100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

1986 MONA SIMPSON. Lawns from the Iowa Review

MONA SIMPSON was born in 1957 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and moved to Los Angeles as a young teenager. Her father was a recent immigrant from Syria and her mother the daughter of a mink farmer and the first person in her family to attend college. Simpson earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and published her first stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, and Mademoiselle. After earning her MFA from Columbia University, she worked as an editor for The Paris Review.

Simpson writes about the American class system through the lens of the family and its changing sociology. Alice Munro has called her families “amazing” and “heartbreaking… the sort who haven’t turned up before in anything else I’ve read.” John Ashberry wrote, “Simpson has a remarkable gift for transforming the homely cadences of plain American speech into something like poetry.”

Simpson won the Whiting Prize for her first novel, Anywhere but Here. In 1992 she published a sequel titled The Lost Father. Off Keck Road won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also been awarded a Literature Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent books are the novels My Hollywood and Casebook. Simpson lives in Santa Monica, California.

★

I STEAL. I’VE STOLEN books and money and even letters. Letters are great. I can’t tell you the feeling walking down the street with twenty dollars in my purse, stolen earrings in my pocket. I don’t get caught. That’s the amazing thing. You’re out on the sidewalk, other people all around, shopping, walking, and you’ve got it. You’re out of the store, you’ve done this thing you’re not supposed to do, but no one stops you. At first it’s a rush. Like you’re even for everything you didn’t get before. But then you’re left alone, no one even notices you. Nothing changes.

I work in the mailroom of my dormitory, Saturday mornings. I sort mail, put the letters in these long narrow cubbyholes. The insides of mailboxes. It’s cool there when I stick in my arm.

I’ve stolen cash — these crisp, crackling, brand-new twenty-dollar bills the fathers and grandmothers send, sealed up in sheets of wax paper. Once I got a fifty. I’ve stolen presents, too. I got a sweater and a football. I didn’t want the football, but after the package was messed up on the mail table, I had no choice, I had to take the whole thing in my day pack and throw it out on the other side of campus. I found a covered garbage can. It was miles away. Brand-new football.

Mostly, what I take are cookies. No evidence. They’re edible. I can spot the coffee cans of chocolate chip. You can smell it right through the wrapping. A cool smell, like the inside of a pantry. Sometimes I eat straight through the can during my shift.

Tampering with the United States mail is a federal crime, I know. Listen, let me tell you, I know. I got a summons in my mailbox to go to the Employment Office next Wednesday. Sure I’m scared.

The university cops want to talk to me. Great. They think, “suspect” is the word they use, that one of us is throwing out mail instead of sorting it. Wonder who? Us is the others, I’m not the only sorter. I just work Saturdays, mail comes, you know, six days a week in this country. They’ll never guess it’s me.

They say this in the letter, they think it’s out of laziness. Wanting to hurry up and get done, not spend the time. But I don’t hurry. I’m really patient on Saturday mornings. I leave my dorm early, while Lauren’s still asleep, I open the mailroom — it’s this heavy door and I have my own key. When I get there, two bags are already on the table, sagging, waiting for me. Two old ladies. One’s packages, one’s mail. There’s a small key opens the bank of doors, the little boxes from the inside. Through the glass part of every mail slot, I can see. The Astroturf field across the street over the parking lot, it’s this light green. I watch the sky go from black to gray to blue while I’m there. Some days just stay foggy. Those are the best. I bring a cup of coffee in with me from the vending machine — don’t want to wake Lauren up — and I get there at like seven-thirty or eight o’clock. I don’t mind it then, my whole dorm’s asleep. When I walk out it’s as quiet as a football game day. It’s eleven or twelve when you know everyone’s up and walking that it gets bad being down there. That’s why I start early. But I don’t rush.

Once you open a letter, you can’t just put it in a mailbox. The person’s gonna say something. So I stash them in my pack and throw them out. Just people I know. Susan Brown I open, Annie Larsen, Larry Helprin. All the popular kids from my high school. These are kids who drove places together, took vacations, they all ski, they went to the prom in one big group. At morning nutrition — nutrition, it’s your break at ten o’clock for donuts and stuff. California state law, you have to have it.

