The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler Page B

the Shore Road down past the boatyards and salt marshes to Griswold Point, where the Sound and the mouth of the Connecticut River meet. The water was choppy that day, the beach deserted now that the summer folk were gone. I parked there and Lulu hopped out, the better to arf at shorebirds. We stayed in the Jag with the top down, facing the water.
    “Do you love Thor?”
    “Duh, yeah,” she answered mockingly. “Like, what do you think?”
    “I’m trying to figure out what to think.”
    She shook a Camel out of her jacket, stuck it between her teeth like a schoolyard tough and lit it, letting the smoke slowly out of her nostrils. “I’ve loved Thor for as long as I can remember,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy. “Thor is a force within me, the great and eternal male, enveloping me, inside of me, part of me, me. ”
    From the rocks nearby, Lulu started coughing violently. Me, I was just staring.
    “I love him with my body and my mind and my soul,” she went on, and on. “Our love is timeless and life-affirming. By loving Thor I am loving myself.”
    “I hadn’t realized you were majoring in dramatic arts,” I observed.
    “I wasn’t. History.”
    “My mistake. I take it you don’t feel you’ve done anything wrong.”
    She shook her head. “I know I haven’t.”
    “You don’t think of Thor as your father?”
    “He’s not my father!” she insisted, flaring at me angrily. “God, why can’t people get hip to that?”
    “Because he raised you, that’s why.”
    “Look,” she said, with exaggerated patience, “if he was my father I wouldn’t feel this way about him. I have a father. I mean, that’s what people keep forgetting. Barry is my father. I see him all the time and I love him as my father and I would never, ever in a million years think about fucking him. Thor … He’s just a man who used to be with my mom. And now’s with me.”
    “About your mom … Is this you getting back at her?”
    “Getting back at her how?”
    “By taking her man away from her.”
    “She has shit to do with it. I love Thor. I told you.”
    “Do you love her, too?”
    Clethra shrugged her shoulders inside the jacket. “I did, I guess. Back when I was little, I mean. But these last couple of years, man, she’s just been all the time in my face, busting me, dissing me, telling me what to do.”
    “She’s your mom. Moms do that.”
    “Not like her, homes,” she argued. “Like, my mother happens to be the bitch of the century, okay? But I don’t have to tell you that. You know her, right?”
    I nodded. Because I did know her. And because I was well aware she could be damned hard on people. Ruth Feingold was a tough, demanding woman. Her outright belligerence had ultimately led to a big falling-out with Friedan and the others. And had dealt the women’s movement a serious blow.
    Clethra took a drag on her cigarette, staring out across the Sound. It was a clear day, clear enough to make out the north shore of Long Island on the other side. “I mean, nothing I ever do is good enough for her. Not my grades. Not how I look. Not who my friends are. I’m, like, she’s always running me down. Thor’s the one who kept me sane. If it weren’t for him I’d have run away when I was fourteen. I’d be a hooker on the street somewhere. But I’m cool now. I’m free of her.”
    “Is it true that she has physically abused both you and your brother?”
    “Half brother.” She hesitated a moment before she nodded, swallowing. “All the time. With the back of her hand, with her fist. She’s just so mad at the world. But, like, why does she have to take it out on us? Poor little Arvy, she’d smack him and scream at him until he’d just go running from the dinner table. And I’m, like, he shakes when she comes in the room. He’s such a sweet, sensitive boy. I’m scared for him. What she’ll do to him. Thor has to get him away from her. Has to.” She tensed in her seat next to me. Savagely, she added,