Do I need to call the school? Do I need to have a conference with their parents?
Maybe, I say. It’s just not fair that they’re so stupid but everyone thinks they’re so cute.
No one’s cuter than you.
You’re just saying that.
He puts his hand on mine. You are the most beautiful, wonderful, most talented girl I know.
You must not know a lot of girls, I joke.
I’m serious, Kathleen. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, okay?
Okay, I say.
Promise, he insists.
I promise, I say, giggling.
He isn’t laughing. Swear, he says, and I sober up, look into his eyes, and swear.
* * *
There are a few times when Daddy seems tired and we go out to eat and he sits there slushing his straw through his Diet Coke. Those Thursdays we’re alone with our private miseries, just like every father and daughter in the world, and the feeling is tender and beautiful. What’s wrong, Daddy, I’ll ask, and he taps my hand with his fingers and musters a smile and says Nothing you need to worry about, sweetheart, and I’ll suggest a long drive and sundaes to go. His car is old and strewn with trash and I sing along to the radio and Daddy sings too and when he drops me off he touches my cheek and says Sunshine, you always know just how to cheer me up. Then we both get teary from loving each other so much and I go into my house and wave from the window and watch him drive away.
* * *
I’m in the bathroom at work trying to masturbate. I have good enough sex at home but nevertheless there is a gaping hole in me somewhere that says Do something. If it’s not sex and not food and not a night out with the girls then what is it that I need? What is the nature of this hole and with what do I seal it up? When Daddy comes home I am bursting with gratitude but when he leaves I am starving, I literally feel my mouth fill with saliva and I think with agony there are a maximum of hours to get through before the next Thursday evening. In the bathroom my hand sweats between my legs and I imagine Daddy gently pointing out to me everything I’ve got wrong and then coaching me on how to get it right. I wonder for a second if the no-sex clause was a mistake, but when I think about sex with Richard my hand flees from my crotch like it’s been scalded. I shake it, wanting to yell at it, yell at myself What the fuck-hell are you doing. You useless, you failure, you sad cow. I yank my pants up over my hips and stuff my shirt in. Someone comes into the bathroom and I look through the gap of the stall door and see Deborah, my manager, wetting her fingers and then touching her bangs. She looks cool as a cucumber. I want to ask her How? and Why you? and then Why you and not me? But then I remind myself of Thursday night and I remember that getting off is something everyone does, one way or another, but Daddy is something that no one has, not even Deborah, and this is significant. I take a deep breath and exit the stall. The naughty hand is red and moist but I don’t worry about whether Deborah thinks I am weird or sad. She keeps staring at her own reflection and I snap two towels from the dispenser and dry myself and hear Daddy saying to me Kathleen, don’t cry. So I don’t.
* * *
At dinner I bend over the table and wince. Richard half-rises, touching my arm.
Are you okay, sweetheart?
My stomach hurts, I say.
Is it something you ate?
I don’t know.
Why don’t you try using the toilet, he suggests. I hobble to the bathroom. I’m in there a long time, and when he knocks I don’t answer. He eases the door open. I am staring into the toilet, where blood unspools in the water. He takes a deep breath.
You started, he says. Hey, that’s great, right? Does it hurt a lot?
I nod. He takes my arm, opens the drawer I’ve stocked with Tampax in neon wrappers designed to appeal to teens. Solemnly, sweetly, he removes a tampon and hands it to me.
Do you know where to put this?
I bite my lip.
See here, on the box? He tilts it for me to see the drawing of a girl inserting a tampon into her penciled vagina. You take this and unwrap it. This part is the applicator and you use it to push this part—the cotton thing, see?—inside. Okay?
He caresses my arm, peering up into my face before leaving me in the bathroom alone. I hold the tampon in my fist and close my eyes as I squat over the toilet and push the tampon in. I know he’s standing outside the door, listening, waiting. I want to cry out, but I don’t. The tampon swells slowly inside me. I open the bathroom door. Daddy uncrosses his arms, pushes his glasses up on his nose.
Okay? he says.
Okay, I say, with a small smile, and he hugs me, his chin against my hair, and we stay that way for the next minute or so, and then he gives me a last little squeeze and we return to the kitchen for ice cream straight out of the container before he sends me to bed.
* * *
I know, thanks to LinkedIn, that Richard is a math major at the community college and I want to ask him if he knows anything about statistics and so could he tell me what the numbers are about people like us: how many in a town our size? In our state? In our country? What does like us even mean? Come Thursdays I am ready to self-medicate up to my eyeballs in Daddy’s laughter, his wrinkled khakis, his drives to the Dairy Queen for vanilla cones, and he never tells me to want anything else or anything less. We are special. We are us. We clasp hands and laugh and Daddy pays the bill, and when we get to the car again he has me do a little twirl under his arm, and even in old pants and clogs with the heels rubbed raw I shine.
