She laughed the first day she saw her father in Santa Fe. He was striding across the terrace, clicking his cowboy heels on her sister’s hand-painted tile mural of Zozobra, the native Old Man of Sorrows. Her father smiled at her, winked under his white Stetson, and waved. He walked purposefully, like a tall cowboy, with his broad shoulders back, confident and jaunty. Yet for a long time now, and especially in the past few years, he was well-known to her as short. In fact, shorter and shorter ever since she became an adult.

So even though New Mexico was a strange place to her, with Navajo shepherds, Apaches, and Pueblo Indians on peaceful plateaus, she retained perspective. Her eyes adapted to vast skies, deep blue, and pink mountains, the Sangre de Cristos looming, making everything look too small unless she compensated by mentally turning the images large. In her father’s case, however, she remembered to revert to small. They were a short family, after all, except for Ben. And he was her lover, the man she lived with, not a bona fide family member at all.

“You know, Kadey, you ought to get married and have children with Ben. They’d be Nordic blonds, like he is. And tall. I know exactly what your children would look like,” her mother used to say.

"What are you laughing at?” her father called. He tipped his Stetson before folding Kadey in his arms. He had just flown her entire far-flung family to Santa Fe for her nephew’s Bar Mitzvah that weekend. “You look beautiful anyway. Of course you look beautiful, you’re mine.”

She couldn’t help laughing because he was practically bowed beneath a turquoise bola slide the size of an egg. She wanted to convey irony, a bit of contempt, and a love so deep it needed what some poet called “deliberate disguises.” She trusted her father to tell the difference, since he was no Southwestern shit-kicker.

“Because what are you doing, Daddy, a little Jewish man decked out like the Lone Ranger in everything but mask and spurs?”

He winced at the word “little.” She wanted to take it back. But she couldn’t. Words spoken in her family were nailed to you forever.

“Daddy, I mean you look great. But where on earth did you get that gigantic bola?”

“Do you like it? Your mother bought it in Mexico.”

“It’s vulgar,” Kadey assured him. “It’s too large. It must weigh a ton.”

“I told your mother it was too large, but she said no. I’m bringing all my silver squash blossoms and conchas, she told me–-the whole time clanking like King Henry the Eighth--and the least you can do is wear your big turquoise.” Her father pronounced the word “turquoise” without the zzz, ending on a vowel, as if to make up for his vulgarity by converting the stone to French.

By the second day, she was used to his fancy dress. She spotted him heading toward the hot tub in a different costume, equally notable. He was wearing orange trunks of a narrow fishnet mesh that belonged to her brother-in-law Artie. The trunks looked too small. Her father’s wiry body, tanned from living in the South year-round and matted with silver hair, reflected luminously under the sun. Around his neck draped a towel. Kadey settled onto the redwood deck, surrounded by juniper, mesquite, and pine. This might be one of her few chances to talk to him alone. All her life she’d been trying to catch him alone. Catch him for what? Above the deck, her sister’s marmalade cat was crouching on the adobe wall.

“You’re going to wear clothes in the hot tub, Oscar? Do you have a sexually transmitted disease or something?” Her brother-in-law laughed. He set the thermostat with his blunt, quick, businessman’s hand. “It’s not therapeutic. Everybody else is going to go in raw.”

Kadey’s mother overheard. She shouted, “You can’t go in naked, Oscar!” She rushed out of the main house onto the patio, shaking her finger and her frosty upswept head. The house was one of three in a fenced compound that Artie and Maxine bought twenty years ago, in the 1960s before Santa Fe became fashionable and real estate prices soared, borrowing cash–-never repaid, not even after they became rich, her brothers whispered–-from Kadey’s parents.

“What do you mean I can’t go in naked? Your mother inhibits me,” he complained to Kadey.

“You must like being inhibited. You’ve been saying that about her as long as I’ve been alive.”

Her father slid into the tub. He threw the towel off to one side. “Aren’t you going to come in? The air’s cold.” He shuddered luxuriously and flipped like a seal, he blew drops of water from his moustache and surfaced. Slowly he was turning red. “It boils the tension right out.”

Kadey shook her head. She glanced up at the sky. “The radio says there might be a blizzard. It snowed last Thanksgiving when I came without Ben. Maxine and Artie and I got lost horseback riding in the canyon.” She remembered knotting the sleeves of her thick sweater tighter across her flannel shirt, which covered a thermal vest, recalling the sweat prickling her hands, icy air, slippery reins, her own citified panic that they’d never make it home. “You’ve seen too many bad cowboy movies on TV,” her brother-in-law had joked. “Don’t worry, you’re in family hands. We know the territory.”

“If it snowed for Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah that would be something. Snow is a symbol, a fresh start.” Her father was big on symbols, promises, beginnings. So was she. He yearned for reunions and worried about separations even before anyone went away. “Imagine all of us taking a hot tub in the snow.”

