“Daddy . . .”
I swallowed what I was chewing and turned down the volume on the TV, unsure whether she had really spoken, but there she was, her legs pressed together and her hands on her knees, looking at me.
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
I made a movement with my hand and accompanied it with a nod. The whole gesture together meant Yes, of course. She was my daughter, right? And just in case, thinking mostly about what my ex-wife would have considered “appropriate,” I said:
“Yes, sweetheart. Of course.”
And then Sara smiled and looked out at the yard for the rest of the TV show.
We slept badly again, Sara pacing her room end-to-end, me tossing and turning in bed until I finally drifted off. The next day I called Silvia. It was Saturday, but she didn’t answer the phone. I called back later, and again around noon. I left a message. Sara spent the whole morning sitting on the sofa looking out at the yard. Her hair was a little disheveled and she wasn’t sitting up so straight anymore; she looked very tired. I asked her if she was all right and she said:
“Yes, Dad.”
“Why don’t you go out to the yard for a while?”
“No, Dad.”
Thinking of our conversation the night before, it occurred to me to ask if she loved me, but right away that struck me as pure stupidity. I called Silvia again. I left another message. In a low voice, making sure Sara couldn’t hear me, I said to her voice mail:
“It’s urgent, please.”
We waited, each of us at our end of the sofa, with the TV on. A few hours later Sara said:
“Excuse me, Dad.”
She went to her room and closed the door. I turned off the TV so I could hear better: Sara didn’t make a noise. I decided I’d call Silvia one more time. I picked up the receiver, but when I heard the dial tone I hung up. I drove the car to the pet store, looked for a salesperson, and told him I needed a small bird, the smallest he had. The salesman opened a catalogue with photographs and said that prices and food varied from one species to the next.
“Do you like exotic species, or do you prefer more household ones?”
I pounded the counter with my open palm. Everything displayed on the counter jumped and the clerk was silent, looking at me. I pointed to a small, dark bird that was moving nervously from one side of its cage to another. They charged me a hundred twenty pesos and gave it to me in a square, green cardboard box with little holes poked through it, and on the lid, a pamphlet from the breeder with the photo of the bird. They also tried to give me a free bag of birdseed, but I turned it down.
When I got home Sara was still in her room. For the first time since she’d been in the house, I went upstairs and opened her door. She was sitting on the bed across from the open window. She looked at me. Neither of us said anything. She was so pale she looked sick. The room was clean and neat, the door to the bathroom ajar. There were some thirty shoe boxes in a neat pile on the desk, but flattened so they didn’t take up so much space. The cage hung empty near the window. On the night table, next to the lamp, was the framed photo she’d brought from her mother’s house. The bird moved and its feet scratched the cardboard, but Sara stayed still. I placed the box on the desk, and without a word I left the room and closed the door. Then I realized I didn’t feel very good. I leaned against the wall to rest a moment. I looked at the breeder’s pamphlet, which was still in my hand. On the back was information about how to care for the bird, and about its reproduction cycles. They emphasized the species’ need to be in pairs during warm months, and the things one could do to make the years in captivity as pleasant as possible. I heard a brief shriek, and then the bathroom sink turned on. When the water started running I felt a little better, and I knew that, somehow, I would make it down the stairs.
SANTA CLAUS SLEEPS AT OUR HOUSE