Where Boys Wait for Her

Just inside the front door,
. . . standing mute and looking anywhere but at his face. His daughter is thirteen, the middle school dance like a rehearsal for prom. The boy wears a coat and a tie badly knotted, as if he has no father to show how to weave a Windsor. As if his mother has washed her hands of how he looks, busy elsewhere or simply absent. What is impossible is getting that boy to say anything but yes or no until his daughter comes down the stairs in the dress she picked out at the thrift store, one old enough to qualify as retro chic. He is as stunned, when she walks into the kitchen, as the boy, who seems to be holding his breath, his eyes raised and staring.

On the porch,
. . .  like a delivery boy, arms extended as if whatever he is carrying is light but awkward. When his daughter comes up from the basement, he understands everything was arranged by phone, a series of texts that announced the boy’s arrival like a doorbell. That he only knows because he happens to walk into the kitchen and the weather, for October, is warm and sunny, the side door open, the screen still in place, enough coincidence for him to understand that those arms have been positioned for welcome, the boy agreeing to whatever his daughter has suggested.

In the school auditorium,
. . . near the back, she tells him, behind where she was sitting alone waiting for a friend to finish rehearsing her solo. Play practice was nearly over, her parts merely chorus. This one reached over her shoulders and cupped her breasts with his hands, pressing and letting go so quickly she only gasped, not turning until he was gone. She says that she has decided to quit the musical, that no one will miss her because the chorus is made up of everyone who failed their audition, yet willing to rehearse. This is just the first, he thinks, as she begins to cry.

In his driveway,
. . . inside an idling car at the far end, speaker bass vibrating, his face hidden by glare off the windshield. She has finished freshman year, and when he says he would like to meet the driver, she says, “You would like him, Daddy,” but he is fixed upon that car, how it ages this boy into someone he could hate. One with a phony ID. One with beer. One who chooses girls by innocence who might be transfixed by entering the future. One who is preparing to steal something worth waiting for from his house.

Across the street,
. . . shadowed until he cups his hands to light a cigarette. “Smoking isn’t a sin,” she says, fifteen now and indirect. “His license is suspended, but he obeys the law. He doesn’t sneak the car out. He is so honest, he walks.” Making a case as if he’s a jury, as if this is her closing argument.

A block away,
. . . how far, without telling him, she walks in the twilight as he watches, surprised until he notices the car, its headlights not yet necessary, or, he is suddenly sure, extinguished. When she opens the back door, he fixes on the front seat, making himself believe there is another girl, that tonight is as nostalgic as a double date. He watches an old movie in his head, remembering a song his mother loved by Connie Francis. When the car, lights still off, pulls away, he remembers that she told him Connie Francis was raped in a Howard Johnson’s motel, that she was threatened with a knife.

In another town,
. . . in a housing plan, because, she says, she is the designated driver, borrowing the car at night for the first time, not completing his thought about where else his car is going–some empty house or public park with boys who expect her to drink, ignoring her excuse to be cautious and responsible. “You’re so anxious,” she says, clutching the fob as if she thinks he might reach for it.

At a nearby house,
. . . in an upstairs room, she says, because the boy’s mother welcomes her each time and trusts her to help only with her son’s chemistry homework, such a difficult subject for her son that she says, “Good luck” as she climbs the stairs. She volunteers that scene so easily that he believes it’s rehearsed. That the mother works late. That the boy has traded his grade in chemistry for an hour with her body. That, embarrassed by his imagination, he will never call the mother to testify.

From beside his phone,

. . . after sexting a photo of himself shamelessly erect, saying, “Now, you” as if they are six, not sixteen. “Just for me, because I love you,” he said, this boy who claimed he loved art as much as she did, painting with her after school for weeks like a co-curricular teammate, making a promise that he has broken, her bared breasts shared among his friends before they rippled farther from her school until she admits she is stupid and shamed, but refuses to name him.

From the hospital,

. . . texting about his accident, the boy who had driven her, the week before, to a Friday movie, speeding, as if the theater were an emergency room. The boy who had called someone else from her class this week and sped her into a rollover off a country road, the trauma enough to hospitalize him and kill her.

From anywhere,

. . . the boy, like her, an adult now in every state. Where, if she refuses, he will decide to agree or not. Where, if a stranger, he will decide to act or only imagine. Where, if he is someone who takes risks, will decide he has waited long enough for what he wants.