Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

I hugged my knees up under my nightgown. “You should go to your conference, Dad.”

I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel something’s going on, and sure enough, my dad’s down there, he’s got my nightgown worked up like a frill around my neck and my legs hooked over his shoulders.

“Dad, stop it.”

“I just wanted to make you feel good,” he says, and looks up at me. “What’s wrong? Don’t you love me anymore?”

I never really told anybody. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you can bring up over lunch. “So, I’m sleeping with my father. Oh, and let’s split a dessert.” Right.

I don’t know, other people think my dad’s handsome. They say he is. My mother thinks so, you should see her traipsing around the balcony when she gets in her romantic moods, which, on her professional lawyer schedule, are about once a year, thank god. It’s pathetic. He thinks she’s repulsive, though. I don’t know that, that’s what I think. But he loves me, that’s for sure.

So next day, Saturday — that rabbity guy, Paul’s his name, he did my shift for me — we go downtown and I got him to buy me this suit. Three hundred dollars from Saks. Oh, and I got shoes. So I stayed later with him because of the clothes, and I was a little happy because I thought at least now I’d have something good to wear with Glenn. My dad and I got brownie sundaes at Sweet Dreams and I got home by five. He was crying when he dropped me off.

“Don’t cry, Dad. Please,” I said. Jesus, how can you not hate someone who’s always begging from you.

Lauren had Poly Styrene on the stereo and a candle lit in our room. I was never so glad to be home.

“Hey,” Lauren said. She was on her bed with her legs propped up on the wall. She’d just shaved. She was rubbing in cream.

I flopped down on my bed. “Ohhhh,” I said, grabbing the sides of the mattress.

“Hey, can you keep a secret about what I did today?” Lauren said. “I went to that therapist, up at Cowell.”

“You have the greatest legs,” I said, quiet. “Why don’t you ever wear skirts?”

She stopped what she was doing and stood up. “You think they’re good? I don’t like the way they look, except in jeans.” She looked down at them. “They’re crooked, see?” She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it.”

Then she went to her dresser and started rolling a joint. “Want some?”

“A little.”

She lit up, lay back on her bed and held her arm out for me to come take the joint.

“So, she was this really great woman. Warm, kind of chubby. She knew instantly what kind of man Brent was.” Lauren snapped her fingers. “Like that.” Brent was the pool man Lauren had an affair with, home in LA.

I’m back in the room maybe an hour, putting on mascara, my jeans are on the bed, pressed, and the phone rings and it’s my dad and I say, “Listen, just leave me alone.”

“You don’t care about me anymore.”

“I just saw you. I have nothing to say. We just saw each other.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Going out.”

“Who are you seeing?”

“Glenn.”

He sighs. “So you really like him, huh?”

“Yeah, I do and you should be glad. You should be glad I have a boyfriend.” I pull the cord out into the hall and sit down on the floor there. There’s this long pause.

“We’re not going to end up together, are we?”

I felt like all the air’s knocked out of me. I looked out the window and everything looked dead and still. The parked cars. The trees with pink toilet paper strung between the branches. The church all closed up across the street.

“No, we won’t, Daddy.”

He was crying. “I know, I know.”

I hung up the phone and went back and sat in the hall. I’m scared, too. I don’t know what’ll happen.

I don’t know. It’s been going on I guess as long as I can remember. I mean, not the sex, but my father. When I was a little kid, tiny little kid, my dad came in before bed and said his prayers with me. He kneeled down by my bed and I was on my back. Prayers . He’d lift up my pajama top and put his hands on my breast. Little fried eggs, he said. One time with his tongue. Then one night, he pulled down the elastic of my pajama pants. He did it for an hour and then I came. Don’t believe anything they ever tell you about kids not coming. That first time was the biggest I ever had and I didn’t even know what it was then. It just kept going and going as if he were breaking me through layers and layers of glass and I felt like I’d slipped and let go and I didn’t have myself anymore, he had me, and once I’d slipped like that I’d never be the same again.

We had this sprinkler on our back lawn, Danny and me used to run through it in summer and my dad’d be outside, working on the grass or the hedge or something and he’d squirt us with the hose. I used to wear a bathing suit bottom, no top — we were this modern family, our parents walked around the house naked after showers and then Danny and I ended up both being these modest kids, can’t stand anyone to see us even in our underwear, I always dress facing the closet, Lauren teases me. We’d run through the sprinkler and my dad would come up and pat my bottom and the way he’d put his hand on my thigh, I felt like Danny could tell it was different than the way he touched him, I was like something he owned.

First time when I was nine, I remember, Dad and me were in the shower together. My mom might have even been in the house, they did that kind of stuff, it was supposed to be OK. Anyway, we’re in the shower and I remember this look my dad had. Like he was daring me, knowing he knew more than I did. We’re both under the shower. The water pasted his hair down on his head and he looked younger and weird. “Touch it. Don’t be afraid of it,” he says. And he grabs my thighs on the outside and pulls me close to him, pulling on my fat.

He waited till I was twelve to really do it. I don’t know if you can call it rape, I was a good sport. The creepy thing is I know how it felt for him, I could see it on his face when he did it. He thought he was getting away with something. We were supposed to go hiking but right away that morning when we got into the car, he knew he was going to do it. He couldn’t wait to get going. I said I didn’t feel good, I had a cold, I wanted to stay home, but he made me go anyway and we hiked two miles and he set up the tent. He told me to take my clothes off and I undressed just like that, standing there in the woods. He’s the one who was nervous and got us into the tent. I looked old for twelve, small but old. And right there on the ground, he spread my legs open and pulled my feet up and fucked me. I bled. I couldn’t even breathe the tent was so small. He could have done anything. He could have killed me, he had me alone on this mountain.

I think about that sometimes when I’m alone with Glenn in my bed. It’s so easy to hurt people. They just lie there and let you have them. I could reach out and choke Glenn to death, he’d be so shocked, he wouldn’t stop me. You can just take what you want.

My dad thought he was getting away with something but he didn’t. He was the one who fell in love, not me. And after that day, when we were back in the car, I was the one giving orders. From then on, I got what I wanted. He spent about twice as much money on me as on Danny and everyone knew it, Danny and my mom, too. How do you think I got good clothes and a good bike and a good stereo? My dad’s not rich, you know. And I’m the one who got to go away to college even though it killed him. Says it’s the saddest thing that ever happened in his life, me going away and leaving him. But when I was a little kid that day, he wasn’t in love with me, not like he is now.