The Guy Not Taken Read Online Free

chirped, and Dad had glared at her so furiously that she cringed in her seat.
    “That’s it,” he’d said again, and walked away from the table, set with the fancy white lace tablecloth and the good china, laden with roast turkey, sausage stuffing, asparagus and corn-bread and bottles of wine. He stomped through the kitchen and the laundry room and into the garage, slamming the door behind him. We’d sat there, stunned, as the garage door opened and his sports car roared into life. “That’s it,” he’d said . . . and that was the last we’d seen of him. But his mail—and, then, his creditors’ calls—still came to the house on Wickett Way.
    The calls always started the same way. The person from the collection agency would ask to speak to Gerald Krystal. I would say, “He’s not here.”
    “Well, when do you expect him?” the caller would ask.
    “I don’t.” Then I’d recite his office number, which would provoke angry sighs.
    “We already have that number. We’ve left numerous messages.”
    “Well, I’m sorry, but he’s not here, and that’s the only number we have for him.”
    “It can’t be,” a man from Citibank whined in my ear one morning. He had a grating New York accent, and he’d called at 7:10 a.m. “He’s your father, right? You must have some idea how to reach him.”
    “That’s the only number we have,” I’d repeated woodenly.
    Citibank tried seduction. “There’s no point in lying.”
    “I’m not. That’s the only one we’ve got.”
    Citibank pressed on. “Doesn’t your father ever stop by? Doesn’t he call you?”
    I squeezed my eyes shut. He hadn’t called. Not once. Not here, not at college, not me, not Nicki, not Jon. I thoughtI could understand a man not wanting to be a husband anymore—certainly I’d seen enough of my high school friends’ fathers bail over the years, taking up with colleagues, with secretaries, with, in one memorably scandalous incident, the guidance counselor at our high school. What I couldn’t understand was a man not wanting to be a father anymore. Especially not our father. I’d scoured my memories, turning each one over beneath the hard light of hindsight, but I couldn’t convince myself that he’d never loved us, that the first sixteen years of my life had been an elaborate sham.
    He’d taken us all on special trips, little adventures. He’d drive me to the library three towns over that had comfortable couches and the best collection of current fiction. He and Nicki made visits to the toy store, where she’d spent hours playing with the marionettes and the Madame Alexander dolls. He took Jon to hockey games and football games, and to help Mr. Kleinman down the street, who was engaged in a never-ending and, so far, quixotic attempt to steal cable. (“Gendarmes!” Mr. Kleinman would shout when he thought he’d spotted a police car, and Jon and my father, who’d sometimes made it as far as a third of the way up the telephone pole, would drop their pliers and wires and sprint back to the safety of our garage.) My dad would remember the names of our teachers and our friends, and our friends’ teachers, too. He told Nicki she was smart. He told Jon he was an excellent athlete. He’d told me I was beautiful. And he was the one who’d taught all three of us to swim.
    “You could save him a lot of trouble if you’d just tell us how to reach him, honey.”
    “That’s the only number we have.” I twisted the phone cord around my finger and swallowed hard against the lump in my throat.
    Citibank heaved a sigh. “We’ll find your father,” he promised me.
    “Well, when you do, could you tell him his kids say hello?” I said, but got nothing but a dial tone in response.
    Mom used to tell us that the calls were nothing to worry about. “Be polite but firm,” she said, looking each one of us in the eye over dinner one night. But then a smooth-talking operator from a collection agency in Delaware tried to convince Jon that