Dear Bob,

I have missed you for so long I can almost forget the times I knew you. But not quite. There was a time in Pittsburgh when you and Jane and Chris and I were crossing a street together. You lifted me up off my feet by both arms. That’s probably my first memory of you. I was surprised by a feeling of joy and happiness. You were so tall.

The next time was in NYC. You were in a movie and you asked me to be in it too. I was about five. We were in Washington Square Park. I was to get out of a taxi and run to your arms. We ran the scene a few times; then it was over. I never saw the footage but whenever I enter the park there, I think of you.

Once you came to Chris’s birthday party in our apartment on Second Avenue. You brought your snake, Fred. He was a big black snake and you put him in the bathtub while the kids were having cake. When I went to the bathroom, I saw Fred halfway down the drain and I yelled for Mom. I can still see you towering over everyone as you pulled this big black snake out of the drain with all of us kids screaming. Mom wasn’t happy.

Another time you came to our apartment on 111th St., and took me and Chris to the Metropolitan Museum and to Central Park. You and Chris played mumbledy-peg with a pocket knife on Cherry Hill. The museum was kind of boring to me but I inflated the memory into a recurring experience. “My father used to take me to the Met…” I would say. It sounded romantic.

Then when I was 13 and 14, I would find you at the little portrait studio on Bleecker Street where you sketched portraits of tourists. When you weren’t busy, you sketched me, but would stop when a paying customer showed up. People knew you in the Village. You introduced me to some. One was a door guy at one of the basement clubs on Macdougal Street. His name was Jared. I thought that was such a cool name and I developed a misplaced crush on him. When I cut school, I would walk down Macdougal Street looking for Jared.

You took me for a bagel at The Bagel on Macdougal once. It is the only meal I remember eating with you.

Jane hated the portrait of me you finished. She let her cats piss all over it. 

I remember you striding across Bleecker Street mid-block in your long Marine greatcoat. You had a warm gravelly laugh and orange-stained fingers from the cigarettes you rolled and smoked.

The summer you died, you saw Kara on Bleecker Street and recognized her as my friend. You didn’t remember her name so you just called to her. “Miss? Miss?” Finally she saw you and recognized you too. You gave her a small torn-off piece of drawing paper with your phone number written on it in charcoal, to give to me.

Chris and I came to see you before they let you die. Later, Kara gave me the paper. I kept it for years. 

My grandmother once said, “If it weren’t for that baby, that boy would have a father!” Is that true? I don’t think it is. I think you were so damaged, whether from your childhood or alcohol or the war that you couldn’t possibly keep a marriage with anyone. Corinne told me you were violent with her and with Geoff.  Chris said you used a Garrison belt to beat him. 

I kind of felt left out of all that. Like you weren’t even close enough to me to be mad at me. Even negative attention is attention. In your letters to Jane, you sometimes mentioned my name. You called me Cassie, my real name. I liked that. You knew who I was. I was someone to you.