They used to meet outside on the far end of the math patio, all in one group. Some of them smoked. I’ve seen them look at each other, concerned at ten in the morning. One touched the inside of another’s wrist, like grown-ups in trouble.

And now I know. Everything I thought those three years, worst years of my life, turns out to be true. The ones here get letters. Keri’s at Santa Cruz, Lilly’s in San Diego, Kevin’s at Harvard, and Beth’s at Stanford. And like from families, their letters talk about problems. They’re each other’s main lives. You always knew, looking at them in high school, they weren’t just kids who had fun. They cared. They cared about things.

They’re all worried about Lilly now. Larry and Annie are flying down to talk her into staying at school.

I saw Glenn the day I came to Berkeley. I was all unpacked and I was standing there leaning into the window of my father’s car, saying, “Smile, Dad, jeez, at least try, would you?” He was crying because he was leaving. I’m thinking oh, my god, some of these other kids carrying in their trunks and backpacks are gonna see him, and then finally, he drives away and I was sad. That was the moment I was waiting for, him gone and me alone and there it was and I was sad. I took a walk through campus and I’d been walking for almost an hour and then I see Glenn, coming down on a little hill by the infirmary, riding one of those lawn mowers you sit on, with grass flying out of the side and he’s smiling. Not at me but just smiling. Clouds and sky behind his hair, half of Tamalpais gone in fog. He was wearing this bright orange vest and I thought, fall’s coming.

I saw him that night again in our dorm cafeteria. This’s the first time I’ve been in love. I worry. I’m a bad person, but Glenn’s the perfect guy, I mean for me at least, and he thinks he loves me and I’ve got to keep him from finding out about me. I’ll die before I’ll tell him. Glenn, OK, Glenn. He looks like Mick Jagger, but sweet, ten times sweeter. He looks like he’s about ten years old. His father’s a doctor over at UC Med. Gynecological surgeon.

First time we got together, a whole bunch of us were in Glenn’s room drinking beer, Glenn and his roommate collect beer cans, they have them stacked up, we’re watching TV and finally everybody else leaves. There’s nothing on but those gray lines and Glenn turns over on his bed and asks me if I’d rub his back.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. In high school, I was always ending up with the wrong guys, never the one I wanted. But I wanted it to be Glenn and I knew it was going to happen, I knew I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to stay there. It would happen. I was sitting on his rear end, rubbing his back, going under his shirt with my hands.

All of a sudden, I was worried about my breath and what I smelled like. When I turned fourteen or fifteen, my father told me once that I didn’t smell good. I slugged him when he said that and didn’t talk to him for days, not that I cared about what I smelled like with my father. He was happy, though, kind of, that he could hurt me. That was the last time, though, I’ll tell you.

Glenn’s face was down in the pillow. I tried to sniff myself but I couldn’t tell anything. And it went all right anyway.

I don’t open Glenn’s letters but I touch them. I hold them and smell them — none of his mail has any smell.

He doesn’t get many letters. His parents live across the Bay in Marin County, they don’t write. He gets letters from his grandmother in Michigan, plain, even handwriting on regular envelopes, a sticker with her return address printed on it, Rural Route #3, Guns Street, see, I got it memorized.

And he gets letters from Diane, Di, they call her. High school girlfriend. Has a pushy mother, wants her to be a scientist, but she already got a C in Chem 1A. I got an A+, not to brag. He never slept with her, though, she wouldn’t, she’s still a virgin down in San Diego. With Lilly. Maybe they even know each other.

Glenn and Di were popular kids in their high school. Redwood High. Now I’m one because of Glenn, popular. Because I’m his girlfriend, I know that’s why. Not ’cause of me. I just know, OK, I’m not going to start fooling myself now. Please.

Her letters I hold up to the light, they’ve got fluorescent lights in there. She’s supposed to be blond, you know, and pretty. Quiet. The soft type. And the envelopes. She writes on these sheer cream-colored envelopes and they get transparent and I can see her writing underneath, but not enough to read what it says, it’s like those hockey lines painted under layers of ice.

