Emily and I were eating breakfast when Lori came bouncing into the kitchen, humming a pop tune I didn't recognize. She was wearing a pink velour track suit and carrying a gym bag with her work clothes.
"Have you got time to get something to eat?" I asked.
"No," she said, "I'm late for my workout already. I'll grab something when I get to the newspaper. See you tonight," she added with a cheery wave.
As she turned to leave, the glitter on the JUICY logo on her track pants caught my eye. I grinned at Emily and shook my head. My daughter just rolled her eyes.
When we got in the car to begin the drive to the university, Emily reached over and turned off the radio news. "Dad," she said, "you've got to do something about Mom. It's embarrassing to have her dressing like a teenager all the time."
"Damn," I thought to myself. "What do I say to that?"
The truth was that often Lori's clothing would have been more appropriate on a college coed than a forty year-old woman, but how do you tell your wife something like that? Lori had always looked younger than her actual age, and she worked hard to maintain her appearance. To be honest, that was part of her appeal to me, and I was proud that she was so youthful looking, even if I too was occasionally embarrassed by some of her clothing choices.
Besides, the real issue wasn't her clothing, it was the relationship between Lori and Emily. When Emily was an infant, Lori was always hovered over her, spending time with her every chance she got. But as Emily grew older, their relationship began to change. By the time Emily reached high school, Lori often acted more like she was Emily's sister rather than her mother.
I knew that adolescents need to start pulling away from their parents so they can establish their own identities and personalities. But Lori seemed oblivious to this and continued to insert herself into Emily's life. I remembered a time when Emily was a junior in high school and a bunch of her girlfriends had come over to our house. The gaggle of teenagers was laughing and chattering about clothes and boys, and Lori was right in the midst of it all. As I was grading papers in my office, Emily stalked in and demanded, "Dad, make Mom give me my friends back." Frankly, at times the two of them seemed more like high school rivals than mother and daughter.
I'd tried to get Lori to see that her daughter needed space, but Lori couldn't or wouldn't understand the problem. "We're more like sisters," was Lori's comeback, "and it's normal for sisters to squabble sometimes."
That attitude exasperated me. I felt that Lori was trying to deny the fact of her aging by competing with her daughter. But I didn't want to undermine Lori to my daughter, so for now I tried to avoid the larger issue by focusing on Lori's clothing choices.
"Baby, your Mom has worked very hard to keep herself in shape and it's natural for her to be proud of what she's accomplished. You have to admit, there aren't a lot of women who can fit into the clothes she wears," I said placatingly.
"I know, Daddy," Emily replied, "but it's embarrassing to have her wearing the same clothes as my classmates."
"I understand, Baby. I'll say something to her," I promised, but I knew that anything I might say was unlikely to have any effect.
Lori had always been headstrong; in fact, that's part of why we married. We'd met in college -- I'd been a teaching assistant finishing up my Ph.D. in History and Lori Carleton had been an undergraduate taking one of my classes. I was immediately attracted to her, but I knew better than to make any overtures to an undergraduate, especially one in my class. But she wasn't unaware of my frequent glances and the attention I gave to her because she became increasingly flirty with me. She'd come up to me after almost every lecture to ask a question, batting her eyes and frequently touching my hand or arm. She'd sit in the front row in the lecture hall with her skirt hiked up high enough to give me a good look at her gorgeous legs and sometimes a hint of lace. It was almost as though she was trying to break down my reserve.
Nevertheless, I held out until after the semester was over, and then I asked her out. The sexual tension between us had built up so much that by the time she had come back to my tiny apartment after dinner, we were almost panting. When I turned around after locking the front door, she grabbed me and began kissing me frantically. I responded in kind and that seemed to raise her desire even higher. She took both hands and yanked on the front of my shirt, sending buttons flying in all directions.
I tried to unbutton her blouse, but she fell to her knees and began tugging at my belt, then my zipper and finally my underwear. But getting those off over my shoes proved too much for her, and in frustration she yanked my pants back high enough that I could walk and then pulled me over to the couch. She shoved me down on my back, and while I was struggling to shed my shoes and pants she reached under her skirt and pulled off her panties. Without further ado, she swung one leg over me, impaled herself and began to ride me like a wild animal.
It didn't take long for both of us to finish, and when we did she collapsed on me, panting like a runner who had finished a marathon. I was equally exhausted. I'd never experienced passion like that and I was blown away.
