Out Of Control. Janice Macdonald

he’d done that he wasn’t going to tell her about because he wanted it to be a surprise. And he was wearing a big, clomping, olive-green version of the boots he’d bought her in Paris at a shop near the Pompidou Center, where they’d also sold chickens and rabbits in cages. He’d made her put on her boots and they’d gone tromping down to the fields to check out his surprise, which had been an old wrought-iron birdcage that he’d hung from the bare branches of an almond tree. Inside, he’d perched a yellow plastic bird of indeterminate species. It was the incongruity that had delighted him.

      A good memory. And then there was the one about rain.

      She’d been in the bathroom getting dressed for school and she’d called out to ask if it was raining. He’d said it wasn’t, but when she’d looked outside it was pouring down. He’d flown into a rage when she questioned him. His definition of rain was obviously different from hers, he’d yelled. This was just a heavy mist, nothing more than a drizzle, and why did she even ask if she didn’t want his opinion?

      Maybe it would have been funny if he hadn’t been so furious.

      Would that be a memory to share with Nicholas Wynne?

      She glanced at the bedside clock. Two-thirty. God, she was going to be a basket case tomorrow. She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and padded barefoot to the kitchen. The refrigerator, a more reliable source of emotional solace than Baba—she felt guilty thinking that, but it was true—yielded only cheese, milk, peanut butter and some yellowing broccoli. But then, hidden away behind a tub of nonfat yogurt, she spotted a bag of chocolate chips.

      She would hate herself for this when she got on the scales tomorrow, she thought as she finally drifted off to sleep.

      The next time she opened her eyes, it was nine-fifteen.

      Damn. She jumped out of bed and headed for the kitchen. And found Toby, her ex-husband, sitting there with Emily, both of them laughing.

      Emmy laughing. Daisy shook her head. It was a sound she hadn’t heard in weeks. They were so deep in whatever was making them laugh that neither of them saw her in the doorway. There was a box of Cocoa Krispies on the table, two blue bowls and a gallon of milk. Emmy finally glanced up, saw Daisy and her smile faded to a scowl.

      “Our little girl wants to go to culinary school,” Toby said. “What do you think about that, Daze?”

      Daisy grunted something noncommittal. She and Toby ran a restaurant together, Wildfire. He was the chef, she made desserts. When they opened it last year and she’d let it slip to Martin that she’d financed it, he’d told her she needed to have her head examined. “Just don’t come complaining to me when Toby acts up, as he will,” he’d warned. “The restaurant business is notoriously fickle, and going into partnership with your ex-husband, much less a character like Toby, is just asking for trouble.”

      “I was telling Emmy, it’s about time she started dressing up to show off how good-looking she’s getting,” Toby was saying.

      And I’ve been telling her just the opposite, Daisy thought. She noticed that Emmy, who flew into a rage at even the mildest criticism of what she was wearing, was carefully avoiding her eye.

      Toby, after a few more unsuccessful attempts to engage her in conversation, announced that he’d better get going. He left—cereal bowl filmed with milk and glued-on bits of Cocoa Krispies still on the table. Emmy had retreated to her room.

      Daisy carried the bowl to the sink, put the cereal away and wiped off the table. An image came to her of her father at the stove. He’d never slept well, often getting up around dawn to make breakfast, an activity that involved hollering and playing marching music and singing at the top of his voice—just in case she might still be sleeping. None of it had bothered Amalia, who could sleep through anything.

      On that particular morning she remembered, he’d been wearing a chef’s hat, brandishing a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton as he’d belted out tunes.

      She’d got her camera and snapped off half a dozen shots before he realized what she was doing. After the film was developed, he’d critiqued the pictures. “Not bad, not bad. But notice how the spoon is slightly out of focus and you’ve got all this clutter in the background and, this is just constructive criticism, honey, but see the way the clock on the wall seems to be coming out of my head….”

      It had been the same with every picture she’d taken. She’d examine them for hours before she submitted them to him, convinced she’d finally mastered perfection. She’d never even come close. After a while she’d lost interest in photography all together.

      Another memory to share with Nicholas Wynne?

      The phone rang. She took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.

      Nicholas Wynne.

      “My God, I was beginning to think you were a figment of my imagination,” he said. “Either that, or you were avoiding me.”

      Daisy sat at the kitchen table. This guy sounded a tad too chipper for the mood she was in. “A lot of stuff going on,” she said.

      “How is your stepmother, by the way?”

      Sober, I hope. And taking her asthma medicine. And staying off the dune buggy. “Improving,” she said.

      “I’ve left a couple of messages, but haven’t heard back,” he said.

      “You’re kind of batting zero all around.”

      “Sorry?” He paused then laughed. “Oh, right. I’ve left one or two with you, too, haven’t I? Anyway, I wondered if we could meet for lunch in the next day or so. I thought perhaps the Ritz Carlton. A favorite of your father’s, I understand.”

      “So was Tio Taco’s,” Daisy said.

      “Would you like to meet there, then?”

      “It burned down ten years ago.”

      “Right… That’s out then. Back to the Ritz?”

      “The Ritz isn’t my kind of place,” Daisy said. “The Ritz stuff was before my time…before I was born, I mean.”

      “Do you have a suggestion?”

      Go back to England. “Why my father?” she asked.

      “Why do I want to write about him specifically?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Well, as I explained in my letter, I was intrigued by something in his painting. I’m not much of an art enthusiast, I’m the sort who buys a picture because it goes with the couch. But I’d seen your father’s painting and I felt more hopeful somehow.”

      “Kind of a lot to take away from a painting,” Daisy said.

      “You’ve never felt that way? Moved in a way you can’t explain by a piece of art or music…”

      Daisy shrugged although obviously he couldn’t see her. Chopin did that to her, but she wasn’t about to say so. “That was it? You saw the painting and decided to write a book about him?”

      “Well, I did some research, of course.”

      “How?”

      “Newspaper articles, other published works about him.”

      “His first wife’s book?”

      “Uh…I’m taking all that with a grain of salt,” he said.

      Martin had probably told him to take it with a whole saltshaker full. Except a lot of it was actually true. “So, how is a biography different from gossip?” She could hear a tone in her voice that sounded exactly like her father. Not just questioning but truculent, spoiling for a fight. She couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, you read this juicy stuff about him written by an enemy, say. How do you even know it’s true? Who even decides it’s true?” Her voice went up a notch. “Maybe she’s lying through her teeth.”

      “That’s