I run my tongue along the place where his grandmother sealed the letter. A sharp, sweet gummy taste. Once I cut my tongue. That’s what keeps me going to the bottom of the bag, I’m always wondering if there’ll be a letter for Glenn. He doesn’t get one every week. It’s like a treasure. Cracker Jack prize. But I’d never open Glenn’s mail. I kiss all four corners where his fingers will touch, opening it, before I put it in his box.

I brought home cookies for Lauren and me. Just a present. We’ll eat ’em or Glenn’ll eat ’em. I’ll throw them out for all I care. They’re chocolate chip with pecans. This was one good mother. A lucky can. I brought us coffee, too. I bought it.

Yeah, OK, so I’m in trouble. Wednesday, at ten-thirty, I got this notice I was supposed to appear. I had a class, Chem 1C, pre-med staple. Your critical thing. I never missed it before. I told Glenn I had a doctor’s appointment.

OK, so I skip it anyway and I walk into this room and there’s these two other guys, all work in the mailroom doing what I do, sorting. And we all sit there on chairs on this green carpet. I was staring at everybody’s shoes. And there’s a cop. University cop, I don’t know what’s the difference. He had this sagging, pear-shaped body. Like what my dad would have if he were fat, but he’s not, he’s thin. He walks slowly on the carpeting, his fingers hooked in his belt loops. I was watching his hips.

Anyway, he’s accusing us all and he’s trying to get one of us to admit we did it. No way.

“I hope one of you will come to me and tell the truth. Not a one of you knows anything about this? Come on, now.”

I shake my head no and stare down at the three pairs of shoes. He says they’re not going to do anything to the person who did it, right, wanna make a bet, they say they just want to know, but they’ll take it back as soon as you tell them.

I don’t care why I don’t believe him. I know one thing for sure and that’s they’re not going to do anything to me as long as I say no, I didn’t do it. That’s what I said, no, I didn’t do it, I don’t know a thing about it. I just can’t imagine where those missing packages could have gone, how letters got into garbage cans. Awful. I just don’t know.

The cop had a map with X’s on it every place they found mail. The garbage cans. He said there was a group of students trying to get an investigation. People’s girlfriends sent cookies that never got here. Letters are missing. Money. These students put up Xeroxed posters on bulletin boards showing a garbage can stuffed with letters.

Why should I tell them, so they can throw me in jail? And kick me out of school? Four-point-oh average and I’m going to let them kick me out of school? They’re sitting there telling us it’s a felony. A federal crime. No way, I’m gonna go to medical school.

This tall, skinny guy with a blond mustache, Wallabees, looks kind of like a rabbit, he defended us. He’s another sorter, works Monday/Wednesdays.

“We all do our jobs,” he says. “None of us would do that.” The rabbity guy looks at me and the other girl for support. So we’re going to stick together. The other girl, a dark blonde chewing her lip, nodded. I loved that rabbity guy that second. I nodded too.

The cop looked down. Wide hips in the coffee-with-milk-colored pants. He sighed. I looked up at the rabbity guy. They let us all go.

I’m just going to keep saying no, not me, didn’t do it and I just won’t do it again. That’s all. Won’t do it anymore. So, this is Glenn’s last chance for homemade cookies. I’m sure as hell not going to bake any.

I signed the form, said I didn’t do it, I’m OK now. I’m safe. It turned out OK after all, it always does. I always think something terrible’s going to happen and it doesn’t. I’m lucky.

I’m afraid of cops. I was walking, just a little while ago, today, down Telegraph with Glenn, and these two policemen, not the one I’d met, other policemen, were coming in our direction. I started sweating a lot. I was sure until they passed us, I was sure it was all over, they were there for me. I always think that. But at the same time, I know it’s just my imagination. I mean, I’m a four-point-oh student, I’m a nice girl just walking down the street with my boyfriend.

