My Daughter Sally_(1)

My daughter, Sally is a pretty girl. She is also shy, and managed to get through high school without having a real date. Her only close friend was Susan. Once, Susan arranged for the same boy to take both of them to a school dance. Sally wanted to go. She was also nervous about it, and almost relieved when the boy got the flu, and could not attend. Susan came over, and spent the night with my daughter.

Like many girls, Sally feels self conscious about her weight. Susan, who dated several boys in high school, has the pencil thin body of a professional model, and a face to go with it. Sally is what they call in Yiddish, “zaftig.” She is buxom, rather than fat, with large breasts, and a waist that is much thinner than her full, rounded hips. I liked to show her pictures of German beer maids to try to convince her that many men preferred women like her, but I was unconvincing, because boys did not ask her for dates. Her face is not as beautiful as her mother’s, but pretty in the same way, and with a shy smile that I wished she would show the world more often.

Susan tried to get a boy friend to ask Sally to the senior prom. It did not work out. Susan went with another boy. At the dinner table, the night of her senior prom, Sally did not feel like talking. She ate quickly, and went to her bedroom, and closed the door. When I saw her several hours later, I could tell she had been crying.

While this was happening, my marriage was crumbling around me. My wife was beautiful. When we got married I thought I was the luckiest man in the world. My wife did not think she was as fortunate. Our relationship was always more important to me than to her. When my career did not go anywhere, my wife did not let me forget it. The fact that I worked hard at a job I did not like for a boss who did not like me did not matter to her. She valued results, not effort.

When my wife found a man whose career was zooming into the stratosphere, she at first tried to hide the affair from Sally and me. Then, she did not care. Finally, she flaunted it.

My wife sued for divorce. I did not even contest it. What was there to contest? I still loved her. She wanted out. I did not want to keep her if she did not want to stay.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not hiring a lawyer. Because my wife hired a good one, she got the house, and most of our joint bank account. All I had left from twenty years of marriage were a few good memories, a larger number of bad ones, a car dying of old age, our smaller TV, an old radio, my clothes and books, some furniture for my apartment, and the love of my daughter.

After she graduated from high school, Sally got a job at a department store, and continued to live with her mother. I was afraid my ex-wife’s lover would put the moves on Sally, but Sally told me that she despised him, and made that as clear as she could without saying anything.

For Sally’s eighteenth birthday, she and I decided that we would go to a restaurant to celebrate, and she would sleep over. It would be the closest thing she had ever had to a date. Except for courting my ex-wife, I had not dated anyone for over two decades. I had not even thought about other women after the divorce. That had pretty much kicked the wind out of me.

When I picked up Sally at what used to be my home, my ex-wife greeted me with chilly courtesy.