* * *
In the time I know Richard I gain weight and I am not promoted at work and I appreciate my husband less and less for the solid unremarkable man that he is, and maybe you could say that this means the whole Daddy thing is a failure but I would never say that. I don’t know what having a daughter does for Richard exactly, though in the back of my mind are vague hopes for him: that he graduates, that he gets a good job, that he finds his own place. But the thought of him having children slices me in half. If my mind happens to dig up this thought I spend the rest of the day trying to pull my cut-apart halves together again. He’s young, he could be impotent, it’s likely he’ll never even get a girlfriend, but still I’m sore where the thought of other daughters has severed me so completely and I have to add that ache to all the other aches, and by the end of my adding I am exhausted and have to lie down, and then my husband complains that I am lazy, that the dishes are dirty, that his job is harder than mine so what am I complaining about? And I say I am not complaining, I am simply lying down, and he says Same thing.
* * *
It’s supposed to be a “date”: dinner at a real Italian place and tickets to a movie starring a popular teenage singer. Maybe unconsciously I want to spice things up. Maybe nothing is ever good enough for me and that’s why I answer the door in a strapless dress that hits just above the knee. My hair is teased high around my face and my feet are crammed into red patent heels and my legs are blistered raw from a hasty shave job. Daddy stares and I stare back and I can see that he is surprised but up to the challenge.
What do you think you’re doing, young lady? he demands, stepping quickly into the house and shutting the door.
Nothing, I mumble.
Nothing? he scoffs. Look at yourself.
You don’t like it? I ask, knuckling the sweat off my upper lip.
You need to change, he says. Now.
No, I say.
Yes, he insists.
I don’t want to.
I didn’t ask you if you wanted to, I told you to.
I stamp my foot. But it’s pretty and I want to wear it.
I said change, he repeats, and grips my arm, not nicely; instantly a wildness burns into being in both of us, or maybe it was always there, ready for this moment. I rip my arm from his hand and wave it in the air.
I look nice! I shout.
You look ridiculous! he yells back, pushing his glasses up his nose, pointing to the bedroom door.
Go cover up!
No!
Yes! Right now!
Why?
Because it’s—inappropriate!
But everyone dresses like this! It’s not fair!
He puts his hands on his hips and his jaw is tight and his pale lips are flecked with spit.
You are not everyone, you are my daughter, and you will do as I say!
You can’t tell me what to do!
Kathleen Anne Marie Masterson! he shouts, so loud I take a step back. Get in your room and change your clothes this instant or I—
You’ll what? I dare him.
I’ll ground you for a month! he hisses.
Go ahead! I don’t care!
He folds his arms. We are not leaving this house until you take off that dress and wash that junk off your face, he says, his voice cracking. When his eyes cut to anywhere below my chin he winces; I want to hold on to the agony of these clothes, these cheap shoes, my pitiful flesh, and he wants to spare me. He reaches out his hand and tries to wipe away my lipstick; I toss my head like a rabid horse.
Stop it! Leave me alone!
His thumb keeps driving toward my mouth and finally I bite him, quick; the taste of Daddy is like erasers or sweating paper. He yelps and I take a step back, licking my lips.
Why do you want to look like a whore? Are you a whore? he yells. The words are like lightning between us, splitting us open: beneath the staleness of the parts we are playing we are truly shocked, outraged, crazed. He shakes his hand to rid himself of the sting of my bite and as he does I remember my own hand, in the bathroom, rubbing, wet. I realize that he has an erection. I don’t look away fast enough and he sees me seeing it, and we both just stop.
Fine, I whisper, and hurry to my room to change, ripping the dress down and off before balling it beneath the bed. I scrub at my eyes and mouth with a towel, then mash the moussed-up rings into a ponytail and stick my feet into my sneakers. I’m gulping air; I have to lean against the dresser for a while before I’m able to go back to Daddy, who is sitting on the couch staring at the blank television, or maybe at the photo of my son on top of it; I can see myself in the black glass of the high school portrait, a ghost figure next to my son’s smiling head.
I’m ready, I say. He turns and I see his eyes cramped behind his glasses, gentle and miserable. Something has been chipped from both of us, accidentally, necessarily, but I don’t know how big the chip is yet, or if, by now, we can afford to lose it.
Is this better? I ask.
Yes, thank you, Katie, he says, and I follow him out the door with my head bowed, trembling like a bride.
* * *
I call Daddy at two in the morning, standing in my driveway with no jacket or shoes, shivering.
Sweetheart? he answers.
I blubber wordlessly into the phone.
Honey, have you been drinking alcohol?
No, I say. Yes.
You shouldn’t do that, he says.
I know, I say, on a shaky exhale, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. I think of him in his apartment, his mother in the other room. When he answered the phone he sounded wide awake; maybe he was watching TV or playing video games, not thinking about being Daddy, just being a nobody.
What is it? he says.
I squeeze my eyes shut and whisper without thinking.
I wish you were my real dad.
I am, he says, not in his Daddy voice but in a Richard voice I have never heard before, thin and uncertain. I hang up. He calls back and I don’t answer and there is just one word in the message he leaves in the new small voice I don’t recognize and don’t want: Sorry.
* * *
The next morning I am hungover but hopeful. So we had a little misstep. So I blew things out of proportion. So I made a fool of myself—it’s nothing Daddy can’t fix. I clean the house and iron my jeans, read a teen gossip magazine. I am looking somewhat prettier than usual and I wonder if he will bring a present, as he sometimes does. I hope for a necklace or a bottle of scented lotion.
