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POSSESSIONS UNBEARABLE TO LOSE / E. S. Goldman BEING FRIENDS WITH my father, Dave, was easy. He never scolded me. My mother took care of that by the time he came home from the store. After dinner I got in his lap and he read the pages I pointed to in thin books. He brought me surprise presents and showed me how to shoot a marble hard off the end of my index finger. No other girl I knew could do that. They aU did thumbies with the finger crooked around the shooter. That was between him and me. I was eight years old before I had a glimmer of my father's life as it was between him and himself. Eight or ten times a year he made a quick buying trip, sometimes to Chicago or Baltimore, usuaUy to New York. On one of these overnight trips he took me with him to visit my grandmangrampa. He was born in Pittsburgh but mother was a New Yorker. We were in the darkened aisle in front of the parted curtain, his hand absentmindedly on my head as if 1 were the newel post on a stair to the upper berth. Under my camel-hair coat mother had me in a nightgown to minimize the complications of undressing in a PuUman. "Let's see how we'll do this. You're going to sleep downstairs, but Tm going to put you upstairs while I get undressed downstairs. How's that?" It was like cousin Louise's where I had the upper bunk under a slant roof. I was pleased. I volunteered for the upper and assured him I wouldn't fall out. "You'll have more fun in the lower. You can see out the window. Read your book. TU be ready in a couple of minutes." He hoisted me to the berth and ducked away. He continued to reappear at my level Uke a seal at the edge of a pool to accompUsh stages of undress best done verticaUy, but left the top button of the curtain unclosed so I could see his world upside-down if I wanted to. For him, a train was a high-class retreat with the agreeable discipUne of tight but affluently fixtured space, and the service of a porter, the nearest thing to a personal butler an ordinary businessman ever thought about. His ceU was behind a green The Missouri Review · 209 curtain stiffened by a buckram fly from a Balkan general's uniform. A few months ago he would have taken a compartment or a drawing room for the two of us, but the time of extravagance had passed. After a brief experience of sufficient wealth to buy the whole upper-lower section for himself, on his last trip he had cut back to a lower. He would have to get used again to putting on his nightgown without raising his arms over his head. I knew our farmly was having financial problems because money was spoken of more often and with greater tension, but I thought of it as a mUd inconvenience for others. Dad was going into a new store. It was expensive to get the store ready. It had nothing to do with my quarter allowance, and not yet with the make of shoe that could be afforded for me; it hinted not at all that my mother would soon be looking for a cheaper house to rent, and stall cheaper ones later. He put his mUano straw hat and my travel bag on the shelf over the foot of the bed. He reached to the window, pinched the lock and pulled the shade down, shutting out baggage wagons, porters and passengers on the platform. He began to perform famUiar offices—taking off, hanging up, opening, closing; shifting shoes, toUet kit and vaUse in experienced rotation; solving the cat's-cradle of the hammock for socks (French lisle hand-clocked), wrist watch (HamUton, from Edith on their 15th), a leather envelope that was both wallet and paper file strapped with a heavy rubberband. Spreading the valise open, he took out nightshirt, robe, slippers and toUet kit, reclosed it and stuffed it...

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