1965

"Papa?" the child said peering upwards, her fingers intertwined in the tattered fur of a teddy bear. 

"Yes?"

"Tell me another. Please."

She steps her tiny toes onto his big black leather boots. They look silly in comparison, only covering half the length and an eight of its width. They are old boots, the bottoms flapping like mouths when he walks and landing punches to the floor with loud slaps and pops. 

"Another one?" Papa chuckles, "That's the third one this week."

She knows this, it shines in her eyes. Still, she persists, taking her hands in his as she walks him to the record player.

He gives a sigh.

The kind of sigh that tells A father there is no use in fighting, it has been decreed.

His fingers move carefully, as they always do. He takes the black disc from its paper sleeve, setting the cover aside. He moves with precision as if everything could break and fall away within an instant. He knows it all could, he's seen it happen more times than he cares to recall. 

Lifting the needle he places the old record onto the table. Frank Sintras voice plays, low, crackly, and tender as her Papa begins to dance.

"Once," he begins, placing her feet more centered on his own, "Your Mother and I took the record player to the edge of the window. That one there-"

Her eyes glance to the window, and then to her Father. She smiles upwards, trying to remember the way his silky hair curls twisted with dashes of grey. Remember the way his cologne smelled, how he smiled and moved.  They were always changing, those restless curls. Some days would be smooth, other days tired and wild. They were the most fascinating curls in all of existence, she thought. Absolutely no one in any story or anywhere in the world could have curls so strange and wild. 

"He is handsome when he smiles," she thinks to herself as she listens attentively as one of eight years can. 

Or perhaps he isn't.

 Either way, in her young eyes, he is the world.

"And then?"

Her voice is like a ribbon, smooth and eager, each word flowing and rippling into the next.

1, 2, 3.

He steps carefully forward as if he were following a map etched into the wood, telling him exactly where to stand.

"And then," he smiles, "We went out to the stars and swayed with the breeze and trees until-until the light of the moon was as if a candle, flickering and drifting away. We drank our fill of happy for a time and feeling full and content, fell fast asleep under the blanket of night."

She buried her face in his arms, her braids caught and tangled in the buttons of his tattered shirt. 

"Sounds wonderful, like a dream." 

"It was."

They dance together awhile until the horizon is filled with a fiery red that casts shadows of hazy smoke onto the walls.

The record ends, his swaying stops.

The walls in the room catch their breath, the wind outside giving up its stolen possessions and settling gently back down to earth to sleep. The wallpaper turns down its eyes, it's pencil sketched flowers drooping into the lull of night. 

"Time for bed Jane." He says lifting her down off his feet and back onto the floor.

She rushed forward again, hugging him close. She can tell he is too skinny. She knows he always works too long.

She took his shirt in her hands. "Just a little while longer-"

"To bed Jane," his eyes warn, "Straight to bed." 

They've never really needed words to speak to each other. Never words to fill the silences between the thoughts. The small little house creaks and speaks even in the quietest moments. They both would both rather listen. Listen to birds sing and wolves cry than to fill that beautiful silence with idle chatter.

Jane nods as he glances, her little mud-stained toes pointing and leading her to the creaking metal bed.

The teacher tells her they are needy. She does not think they are quite so poor. They have the house, stables and the fields that make up Longford. Perhaps poor simply means you're missing something you love.

"Maybe Teacher just thinks we're poor without Mother here." Jane reasoned with herself as she counted her freckles in the half shattered mirror, running a thumb across her cheek. 

12.
As always.
Just the same as Mother.

She splashed the cold water in her face and patted it dry with the towel made of strings.

The water always tastes sweet, like a good dream or a summer day.

Like ice cream. 

Then, he tucks her into bed as always, pulling the grey scratchy blanket up until it tickles her nose and makes her sneeze.

When all is settled and they are nestled in tight like the birds in spring, they say their prayers.She sometimes wonders what he prays about. There doesn't seem much more that they could want.

Maybe he asks for Mother back.

"Please let paradise come soon," she says with eyes clenched tight, she mumbles it aloud against her better judgment.  "And please let me have an elephant to ride named Dorothy. The end."

Her father gives a shake of his head, as her innocent eyes look back at him "Amen. Not the end."

Her face floods with horror as if she's forgotten to stamp her letter.

She closes her eyes tight again, "Amen."

He looks at her in hopeless adoration and gives her hand a squeeze. A pride that no child can understand until they themselves become parents in turn. 

"I love you, Jane." He says.

Once they danced under the stars-

"I love you too."

Until the moons light was as soft and candlike-

Goodnight Darling," He whispers turning off the light. 

We drank our fill of it and feeling full and content-

"Goodnight Papa." 

We fell fast asleep under the blanket of night.