of you.”
“Homecoming, Daddy. The prom's in the spring. And as of tonight I'm just a princess. Rosemary will probably be queen. She grew up here. She's got about a trillion friends at school.”
“You will be queen,” he said. “Yes. Oh, yes, you will be chosen.”
The milk started bubbling around the edges, and she swirled it in the pan. “It's not like Elizabeth, Daddy,” she said. “There are a lot of really pretty girls here. You can't imagine how they dress.”
She sucked in a breath as if she hoped to pull her last sentence back into her mouth and swallow it. Don't complain to him about money, not when he's like this. But his face didn't change. He continued looking at her with moist, unfocused eyes.
“Princess,” he said. “They are gonna make you queen. I promise.”
He was big and dangerous and full of love. What would happen if she wasn't chosen?
“It's a big honor just being one of the princesses,” she said. “Now sit down, Daddy. The milk is ready.”
She wondered where Billy had gone. He wouldn't kill their father, she knew that, but if he came into the kitchen now and acted a certain way there was no telling what their father might do.
“You're somethin' else,” he said as he lowered himself onto a chair. “How's everything? You happy? How's Todd?”
“Todd is Todd,” she said, pouring the steaming milk into two mugs.
“School is school and Todd is Todd,” he said. “This does not sound so good. This does not sound like happiness.”
She set a mug on the table in front of him. “Don't listen to me,” she said. “Everything's great. I guess I have a touch of se nioritis, or something.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, senioritis. A desperate urge to be done with school just about the time you've reached the top of the heap. It has medical science baffled.”
He nodded. He looked into his milk. “Your brother and me, we had a little disagreement tonight,” he said.
He wanted so much. He could do such damage.
“I heard,” she said. “I wish you two wouldn't fight like that.”
“Don't tell me. Tell him. You want to know what he called me?”
“What?”
“He called me a pig. A pig.”
“Oh, Daddy.”
“Like what he calls the police. He called me a fucking pig, excuse the language. That's how your brother talks these days.”
“You have to ignore him sometimes.”
“Your mother, she told me to get out of the house—”
His voice was filling with emotion, a clotted sound. His face was darkening.
“She gets upset,” Susan said. “She's high-strung, you know that, these fights are too much for her.”
“I guess so. I guess that's true. You know a lot, don't you? Only eighteen, and you know so much.”
“Not all that much. Listen, Daddy, it's late. I should get to bed.”
“I wish your mother knew half the things you know. God. I wish she wasn't so mad all the time.”
“I have to get up in about five hours—”
He put his hand on top of hers. She recognized what was in his face, the love and the hunger and the bottomless grief.
“Susie,” he said. His face was imploring as a baby's, full of a baby's inchoate, violent need.
“I'm here,” she said. “I'm right here.”
She didn't move. She was frightened and vaguely excited. It wasn't desire; not exactly desire. She saw the power she could have. She heard her name being called out on the football field, saw a crown lifted in the floodlit air. Slowly, with tenderness, she took his big suffering head in her slender hands and guided his face to her own. His breath was full of beer, strong but not unpleasant. Human. She thought he would pull away. He didn't. She was frightened. She let the kiss go on.
1968/ Words caught in Zoe's throat. She watched instead. A leaf fluttered down from the ivy plant that was inching its way out of its Chinese pot. Dust brightened and dimmed in the square of light. A ghost slipped across the carpet, crying silently for all it couldn't find.
“Zoe?” Momma called. “Zoe, are you in there?”
She nodded. Momma tapped with her heels on the floorboards. She entered in a fury of perfume and sly glistenings. Her nylons hissed against her skirt.
“Right,” she said. “Not dressed. Hair's a rat's nest. Zoe, he's going to be here in twenty minutes. Do you get it? Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” Zoe said.
“Then will you move?”
“I hate my dress.”
Momma's mouth made a noise, a dry sucking. Momma's mouth refused the cravings, made itself into a line.
“Last week was the time