He kissed his daughter like a lover in the dark hallway at her bedroom door. I could see him, but not her. He walked her to her bedroom then lingered in the doorway and he leaned in and kissed her.

I was watching from the couch in my boyfriend's family's living room. We were lying together under a crocheted afghan and his fingers were inside my jeans and we were watching Happy Days with his mom and dad and sister.

Then his dad said to his sister, time for bed, and she rose and he walked her down the dark hallway to her bedroom, directly in my line of sight from my place on the couch with my boyfriend.

Nobody seemed to find it strange that she was told to go to bed at 8:15 in the middle of Happy Days.

And nobody seemed to find it strange that her dad had to walk her to her bedroom and that there'd been a substantial passage of time, that he was gone for the entirety of the commercial break.

He had a jug of Pink Catawba rosŽ next to his recliner and he lumbered back to it and poured another glass.

Then Happy Days was over but they kept the TV on and his mom asked me if my family traveled much. Under the afghan my boyfriend removed his fingers from my jeans. I said, no, we don't.

I mean we wanted to, but we didn't.

Once my dad borrowed the neighbor's car so we could drive to Osage for my grandfather's wake. My dad had been sleeping in the basement by that point, next to the washer and dryer. He always smelled like fabric softener. At the funeral home, everyone was just standing around watching the little cousin in a three-piece suit turn somersaults across the room. The funeral director put some stairs up against the casket so the kid could have a look at the body. The kid spilled Orange Crush all over my dead grandfather and the funeral director had to cover him up with a blanket and everyone agreed he looked more peaceful that way. A snowstorm had blown into town while we'd been inside mourning and eating ham sandwiches. Everyone's cars were buried. It took some time to dig them out and we drove Grandma home and stayed at her place for the night. My dad slept on the couch and I slept on two easy chairs pulled together and in the middle of the night my dad thought he was being chased and he ran out into the snow and put his fist through a neighbor's front window and they called the cops. It was determined my dad had been playing out a dream (it was something he did, he told them) and he made me drive home the next morning as he held his bandaged hand against his chest.

But I don't think that was the kind of travel she was referring to.

Come look at my spoons, she said, because Happy Days was over and my boyfriend's dad had fallen asleep.

They hung in a display box on the wall in the kitchen. I looked at the spoons and she looked at me.

So many, I said, finally. 

These are mementos from our travels.

They were decorative spoons, each suspended in its own cubby, from various attractions around the Midwest. The Wisconsin Dells. Adventureland. The St. Louis Arch. The Amana Colonies. The Mennonites ran a restaurant there. You were made to eat family style even if you didn't have a family. If you came by yourself they sat you with a family. That was the rule.

We saw Marcel Marceau at the Guthrie Center. Do you know who Marcel Marceau is? Then she said something about Òthe FrenchÓ but I was thinking about her husband kissing their daughter like a lover in the hallway at her bedroom door.

Maybe I wasn't in a position to judge. My mom's boyfriend, who carried around a dog-eared copy of I'm Ok, You're Ok, had been sleeping in my parents' bed while my dad slept in a cot behind a curtain in the basement.

My boyfriend's sister was only one grade behind me. She was fifteen but when her dad told her it was time for bed she got up and went.

My boyfriend's mom watched as I pretended to examine the spoons. Maybe I was poor, but my dad never kissed me like a lover.

My boyfriend came up behind me with his coat on, the smell of me all over him.

Which one's your favorite, I asked, and he pointed to the biggest one, the clear prize, hanging in the center.


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