Comet's Tale by Steven Wolf

they’d tell her, “You go ask Dad. He won’t say no to you.” Lindsey had been not quite three years old and strongly attached to me when her mom and I divorced. I always had the feeling that the breakup had caused her to doubt her worth on some deep level.
    Jackie, Freddie’s daughter, was still in preschool when Freddie and I married. Her large brown puppy eyes and long eyelashes were the envy of every female who met her, and the cuteness factor was enhanced by round eyeglasses that corrected for a lazy eye. As the years passed, she could usually be found outdoors kicking a soccer ball, chasing the dogs, or leaping into the lake.
    Merging the families had not been smooth sailing. Kylie and Lindsey lived with their mother in Omaha during the week but also spent a great deal of time with me. Naturally they were reluctant to share their dad with some new woman, especially one who sometimes spoke a different language and wanted to live in their home. Jackie had been raised by Freddie, secure in the world of her one-parent household. At first she didn’t take kindly to being supervised by another adult, especially since her father, Freddie’s ex, had not been a major part of Jackie’s life. Given the young ages of our daughters, we had a hard time convincing some people that combining our families was a wise idea.
    Shortly before our February marriage, Freddie and Jackie moved into the lake house. Fortunately for me, Freddie’s inventive, occasionally zany approach to life intrigued my daughters, breaking through their initial reservations about this new familial unit. Within weeks, Freddie came up with the idea of turning our traditional Sunday afternoon suppers into a culinary grand tour.
    â€œWhat would you girls think if we decided to go around the world with our meals?”
    Kylie’s forehead creased. “What do you mean, around the world?”
    â€œEvery Sunday we’ll make food that represents a different country. Like corned beef for Ireland, lobster bisque for France, sushi for Japan. You girls can decide which country will be featured and can help me prepare the meal. How does that sound?” Over the hundreds of Sundays that followed, Freddie flambéed, fried, baked, and broiled us around the world several times.
    There were hurdles, hurt feelings, and misunderstandings along the way to forging our new family, but the girls adapted to one another much sooner than Freddie and I did to our new parental roles. Many nights we stared at each other with glazed eyes across the deserted dinner table, silently communicating the same doubts—am I a parent, a friend, or just a presence? Over time we eventually found our balance.
    It helped that Freddie was a born hostess. “Of course you can have your friends over for the weekend,” she always agreed. Whenever neighbors on the lake cruised by, Freddie was the first to accept an invitation to hop aboard, relishing the gossip provided by other boaters. Her attitude sometimes struck me as a little reckless: when I advised her to learn how to swim before she tried to water ski, Freddie just laughed and said, “That’s what life jackets are for.” But overall her instincts were excellent. As the girls grew older and wanted to boat around by themselves, it was Freddie who excluded me as a passenger. “You taught them how to safely drive the boat. They don’t need Dad riding along, telling them to be careful and yelling at the boys to get lost.” And if I did happen to express reservations about any of this, I was always admonished, “Get over it, Wolfie. Life is good.”
    I realized very early on in this arrangement that my most humbling blessing in life would be a daughters-only family. It was a surefire antidote to afflictions such as hubris, chauvinism, and tastelessness, not to mention cigar cravings. While not a total cure (symptoms can persist for decades), it did bevel the edges.