She thought about Ben. Their impending breakup after thirteen years, the breakup they refused to announce or even discuss with each other until after Kadey was away from her family. Ben would go crazy if it stormed and no planes could take off because the airport was closed. Still, secretly the idea of being snowed in with her family appealed to Kadey. They would protect her from the pain of any breakup. A vision of white-on-white dazzled her with possibilities, her family pressing together, inseparable horizons, earth and air. Shadows and rippling lights and bare skin mirrored from the hot tub onto the low sky. Then the vision turned to glare. More practical to prepare for problems. In this family, tender togetherness and sympathy often ended in a fight: somebody jumping up from the table at mealtimes-–hot tears rolling down hot cheeks, with a mouthful of hot food–racing to lock the bathroom door until whoever felt guiltiest pounded and pounded on the other side and demanded to be let in. “Daddy, it could get a little hairy if we all got snowed in together.”

Her father’s manner was mocking. “You’re right with this bunch of rabble-rousers I’ve raised. It’s a wonder their mates put up with them. They’d blow the roofs right off.” He sounded proud. The Progenitor, embracing. “All right, then I won’t make it happen. You know I might make it happen if I wished for snow.”

“Oh, Daddy.” Affectionately, she clicked her tongue. She felt cold and wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you still want me to believe at my age that you can blow smoke rings out of your eyes?”

He nodded, almost teasing. Not quite. He splashed water and vigorously rubbed his cheek and chin. A muscle quivered beneath his eye. From above on the wall, the cat leaped at a flash of squawking blue jay, missed, and crashed into scrub.

“A man could be happy here,” her father announced after a while. He sank down again and drifted. “This is an ancient land, spiritual, it’s full of tradition.”

“Full of lots of traditions,” Kadey agreed, deadpan. “Indian’s, Spaniards, Mexicans, and rednecks. Unfortunately, none of the traditions is yours.”

“Don’t be narrow. That’s not what I mean. My own traditions are a mystery to me, in more ways than one. I’m talking about inner life. The Family of Man. Jewish is good, an extraordinary vital culture, it’s fine they have a little shul in Santa Fe now. But look what else they have here. Shamans. Monasteries. Retreats. All kinds. A Gurdjieff group, Baba Ram Dass, friends of Rinpoche, and those guys in the white turbans, the Happy Holies or whatever they’re called. There are more different kinds of religions here, Artie told me, than anywhere per square foot in the US”

“Per square foot? A great selling point.”

“Listen.” He tilted his head. The coils and entrances of his ear were outlined by cold light. “You can hear yourself by listening to this land. It’s so peaceful. Open spaces, but with a history, a grandeur. Nothing but the birds and the breeze blowing dry weeds.”

“Yes, it’s a desert, Daddy.” She wanted to deflate him because his eyes were closing. He was flicking her off at will, as usual. “How can you say it’s peaceful when everybody’s fighting inside?”

“We’re out here.” He blinked and the younger man, the dreamer Daddy she remembered beneath the pouches and the too-large skin, peeked out at her in fierce bewilderment. “I’m a searcher. You know that. I have been all my life. But do you know what I wanted all my life? Don’t laugh.” His mouth twisted, babyish, and she saw the sparkling underside of his lower lip. His arm extended muscularly to sweep back time. Complicated veins traveled its length. “I always wanted a salon, a big house or a ranch–-a place like this, pretty and private–-where people could come to be themselves. I wanted them to come to me. And I’d help them, soothe them, spin them protection in my magic cocoon. Not to make myself feel important. It’s a hard life and I’ve worked hard but now I’m privileged. I want to be a healer too, I want to give. I could have been one, I have the gift, I feel it. It will be a place where people can be safe, Oscar’s house. Mine. Where you can count on somebody’s caring and you never have to be alone.”

“Do you feel alone?” His wistfulness excluded her. She’d offered herself to him long ago, offered up her needs–-more than scraped knees, scraped feelings, night terrors, horrible fights with her mother–-offered up her whole impassioned childhood. When she was a teenager, she used to stay up all night talking to him, the two of them with their feet up on the kitchen table, sipping cocoa. When she was twenty, she tried to fix him up with one of her girlfriends who she thought better suited to him than her mother. Her passion for him was so obvious, it was embarrassing, "like having a gigantic wen in the middle of your forehead," Ben said.

Looking down at his familiar bulge of brow, hair swirling, thick and silvery, suspended, she remembered dark crinkly hair used to wing off the top of his head when she was a child, and her own wistfulness when people often told her how close they felt to her father, what a deep spirit he had, how he’d rescued them, how he’d looked and listened and saved their lives. St. Daddy. Oh, St. Daddy, cure me of my desires–-which are ever in conflict. That which suppresses conflict is authoritarian, she reminded herself. The Patriarch. Desire for the Father. But she could only win his attention by being a loser. I can’t be needy just for your sake, Daddy.

