she said. She stood up. “Oh, you guys, we’ll talk about this later. Let me get unpacked.”
Fergus said, “No, tell us now, Lisa. Spit it out, kid. Not everyone stars in a documentary.”
Lisa looked at him. “Well. Okay. Now, listen, you guys. I’m a dominatrix,” she said.
* * *
Fergus couldn’t sleep. He stared at the dark above his head. Then he closed his eyes and immediately felt afraid and so he kept his eyes open, but he couldn’t sleep that way. After almost two hours he got out of bed and went down the hall and listened, and he heard Lisa moving about her room, so he knocked lightly on the door.
“Dad?” She stepped back and let him in. She was dressed in her pajamas; they were pink silky-looking things, the bottoms long.
“You know, Lisa,” he said. He put his hand to the back of his head. “You know, if it’s money you need, honest to God, just say the word. I never should have assumed you could have made it on your own down there—”
“Dad, it’s not the money. Well, it kind of is, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Lisa put her hand to her hair, which was out of its ponytail now, and she smoothed it over her shoulder; it looked glossy to Fergus, like a television ad.
He sat down on her bed; his legs felt weak. “What is the point?” he said.
“Oh, Dad.” She looked at him with such great sadness on her face that he had to look away.
Earlier—that afternoon, after a great deal of confusion, especially from Ethel, who did not understand what a dominatrix was and who kept saying, “I just don’t understand what you mean, Lisa”—Lisa, after explaining to her mother what she did as a dominatrix, that she dressed up and had men play out their sexual fantasies, had said to her parents, “People need to be educated.”
“Why?” Ethel and Fergus had said this at the same time.
“So they can understand,” Lisa said. “Just like how Mom doesn’t even know what we do.”
Fergus had unwittingly walked across the tape to his wife’s side of the living room. “People don’t need to understand that kind of behavior. Good God, Lisa.” He tugged on his beard, walking about. Then he said, “You’re only excited because some damn person, some goddamn nimrod, decided to make a movie about this.”
“A documentary,” Lisa said. She said, almost with exasperation, “It isn’t about sex, Dad. I’m not a prostitute, Dad.” She added, looking up at him, “I don’t have sex with any of these men, you know.”
“I don’t understand,” Ethel said, moving her hand through her hair; she stood up and looked around and then sat right back down. “I really don’t understand any of this.”
Fergus felt puzzled but—only slightly—relieved to hear that she didn’t have sex with anyone, but he said, “What do you mean it’s not about sex? Of course it’s about sex, Lisa. Come on.”
“It’s about playacting. Dressing up.” Lisa’s voice sounded like she was trying to be patient. “If you watched it, you might learn something. Laurie watched it.”
“You have it?” Fergus asked.
“Yeah, I have a DVD. I’m not suggesting you watch it, I’m just saying if you did—”
Now, late at night, Lisa only said, still with the sadness in her face, “Go to sleep, Dad. I never should have told you. It was a mistake. But you know, you might have found out, because it will go public, and I thought you should know.”
“You don’t have sex with these men?” Fergus asked.
“I don’t, Dad. No.”
Fergus backed out of the room. “Good night,” he said.
“Sweet dreams,” Lisa called to him.
And Fergus could not believe she said that.
* * *
In the morning, Fergus overslept—he had not fallen asleep for ages—and when he woke he could hear Lisa and her mother in the kitchen. He knelt and got out his Civil War uniform from the trunk beneath his bed; the hat seemed squashed, and he punched it a few times. The whole uniform looked wrinkled; he had not taken it to the cleaners to have it pressed as he had in the past. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he murmured to himself. He put it on, got out the small brush for his mustache, which he tried curling at the ends, then went into the bathroom and sprayed hairspray on it, which got into his eyes and stung like hell.
In the kitchen, while sunlight was streaming through the window, he said to