Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

These people across the street from us. Little girl, Sarah, eight years old. Maybe seven. Her dad, he worked for the army, some kind of researcher, he decides he wants to get a sex-change operation. And he goes and does it, over at Stanford. My mom goes out, takes the dog for a walk, right. The mother confides in her. Says the thing she regrets most is she wants to have more children. The little girl, Sarah, eight years old, looks up at my mom and says, “Daddy’s going to be an aunt.”

Now that’s sad, I think that’s really sad. My mom thinks it’s a good dinner table story, proving how much better we are than them. Yeah, I remember exactly what she said that night. “That’s all Sarah’s mother’s got to worry about now is that she wants another child. Meanwhile, Daddy’s becoming an aunt.”

She should know about me.

So my dad comes to visit for the weekend. Glenn’s dad came to speak at UC one night, he took Glenn out to dinner to a nice place, Glenn was glad to see him. Yeah, well. My dad. Comes to the dorm. Skulks around. This guy’s a businessman , in a three-piece suit, and he acts inferior to the eighteen-year-old freshmen coming in the lobby. My dad. Makes me sick right now thinking of him standing there in the lobby and everybody seeing him. He was probably looking at the kids and looking jealous. Just standing there. Why? Don’t ask me why, he’s the one that’s forty-two years old.

So he’s standing there, nervous, probably sucking his hand, that’s what he does when he’s nervous, I’m always telling him not to. Finally, somebody takes him to my room. I’m not there, Lauren’s gone, and he waits for I don’t know how long.

When I come in he’s standing with his back to the door, looking out the window. I see him and right away I know it’s him and I have this urge to tiptoe away and he’ll never see me.

My pink sweater, a nice sweater, a sweater I wore a lot in high school, was over my chair, hanging on the back of it, and my father’s got one hand on the sweater shoulder and he’s like rubbing the other hand down an empty arm. He looks up at me, already scared and grateful when I walk into the room. I feel like smashing him with a baseball bat. Why can’t he just stand up straight?

I drop my books on the bed and stand there while he hugs me.

“Hi, Daddy, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” He sits in my chair now, his legs crossed and big, too big for this room, and he’s still fingering the arm of my pink sweater. “I missed you so I got away for the weekend,” he says. “I have a room up here at the Claremont Hotel.”

So he’s here for the weekend. He’s just sitting in my dorm room and I have to figure out what to do with him. He’s not going to do anything. He’d just sit there. And Lauren’s coming back soon so I’ve got to get him out. It’s Friday afternoon and the weekend’s shot. OK, so I’ll go with him. I’ll go with him and get it over with.

But I’m not going to miss my date with Glenn Saturday night. No way. I’d die before I’d cancel that. It’s bad enough missing dinner in the cafeteria tonight. Friday’s eggplant, my favorite, and Friday nights are usually easy, music on the stereos all down the hall. We usually work, but work slow and talk and then we all meet in Glenn’s room around ten.

“Come, sit on my lap, honey.” My dad like pulls me down and starts bouncing me. Bouncing me . I stand up. “OK, we can go somewhere tonight and tomorrow morning, but I have to be back for tomorrow night. I’ve got plans with people. And I’ve got to study, too.”

“You can bring your books back to the hotel,” he says. “I’m supposed to be at a convention in San Francisco, but I wanted to see you. I have work, too, we can call room service and both just work.”

“I still have to be back by four tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“OK, just a minute.” And he sat there in my chair while I called Glenn and told him I wouldn’t be there for dinner. I pulled the phone out into the hall, it only stretches so far, and whispered. “Yeah, my father’s here,” I said, “he’s got a conference in San Francisco. He just came by.”

Glenn lowered his voice, sweet, and said, “Sounds fun.”

My dad sat there, hunched over in my chair, while I changed my shirt and put on deodorant. I put a nightgown in my shoulder pack and my toothbrush and I took my chem book and we left. I knew I wouldn’t be back for a whole day. I was trying to calm myself, thinking, well, it’s only one day, that’s nothing in my life. The halls were empty, it was five o’clock, five-ten, everyone was down at dinner.

We walk outside and the cafeteria lights are on and I see everyone moving around with their trays. Then my dad picks up my hand.

I yank it out. “Dad,” I say, really mean.

“Honey, I’m your father.” His voice trails off. “Other girls hold their fathers’ hands.” It was dark enough for the lights to be on in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t really dark out yet. The sky was blue. On the tennis courts on top of the garage, two Chinese guys were playing. I heard that thonk-pong and it sounded so carefree and I just wanted to be them. I’d have even given up Glenn, Glenn-that-I-love-more-than-anything, at that second, I would have given everything up just to be someone else, someone new. I got into the car and slammed the door shut and turned up the heat.

“Should we just go to the hotel and do our work? We can get a nice dinner in the room.”

“I’d rather go out,” I said, looking down at my hands. He went where I told him. I said the name of the restaurant and gave directions. Chez Panisse and we ordered the most expensive stuff. Appetizers and two desserts just for me. A hundred and twenty bucks for the two of us.

OK, this hotel room.

So, my dad’s got the Bridal Suite. He claimed that was all they had. Fat chance. Two-hundred-eighty-room hotel and all they’ve got left is this deal with the canopy bed, no way. It’s in the tower, you can almost see it from the dorm. Makes me sick. From the bathroom, there’s this window, shaped like an arch, and it looks over all of Berkeley. You can see the bridge lights. As soon as we got there, I locked myself in the bathroom, I was so mad about that canopy bed. I took a long bath and washed my hair. They had little soaps wrapped up there, shampoo, may as well use them, he’s paying for it. It’s this deep old bathtub and wind was coming in from outside and I felt like that window was just open, no glass, just a hole cut out in the stone.

I was thinking of when I was little and what they taught us in catechism. I thought a soul was inside your chest, this long horizontal triangle with rounded edges, made out of some kind of white fog, some kind of gas or vapor. I could be pregnant. I soaped myself all up and rinsed off with cold water. I’m lucky I never got pregnant, really lucky.

Other kids my age, Lauren, everybody, I know things they don’t know. I know more for my age. Too much. Like I’m not a virgin. Lots of people are, you’d be surprised. I know about a lot of things being wrong and unfair, all kinds of stuff. It’s like seeing a UFO, if I ever saw something like that, I’d never tell, I’d wish I’d never seen it.

My dad knocks on the door.

“What do you want?”

“Let me just come in and talk to you while you’re in there.”

“I’m done, I’ll be right out. Just a minute.” I took a long time toweling. No hurry, believe me. So I got into bed with my nightgown on and wet already from my hair. I turned away. Breathed against the wall. “Night.”

My father hooks my hair over my ear and touches my shoulder. “Tired?”

I shrug.

“You really have to go back tomorrow? We could go to Marin or to the beach. Anything.”