"And I haven't told anyone at work. I thought about it. I thought about posting the real picture from that night, the one with you in it, with some caption about my amazing dad. And then I thought, no. That's just the same thing. That's just being the brave girl in a different outfit." She shrugged. "So I didn't. It's still up there. The cropped one. I look at it sometimes."
I didn't tell her I'd looked at it too. I think she knew.
"Can I invite Pauline?" she said. "And Rudy? To the wedding?"
"It's your wedding, sweetheart."
"I know it's my wedding, Dad. I'm asking if you want them there."
I thought about it. I thought about a woman on a curb on Fulton Road, and a boy with a disposable camera, and the hum of a compressor coming on at four in the morning, and Gloria in my coveralls with the flashlight, talking about painting the bathroom yellow.
"Yes," I said. "I'd like that very much."
She nodded. She went to pay for the suit, eleven dollars, and wouldn't let me, and I let her.
On the way out to the car she stopped on the sidewalk and turned around and looked at me in the brown corduroy jacket, with the flour stain on the lapel that never quite came out.
"You know you can keep wearing that," she said. "I mean, not to the wedding. But otherwise."
"I know I can."
"I know you know. I'm saying I know."
We stood there a second on Lorain Avenue in the cold with the bag between us. A bus went by. She didn't hug me, and I didn't try, and it wasn't the end of anything, and it wasn't fixed. I don't think things like this get fixed. I think you find the leak, if you're lucky, and you braze it, and you pull a vacuum and sit and watch the needle and don't breathe, and you wait to see whether it holds.
Then she said, "Come on, Dad. I'll buy you a pierogi," and unlocked the car, and I got in.