alcohol content.â
He had used his own gin and made his drink to his exacting specifications, but never mind.
âCome on, Dad,â Cassandra said. âWeâll climb the hill together.â
He smiled, pleased by the allusion to one of his favorite poems. âBut Iâll beat you down.â
TOTTERING DOWN
DICKEY HILL ELEMENTARY, SCHOOL NUMBER 201, new in the fall of 1966, opened in utter chaos. I stood in the hallway near the principalâs office, willing myself not to reach for my fatherâs hand. Just five minutes ago, I had shaken his hand off as he walked me to school, a rare treat. We had been climbing the hill past the Wakefield Apartments, prompting, inevitably, a recitation of âJohn Anderson, My Jo.â In a Scottish accent, no less.
John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
Weâve had wiâ ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand weâll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.
It was the first time I felt a twinge of embarrassment at my fatherâs behavior. Fleeting, to be sureâI was still years away from the moment when everything about oneâs parents becomes unbearable, when the simple act of my mother speaking, in the car, with no one else there to hear,could make me cringeâbut I remember speeding up a little so the students arriving by car and bus might not associate me with this odd man.
âDo you know what brent means, Cassandra?â my father quizzed me, referring to another line in the poem: His bonny brow was brent.
I pretended great interest in the Wakefield Apartments, and the pretense quickly became authentic. Apartments were glamorous to me, in general, and although these did not conform to my penthouse fantasies, the terraced units had that kind of compactness that often appeals to small children. I wanted to make friends with people who lived in those apartments, see what was behind their doors and windows. It was a frequent impulse, one that would later lead to my dismal attempt to support myself as a freelance journalist for shelter magazines. Wherever I wentâthe sidewalks of the Wakefield Apartments, the long avenues of rowhouses that led to various downtown destinationsâI wanted to know the interiors of peopleâs homes, their lives, their minds.
Because I was encouraged to tell my parents whatever passed through my quicksilver little brain, I told my father what I was thinking.
âI hope there are kids who live in those apartments and theyâre in my class and they become my friends and I get to go to their houses after school and play there.â It was lonely on Hillhouse Road, where I was the only child in the five houses. There were teenagers, but they had no use for me. We had so little in common that they might as well have been bears or Martians or salamanders.
âYour mother wonât like that,â my father said.
âWhy?â
âBecause your motherâs a snob.â
I pondered that. A snob considered herself better than other people. This did not fit my sense of my mother, who seemed forever⦠sorry about things. She was always apologizing, mainly to my father. For dinnerâits arrival time, its contents. For letting me sneak television shows like Peyton Place and, a few years hence, Love, American Style, which my father found so appalling that he couldnât stop watching it. Television,which my father despised, would become a regular feature of my weekend visits with him, a reliable way of âentertainingâ me. On Friday nights, I would sit rapt in front of the television, tuned unerringly to ABC, where I progressed from fantasy to fantasyâthe blended world of The Brady Bunch, the domestic magic of Nanny and the Professor, the harmonious life of The Partridge Family. That Girl (my personal idol), Love, American Style. It was fun, or would have been if not for my