We were on our way to get Happy Burgers. When we turned the corner, about a block past the cops, I looked at Glenn and I was flooded with this feeling. It was raining a little and we were by People’s Park. The trees were blowing and I was looking at all those little gardens coming up, held together with stakes and white string.

I wanted to say something to Glenn, give him something. I wanted to tell him something about me.

“I’m bad in bed,” that’s what I said, I just blurted it out like that. He just kind of looked at me, he was nervous, he just giggled. He didn’t know what to say, I guess, but he sort of slung his arm around me and I was so grateful and then we went in. He paid for my Happy Burger, I usually don’t let him pay for me, but I did and it was the best goddamn hamburger I’ve ever eaten.

I want to tell him things.

I lie all the time, always have, but I keep track of each lie I’ve ever told Glenn and I’m always thinking of the things I can’t tell him.

Glenn was a screwed up kid, kind of. He used to go in his backyard, his parents were inside the house I guess, and he’d find this big stick and start twirling around with it. He’d dance, he called it dancing, until if you came up and clapped in front of him, he wouldn’t see you. He’d spin around with that stick until he fell down dead on the grass, unconscious, he said he did it to see the sky break up in pieces and spin. He did it sometimes with a tire swing, too. He told me when he was spinning like that, it felt like he was just hearing the earth spinning, that it really went that fast all the time but we just don’t feel it. When he was twelve years old his parents took him in the city to a clinic to see a psychologist. And then he stopped. See, maybe I should go to a psychologist. I’d get better, too. He told me about that in bed one night. The ground feels so good when you fall, he said to me. I loved him for that.

“Does anything feel that good now?” I said.

“Sex sometimes. Maybe dancing.”

Know what else he told me that night? He said, right before we went to sleep, he wasn’t looking at me, he said he’d been thinking what would happen if I died, he said he thought how he’d be at my funeral, all my family and my friends from high school and my little brother would all be around at the front and he’d be at the edge in the cemetery, nobody’d even know who he was.

I was in that crack, breathing the air between the bed and the wall. Cold and dusty. Yeah, we’re having sex. I don’t know. It’s good. Sweet. He says he loves me. I have to remind myself. I talk to myself in my head while we’re doing it. I have to say, it’s OK, this is just Glenn, this is who I want it to be and it’s just like rubbing next to someone. It’s just like pushing two hands together, so there’s no air in between.

I cry sometimes with Glenn, I’m so grateful.

My mother called and woke me up this morning. Ms. I’m-going-to-be-perfect. Ms. Anything-wrong-is-your-own-fault. Ms. If-anything-bad-happens-you’re-a-fool.

She says if she has time, she might come up and see my dorm room in the next few weeks. Help me organize my wardrobe, she says. She didn’t bring me up here, my dad did. I wanted Danny to come along. I love Danny.

But my mother has no pity. She thinks she’s got the answers. She’s the one who’s a lawyer, she’s the one who went back to law school and stayed up late nights studying while she still made our lunch boxes. With gourmet cheese. She’s proud of it, she tells you. She loves my dad, I guess. She thinks we’re like this great family and she sits there at the dinner table bragging about us, to us. She Xeroxed my grade card first quarter with my Chemistry A+ so she’s got it in her office and she’s got the copy up on the refrigerator at home. She’s sitting there telling all her friends that and I’m thinking, you don’t know it, but I’m not one of you.

These people across the street from us. Little girl, Sarah, eight years old. Maybe seven. Her dad, he worked for the army, some kind of researcher, he decides he wants to get a sex-change operation. And he goes and does it, over at Stanford. My mom goes out, takes the dog for a walk, right. The mother confides in her. Says the thing she regrets most is she wants to have more children. The little girl, Sarah, eight years old, looks up at my mom and says, “Daddy’s going to be an aunt.”

Now that’s sad, I think that’s really sad. My mom thinks it’s a good dinner table story, proving how much better we are than them. Yeah, I remember exactly what she said that night. “That’s all Sarah’s mother’s got to worry about now is that she wants another child. Meanwhile, Daddy’s becoming an aunt.”

She should know about me.

