She was a strange combination with my father, I could tell even then; he would often become grandiose about himself, leaving behind the part of him that matched with her. “She could wear a sack, a brown sack,” I heard my father say. As if beauty was measured by how strong an obstacle it had to overcome. It was the same way he spoke about Ingrid Bergman. I watched for it, in Tina, because I didn’t think of her as particularly beautiful. Her eyelashes were as blonde as her hair. She didn’t try, and the trying was beauty to me then. But a few times when she tossed her bangs out of her face, her
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