At six Daddy calls to say he can’t make it because of a last-minute meeting with a big client. He’s trying to sound cheerful, but we both hear Richard panicking. Maybe you can call in a pizza? he suggests weakly. I say yeah, maybe. I don’t ask if he’ll be home in time to tuck me in; we don’t say we love each other, we don’t say anything else, except he says Take care. And then I know for sure that it’s over.
* * *
Hours later I’m waiting on the couch when my husband comes home with my son, laughing, both of them high on football and Red Bull. I tell them to take off their shoes. My husband flops on the couch. I hand over the remote and he flips to the sports.
I hear my son rummaging in the fridge, whooping when he finds the pizza I ordered but didn’t eat still in its box. He stands in the doorway, chewing with his mouth open, Daddy’s slice devoured in three bites.
We stay here like this, my husband’s hand on my knee, my son wiping his fingers on his shirt, and I think, This is it, this is Thursday from now on, and as I start to cry I hear Daddy’s voice, tired and unimpressed, saying, Grow up, Kathleen, grow up grow up grow up.
RAPTURE
The man is brushing his teeth when the doorbell rings. Pausing, he listens: it is not even light out yet. The doorbell rings again, and the man sets his toothbrush down on the edge of the sink, wiping his mouth on the towel.
The man opens the door. Standing on the mat is a boy, ten or eleven years old, in jeans and a brown sweater, a newspaper at his feet.
Oh, the man says. Are you the new paperboy?
No, the boy says.
Oh, the man says again.
I have something that’s yours.
You do?
The boy nods.
Well—what is it?
I have to go inside your house to show you, the boy says.
My house? the man echoes.
Can I?
The man turns to look over his shoulder, into the empty hall, then turns back to the boy.
Okay—
The boy walks in, flattening past the man.
Close the door, the boy says.
The man closes it.
Do I know you? the man asks. I mean, have we met before?
No, the boy says.
Don’t you have school?
The boy shakes his head. Not today.
Who knows you’re here?
The boy looks at him, his eyes glittering in a face made of milk and bone.
No one, the boy says.
* * *
The house is ordinary; it used to belong to the man’s parents, and almost everything in it is theirs. The man’s computer and desk stand where the piano used to be, and the shape the piano left on the wallpaper doesn’t match the shapes of the new furniture.
The boy slips a canvas bag from his shoulder to the floor, sweeping the room with his eyes.
You need to give me something? the man asks.
There was a package for you, the boy says.
What package?
This, the boy says, pulling a plain black DVD case from his bag.
That’s mine?
The boy nods.
The blood in the man’s face burns. Then why would you take it? If it wasn’t yours?
Just because.
Because why?
Is it something secret? the boy asks.
The man’s surprise turns cold.
It’s not for children, he says.
I want to see it, the boy insists.
No, the man says.
I have the envelope, the boy threatens. With your name on it.
The man opens his mouth. The boy moves deeper into the house.
* * *
The man sits down at the desk and taps the computer awake. The boy stands at his elbow; the man swallows. He loads the disc into the player.
On-screen a boy begins hitting a man bound to a chair. Both are naked, except for a pair of boots laced to the boy’s knees. The boy slaps the man, over and over. The man’s eyes are
half-closed and he makes no sound. The boy shoves the man’s head back and spits into his mouth.
Before anything else can happen, the real man punches a key on the keyboard; the figures on the screen freeze.
Why did you stop it? the boy asks.
The man shakes his head.
I shouldn’t show it to you, the man says.
Why not?
It’s bad.
Why?
Because.
Because why?
Because it’s not normal.
But it’s just pretend.
The man pauses. Yes, he says. But even pretend things should be the right things.
Why?
The man moves to shut down the computer but the boy pushes the man’s hand away. The man leans back in the chair.
Because, the man says again.
Why do you like it?
I don’t like it.
You don’t?
Can I turn it off now?
The boy’s eyes flicker over the still image. Okay, he says, and the man leans forward, fast. The screen crackles.
Is that all? the man asks.
All what?
All you wanted?
The boy rolls his lip between his teeth. The man moves his chair a little, back and forth.
No, the boy says finally.
They stay, still, the man in his chair and the boy standing beside him, watching, waiting.
I want to look around, the boy says.
The man makes a soft sound, not quite a laugh.
Why? What are you looking for?
The boy shrugs.
* * *
The man’s bedroom is jammed with clothes, tangled blankets, paper. The blinds are shut and the curtains drawn.
It’s messy, the boy says.
No one comes in here usually, the man explains from the doorway.
The boy slides open the closet door, touching the man’s clothes, moving a shoe with his foot. He inspects a broken lamp, a bookcase of paperbacks. He opens the dresser, exposing twin stacks of white shorts.
The boy looks into the nightstand drawer. The man holds his breath. There are pictures inside the drawer, which the boy shuffles without comment.
Will you tell? the man asks.
The boy shakes his head, easing the drawer shut. On the nightstand is an alarm clock, a water glass, and several bottles of pills; the boy touches his finger to each one.
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