So my dad comes to visit for the weekend. Glenn’s dad came to speak at UC one night, he took Glenn out to dinner to a nice place, Glenn was glad to see him. Yeah, well. My dad. Comes to the dorm. Skulks around. This guy’s a businessman, in a three-piece suit, and he acts inferior to the eighteen-year-old freshmen coming in the lobby. My dad. Makes me sick right now thinking of him standing there in the lobby and everybody seeing him. He was probably looking at the kids and looking jealous. Just standing there. Why? Don’t ask me why, he’s the one that’s forty-two years old.

So he’s standing there, nervous, probably sucking his hand, that’s what he does when he’s nervous, I’m always telling him not to. Finally, somebody takes him to my room. I’m not there, Lauren’s gone, and he waits for I don’t know how long.

When I come in he’s standing with his back to the door, looking out the window. I see him and right away I know it’s him and I have this urge to tiptoe away and he’ll never see me.

My pink sweater, a nice sweater, a sweater I wore a lot in high school, was over my chair, hanging on the back of it, and my father’s got one hand on the sweater shoulder and he’s like rubbing the other hand down an empty arm. He looks up at me, already scared and grateful when I walk into the room. I feel like smashing him with a baseball bat. Why can’t he just stand up straight?

I drop my books on the bed and stand there while he hugs me.

“Hi, Daddy, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” He sits in my chair now, his legs crossed and big, too big for this room, and he’s still fingering the arm of my pink sweater. “I missed you so I got away for the weekend,” he says. “I have a room up here at the Claremont Hotel.”

So he’s here for the weekend. He’s just sitting in my dorm room and I have to figure out what to do with him. He’s not going to do anything. He’d just sit there. And Lauren’s coming back soon so I’ve got to get him out. It’s Friday afternoon and the weekend’s shot. OK, so I’ll go with him. I’ll go with him and get it over with.

But I’m not going to miss my date with Glenn Saturday night. No way. I’d die before I’d cancel that. It’s bad enough missing dinner in the cafeteria tonight. Friday’s eggplant, my favorite, and Friday nights are usually easy, music on the stereos all down the hall. We usually work, but work slow and talk and then we all meet in Glenn’s room around ten.

“Come, sit on my lap, honey.” My dad like pulls me down and starts bouncing me. Bouncing me. I stand up. “OK, we can go somewhere tonight and tomorrow morning, but I have to be back for tomorrow night. I’ve got plans with people. And I’ve got to study, too.”

“You can bring your books back to the hotel,” he says. “I’m supposed to be at a convention in San Francisco, but I wanted to see you. I have work, too, we can call room service and both just work.”

“I still have to be back by four tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“OK, just a minute.” And he sat there in my chair while I called Glenn and told him I wouldn’t be there for dinner. I pulled the phone out into the hall, it only stretches so far, and whispered. “Yeah, my father’s here,” I said, “he’s got a conference in San Francisco. He just came by.”

Glenn lowered his voice, sweet, and said, “Sounds fun.”

My dad sat there, hunched over in my chair, while I changed my shirt and put on deodorant. I put a nightgown in my shoulder pack and my toothbrush and I took my chem book and we left. I knew I wouldn’t be back for a whole day. I was trying to calm myself, thinking, well, it’s only one day, that’s nothing in my life. The halls were empty, it was five o’clock, five-ten, everyone was down at dinner.

We walk outside and the cafeteria lights are on and I see everyone moving around with their trays. Then my dad picks up my hand.

I yank it out. “Dad,” I say, really mean.

“Honey, I’m your father.” His voice trails off. “Other girls hold their fathers’ hands.” It was dark enough for the lights to be on in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t really dark out yet. The sky was blue. On the tennis courts on top of the garage, two Chinese guys were playing. I heard that thonk-pong and it sounded so carefree and I just wanted to be them. I’d have even given up Glenn, Glenn-that-I-love-more-than-anything, at that second, I would have given everything up just to be someone else, someone new. I got into the car and slammed the door shut and turned up the heat.

“Should we just go to the hotel and do our work? We can get a nice dinner in the room.”

