After Her Read Free Page B

women they loved. Their daughters or their girlfriends or their wives.
    But it was only my father who did that. The only person ever who did that, in the history of the world, possibly.
    P ATTY AND I ADORED OUR father, simple as that. Young as we were back then, he taught us to wrestle and instructed us in self-defense moves to protect against the unwelcome advances of the boyfriends he told us would pursue us tirelessly all our lives. But he also ran us bubble baths and lit candles for us when we got in the tub. He put on Sinatra and taught us to slow dance, with our toes resting on his shiny black shoes.
    If she had the right dance partner, he said, a woman should be able to close her eyes and let him take her anywhere. But steer clear of a man with a limp hand. You want to feel strong pressure on your back, and his hand pressing against yours, as he led. It’s fine if he smells your hair—you want a sensual man—but not his hand on your rear end. And if he doesn’t walk you back to your table after the dance, he’s danced his last with you. Then again, how could a man ever stop dancing with either of the Torricelli girls?
    Never let a man disrespect you, he said. You deserve a man who treats you like the queen of the world.
    We were not yet six and eight when he told us these things. What did we know of love and romance then, or cruelty and rejection? We took his words in anyway, to file for later.
    He never yelled at us. He never had to. If one of us had done something we weren’t supposed to, it only took one look from him to stop what we were doing.
    Often he worked late, but if he came home early enough, he was the one who’d cook for us. Garlic was always involved—those large, beautiful hands of his finely chopping and sautéing it in good olive oil. He prepared his sauce from scratch, and pasta too, hung up all over the kitchen like laundry, with meatballs made following his father’s recipe. He claimed to speak Italian, and sometimes spewed out foreign-sounding words while he cooked, but at some point we figured out they were made up.
    After the meal, if he had to yawn, he’d stretch his arms as wide as possible, open his mouth all the way, and let out a roar. We’d curl up on the couch with him to watch TV— The Rockford Files, his favorite—and he’d rub our feet. When we got tired, he’d carry us to bed, one in each strong arm, then sit in the dark and sing to us.
    Our mother stayed home mostly, but on his days off, we’d pile in his car (bench seats, before he got the Alfa Romeo) so Patty and I could both snuggle up in the front—and take off on the most winding roads. He drove stick and took the curves like a race car driver, which made me want to be one.
    â€œDon’t tell your mother,” he said—his regular refrain—as the speedometer reached seventy-five. Of course we never did.
    One time he took us to Candlestick Park for a Giants game. “That guy on first?” he said. “Number forty-four? Take a good look at him. For the rest of your life you can tell people you saw Willie McCovey play.”
    Once, standing in line with our father at the supermarket, a man just ahead of us started giving his wife a hard time, or maybe she was just his girlfriend. “Shut your trap if you know what’s good for you,” the man told her.
    Our father stepped out of the line then to face him. “Does it make you feel like a big guy, bullying a woman like that?” he said.
    â€œListen hard to what I tell you here, girls,” he said after, in the parking lot. “I wouldn’t normally use this language, but you need to hear this plainly: Never let any man give you shit. One stunt like that and you’re out the door.”
    He took us on the cable cars and out to dinner at some grown-up restaurant, not McDonald’s or Chuck E Cheese. He brought us gardenias, or a 45 rpm single he thought we’d like,