The Second Coming

beginning to see that her father smiled all the time and that all his expressions, even frowns, occurred within the smile. For example, now he was grinning angrily, not smiling.
    She used to work for her father, as assistant to the dental hygienist, after she flunked life and had come home but before she curled up in a closet. He had passionate and insane views on every subject. She was certain that one reason he had taken up dentistry was so he could assault helpless people with his mad monologues. In he’d come, smiling and handsome, hands scrubbed pink, breath sweet with Clorets, and while she kept the patient’s mouth dry with a suction tube, he’d stuff the same mouth with hot wax and crowns and fillings and fingers and then he’d come out with it: “What’s wrong with Mao?” or “What’s wrong with Franco?” or “Do you know what I’d do with them”—striking coal miners, hippies, queers, niggers, Arab sheiks, Walter Cronkite, George Wallace (yes! a hick, a peckerwood), media Jews, Miami Jews (but not Israelis!), Ronald Reagan (yes! a two-bit actor), Roosevelt (!), Carter, Martin Luther Coon, Kennedy, Nixon (yes! a crook), the Mafia, Goldwater (yes! he runs Arizona with Mafia help), J. Edgar Hoover (yes! a homosexual fascist punk). He liked General Patton. He had seen Patton eight times. “You know what I’d do with all of them? Line them up against that wall and go down the line with my BAR”—he grinning and boyish all the while, she embarrassed for him (was that her real sickness, that she was embarrassed for everybody? and for a fact everybody did so badly!), the patient’s eyes rolling. “You want to know my philosophy? Shape up or ship out. If the cat keeps crapping on the rug, the cat goes—that’s all! If the cook sasses me, the cook goes. What’s wrong with that?”
    What do you think, Allie? her father asked her. You take the top of the chalet. There’s a room in the back with a balcony and the damnedest view you ever saw. Well?
    Wif you? Wiv view? she heard herself say.
    Why did she sound so crazy around her parents? Because no matter what she said or did, her mother would make her own sense of it and her father wouldn’t like it. So it didn’t matter what she said. It was like being alone in a great echoing cave. There was a temptation to holler.
    A view! said her father. You wouldn’t believe the view!
    Interesting, said Dr. Duk, safe behind his thigh and therefore more able to conceal himself. You thought she said with view, meaning room with view. But thought I heard with you, meaning praps she might have some reservations about living with you. With you both. With yall.
    Dr. Duk smiled, pleased with himself. He could talk Southern.
    They all looked at her.
    She shrugged. She didn’t know which she meant or whether she meant anything.
    Dr. Duk’s plan: I think yall are overlooking one little thing. Both plans are excellent. But the fact remains that Allison is not quite herself yet—though she is clearly making progress, progress toward a decision to have something to do with us. My own feeling about Allison is that she knows a great deal more than she lets on. Right, Allison?
    Wraing.
    You see, said Dr. Duk. What she said was halfway between right and wrong. She’s afraid to commit herself. My own wish is that she have a final little refresher course of treatment.
    I don’t think she needs any more shock treatments, said her mother. There’s nothing wrong with Allison except that she’s an extremely sensitive person who is more subject to tension than most people. So am I! Tension! That’s the enemy. She gets wound up just like me. You know what I do? Stretch out and tell my toes to relax, then my knees—they do it!
    You want to know what I think it all comes down to, said her father to the world around, looking at no one in particular. It all comes down to accepting your responsibility. Once you do that, you got it made.
    Shape up or ship out, she thought. Right. I’m shipping out.
    This little refresher course is my own contribution, said Dr. Duk. I’m reading a little paper on it in San Francisco. My finding is that a refresher course of six treatments in selected cases is even more effective than the usual thirty.
    No buzzin cousin. It was her voice but it sounded like a radio with a bad volume control.
    They all looked at her.
    She