“I’d rather go out,” I said, looking down at my hands. He went where I told him. I said the name of the restaurant and gave directions. Chez Panisse and we ordered the most expensive stuff. Appetizers and two desserts just for me. A hundred and twenty bucks for the two of us.

OK, this hotel room.

So, my dad’s got the Bridal Suite. He claimed that was all they had. Fat chance. Two-hundred-eighty-room hotel and all they’ve got left is this deal with the canopy bed, no way. It’s in the tower, you can almost see it from the dorm. Makes me sick. From the bathroom, there’s this window, shaped like an arch, and it looks over all of Berkeley. You can see the bridge lights. As soon as we got there, I locked myself in the bathroom, I was so mad about that canopy bed. I took a long bath and washed my hair. They had little soaps wrapped up there, shampoo, may as well use them, he’s paying for it. It’s this deep old bathtub and wind was coming in from outside and I felt like that window was just open, no glass, just a hole cut out in the stone.

I was thinking of when I was little and what they taught us in catechism. I thought a soul was inside your chest, this long horizontal triangle with rounded edges, made out of some kind of white fog, some kind of gas or vapor. I could be pregnant. I soaped myself all up and rinsed off with cold water. I’m lucky I never got pregnant, really lucky.

Other kids my age, Lauren, everybody, I know things they don’t know. I know more for my age. Too much. Like I’m not a virgin. Lots of people are, you’d be surprised. I know about a lot of things being wrong and unfair, all kinds of stuff. It’s like seeing a UFO, if I ever saw something like that, I’d never tell, I’d wish I’d never seen it.

My dad knocks on the door.

“What do you want?”

“Let me just come in and talk to you while you’re in there.”

“I’m done, I’ll be right out. Just a minute.” I took a long time toweling. No hurry, believe me. So I got into bed with my nightgown on and wet already from my hair. I turned away. Breathed against the wall. “Night.”

My father hooks my hair over my ear and touches my shoulder. “Tired?”

I shrug.

“You really have to go back tomorrow? We could go to Marin or to the beach. Anything.”

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.

Only thing I’m sad about isn’t either of my parents, it’s Danny. Leaving Danny alone there with them. He used to send Danny out of the house. My mom’d be at work on a Saturday afternoon or something or even in the morning and my dad would kick my little brother out of his own house. Go out and play, Danny. Why doncha catch some rays. And Danny just went and got his glove and baseball from the closet and he’d go and throw it against the house, against the outside wall, in the driveway. I’d be in my room, I’d be like dead, I’d be wood, telling myself this doesn’t count, no one has to know, I’ll say I’m still a virgin, it’s not really happening to me, I’m dead, I’m blank, I’m just letting time stop and pass, and then I’d hear the sock of the ball in the mitt and the slam of the screen door and I knew it was true, it was really happening.

Glenn’s the one I want to tell. I can’t ever tell Glenn.

I called my mom. Pay phone, collect, hour-long call. I don’t know, I got real mad last night and I just told her. I thought when I came here, it’d just go away. But it’s not going away. It makes me weird with Glenn. In the morning, with Glenn, when it’s time to get up, I can’t get up. I cry.

I knew it’d be bad. Poor Danny. Well, my mom says she might leave our dad. She cried for an hour, no joke, on the phone.

How could he do this to me, she kept yelping. To her. Everything’s always to her.

But then she called an hour later, she’d talked to a psychiatrist already, she’s kicked Dad out, and she arrives, just arrives here at Berkeley. But she was good. She says she’s on my side, she’ll help me, I don’t know, I felt OK. She stayed in a hotel and she wanted to know if I wanted to stay there with her but I said no, I’d see her more in a week or something, I just wanted to go back to my dorm. She found this group. She says, just in San Jose, there’s hundreds of families like ours, yeah, great, that’s what I said. But there’s groups. She’s going to a group of other thick-o mothers like her, these wives who didn’t catch on. She wanted me to go to a group of girls, yeah, molested girls, that’s what they call them, but I said no, I have friends here already, she can do what she wants.

