Partly it was because it had gradually dawned on her that this wasn’t in fact a date, and there was no danger at all (presumably) of her father suddenly trying to kiss her. Partly it was because her nausea had seemingly gone for good, and the relief was as glorious as waving good-bye to an annoying houseguest.
And perhaps it was really because before they left this morning, Patrick had shown her father the ultrasound photos and he’d got tears in his eyes and then he’d been embarrassed, and at that moment he’d become a real person, not the punch line of a joke about Ellen’s life. All the way here in the car, as she sat in the passenger seat and watched her father drive (capably, casually—like Patrick), she’d felt something softening in the very core of her body. Why not be sentimental about this, she thought. He’s your father. It’s allowed. You can like him if you want. You can let yourself feel fond of him.
They stopped in front of a stall and a small, intense woman immediately launched into a passionate explanation of the Australian Olive Association’s criteria for extra virgin olive oil status. She spoke in such meticulous detail, it was as if she believed they were about to apply for extra virgin olive oil status and probably wouldn’t get it.
“Right!” said David, when she finally finished. “Well, that’s … Ellen, why don’t we try some?”
Ellen dipped a piece of bread into a small square of golden olive oil.
“Fantastic.” She rolled her eyes heavenward with exaggerated pleasure. And it was fantastic, although she knew from past experience that everything always seemed to taste particularly delicious at these sorts of things, and then once she got back home it would probably taste much the same as the mass-produced stuff she got from the supermarket. It was the fresh air and the power of suggestion at work. She was being gently hypnotized.
“Let me buy you a bottle.” David pulled a fifty-dollar note out of his wallet.
“What a nice dad,” said the woman.
David coughed into his fist, and Ellen smiled sympathetically at him.
The woman frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re not father and daughter?”
“No, you’re right, we are,” said Ellen.
“Well, I knew it,” said the woman, in a tone of mild rebuke, as if they’d tried to put one over on her. She handed back David his change and the olive oil in a white paper bag. “You’ve got identical chins.”
Ellen and her father simultaneously touched their chins with the tips of their fingers and then dropped their hands.
They ate spaghetti sitting at a white plastic table under a big marquee. The conversation was pleasant but a bit of an effort, as if they were two strangers who had struck up a conversation at a bus stop, and now the bus was taking too long to arrive and they felt obliged to keep talking.
“I’m sorry about you and Mum breaking up,” said Ellen, after a long discussion about spring in Australia as compared to spring in the UK.
“So am I,” said David. “It was probably my fault. I shouldn’t have rushed into a relationship when I was still a bit battered and bruised.”
“Battered and bruised,” repeated Ellen, confused.
“Well, my wife left me after thirty years of marriage,” said David. “It threw me for a loop. There wasn’t even another man. She said she’d ‘forgotten how to be herself.’ I said, ‘Be yourself. I’m not stopping you!’ But apparently I was.” He looped his spaghetti expertly around his fork and contemplated it sadly.
“I’m sorry,” said Ellen. She was struggling to readjust her perceptions. “I think I was under the impression that you’d left your wife, or that it was mutual.”
“It certainly wasn’t mutual.”
“Mum didn’t say,” began Ellen.
“I sort of played down the ‘I’m so heartbroken about my wife’ side of things,” said David.
“She said you’d been thinking about her throughout your marriage.” She hoped he didn’t notice the sound of accusation in her voice.
Her father gave her a rueful look. “She told you that.” He pushed his plate away from him and settled his arms on the sides of his chair. “I wasn’t lying. Over the years I did think about your mother occasionally, and even dreamed about her, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love Jane.”
Ellen pushed her own plate away.
“Although, of course, you did cheat on her when you were engaged,” she said briskly but jokily to show she wasn’t judging. She gestured at herself to indicate the results of his infidelity. “More than once, I hear.”
“Yes,” said David. “I was young and stupid and your mother was gorgeous. Those eyes of hers!” He gave a boyish, “Awww, shucks” shrug. “Lucky I did, hey?”
Ellen couldn’t decide whether to be charmed or not.
These were the muddled, imprecise facts of her conception: not quite a great love story, not quite a seedy indiscretion, not quite a brave feminist act.
“Anyway,” said David. “Your mother and I are still friends, and just between you and me, I’m not giving up hope yet.”
“Really?” said Ellen. She wondered if she should tell him that she didn’t think he had a chance at all, but then what did she know? Over the last few months she’d learned that anything she thought she knew to be true could shift and change in an instant. Nothing was permanent: The Buddhists knew what they were talking about.
They sat in silence for a while, watching the preparations for some sort of performance that was obviously about to take place in the center of the marquee.
“Patrick seems like a good man,” said David. “He’s got a son too, hasn’t he? From a previous marriage?”
“Jack,” said Ellen. “He’s at a party today. His mother died when Jack was little.”
“Testing,” said someone over a microphone. “Testing, two, three, four.”
“So obviously the relationship is a bit complicated,” Ellen heard herself say. This was what happened when you talked for too long to a stranger at a bus stop. The conversation suddenly took an inappropriately intimate turn.
“Why?” said David. Ellen was a bit thrown by the question. Wasn’t it self-evident? Most women she knew would have said something like, “Oh, well, yes, of course, I can just imagine, my sister’s friend dated a widower and it was a disaster…”