Chapter One

Chapter 1


The problem was not that I believed in ghosts. I did not believe in ghosts, but I was visited by one. I could not deny it. When I least expected to, I would see my father, solid of body, curly of hair, in true corporeal splendor, even though he had died months earlier. Once I saw him across the floor at the Rose Room in the Algonquin Hotel. I spotted him from behind. He was dining with two other men, and his graying golden-brown hair looked as springy as ever. I made no attempt to speak to him. I sat in my seat, not eating my chef's salad, watching his familiar movements: the way he drank his martini, smoked his cigarette, gestured expansively. I guessed that he was trying to sell some land to his table companions. I had no doubt that he would pick up the tab.

The next time I saw him was at the apartment I shared with my sisters in Newport. It was a small, dingy, second-floor walkup, made cool by a breeze off the harbor. One close August morning Lily and Margaret had left for the boatyard where they worked, and I had just finished another cup of coffee. I grabbed an old Redbook and headed for the bathroom. There I found my father, seated on the toilet, reading the New York Daily News.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, backing out and slamming the door behind me.

"Hang on a sec, I'm almost through," he called. My heart was racing, but from embarrassment, not shock. I did not ask myself how my father, a man who had died wearing two colostomy bags, could be taking a normal shit. Nor did I wonder why he was reading the Daily News, a tabloid he had considered vulgar in life, and which, besides, was not readily available in Newport. I just