I recalled how I had felt when we were reading Hamlet and the Player Queen said, “A second time I kill my husband dead when second husband kisses me in bed.”
Did all men and women who had lost their spouses feel this great guilt if they remarried or even just seriously dated someone else? My father couldn’t get himself to go out on a real date even after all these years, not even with Mrs. Osterhouse, at least as far as I knew. From the way Corrine had talked about Christopher Sr. when they had first met and secretly courted, it sounded like the greatest love of all time, a Romeo and Juliet story, because their love was so intense for each other that they’d risk and even willingly lose all family contacts. In Corrine’s case, she was also willing to give up a great fortune. Now that she had lost her love, she wanted that fortune back. Was that something understandable or just plain hypocrisy? Where was the young woman who had been so in love and willing to live a much simpler, poorer life, or was the truth really that she never did live a simpler life, that she always lived beyond their means?
I turned over and forced myself to stop thinking about the Dollangangers by concentrating on Kane instead and drea
ming of when I might just “cross the Rio Grande,” which was the phrase Serena Mota used for losing your virginity.
I fell asleep quickly and woke to a surprise. My father had brought me breakfast in bed.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Every once in a while, you have to treat the women in your life like queens,” he replied.
I sat up quickly. I couldn’t recall another time when he had referred to me as a woman in his life. What had changed? My seriously dating someone? Was this that moment all fathers experience, that awareness that their little girls were starting to shift to edge their fathers further away, gently but firmly? Should I be sad or happy about it?
I couldn’t help being happy about it, but I also couldn’t help seeing things from his point of view. As long as he had me as his little girl, the gaping hole in his life didn’t expand. There would soon be a time when he was really alone. At minimum, that would come when I went off to college, and then, if and when I did meet someone with whom I wanted to spend my life, he would drift even further back.
Into what?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Corrine, I thought. From what I understood between the lines of what Christopher had written about her, she was really not a very strong person. She craved pampering, comfort, and luxury. Yes, her husband had spoiled her, but maybe he felt guilty about sweeping her off her feet and stealing her away from her legacy. Maybe he felt a great responsibility to succeed in a big way and compensate for all she had lost, and in doing that, he had lost his own sense of balance, put them into vast debt, and left them vulnerable and helpless. Christopher Jr. seemed willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, to continue to think of her as someone who mainly wanted only to please and protect her children.
Cathy was more reluctant to do that, but thinking back to how she had reacted to Corrine’s pregnancy, I was of the opinion that she was the most spoiled of all. I could be unfair. She was still a young girl but beginning that amazing metamorphosis into full femininity. A young girl couldn’t open herself fully to an older brother, surely. I couldn’t imagine myself doing that. I couldn’t even discuss my womanly things with my father. She had no mother there most of the time, and when her mother was there, her attention was so divided, the twins needed so much, and Cathy had no place to go for her answers.
I didn’t know for whom I should feel sorrier. I would never reveal it to my father. He would physically tear the diary out of my hands, but I was twisted up inside, my feelings crisscrossing, knotting up, and stealing away my attention from my own world, my own happiness.
“It looks terrific,” I said, gazing down at the tray. He had made me his pancakes, served them with the delicious maple syrup we bought from the Wilsons, who tapped the trees on their two hundred acres and prepared the syrup to sell from their own garage on Sundays, and the blueberry and blackberry jam Mrs. Wheeler made.
“But you’ll be eating breakfast alone,” I told him.
He laughed and nodded at the clock. “I’ve been up nearly two hours, Kristin. It’s Saturday, but I’m putting in a full day at the . . . job,” he said. He was starting to avoid calling it the Foxworth estate. He wanted it buried and gone.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize the time and . . .”
“Hey, you’re entitled to sleep in once in a while.”
“What about you?”
“Your mother tried to get me to do that, but I was always up ahead of her. I’ll be up early the day I die.” He started out.
“Oh. Kane was thinking of taking me to dinner tonight,” I said.
He paused, looked at me hard for a moment, and then smiled. “Okay.” I could see his mind spinning. He was debating whether to voice his next thought. He decided he would. “Don’t go too fast. I know your mother would say that.”
“And then she’d tell me she got a speeding ticket riding your smile,” I replied.
His lips quivered, but his eyes brightened. “Wear your safety belt at all times,” he concluded, and left.
That was the closest he would ever come to warning me not to “cross the Rio Grande” too soon. I couldn’t imagine a harder thing for a father to tell his daughter. His face was probably still red with embarrassment when he got into his truck.
I laughed to myself and dug into my delicious breakfast.
Usually, I scheduled myself to do my homework calmly on weekends, taking long breaks and not finishing up until Sunday evening, but the diary was in charge of my life at the moment. I didn’t want to rush anything, especially the math and my English essay, but I couldn’t help thinking that if I had my other responsibilities out of the way, I could read more of the diary and get to the answers faster perhaps. Not that I wanted to rush through it. It was both infuriating and fascinating. Finishing it would be more like regretting the last lick of a delicious ice cream cone.
I did the best I could on my math. Around ten thirty, my girlfriends began to call. I was impatient with them all, especially Suzette, who insisted on knowing not only how long I had remained at Kane’s house after they had all left but how far I had gone.
“Did he take you up to his bedroom? Don’t say he didn’t,” she followed. “Theresa Flowman said he did the first time she was at his house and his parents weren’t home.”
“Good for her.” In my heart of hearts, I knew Theresa was a liar. She, more than any of the girls, fantasized aloud and tried hard to make what she said sound like fact.