Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,37

other. His button-down shirt felt dry-cleaner pressed, and his after-prom loafers held a deep burgundy shine. He smelled nice. Clean. Secure.

He pointed out his home across the lake. Following his finger, I could make out, framed by two enormous live oaks on the opposite shore, a white columned porch and a redbrick chimney. The lake was still and black, and the moon, sunk low behind us, laid a milky white path across the water. I had the fantastic notion that Chip and I could step from the car and walk hand in hand across that white road to his house and up the porch steps to the front door and keep walking forever into a rich, easy future. It would be that simple. Life would be that simple.

How do I justify what I did next? It would be easy enough to blame the alcohol, but there was more to it than that. There was genuine affection involved. I knew that Chip was graduating soon and going to Tulane. This was possibly our last chance to be alone together before he left. Certainly this was the only senior prom he would ever attend, and the only night after a senior prom he would ever know. And he was so kind and polite and decent. I thought of it as a gift I might offer him. “I want this night to be special for you,” I said, and meant it as sincerely as I had ever meant anything.

“My god,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”

“Shh—” I said.

“Laura—”

“Do you like that?” I found his right hand on the seat and held it in my left. He squeezed my fingers. I only wanted to make him happy. The radio dial cast a blue-green glow into the front seat, as if we were sinking underwater. Sounds became muted and distant, and all of our movements seemed to be in slow motion. His brass belt buckle glinted in the submarine light. The song on the radio, I remember, was “Close to You” by the Carpenters.

“Is that okay? Do you like that? Do you?”

“Oh my god,” he said, miles above me. “Oh dear god, yes.”

• • •

In case you’re counting, Liz, that was the third time I betrayed Tim that evening. In the days that followed the prom, it wasn’t the act itself, no matter how stupidly inappropriate it might have been, that caused me such remorse. Rather, it was how easily I had disowned Tim that racked me with guilt, making me feel lower than Judas, the lowest, most untrustworthy friend in the world. And as the weeks went on and Chip became more and more peculiar and unresponsive and eventually stopped talking to me altogether, I felt it was only fitting retribution for my unfaithfulness that he should turn away from me.

I don’t blame Chip. He was and always would be a kind and decent Catholic boy—that would never change about him. But as a kind and decent Catholic boy, he also had certain expectations about girls, and in particular the type of girl he might bring home to his parents one day, the type he might safely marry knowing that she was as pure and untested as his own mother had been on the day of her wedding. I, clearly, was not that girl. And it was only just, I felt, that in addition to the private guilt I suffered for my betrayal of Tim, I also suffered the public shame of soon being branded by my peers and classmates at Cathedral High School and Sacred Heart Academy as a low-class, easy slut.

Your father’s out mowing the grass again. It’s eight o’clock at night and he’s mowing the grass. The noise of the engine builds to a roar as he pushes it past the rear of the house, fades to a whine as he steers it to a dark corner of the yard.

Do you remember when you were three years old and caught pneumonia? You probably don’t. Your father took off work for a week so he could sit by your bedside and rub you with witch hazel and feed you chicken broth. He loves you, he does, he just doesn’t know how to show it anymore. As best as I can explain it, Liz, that’s why he’s out there now mowing the grass, the grass he’s already mowed.

Before going out your father suggested I take a break. Why was I still obsessively writing this letter? Wasn’t I tired? What was the point? I