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***

She didn't know how to ask.

For his attention. Sitting on the floor of his study, playing with the dolls he had given her. For her birthday. For Christmas.

Cheap plastic and polyester. They didn't even smell, but they did look pretty. She wondered if she looked pretty.

The dolls were thin and hard. She was round and soft. Nothing like them. Nothing at all. At his desk that shadowed her, he sat, smoking and staring at his tablet. The cigar smoke wafted up and dissipated in the exposed beams. The curly white hair on both sides of his bald dome stood straight up, seemed to be reaching for the ceiling too.

She tossed the Barbie to one side and reached for her pink plastic phone. Picked up the handset. Dialed the rotary, exactly as nana had shown her.

“Hello, is my daddy there?” she whispered. 

Behind her she could hear him blowing out a stream of cigar smoke, the tablet emitting soft clicks. Nothing from the handset. No reply at all, but that was okay, she had imagination.

“Hello, Alison, this is your father, ” she pretended that he said.

“Hi, daddy, how are you?”

“I'm wonderful, now, since I'm hearing from my baby girl.” He seemed so pleased, in her imagining, and she giggled. 

“What would you like to do this evening?” he went on. “Would you like to watch Dora, perhaps?”

“Yes, can we? There's three episodes that we haven't seen yet. I watched them already, but I can watch them with you, if you want.” In her excitement, she forgot she was pretending and spoke in her normal voice.

Behind her his swivel chair creaked and the tablet clattered on the desktop. “Allie,” her father said. “Go downstairs if you're going to play with your phone. Daddy needs to concentrate.”

“Daddy, I wondered if we could watch Dora tonight?” she braved.

“Yes, you can watch Dora. Go downstairs, now, and let daddy concentrate on his charts.”

Always his charts. She hated his charts. She gathered her dolls and the phone and went out into the darkened hallway and down the stairs. The living room was lit only by the kitchen florescent spilling through the archway and casting a white bar on her father's huge flat-screen. 

Charlie was there. On the couch. Charlie was imaginary, of course she knew that, and her father had forbidden her to talk to him, but he was there. And he had the remote.

“Is it Dora tonight, my dear?” he asked when she cuddled up to him.

“You know it. Turn it on, Charlie.” She liked teasing him about the TV. She knew he couldn't turn it on. 

He sighed, exactly as she knew he would, and told her to do it, because he just wasn't feeling up to it. She tried not to giggle. That was always his excuse.

He put his arm around her as the show began. She could feel the warmth radiating off him. Her head rocked slightly on his chest as he breathed. And, whenever Dora got up to something ridiculous, laughter made his soft round belly jiggle.

It didn't matter that her dad was busy, she decided, as she fought sleep to reach the end of the episode.

Charlie was the best dad a girl could hope for.

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