Chapter 7: A Most Perceptive Young Lady
Reviewing her options together, she elected to drop that 101 class and enroll late into another, and at the 201 level, eliciting from me first a promise that I would help her keep up with the readings and background. To my several arduous duties I added one more, without giving it a second thought. Such times with her were a delight beyond imagining.
"Dad?"
Addressing me so was her signal now that she needed to talk to me not as a man, nor a friend, but as her father. She had come to like the less formal title of "dad" from hearing me talk of my own children, I guess, and probably from her chats with Jenny. Anyway, she thought it informal and it eased the stress of sometimes conflicting relationships and interests.
"Yes, darling daughter?" My response, too, was a little contrived, a tone deeper with a little officious overlay to keep it playful, even if the topic were to be deadly serious.
"You never told me, Dad, about… about what a man is like when his spirit dominates his body." She was looking down at her pizza and Caesar salad on her plate after sitting down in our rooms together to our take out, fast food dinner. It was Tuesday evening after the big clash on Friday. She was out of one Lit class and into the other and finding it fascinating. Together with her drama class, she was head over heels engaged in her studies and readings and the dramatic essays to be written. We had already started a couple and she was asking all kinds of questions about phrasing and syntax and word usage and style. She was a sponge for learning and it was just fun being together. For her to come back, now, with no urging from me, to our discussion about sex and intimacy the previous Thursday told me a lot about how well I was getting across to her.
"I have met a predatory beast already," she observed dryly, looking up at me and about to take a bite of pizza. "When do I get to meet a knight in shining armor?"
Her glib playfulness could be heard in her lilt, though when I looked up she pretended to be concentrating on the pizza. I had to smile at her. She was very quick, and learning to express herself in English with a cute and refreshingly feminine manner that was very alluring – at least it sent my heart into a series of impromptu aerobatic stunts that boggled my mind.
"Well," I had to buy myself a little time here to come up with something appropriate in response, "I will review the schedule to see when the knight is to appear, and let you know."
"How will I be able to recognize him? Can I assume he will not have muddy paws and be panting after me like that lunatic in that one short story?" She was recalling a story we had enjoyed together. Our discussions, sometimes at considerable depth and detail, of the short stories we read together were such that in our casual conversation we could make reference to many incidents with just a word or two and know that the other would pick up immediately.
We pushed on and I explained some more of what I felt was perhaps useful for her, trying to keep it short.
She was quiet then for the longest time. She cleared the table and did up the few dishes quickly, and I wondered whether I had answered her question to her satisfaction. How would I ever know? Each person is so very unique in their thinking and values.
She was still drying her hands on the dish towel, her back to me at the table, "No wonder your daughter is so smart." She paused; she had spent a lot of time with Jennifer by now, and they had become good friends. "With a Dad like you to stimulate her brain, no wonder that she has found learning and ideas about all kinds of things…" she turned now to me, confident and bubbly, "fun. You make it that way for me."
Her smile was like the morning's sunrise itself, and she leaned over and kissed my forehead as were she but ten years old. "Thanks, Dad," and she moved away into the other room, leaving my head and heart in a swirl.
"Can we read that next Langston Hughes short story together now? We've still got forty minutes before study time. OK?"
"Sure. Either that or we start Poe's ‘Gold Bug.'" ‘The Gold Bug' is certainly one of Edgar Allen Poe's masterworks, I thought, and one of my favorites, and I had seen it listed in the contents of her lit book.
"Oh, yes, let's do that one first! I'll get my book."
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The entire matter of sex and intimacy and love and standards was not, however, put away on the shelf. Not by a long shot.
He appeared the very next week. From among the young men in her Lit 201 class one soon stood out and caught her eye and she caught his. Lit was scheduled right before her Drama class, so time after was limited and this fellow said he worked afternoons and evenings. By Thursday they chatted briefly before departing and I watched from a distance. No Viking, this young man was a runner, wiry and slender, broad shoulders and well built in a runner kind of way. Not massive, but tight and bundled for speed.
Friday evening she wanted to talk some more about knights and the various kinds of shining armor that knights wore, as she phrased it. She told me that Nick was a local boy, on the track team, but worked two part time jobs to save for his transfer in the fall semester to the University of Washington in Seattle. He had enough credits to begin his junior year in his undergrad work. He was a History and Political Science dual major, and a little older than the others with a four year hitch in the Navy behind him. She was impressed with how courteous he was with her, and he could make her laugh at, she said, his silly jokes.
It was obvious just watching her that she was very pleased at his attention. Her eyes were alight and she was animated and excited, and had to tell me every little detail. Well, many, anyway. There were doubtless some of which she made no mention.
Then it came out. He had asked her to dinner Sunday evening. She had asked him about his plans, she told me, just like we had discussed before, and he had said he would make reservations at the hotel's dining room where we had ourselves dined just the previous week. He had told her that it was the best place in town for a good steak dinner and a nice place to just chat and get acquainted. Afterwards he would bring her home again, he had said, because he had to go to work on the night shift at 10 PM. She had said "yes," she told me with excitement, and I could feel her waiting for me to respond, as if she needed my approval.
"That's marvelous, Christine. He sounds like a pleasant fellow, and he's right about two things, I can tell you that right now. The hotel's dining room is a good place to eat." I suddenly decided the second thing would be better left unsaid, and left it at that.
She was not fooled for a minute.
"What's the second thing?"
It was a calm enough question, but I made no response. I should have known better.
"Dace? What second thing?" Now her tone told me she knew she was on to something and would dig it out of me for sure. It was not that she was aggressive, just persistent when she felt she had to connect the dots and make sense of things.
"He obviously has a sailor's eye for a pretty girl." I tried to keep that from sounding other than complimentary. Christine looked at me intently, and even as she blushed prettily at the acknowledgement of her beauty, the look in her eyes told me the wheels were turning in her head.
I guess I just wanted to close the subject and go elsewhere. There was a silence suddenly in the room, one of those silent periods that seems like lifetimes but is in fact probably thirty seconds on the outside.
She broke the silence when she stepped up to me sitting at the table and took my chin in her one hand, turning my face up to hers. She looked directly into my eyes, a somewhat forward and daring act for her, but she was blossoming and gaining confidence as the days passed and I was pleased to see it.
"
You're jealous!
