Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

‘too many pills’! I don’t even take all the pills that are prescribed for me.” Dinah tried to speak calmly. She was hearing Robbie in another room, chattering brightly. He had questions for her—she had to get to him, to hug him tight.
    “I—I may have to report you, Dinah. I should call the medical clinic—your doctor—”
    “Mother, go away! I’ll call you when I want to see you again but it won’t be for a while.”
    Now Dinah was speaking wildly. Far from being drugged she was cursed with a clarity of perception cruel and pitiless as a shining knife blade. She hid her ravaged face in her hands hoping that, when she lowered them, the Fury would have vanished.
     
    Your “husband.” Where is he?
    Most days, all day into the evening Whit was at the radio station or—elsewhere.
    Since the abduction he stopped by Ypsilanti police headquarters regularly, never less than twice a week. He’d taken an active role in the search for their son. He’d organized volunteers in the Ypsilanti–Ann Arbor area to search for Robbie and to affix MISSING CHILD posters in public places. He’d been many times interviewed on TV and radio and he’d traveled in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota to meet with law enforcement officers, city and state police, sheriffs’ departments. He spoke regularly with FBI officers assigned to his case. The face of Whit Whitcomb—intense, pained, earnest—was nearly as familiar in the public gaze as the face of the lost child Robbie Whitcomb.
    Whit Whitcomb had become a volunteer for the Missing Children of America Foundation and had several times been interviewed on national cable channels—CNN, MSNBC.
    He continued with his popular WCYS-FM program. It had become a call-in program now, and many people called to commiserate over the DJ’s abducted son.
    He saw friends. Not friends whom Dinah knew but male friends, whom he’d known before his marriage. Sometimes, returning home, he smelled of alcohol.
    Dinah thought
It’s the smell of grief. Who can blame him.
    Her mother hinted, and more than hinted, that
a man like Whit Whitcomb
wouldn’t be faithful to her for long.
A man like that, it’s in the genes.
    What precisely did Dinah’s mother mean? Whit’s genetic pool was immense, you had to suppose—that was what
mixed-race
meant.
    Pursue
race
far enough back, you’d probably end in an ancient kingdom somewhere in Africa.
    Now that Dinah was
disabled
. Now that Dinah’s face
needed more surgery.
    Her mother protested: she was just speaking frankly! She was just saying what everyone was thinking.
    It was true, Whit was away from home on an average of twice as much as he’d been before the abduction. He often missed dinner, which he’d tried never to miss before. He never watched the TV channels he’d watched with Dinah and Robbie—Animal Planet, Discovery, Comedy Central; he never watched TV at all. When he was home, he was at his computer, scrolling the Internet. Checking e-mail obsessively.
    Yet Whit called home faithfully, never less than once a day. He called Dinah’s cell, not the special landline number.
    Hi honey. How’s it going?
    Pretty good. You?
    Great.
    Any news?
    I guess not. You?
    Guess not.
    A pause then. In the background, raised voices and maybe laughter. For Whit inhabited a bright peopled world from which Dinah was exiled for now.
    Are you hurting, Dinah?
    No! Not bad at all.
    You had kind of a bad night last night—I guess?
    Did I? No.
    Maybe tonight will be better.
    Maybe.
    Well. Love you, Dinah.
    Love you, Whit.
    See you later.
    How late?
    Not past nine. Promise.
    Whit didn’t always keep his promises.
    Dinah never reproached him. Lying on the sofa watching TV—not really watching, just clicking through channels as if in search of—what?—she didn’t know—until midnight. She’d lost so much weight in the hospital and in rehab, she now atefrozen yogurt out of the container, ravenous with hunger, a kind of desperate greed, that ended in abrupt