first visit.
“Why don’t you have a pet name for me?” Hero scowled from across her newly discovered favorite breakfast: cheese grits.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, other fathers call their kids dumb things like Sugar or Pumpkin. All you ever call me is Hero.”
“Which is the name you came with.”
“So?”
“You want me to give you a pet name?”
“I want to know why you don’t call me anything.”
After almost a week of meals filled with blank, silent stares, we decided something had to be done, so we developed this method of discussion: In the morning we asked each other a question, some tidbit about our respective pasts, presents and future dreams. Those little joys and tragedies that gain significance by sheer accumulation. Nothing too personal. Then after dinner, during dessert, we’d ask a follow-up and sift for some significance amid the random flotsam gathered in our nets. This was Hero’s idea, so naturally her questions were better. I would ask some banal question about her school or friends, carefully avoiding any area that might seem too personal. She, on the other hand, like any good predator, knew how to go for the jugular.
“You hate my name. Don’t you.”
This was after dinner and partway into dessert. All day I’d been struggling with our morning session, foolishly hoping she’d let the matter drop. I swallowed uncomfortably and scratched my knee.
“Why would you say that?
“I don’t know. Something in your face. Your nose scrunches up when you say it. Like you’ve eaten something sour.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“I didn’t say it did. I’m just asking.”
“Fine. I probably would have picked something else.”
She smiled. Once again, as had happened so often during her visit over the past week, it occurred to me that I might have found just the wrong thing to say.
“And what would you have called me?”
“One thing at a time,” I stalled, taking an earnest spoonful from my bowl. “I’m still working on the pet name… Puddin’.”
She frowned over her grape Jell-O.
“That’s the best you can do?”
“It’s a start.”
“That’s barely even trying. Why don’t you call me Hamburger? Or, wait! What’d we have for dinner last night?”
“I’m doing my best.”
“Spaghetti! Or how about Meatball?”
“You’re the one who suggested Pumpkin,” I said.
Hero’s face puckered. “That was an example.”
“I’m just saying.”
“My sweet Noodle,” she mocked, bracing her chin on folded hands. “My darling little Marinara.”
“Marinara’s kinda nice,” I said. “Let’s go with that.”
As evening set in, we walked the neighborhood. It was for exercise, so naturally her idea, and it was a rare opportunity to explore the place I lived. After six years living here again, I had not found the time or been pushed by strong inclination. Most often, I was either racing to or from work, or buried deep in one project or another, observing the necessary detachment from streets and houses and landscapes beyond the borders of my front lawn.
But here at the close of the day, we had time to meander with no expressed purpose or design. Up and down the blocks, past shaded and glowing windows, perfectly tailored lawns and next year’s luxury automobiles.
My next door neighbor Alfred was clipping hedges below his front windows. Alfred was a veteran, a widower, and seemingly obsessed with how I organized my affairs. He was not only my Magnolia Grove block president, but also vice-chair of the entire Neighborhood Association. He saw to it that the rules were followed, and when they weren’t, he made sure a penalty was paid. He also took a surprisingly dim view of my reconstruction plans. It wasn’t the retrofitting that was the problem, given the popularity of neoclassical homes; rather, he found my insistence on an authentic renovation perplexing. In a neighborhood perpetually reaching toward modernity, there were specifications and regulations to follow, security elements to maintain, beautification standards to meet, and my idea of a historically accurate home was, as he put it, “potentially depressive of property values”—all of which explained why he, along with everyone else on my block and the Neighborhood Association itself, was in the process of suing me out of house and home.
He stopped clipping to wave and smile. I waved back.
“This place isn’t what I expected,” Hero said, as we climbed the set of meandering public stairs into the upper level of the neighborhood. “Not at all.”
“Worse, then?”
“Hard to say. My expectations were pretty low.”
I nodded, but said nothing.
“When I think of the South, I picture everything in black and white. Fire hoses. Police dogs. We Shall Overcome.”
“That’s the Old South. Things are different now.”
“It’s so lush here. The trees, the vines.”
“We’re doing our best to change that. It’s a constant battle for supremacy.”
“And it’s got all this history. But what’s freaky, though, is how much of it isn’t different at all. Standing around, sometimes, I think I could be anywhere. I mean, that could be anyone’s McDonalds and Jiffy Lube.”
“Is that a compliment or a criticism?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
We walked side by side, her hands swinging loose. I started to reach out to hold one of hers, then laid my arm on her shoulder instead. She let it rest there for a moment. Then she stepped forward with a shrug—gentle, but firm and definite.
We passed a series of lawns with poster board signs for competing political campaigns—judges and congressmen and governor.
“You should know I don’t blame you for all this.”
“The South?”
“No. My birth. It’s not your fault,” she said, walking ahead of me. “Wait. Strike that. I should say, it is your fault. But I still don’t blame you.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said, feigning cheerfulness. “You’re a girl with two fathers.”
Hero shook her head. “Right now, I’m a girl with no father.”
“I