I talked to my dad, too, that’s the sad thing, he feels like he’s lost me and he wants to die and I don’t know, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He called in the middle of the night.

“Just tell me one thing, honey. Please tell me the truth. When did you stop?”

“Dad.”

“Because I remember once you said I was the only person who ever understood you.”

“I was ten years old.”

“OK, OK. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t want to get off the phone. “You know, I love you, honey. I always will.”

“Yeah, well.”

My mom’s got him lined up for a psychiatrist, too, she says he’s lucky she’s not sending him to jail. I am a lawyer, she keeps saying, as if we could forget. She’d pay for me to go to a shrink now, too, but I said no, forget it.

It’s over. Glenn and I are, over. I feel like my dad’s lost me everything. I sort of want to die now. I’m telling you I feel terrible. I told Glenn and that’s it, it’s over. I can’t believe it either. Lauren says she’s going to hit him.

I told him and we’re not seeing each other anymore. Nope. He said he wanted to just think about everything for a few days. He said it had nothing to do with my father but he’d been feeling a little too settled lately. He said we don’t have fun anymore, it’s always so serious. That was Monday. So every meal after that, I sat with Lauren in the cafeteria and he’s there on the other side, messing around with the guys. He sure didn’t look like he was in any kind of agony. Wednesday, I saw Glenn over by the window in this food fight, slipping off his chair and I couldn’t stand it, I got up and left and went to our room.

But I went and said I wanted to talk to Glenn that night, I didn’t even have any dinner, and he said he wanted to be friends. He looked at me funny and I haven’t heard from him. It’s, I don’t know, seven days, eight.

I know there are other guys. I live in a dorm full of them, or half full of them. Half girls. But I keep thinking of Glenn ’cause of happiness, that’s what makes me want to hang on to him.

There was this one morning when we woke up in his room, it was light out already, white light all over the room. We were sticky and warm, the sheet was all tangled. His roommate, this little blond boy, was still sleeping. I watched his eyes open and he smiled and then he went down the hall to take a shower. Glenn was hugging me and it was nothing unusual, nothing special. We didn’t screw. We were just there. We kissed, but slow, the way it is when your mouth is still bad from sleep.

I was happy that morning. I didn’t have to do anything. We got dressed, went to breakfast, I don’t know. Took a walk. He had to go to work at a certain time and I had that sleepy feeling from waking up with the sun on my head and he said he didn’t want to say goodbye to me. There was that pang. One of those looks like as if at that second, we both felt the same way.

I shrugged. I could afford to be casual then. We didn’t say goodbye. I walked with him to the shed by the Eucalyptus Grove. That’s where they keep all the gardening tools, the rakes, the hoes, the mowers, big bags of grass seed slumped against the wall. It smelled like hay in there. Glenn changed into his uniform and we went to the North Side, up in front of the chancellor’s manor, that thick perfect grass. And Glenn gave me a ride on the lawn mower, on the handlebars. It was bouncing over these little bumps in the lawn and I was hanging on to the handlebars, laughing. I couldn’t see Glenn but I knew he was there behind me. I looked around at the buildings and the lawns, there’s a fountain there, and one dog was drinking from it.

See, I can’t help but remember things like that. Even now, I’d rather find some way, even though he’s not asking for it, to forgive Glenn. I’d rather have it work out with him, because I want more days like that. I wish I could have a whole life like that. But I guess nobody does, not just me.

I saw him in the mailroom yesterday, we’re both just standing there, each opening our little boxes, getting our mail — neither of us had any — I was hurt but I wanted to reach out and touch his face. He has this hard chin, it’s pointy and all bone. Lauren says she wants to hit him.

I mean, I think of him spinning around in his backyard and that’s why I love him and he should understand. I go over it all and think I should have just looked at him and said I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Right there in the mailroom. Now when I think that, I think maybe if I’d said that, in those words, maybe it would be different.

But then I think of my father — he feels like there was a time when we had fun, when we were happy together. I mean, I can remember being in my little bed with Dad and maybe cracking jokes, maybe laughing, but he probably never heard Danny’s baseball in his mitt the way I did or I don’t know. I remember late in the afternoon, wearing my dad’s navy-blue sweatshirt with a hood and riding bikes with him and Danny down to the diamond.

