don’t ask me a million questions because I don’t know if I’m ready to answer them yet.
Her parents nod.
When I was a senior I had an inappropriate relationship with my teacher, Mr. Knodel.
Arlene begins to cry immediately. What does that mean? she says, trying to get the words out through the sobs.
Maggie looks at her father. There are tears in his eyes. She has never been her daddy’s little girl in the traditional sense, because they are too similar. They butt heads and yell but she buys him beer and he fixes her car and he doesn’t let anybody talk down to her. He gives her spirit and protection. She’s the youngest of his children. Men know what other men think and want and do. Arlene doesn’t, but her husband knows precisely what their daughter is saying.
Maggie tells them it was physical but they never had actual intercourse. Somehow this is more horrifying to divulge. Somehow this calls closer attention to all the bits and bobs of knobby sex parts, flicking and pinging like a pinball machine.
She says she’s telling them because she’s ready to report it. She says she has evidence that is packed in their storage closet.
Later that night Arlene digs through it all to find Maggie’s Spider-Man folder and the book Twilight with the plumage of Post-it notes. It’s a Sunday night, the calm evening before a workweek, and the atmosphere in the house is appalled, shaken.
Arlene kneels over the evidence, running her hands along the things her daughter’s teacher gave to her. She reads the notes in the vampire book and looks at all the child stuff mixed with adult stuff.
Meanwhile, Maggie goes looking for her father. She finds him in the garage, crying under the rafters. She hates herself. She feels she will never be able to build up from here. He will never look at her like someone who didn’t do the things she did. No matter how much he loves her, there is a portion of their relationship that has gone gangrenous.
He doesn’t say a word but opens his arms to his daughter and she runs into them. They are, after all, the best arms in the world. They cry together until he stops, and then she does.
• • •
Maggie walks into the police station. She is suddenly conscious of every thing on her body. The swing of her rear in black leggings. Her Bearpaw boots. Her long, fake nails. In a few weeks the investigator assigned to her case will give her shit about it, that her nails are done all the time like some big-haired broad’s. At first she’ll laugh but then she’ll tell him the truth, which is that she wears fake nails so it’s harder to pull out her own eyelashes.
The receptionist looks up. There’s still time to turn around. Maggie imagines Aaron in his classroom today. This is the time of year that their love story began six years ago. He has no idea what is about to happen. There is some small power in that. Her shaking hands embarrass her. The receptionist waits for her to say something.
For the past few days Maggie has been asking her sister’s friend, a female police officer, various hypothetical questions. Lately, Maggie feels safer around women than men, with the exceptions of her brothers and her father and her therapist.
She knows she can still leave now. She can tell Dr. Stone that she changed her mind and he will tell her that whatever she feels is just fine.
She coughs a little to make sure she has a voice.
I’m here, she says to the receptionist, to report the corruption of a minor.
It’s too late now, too late now, too late now, too late now. She shivers and feels the scared kind of hot. The receptionist doesn’t seem to care. Unimpressed, just doing her job. Bored, even. She makes a call.
Maggie waits for a long time until finally an officer leans half his body through the open doorway and summons her into a private room. She begins to tell her vampire story. She is aware, suddenly, that every little thing matters. On a yellow notepad, the man takes down her words. The past yawns at her, stretching itself, like a cat.
Six months after Maggie went to the police, five years after the relationship between his daughter and Aaron Knodel ended, Mark Wilken got up long before his wife. This had been Mark’s way for some time, not a predilection but a by-product of