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What surprised me when my
father asked me to sit down

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at his desk in the
basement office

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was that I wasn't
surprised, not really.

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Even before he
explained, I saw it all.

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He was so patently
phony, my best customer.

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So absolutely not an officer
in the Navy or anything

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remotely military.

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The jacket was a joke.

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It came in sharp focus as my
father pointed to the orders

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on the desk.

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The cuffs were frayed, the
wool of the jacket was pilled,

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not even quite clean.

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The man's hair was too long.

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His blue wool tie strangled his
reddish neck in a tight knob.

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And that salute as he
left, it was ridiculous.

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The hat's cheap, shiny visor
had been cracked, gray cardboard

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showing in the little split.

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It was a costume and not
even a very good one.

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And his shoes-- I hadn't
even looked at his shoes.

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I stayed with his face, the
smile and the commanding face.

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The Robert Mitchum sexiness.

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Why was it all so evident now?

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Why was I so easily
hoodwinked at the time?

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I sat at my father's
desk and looked

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at his face, which
really was severe,

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not the mock sternness
of the Navy officer

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broadly play-acting a big man.

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My father brought out a letter.

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It was from the man's
mother, or rather, it

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was a letter from a lawyer
representing the mother.

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Her address was the
Bayard address where

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the roses, and the chartreuse
orchids, and the wreath,

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and the Christmas tree
have been delivered.

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The letter included a
copy of a public notice

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the woman had placed in the
classifieds at the St. Paul

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Pioneer Press
several years earlier

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notifying anyone who cared
to know that she, Mrs. Thomas

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So-and-so of whatever
number on Bayard Avenue,

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hereby disavowed all
responsibility for any debts

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or encumbrances incurred
by her son, Thomas

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Jr., same last name, no
known address, under any name

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or alias he might use
from this day forward.

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"Will she pay?"

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I asked in horror.

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"No," my father said,
looking down at the orders.

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"We can't ask her to pay."

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The Navy officer-- I couldn't
think of him as anything else--

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had skipped town.

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Fresno, I thought.

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As for the FTD order for
the three dozen roses,

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"We'll have to eat
that, too," my father

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said, a rare weariness
in his voice.

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I'd been incredibly
stupid, yet he

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didn't scold, didn't admonish.

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There was no punishment,
no demand or suggestion

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that I pay it all back
out of my own wages.

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No sermon.

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I went back upstairs to
the showroom chastened,

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but apparently I
wasn't in any trouble.

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All this would be swept
under the rug of invoices

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and receipts, taken on the
winds of remittances and debits

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that gusted through the
business office in the basement.

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It would all just
go away, somehow.

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But did I understand then
or is it only possible now,

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in the middle of the night of
the last day of my mother's

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life, as I sit holding
her hand in the hospital,

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to see in the great
framed panels of memory

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how my father struggled.

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How trapped he was as he
explained the situation to me.

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There he is sitting miserably at
his desk with the lavish orders

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before him.

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I've been an idiot,
naive, so easily taken in.

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But he can say none of that.

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He, the great believer
in the teaching moment,

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can use this experience
to teach me nothing.

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That was his real misery,
not the hundreds of dollars

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I had given away so easily.

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I wasn't Ollie or Mrs. Butler.

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I wasn't an employee who
had made a terrible mistake

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and must be wised up.

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I was his girl.

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The girl he'd brought up
to be-- to remain always--

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an innocent, an eternal ingenue
without guile or mistrust

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or even too many useful skills.

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No waitressing, no typing.

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Something better and
freer and more beautiful

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was waiting for me,
though he couldn't quite

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imagine what it was.

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Nothing bad could happen
to me there in the store

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where he himself worked.

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I was free to trust
everyone and everything.

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He didn't realize that
the trust he bred in me,

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the trust he demanded,
dragged in its communion-white

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innocence the deep shadow
of its own adulthood

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where, eventually, I'd have to
learn the score like everybody

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else.

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But admit it.

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I was already on my way
to being an ex-innocent.

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Worse, I was becoming a phony
innocent, a pretend naive.

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I'd seen it all, but I knew
I wasn't supposed to see it.

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So I un-saw it.

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Didn't see the fakery.

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Didn't see the scam.

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Saw only the charm and happiness
of the moment, the possibility

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of making someone happy,
of someone else making

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someone else happy.

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All those roses to the
coast of the country.

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The handsome man with his
fabulous smile and a desire

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to give lavish gifts.

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It was what my father
trained up in me,

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Miss Muffet on my
flowery tuffet.

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I was never to approach the
world with narrowed eyes, not

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I. Never to be the one to
get the better of anybody.

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I won't be a file clerk
like Leo the Lion.

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And I won't sit in
a corner, as she

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does, nursing her
Celtic grudges,

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keeping tabs on people.

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Unlike her, I'll never morph
from the romantic lead leaning

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with sweet dependence
against his shoulder

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under a cottonwood tree along
the trees of the Mississippi

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in the picture that
stood on the piano

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where I practiced
my Chopin every day.

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How often he still comes
back to me, my Navy officer.

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He appears at odd moments.

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He's here right now as I
hold my mother's dying hand.

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Face shining at me on the big
screen of the hospital window

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with his Robert Mitchum wink.

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I keep thinking about him when
I should be thinking of her,

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or thinking of dad, or
thinking of someone,

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but not him, whoever he was.

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But he comes out of the cold
from Fifth Street on Christmas

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Eve, striding
across the showroom,

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the last customer of the holiday
and my best customer ever.

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The laughable costume,
the lavish smile,

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his final jaunty salute.

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Was that ever his lucky day.

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I was waiting for him.

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I wanted to help.

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He didn't even need to do
much acting because I made him

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up all on my own.

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Even as he swept the orders from
his desk like a bad poker hand,

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my father said nothing.

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I wasn't in trouble.

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I couldn't be scolded.

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I was what he wanted
me to be, his daughter,

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a truster in the lovely
surface of things, a believer.

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His girl.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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