“You asked, do I feel alone?” He had a sixth sense for catching her drifting thoughts. “Everybody feels alone. That’s a quality all humans share.” He paused, grinning and appraising her. “See, the life I wanted will come. Time is an ally. I’ve always said that. Sometimes it feels like it’s moving backwards, spiraling. I’ve always had faith in time.” He jabbed the whirlpool button and the water bubbled with a huge gulp. “Still, I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t understand this family. Here they are together once in a blue moon and why, because it’s meaningful, that’s why. The best thing we do is look after each other, and the worst thing we do is pretend we’re looking after each other when we’re actually doing something else. What are they fighting for? This morning your brother Mike picks an argument about the best way to change a tire. What’s he trying to prove? He has to be better, he has to be the best? Why do these people,” he dissociated himself from the fray, wafting his hand and spattering Kadey’s blue jeans, “want to waste our time together? Too many temperaments.”

“I’m not fighting.”

“Did I hurt your feelings? You’re too thin-skinned. I didn’t mean you.” He narrowed his eyes invitingly and showed a mischievous grin. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but now he could soothe her too. Advice, a love pinch, and a punch line. “I know you, your feelings are too easily wounded. You’re too naked for this world, Kadey. It’s one thing I worry about. You need padding. Your nerves are too close to the surface. What did I teach you? Courage! Perseverance. Hey, you’re shivering. You should try this hot tub, Kadey. Your sister poured a special herbal infusion into it. Cure all your ills.”

She kicked off her shoes and steadied herself on his shoulder, but her grip slid. The steam enveloped her like a hot breath.

“How are you anyway, Daddy? I mean how are you feeling?”

“Better than ever.” His standard response and he didn’t skip a beat.

She half-laughed, and half-sighed. “Now tell me how you are really.” He had what he called "a bum ticker," but the bumper stickers on his car read Better Than Ever, both front and rear. “I could call up the Daddy hot line, you know–-call Dial-a-Daddy and get a recorded reply. How am I supposed to know when to believe you?”

“Always believe me.”

“A temptation I’ve overcome.”

He tilted his head. She guessed by his expression that he was wondering if there really was such a Dial-a-Daddy phone service. He was entrepreneurial. Now, she’d bet, he was thinking of marketing it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Isn’t Ben taking care of you?”

“What do you mean taking care of me?” The desire to be folded into her father’s skin was dangerous. Sometimes she thought the whole notion of “helping” people was one of her father’s cover stories for a complex moral exchange. “You know, Ben is thinking of going into politics.”

“Stop bragging about him.” Her father’s superior smile covered a lot of emotional bases. “It’s funny a sweet low-key guy like Ben who talks as little as he does wants to fight for Free Speech.”

“Woo, is that criticism, Daddy, or competition? You used to be political, you ought to be proud.”

Her feet splashed aggressively into the whirring tub. No, she couldn’t talk to her father. She couldn’t participate in a complex moral exchange right now. Underwater, distorted, her feet looked rubbery. Not the feet of a small person. High arches, bony, overly long toes. (“With those feet you could still hold a spoon and fork if you ever have an accident and lose your hands,” her mother counseled Kadey yesterday when she changed socks. “You could train yourself to type with your toes too. I saw it on TV. You have such sensitive-looking feet. You could even paint.. .” “But Mother, I don’t paint now!” Her mother was a painter. “Silly!” her mother answered. “Don’t you think you’d experiment if you didn’t have any hands?”)

“I want my family to be close,” her father was saying. “I’m waiting for you and Ben to settle down and have children.”

She trapped his gaze. She almost shouted, No, no, no, you’re all wrong about that. Instead she said, “I’m not Ben’s big baby originally, I’m yours.”

He laughed, hidden under the tent of the striped towel. He rubbed. “I wonder how much one of these big tubs costs.” He hauled himself up the side easily. Water coursed down his legs.

Their eyes met and locked again. Then he was tying his robe. He was walking away. She felt like chasing after him. She stamped her feet dry. They steamed pinkly in the high sun. Her father had left his soggy towel balled up on the deck. It looked obscene, cast off, and used. It reminded her of dirty underwear.

She carried the towel to the pump house and tossed it into the dryer. The floor vibrated. She watched the towel spin round and round. Maybe she was too thin-skinned. The air felt icy. The spin cycle stopped and she hauled the towel out of the dryer and draped it around her shoulders for warmth. It was still damp, but not clammy, fluffy, almost comforting. She had to go back to her family soon--to their dinner together, to the silent mess with Ben. The towel would do for the moment, though–-a tentative wrapping for her buffeted soul, a second skin.