words that might reach across the divide between us. “All right, ” I say at last, and I kiss her cheek under her closed eyes. “I’ll go. You stay. ” When I tell my father she’s not coming, he smiles. “Oh good, “
he says. “I’m glad to have you to myself for a little while. ” He picks up his bags. “Maybe you should go up and say good-bye, ” I say, surprised by his callousness, the way he doesn’t seem to consider her feelings when she is slain by as little as a glance from him. In the terminal, he puts down the camera case to embrace me with both arms. “I love you, ” he says. “God, I love you. I lost you, but now I have you back, and I’ll never let you go again. ” He says the words and he holds me tightly, so tightly. How solid he is, how real. Father. My father.
The word made flesh. “You don’t know how I suffered when they sent me away, ” he says.
“You can’t imagine the pain of losing you. ” He takes my face in his hands and kisses my forehead, my eyes.
“How can a daughter of mine be this beautiful? ” he murmurs. “When I look at you, I wonder if I, too, must not be handsome. ” My father knows he is a good-looking man. He’s overweight, and I have to stretch to get my arms around him, but his features a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and long no seare good enough to excuse the excess. I smile, but I don’t return to him the compliment I suspect he’s trying to prompt. We look at each other. We search each other’s faces. “What happens now? ” I say, and we make promises that we’ll be together again soon. “In the summer, maybe, ” I say.
“No, ” he says. “Sooner. Sooner. “
With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen. I’ve seen it before, fathers kissing their daughters on the mouth. A friend of mine’s father has kissed her this way for years, and I’ve watched them, unable to look away, disquieted by what I see. In my family, lip-to-lip kisses between parent and child are considered as vulgar as spitting in public or not washing your hands after using the toilet, all of which failures my grandmother would judge as evidence of poor upbringing. She might excuse such kisses from a person raised in an exotic, backward culture, but never from a decent American. A voice over the public-address system announces the final boarding call for my father’s flight. As I pull away, feeling the resistance of his hand behind my head, how tightly he holds me to him, the kiss changes. It is no longer a chaste, closed-lipped kiss. My father pushes his tongue deep into my mouth, wet, insistent, exploring, then withdrawn. He picks up his camera case, and, smiling brightly, he joins the end of the line of passengers disappearing into the airplane. How long do I stand there, my hand to my mouth, people washing around me? The plane has taxied away from the gate before I move. Through the terminal’s thick wall of glass, I watch it take off, the thrust that lifts its heavy, shining belly into the clouds. I am frightened by the kiss. I know it is wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret. In years to come, I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion, a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed. The route I take from my mother’s home back to school is devoid of visual distractions, a straight path cut through flat, dry country. The highway is so old that the asphalt has faded to a pale gray, its cracks painted over with black lines of tar. It’s a road that lacks a vanishing point even when it isn’t hot, a mirage of water glimmers at its end.
the Rolling Stones album still plays in the tape deck, over and
he says. “I’m glad to have you to myself for a little while. ” He picks up his bags. “Maybe you should go up and say good-bye, ” I say, surprised by his callousness, the way he doesn’t seem to consider her feelings when she is slain by as little as a glance from him. In the terminal, he puts down the camera case to embrace me with both arms. “I love you, ” he says. “God, I love you. I lost you, but now I have you back, and I’ll never let you go again. ” He says the words and he holds me tightly, so tightly. How solid he is, how real. Father. My father.
The word made flesh. “You don’t know how I suffered when they sent me away, ” he says.
“You can’t imagine the pain of losing you. ” He takes my face in his hands and kisses my forehead, my eyes.
“How can a daughter of mine be this beautiful? ” he murmurs. “When I look at you, I wonder if I, too, must not be handsome. ” My father knows he is a good-looking man. He’s overweight, and I have to stretch to get my arms around him, but his features a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and long no seare good enough to excuse the excess. I smile, but I don’t return to him the compliment I suspect he’s trying to prompt. We look at each other. We search each other’s faces. “What happens now? ” I say, and we make promises that we’ll be together again soon. “In the summer, maybe, ” I say.
“No, ” he says. “Sooner. Sooner. “
With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen. I’ve seen it before, fathers kissing their daughters on the mouth. A friend of mine’s father has kissed her this way for years, and I’ve watched them, unable to look away, disquieted by what I see. In my family, lip-to-lip kisses between parent and child are considered as vulgar as spitting in public or not washing your hands after using the toilet, all of which failures my grandmother would judge as evidence of poor upbringing. She might excuse such kisses from a person raised in an exotic, backward culture, but never from a decent American. A voice over the public-address system announces the final boarding call for my father’s flight. As I pull away, feeling the resistance of his hand behind my head, how tightly he holds me to him, the kiss changes. It is no longer a chaste, closed-lipped kiss. My father pushes his tongue deep into my mouth, wet, insistent, exploring, then withdrawn. He picks up his camera case, and, smiling brightly, he joins the end of the line of passengers disappearing into the airplane. How long do I stand there, my hand to my mouth, people washing around me? The plane has taxied away from the gate before I move. Through the terminal’s thick wall of glass, I watch it take off, the thrust that lifts its heavy, shining belly into the clouds. I am frightened by the kiss. I know it is wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret. In years to come, I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion, a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed. The route I take from my mother’s home back to school is devoid of visual distractions, a straight path cut through flat, dry country. The highway is so old that the asphalt has faded to a pale gray, its cracks painted over with black lines of tar. It’s a road that lacks a vanishing point even when it isn’t hot, a mirage of water glimmers at its end.
the Rolling Stones album still plays in the tape deck, over and
Similar Books
