“You just think so because I look like you.”
“That’s what they tell me, but it looks better on you. How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know. All I know is I’m here.”
“Well, I’ll settle for that. How did you get here?”
“Oh, wow. I was in New York and I took a bus to Flemington and hitched a ride to Lambertville and walked across the bridge and looked around for someone I knew to give me a ride, and I didn’t see anyone I knew. That’s weird, growing up in a town and all of a sudden there’s nobody around that you know.”
“You still know a lot of people here. Last summer—”
“Well, they weren’t around today. I took a cab.”
“It’s a shame you took a cab. You should have called me, but I guess that would have blunted the surprise. What were you doing in New York?”
“Let’s go inside, okay? I want to sit down in your chair and put my feet up. I hope you still have that chair.”
“Of course I do.”
He carried her suitcase. They went into the living room where she sat in his reclining chair. He called in Mrs. Kleinschmidt and the woman made just the right amount of fuss over the girl before retiring to the kitchen. He made himself a drink and was sitting down himself before he thought to ask Karen if she wanted one.
“I don’t — actually I think I will. If it’s all right.”
“Of course it’s all right. What would you like?”
“I don’t know. I don’t drink much.”
“Well, this is an occasion. Scotch and water?”
“Just scotch.”
“Ice?”
“Just plain.”
He poured two fingers of scotch in a glass and took it to her. He went to get his own glass for a toast but before he could turn around she had tossed off her drink and was grimacing.
“You don’t have to drink it like that,” he said mildly.
“I just wanted to — I don’t know.”
“What’s the matter, kitten?”
“I don’t know.”
“How was school?”
“Fine.”
“You’re happy there? Because you can always transfer, you know.”
“Daddy.”
He looked at her, and for a moment her face was twelve years old again.
“Go on, kitten.”
“I just don’t know,” she said, miserably.
“Anyway you want.”
“I can’t decide whether to be nice or honest.”
“Which would you rather someone were to you?”
“Honest, but it might not be the same if I was a parent.”
“I was a kid once.”
“You were, weren’t you?” She patted her pockets, asked for a cigarette. He gave her one and lit it for her. Two years ago he had seen her smoking for the first time, and she had acted as if she had been puffing cigarettes all her life.
She said, “I had it all worked out in my mind. I would come down here and be Little Mary Sunshine for a couple of days and everything would be cool, but I don’t want to play games with you. I can put on an act with Mother and Gregory because I’ve been doing it for years, but not with you.”
“You don’t have to, kitten.”
“I know I don’t, but do I have to lay a whole trip on you? That’s the question.” She worked on the cigarette in silence. Then she said, “I didn’t do too well in school.”
“Exams didn’t go very well?”
“Next week is exam week, Daddy.”
“I see. Of course you’ve decided not to go back.”
“I couldn’t pass them anyway. No, you might as well have the whole thing. Then we can play out some shitty scene and I’ll get on a bus in the morning. I dropped out of school — I don’t know, three months ago? Something like that. Sometime after the start of the semester. I had just had it with that place.”
“But you weren’t in New York all that time. Unless you had mail forwarded—”
“No, I was in Evanston.”
“They let you stay in the dorm?”
“I wasn’t in the dorm.”
“Oh.”
“I was in this sort of commune off campus. Not exactly a commune, we called it that but it wasn’t a real commune. Just a house in town that somebody rented and a bunch of us were living there.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I think so. You dropped out and you were shacking up with a guy and experimenting with drugs and you want to feed me this a spoonful at a time because you’re afraid it will shock me.”
“Just grass, if you call that a drug. There were other things around but we stayed away from them.”
“I’m just as glad to hear that.”
“And I wasn’t exactly living with a guy. We weren’t into a monogamy thing. So you could say I was shacking up with four guys, if you wanted to use that term.”
“Well, one term’s as good as the next.”
“I suppose so. You are shocked, aren’t you?”
He made a fresh drink. Before answering the question aloud he tried to answer it in his own mind. He said, “I am, but probably not in precisely the way you think. I wonder how I can explain it. When I called to you and you looked at me with your face beaming I held out my arms to you. I don’t know if you noticed. And I realize now that I expected you to fly across the gravel and throw yourself into my arms the way you did years ago. But of course you didn’t because you’re — I was going to say a woman, and I’m not sure that’s accurate. It doesn’t matter. You’re an older girl than the one who would run crazily and leap at me. I’m your father, Karen, and that means for the rest of my life I’ll always tend to remember you as a child and I’ll always tend to think of you as younger than you actually are. So I am shocked, but not because I disapprove of anything you’ve done. I may disapprove of it and I may not but that’s beside the point. I’m shocked because you’ve changed and of course it would be infinitely worse if you hadn’t changed, but nevertheless it takes getting used to. Did you follow any of that?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t judge you, kitten. I only see you on special occasions. Perhaps your mother can judge you, and I’m by no means sure of that, but I can’t.”
“I wouldn’t have told her any of this.”
“That’s something else again.”
“I went to New York for an abortion. No, I’m all right, there was nothing to it. I was pregnant and I had the money and I took care of it, and I’m fine. I didn’t| feel bad about the abortion. All I feel bad about is getting pregnant in the first place.”
“There are ways to avoid it, you know.”
“I know, but the Pill only works if you remember to take it.” She grinned suddenly. “From now on I’ll remember.”
“That’s a good idea. All right, if there’s any more to the confessional period I might as well hear it now. You dropped out of school and you’re not a virgin, and you had an abortion and what else? You’ve got ‘Property of Hell’s Angels’ tattooed on your behind.”
“Who told you?”
“Oh, it was in all the papers. Hey.”
“What?”
“I missed you. And you look good. From what you said it doesn’t sound as though you should, but you do.”
“So do you.”
“What are your plans? Assuming you have any.”
“I don’t exactly.”
“What are your inexact plans? Back to Evanston?”
“No, there’s nothing there for me. I thought I would go back to New York.”
“What’s there in that rotten town?”
“I know some people there, sort of.”
“You could spend the summer here, you know.”
“That’s what I was hoping. That’s why I came here to begin with, hoping I could stay here awhile. The only thing is I don’t know if I can.”