I LIVE ON THE TWELFTH STORY. I have written eleven stories about life on the twelfth story. This is my twelfth twelfth story story. I shall begin it soon.

As I stare out the terrace, stare down, until finally it no longer exists and I am one with what surrounds me, my five-year-old daughter says: "That is gross, Daddy."

I tell her I do not write stories for children, not even this twelfth twelfth story story.

Stendhal says there is no joy greater than that of anticipation. I find him to be correct in all matters save that of fatherhood. I never expected I would love my daughter. Yet somehow I do, very much. Mostly she is not a pest. Her name is Lisa, and she draws human figures with their arms coming out of their necks. Lisa's own nape of the neck, when uncovered by blonde strands, is something else to see. A description of it appears in my seventh twelfth story story.

Lisa's mother is dead. Suicide, last year. It happened while I was gone. The cleaning lady was here. She told Lisa her mother had an accident in the bathtub. The police had to be called. The rabbi was a Reform rabbi, so he let us bury Lisa's mother next to her parents. My parents are also dead. A character sketch of my late mother appears in my first twelfth story story.

My book is supposed to be a unified collection of short stories. All of the characters in each of the eleven stories (plus myself, the author, in this one, the twelfth story) live on the twelfth floor. Each story has a protagonist who lives in an apartment building in New York City or North Miami Beach or Newark, Delaware, but each lives on the twelfth story. I have written them all since my wife died, since I have been taking care of Lisa alone.

Sometimes Lisa thinks she lives on the planet Jupiter. This is a game of hers. When I call her to breakfast, she pouts in bed and says, "But Daddy, I'm on Jupiter now!" When Lisa lives on Jupiter she watches the five inner moons. They revolve around her all day. Their names are Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Amalthea. Only the latter was unknown to Galileo. Lisa watches all five moons. They arc the sky. They shine gaily. They make Lisa happy.

On Jupiter, Lisa's days are ten hours long. But Lisa's years on Jupiter are twelve years long. There is no way to reckon the months; with so many moons, it is impossible. Still, some mornings it is hard to pry Lisa away from Jupiter and into her seat at the breakfast table. Lisa says this is because the gravitational pull is so strong.

In my sixth story about people living on the twelfth story, a widower confronts his daughter with the reality that she does not live on the rings of Saturn. Eventually the girl dies. This is only a story of mine. I do not believe in handling things that way in real life.

My ninth twelfth story story concerns another widower, a linguist whose wife died in a fire. This man is a world-renowned scholar famed for his landmark study of Indo-European reflexive verbs. But there is one reflexive verb that escapes him, and that one is "to save oneself."

I am certain this is no way to bring up a daughter. I sit at my computer all day, hoping for connections, gearing up, persisting even when the eyes cannot make out the words on the screen. Mostly Lisa watches television, a poor substitute for life. Lately they have cut most of the violence from children's programming, and Lisa is becoming less interested in television. She has taken up finger painting, and this is an activity I encourage. She urges me to try it myself, but I am too squeamish. I do not like to get my fingers messy. When the police came, they wouldn't clean up the blood.

My third, fourth, and fifth stories have a similar plot. In the third story, a West Point cadet goes to his aunt's apartment in Newark, Delaware, to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Because the cadet's parents are vacationing in China, his aunt has offered to make him a party. He brings two of his friends, fellow cadets, down with him for the weekend. During the night one of the friends goes berserk, bludgeons the aunt to death, maims the boy's uncle. The boy's parents are summoned home from China. The police will not clean up the apartment. The boy has to do it all himself. He even takes up the blood-soaked carpeting. Later he has a nervous breakdown and is forced to leave West Point.

My fourth twelfth story story concerns a man who has his car simonized by a young fellow who turns out to be the cadet in the third story. He tells the man, who lives in a Manhattan high-rise, of the guilt he feels when he thinks of his dead aunt and his poor uncle, paralyzed for life. On the anniversary of the murder, the ex-cadet attempts suicide. Later he decides to enter the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, on the advice of the man whose car he has simonized.

The fifth story is a little different. In this one, the murderer-cadet, sitting in his cell on the twelfth floor of a Delaware prison, imagines his old friend's guilt and fantasizes about him telling his story to a man whose car he is simonizing.

Of these three, I would let my daughter read only the fifth story. The others are too violent, too gross. Yet Lisa is aware of death. She is always asking about funerals and wants to know how you can be certain a corpse is dead before you bury it. I am told this is not an uncommon question.

I know I am not much of a writer. Probably this book of twelve stories will never get published. Yet I am a better writer than I am a father, as hard as I try. Lisa senses my diffidence in the role, and she makes do. She will have to grow up hard and fast.

Sometimes she wishes to go up on the roof, but I tell her we are not allowed up there. We are on the next to last floor. Above us is the top floor, the fourteenth story. There is no thirteenth story in our building. Lisa, who can count up to twenty, cannot understand this. Turning away from my computer for a moment—from the conclusion of my twelfth twelfth story story—I tell her that when she is older she will understand.


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