The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories by Carroll Jonathan

Author:Carroll, Jonathan [Carroll, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781453289266
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-11-26T20:00:00+00:00

CRIMES OF THE FACE

MY FATHER WAS A careful man. He taught us to count our change before leaving a store, check the tires on our bikes before taking them out of the garage, to brush our teeth in an up and down rather than side to side motion.

Because he was careful and because he handled other people’s money as if it were his own, he became successful and wealthy and we lived well. He was the man you see raking leaves in front of the nice Connecticut house on an orange and brown fall day. Or the one at the A&P with a couple of his kids picking up supplies for the barbecue—ten pounds of briquettes, corn on the cob, a couple of steaks as thick as telephone books.

The only thing that was odd about him was he was cursed with increasingly bad insomnia as he got older. One of my vivid memories of childhood is waking up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom, or downstairs for something to eat. He was always up, either reading in the living room or standing at the kitchen counter eating an egg and onion sandwich which for some peculiar reason, he said helped him to sleep. He was always happy to see me and now with an adult’s understanding, I’m sure it was because he was glad for the company even if it was only for a few minutes before I went sleepily back up the stairs to bed.

I say this because among the other things I inherited from him, the insomnia is unfortunately one of them. He used to say he was lucky to have it because he got to own more of the day than anyone else and loved the mysterious quiet of the deep night. I do not, but that is not important to this story which, in an important way, hinges on one sleepless night I experienced not long ago.

I think he had a lover once but even now cannot be sure. I would never in a million years ask my mother however because she loved him very much and since he died, has spent the years sifting her memories of him through some kind of benevolent strainer that leaves her with only happy or sadly-sweet memories of their life together.

The reason why I mention this lover is because of my father’s one real peculiarity: he was an absolute dandy when it came to clothes. He spent thousands and thousands of dollars on them and was never satisfied with what he had. Never. Gray suits, blue suits, gray-blue suits. A tie rack that took up one whole door of his custom-made closet. A closet that was so off-limits to us kids that even the thought of going near it gave us the shivers. When I learned German in school, I realized the only word that properly applied to my father’s closet was VERBOTEN. “Forbidden” has too many soft, sissy sounds in it.

He went to Europe once a year on business for a few weeks.

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