The light went on when I opened the door to Delia's Toyota. Her car always smelled like pine. Hey, I used to buy those little scented trees at Kmart and hang them from the rearview mirror. Nothing. Oh, a quick burst at first. Then second day, nothing.

When I turned on the radio, some very busy violin screeching filled the car. It sounded like an invasion of killer bees. Squeak. Squawk. Buzzzzzz. There was no rock and roll to be found pushing her magic buttons. No country. Just talk. And finally, the Blues.

The guitar edged its sharp blade into my soul. Back. Way back. Way in, and it felt so right there. Like digging that hole to China. Dark and safe. Sweet and thick. Honey.

I turned the key and started the motor while I listened to the paradiddling in the background. Sticks on skins. Heartbeats while the blues band crooned their soft lullaby.

The engine purred like a hedging cat, mindful it could slash its claws and bring me my peace. So I rested my head back and closed my eyes. No one would have to pretend anymore. Or try. Or worry. Or hope.

"Mommy."

I hadn't heard the car door open and close or seen the overhead light blink on and off, but Olivia was suddenly beside me in the front seat.

"Take me with you, Mommy." Her eyes were saucers of affection and supplication. And the fumes from the exhaust were now mixed with Olivia nectar. "Pretty please with sugar on it?"

When I looked into her face I didn't see the innocence a ten-year-old should have. I also didn't see the feigned caring of Lou or the desperate worry of Delia.

I saw him. Daddy.

"Do you love your father?"

I pressed the button on the black box that hung securely on the visor overhead, and the garage door rumbled open. Rich, clean air rushed into the windows as I backed out, thumping over the speedbump of rags.

"Where are we going, Mommy?"

I drove down MacDonald Street past my old school. "Hey, sticks!" I heard Ten Ton Tim yell from long ago. He was still as round as the hippo at the zoo, even had his picture taken with the damned thing when he ran for mayor last year. How could he just laugh it all off?

The car rounded Liberty Park where Delia and I flew our kites. I'd stepped on a bee there, and Daddy had carried me all the way back home.

"Let's be bees," I said to Olivia. "Let's look for flowers and collect their nectar."

I turned off the radio and listened to her honeyed voice tell me about her best friend, Gretel, and a boy name Dan. I could tell she liked Dan.

"Dan gave me a red ball the other day that could bounce really high," she told me. The blue glow from the dashboard lights couldn't disguise the pleasure of acceptance in her face. "But I lost it."

"I'm sorry, baby." I would crawl under a car or dig another hole--this time all the way to China--to find her treasure.

But she patted my hand. Like Delia. Like Lou tried. "It's okay. He'll give me another one."

"He will?"

"Yes, Mommy. Dan's like that."

"Like what?"

My little girl stared down at her shoes for a moment, though they were nearly invisible in the dim light; then her eyes glinted. "Like Daddy."

Daddy. My own father was a tall man, thin like me. My Mom used to call him "the rail." I remember I fell off my bicycle once, and he carried me, a crying me, back to our house. The same house where he locked himself in the basement and French kissed a gun barrel.

"You have your father's eyes," my Mom once told me, and now I was looking at the next generation.

"Are we going to make honey, Mommy? You know, after we collect the flowers?"

"Yes, baby. Honey."

"Can we eat it then, Mommy?"

I looked at my baby. The child who grew inside me. The child who giggled and had only begun seeing the whole world with eyes that could damn her to hell. Lou was right; she was just like me. And just like him--my Daddy.

He left such a big hole--a hole deeper than could reach to China. I loved him so much, his crooked smile and wavy hair. The way he sucked on a cigarette and held it in his hand as though he could hide the burning end because he was afraid I would accidentally get burned.

"Do you love your father?"

"I don't understand why he left me."

"Is that what he did?"

"Yes."

"And that's why you want to run away from Olivia?"

I looked at her. This time her lips were blue, but she wasn't dying.

"Look again. Look at her eyes."

That glimmer. It was death's gleam. The same siren that beckoned my daddy away from me. Cajoling. The end of pain. The end of my pain.

The beginning of hers.

Why had it taken so long to learn the lesson of the hole we dug to China? It didn't go there. And it wasn't safe.

No place would ever be safe.

It only took a few minutes to get back to Delia's.

I laughed as I looked at Olivia, giving her my best Irish twinkle. Playful beam. I gave it to her. Fully. Forever. Just as my father had given me mine.

We snuggled together in the front seat and pushed the buttons on the radio, but we couldn't find Paul Simon. We couldn't find the blues. There were only people talking, sounding like bees searching for nectar. Buzzing a benediction.

And the sound of the car's engine...