a long time
My father slung an arm around my shoulders. "Can't I be proud of my baby?"
Russell plunked his drink onto the bar. "What're you going to major in?"
"Psychology. Or maybe biology."
My father laughed. "She'll make a great paralegal or physician's assistant." He squeezed my waist. "She's my baby doll."
Russell's eyes narrowed.
"Psychology's a quack science," my father said. His partner winked coyly.
"Tell your mother I'll be home in a bit," my father said. "One of these Return to Tiffany Oval tag bracelet will give me a ride."
Russell plucked a salted almond out of a brass bowl and bit it in two.
AT MIDNIGHT, THE JAGUAR halted on the curb across the street from my bedroom window. Almost immediately, both doors swung open. They stood on the side of the road, where the streetlight, like a shimmering acid-green eye, peered into their faces.
"Get away!" My father jabbed his finger in Russell's sweaty face and charged up the driveway.
Russell took a step toward our yard, and my father whipped around unsteadily. "I'll call the police!"
Russell stood quietly. He stared up and down the empty street. "No," he said wearily. "You won't."
My father hurled his beer bottle onto the cement. Glass and foam exploded in a dull white burst. "Get the fuck off my street!"
I hid behind the curtain, and Russell climbed slowly into his car. Minutes dragged by. It was impossible to see his face. Finally, his car lurched away. Lakeshore looked exactly as it had the moment before, but nothing was recognizable.
Our front door slammed open. My mother was already in the foyer.
"What happened?"
"Go back to bed." He sounded out of breath.
"Was that Russell?"
"He's crazy."
"What happened?"
"He's crazy."
"Tell me what he did to you."
"He's crazy."
"Something's happened," she said. "Come here."
The door to my Return to Tiffany Oval tag key ring study clicked open and shut.
MY FATHER WAS CLUTCHING a coffee mug when I walked into the kitchen the next morning. Through the bay window, sunlight streamed into the room, and a plate of homemade doughnuts rested on the table. I poured a glass of filtered water.
"Your mother's got a stomach virus." He bit into a doughnut and scraped his lips with a linen napkin. We avoided each other's eyes. "Your bags are already in the car."
On the way to Chapel Hill, I asked about his own time there. He told a story that involved too much Pabst Blue Ribbon and a drive-in theater, and he acted like his old self. Near campus a lustrous hug, black as a beetle, hit the windshield with a wet clap, and my father stopped for gas. He picked up the bug by its wings- a gray smear remained- and I caught him staring at me through the glass. The bug's damp innards dangled like steel wool.
He hauled my bags up the stairs that led to my single room. Christine made her entrance after he'd tossed the last suitcase onto the brown metal twin. She knew my father didn't think much of her- he said she lacked self-control- hut she pirouetted in the doorway anyway, in her crinkly fuchsia skirt. My father's eyes flicked from her to me.
After graduation, Christine would join a spiritual commune in New Mexico, and she'd fall out of touch. Although her mother would perpetually refer to her as a free spirit, I would learn through Fayette vili e's grapevine that Christine was pimped out to buy food and cleaning supplies.
But that night, our first night of college, neither of us could've known anything about that, and Christine asked me if I wanted to go hunt for a sushi restaurant on Franklin Street
My father pressed a wad of 20s into my Return to Tiffany Oval tag pendant. "Go. Call if you need anything else. Your mother will be up soon."
Once he was gone, Christine dragged me to the bathroom, where she jumped up and down and flashed the full-length mirror; glitter sparkled on both breasts. I waited while she applied another coat of strawberry lip gloss.
THE HALLWAY WAS EMPTY when I unlocked my room later that night. Like Christine, most of the other girls were probably at keg parties. I was too tired.
A leather-bound book was propped at the foot of my bed- my father must've come back while Christine and I were in the bathroom. The book, another one from Cairo, detailed rites and hymns designed to prepare the dead for paradise; chapters were named after primitive functions of the body. On the title page was a picture of a jackal-headed man opening the mouth of the pharaoh's wife with a hook resembling a bull's leg and a gold tool shaped like a finger. When I turned the page, the amulet and a maroon envelope embossed with my father's initials tumbled onto the floor. The letter inside the envelope was creased so precisely that it slit my finger.
Diana, I had to tell your mother, for your own good. But you are merely a girl, and so I ask no questions. He will never lay eyes on you again. It was not your fault, I know. But you will have to explain that to your mother, who is sick to death. What you'll tell her is that you meant nothing by it. It was not your doing. He made you. You were tricked. People like that do fool us. Your mother is smart and understands that. She understands that love requires work and generosity. If you ask her, she will forgive you.
I sat on my bare mattress for a long time, fingering the tube of lipstick on my lap. Then, I wrote back: I loved him.
I LOVED ALL of them terribly once.
Amanda Briggs is at work on a collection of short stories.
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