This was the first time. There were others. I meant to confront him, to march out to his car and tell him he did not scare me—but whenever I approached, the Camaro growled to life and sped away.
Sometimes in the morning I found a collection of cigarette butts on the street or a smashed soda cup, the plastic straw twisted into anxious knots. Sometimes I could hear the distinctive sound of his engine pass by without stopping, a high-pitched rumble while approaching and a lower-pitched one departing. I knew this was called the Doppler effect, and in my imagination, I pictured explaining the phenomenon to him, sitting in the passenger seat of the Camaro, maybe drawing a diagram in ballpoint pen on the back of a paper fast-food bag, and him—the all-at-once light in his eyes as he understood—smiling. Sometimes I turned off the light in my bedroom and watched him through a slit in the curtains. He could not have seen me, but he seemed to be looking right at me.
There was nothing I could tell from his dark form.
Maybe he was angry and plotting revenge over something I had done.
Maybe he was sad, like the rest of us.
*
My father wondered where I was going those afternoons and evenings. He did not ask about it directly. It was not his way. Instead he said things like, “Boy, you’ve been keeping late hours,” or “Do you think you’ll be home for dinner?”
The house was quieter in those days. We were too aware of each other—like two guarded animals circling each other on a solitary hill. We had sniffed out all the shifts that had occurred in both our lives, and we were keen to them. It wasn’t anger or discomfort or fear—just a heightened sensitivity to certain silent currents that seemed to ebb and flow through the house.
We didn’t avoid each other. In fact, more frequently than I had in the past, I did my homework downstairs, spread out on the floor, while my father read the newspaper and drank Earl Grey tea. But I was distracted. I couldn’t help but be watchful, listening for the fluttering sound of the newspaper pages turning, the sound of his teacup clattering against the saucer as he lifted it and set it down, the sound of his hand running across the scruffy line of his chin while he read.
Sometimes I would listen at the door to his office when he went in there to talk to Margot Simons on the telephone. I couldn’t hear particular words, but I didn’t need them—I was listening for cadences, certain lilts and tones that might speak to who he really was when I wasn’t around to discomfit him.
*
There’s something else I remember—from a long time before that. When I close my eyes, I can see it still.
My father, he looks the same as ever in my mind, no variations. That magisterial jawline, that long face, those rough hands.
In my memory, he sits on the edge of the couch, and I am caught between his knees. I have a splinter in my finger, and he has fetched the tweezers from the medicine cabinet. He has a monocular magnifying glass wedged magically in his eye—I don’t know how he does it. I can’t get it to stay in my eye when I try. He switches back and forth between two instruments: the tweezers and the blade of his pocketknife.
I writhe in panic, but his knees tighten around me. They hold my little body still. I am pressed between the muscly levers of his legs, and I am safe.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It won’t hurt at all. You won’t feel a thing. I promise.”
He pinches my finger tight.
“Ow,” I say.
“Oh, come on,” he says. “That doesn’t hurt.”
He tells me it doesn’t hurt, and I believe him, and so it doesn’t hurt. He instructs my body on what to feel. And I am relieved, because I relish instruction. How does one know what to make of the world if one is not told?
The vise of his legs, crushing with absolute control my wild little body.
He unpinches my fingers. He tells me the splinter is out. It does not hurt.
His legs release me, and I feel suddenly light—too light, as though I might spin off into the sky like a rogue balloon lost to the thinness of ether.
*
My husband is a good father. When our son gets hurt, Jack is the person he runs to by instinct. I watch the two of them—the way Jack puts his two big hands on the boy’s shoulders, creating pacts among males.
When Marcus’s teacher calls home to talk about his biting problem, Jack takes the call. He expresses grave concern. He is apologetic and thankful for the opportunity for social correction. When he gets off the phone, he turns to me, reproaching.
“She says she’s spoken with you about Marcus’s problems in school?”
“I guess she did,” I say. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? Ann…”
He shakes his head and walks out. He has a talk with Marcus later, sitting the boy next to him on the couch. They discuss acceptable modes of expression, ways for Marcus to communicate what’s inside of him without hurting others. After it’s over, Jack lifts the boy and hugs him tight. I watch from the dining room.
I am concerned that Jack is making our boy too soft. So later that night, after everyone is asleep, I creep into the boy’s bedroom and speak rhymes from my own childhood over his slumbering form.
Mary’s gone a-breaching,
ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.
Mary’s gone a-breaching,
ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.
Mary’s gone, and she lost her head.
What might she do with her body instead?
They scored her flesh, and they broke her bones.
Now who will she be if she makes it back home?
Mary’s gone a-breaching,
ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.
My husband would not like it if he heard, so I have no choice but to sing my songs to my boy in his sleep. I see his eyes shifting wildly under his lids, and I wonder what animal dreams he’s having.
When I go back to bed, Jack wakes briefly.
“Everything all right?” he asks, half asleep.
“You’re a good father,” I say.
He throws an arm over me and gives me a squeeze. Soon he is asleep again, and I gaze at the stars through the bedroom window.
*