All My Loving by Beth Kaplan

Author:Beth Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iguana Books

At the end, as Paul and I whirled away in a dance, he invited me to go with him to Liverpool.

Take me there please, I prayed. Just take me there.

ONE OF DAD’S young New York cousins arrived in Paris, and the three of us went out to dinner. Robert was twenty-seven, handsome and mature. I got dolled up — backcombed and sprayed my hair and put on the padded bra with a bit of foam fibrefill, the pink flannel shift Mum had made, my fishnet nylon stockings with a dark diamond pattern and my gold heart locket with the tiny picture of Paul cut to fit one side and of our dachshund Brunhilda on the other. I slipped on my new shoes with the Baby Louis heel. Mum and I had fought, again: I still wanted an illusion or a jet heel, and she would allow only a Baby Louis heel, because of my height, she said. What height? I was growing, yes, but normally, not like HER height. Though my feet were getting worryingly big, size nine already. I prayed, please God, do not give me kangaroo feet like my mother’s.

When I walked into the living room, Daddy said, “Where’s my little Pupikina?” and Robert said, “Va va voom!”

“All grown up,” Robert continued. “Last time I saw you, you were a little girl.”

“Thank you. I like a casual but sophisticated look,” I replied, smoothing my hair.

The restaurant was a chic little haunt of Dad’s bygone days. He told us about volunteering for the American Army during the war and being sent to do basic training in Oxford, England, where one weekend he went to a Chopin recital, saw a stunning, very tall Englishwoman and introduced himself to her — luckily for me and Dave, because it was our mother. They discovered that they both loved and played classical music, went on a date where they listened to late Beethoven string quartets on a record player Dad had borrowed, and fell madly in love. If this weren’t a story about my parents, it would have been romantic.

And then he talked about moving on with his unit to Paris, where he fell madly in love with everything French. After the war, he stayed in Paris for a year and took classes at the Sorbonne, where he met his buddy Jacques and saw my mother again. It was hard to think of my dad so young. He seemed a bit more human when he spoke about his memories, which he almost never did. Dad had told me that when he saw the movie Dr. Strangelove, he’d wept with laughter. I couldn’t imagine him weeping, even for fun.

Robert offered me a sip of his wine, but I didn’t like it — too sour. It was easy in French restaurants to eat in a grown-up way, because you could order steak frites — no vegetables, just meat and the most delicious chips. Daddy ordered pig’s ear, a rare delicacy, he boasted, but even he

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