But that’s over. I don’t know if I’m sorry it happened. I mean I am, but it happened, that’s all. It’s just one of the things that happened to me in my life. But I would never go back, never. And what hurts so much is that maybe that’s what Glenn is thinking about me.

I told Lauren last night. I had to. She kept asking me what happened with Glenn. She was so good, you couldn’t believe it, she was great. We were talking late and this morning we drove down to go to House of Pancakes for breakfast, get something good instead of watery eggs for a change. And on the way, Lauren’s driving, she just skids to a stop on this street, in front of this elementary school. “Come on,” she says. It’s early, but there’s already people inside the windows.

We hooked our fingers in the metal fence. You know, one of those aluminum fences around a playground. There were pigeons standing on the painted game circles. Then a bell rang and all these kids came out, yelling, spilling into groups. This was a poor school, mostly black kids, Mexican kids, all in bright colors. There’s a Nabisco factory nearby and the whole air smelled like blueberry muffins.

The girls were jump-roping and the boys were shoving and running and hanging on to the monkey bars. Lauren pinched her fingers on the back of my neck and pushed my head against the fence.

“Eight years old. Look at them. They’re eight years old. One of their fathers is sleeping with one of those girls. Look at her. Do you blame her? Can you blame her? Because if you can forgive her you can forgive yourself.”

“I’ll kill him,” I said.

“And I’ll kill Glenn,” Lauren says.

So we went and got pancakes. And drank coffee until it was time for class.

I saw Glenn yesterday. It was so weird after all this time. I just had lunch with Lauren. We picked up tickets for Talking Heads and I wanted to get back to the lab before class and I’m walking along and Glenn was working, you know, on the lawn in front of the Mobi Building. He was still gorgeous. I was just going to walk, but he yelled over at me.

“Hey, Jenny.”

“Hi, Glenn.”

He congratulated me, he heard about the NSF thing. We stood there. He has another girlfriend now. I don’t know, when I looked at him and stood there by the lawn mower, it’s chugging away, I felt the same as I always used to, that I loved him and all that, but he might just be one of those things you can’t have. Like I should have been for my father and look at him now. Oh, I think he’s better, they’re all better, but I’m gone, he’ll never have me again.

I’m glad they’re there and I’m here, but it’s strange, I feel more alone now. Glenn looked down at the little pile of grass by the lawn mower and said, “Well, kid, take care of yourself,” and I said, “You too, ’bye,” and started walking.

So, you know what’s bad, though, I started taking stuff again. Little stuff from the mailroom. No packages and not people I know anymore.

But I take one letter a Saturday, I make it just one and someone I don’t know. And I keep ’em and burn ’em with a match in the bathroom sink and wash the ashes down the drain. I wait until the end of the shift. I always expect it to be something exciting. The two so far were just everyday letters, just mundane, so that’s all that’s new, I-had-a-pork-chop-for-dinner letters.

But something happened today, I was in the middle, three-quarters way down the bag, still looking, I hadn’t picked my letter for the day, I’m being really stern, I really mean just one, no more, and there’s this little white envelope addressed to me. I sit there, trembling with it in my hand. It’s the first one I’ve gotten all year. It was my name and address, typed out, and I just stared at it. There’s no address. I got so nervous, I thought maybe it was from Glenn, of course, I wanted it to be from Glenn so bad, but then I knew it couldn’t be, he’s got that new girlfriend now, so I threw it in the garbage can right there, one of those with the swinging metal door, and then I finished my shift. My hands were sweating, I smudged the writing on one of the envelopes.

So all the letters are in boxes, I clean off the table, fold the bags up neat and close the door, ready to go. And then I thought, I don’t have to keep looking at the garbage can, I’m allowed to take it back, that’s my letter. And I fished it out, the thing practically lopped my arm off. And I had it and I held it a few minutes, wondering who it was from. Then I put it in my mailbox so I can go like everybody else and get mail.