Instead of burning out, over time our relationship deepened into something more lasting and encompassing. By the time she was ready to graduate, I knew that she was the woman I wanted to build my life around. So when she took me down to Savannah to meet her parents, my intention was to ask her father for permission to marry his daughter.
When we got to Lori's home in Savannah, we were greeted at the door by Cecily, Lori's little sister, who threw her arms around Lori with greeted me happily. Cecily was an "oops" baby, born some 16 years after Lori. Perhaps as a result, Lori had been a combination of second mother and role model for her baby sister.
But if Cecily's greeting was warm, her mother's reception of me was chilly and her father's was absolutely icy. All my efforts to win him over were bluntly rejected. Rufus Carleton was a wealthy attorney prominent in Savannah society whose plans for his daughter didn't include marriage to "some left-wing starving intellectual type." I tried to reassure him that a) I considered myself a political independent and b) I had already managed to secure my first teaching position at a university in Atlanta. Neither argument made the slightest difference; Rufus had already plotted a course for his daughter's life centered around marriage to a suitable candidate from the local landed gentry. I was simply not good enough in his eyes.
I was angry at her father's highhanded rejection, but Lori went absolutely ballistic. That's when I learned how headstrong she truly was. Even though we had intended to spend a long weekend with her family, after a private talk with her father she stormed out, grabbed her bags and demanded that we return to Atlanta immediately.
On the drive back, I found out a great deal more about her stormy relationship with her father. Lori might have been the older, but she behaved more like a second child, always rebelling against the limits her father sought to impose. They were like oil and water, except that not only did they not mix, they couldn't even coexist anywhere near each other.
"I'll be damned if I'll let my father run my life," she said vehemently.
When we finally got back to my apartment, she grabbed my shoulders and said almost angrily, "Do you still want to marry me?"
When I eagerly affirmed that I did, she said, "Good, let's go!" With that she dragged me back to the car and drove us to the Fulton County Court Clerk's office, where we obtained a license and got married on the spot, thanks to the absence of a waiting period in Georgia.
The upshot of Lori's act of defiance was that when he found out what she had done, her father cut off all contact with his daughter. There were no communications on birthdays or at Christmas; even the birth of a grandchild was unable to break the ice. Moreover, the freeze extended to the rest of the Carleton family as well. Early on, Lori did get a letter from her younger sister, but it consisted mainly of a plea for Lori to beg her father's forgiveness. That Lori would not do.
Over the years I tried several times to reestablish relationships because I thought family was too important to write off like some bad debt. But my overtures were ignored. There was no doubt in my mind where Lori had gotten her stubborn streak.
Lost in those memories, I was startled to realize we had reached the campus, so I headed toward the bookstore. I'd pulled a few strings and managed to get Emily a summer job there. As she opened the car door to get out, I grabbed her arm. "Hey, what time do you want me to pick you up this afternoon?"
She hesitated a moment, then turned back to smile at me. "You don't need to get me, Daddy. I've got a ride home."
I tried not to frown, but I could feel my gut clinch nevertheless. I was morally certain that her transportation would be provided by her boyfriend, Brandon Hilton.
It's natural for a father to feel protective of his daughter, but my doubts about Brandon went beyond the normal paternal reservations. He was a third-year law student, and it bothered me that someone so much older would take an interest in a freshman.
I knew that many upperclassmen target new coeds the way wolves prey on newborn lambs. Similarly, I had seen many inexperienced girls, just out of high school and eager to experience life on their own for the first time, get their hearts broken. But I felt a law student ought to be looking for a woman closer to his own age to start a life together, not pursuing a girl still in her teens. His interest made me extremely leery.
But Emily was clearly crazy about him, and Lori, who had talked to Brandon at some length one time when he came to pick Emily up, had no reservations. So I swallowed my protests and simply said, "Okay, baby, I'll see you at dinner tonight."
From there I headed over to the History department, still dithering about my daughter. I was under no illusions about her innocence; I was pretty sure that the little creep she'd dated during her last two years of high school had taken her virginity. But both Lori and I had held some frank discussions with her, and Lori had quietly arranged to get Emily on the pill, so at least she was protected in that regard. Still, I couldn't help wishing that Brandon Hilton would just disappear and let my daughter find someone closer to her own age.
Sighing, I arrived at my tiny office and began going through the administrivia that colleges require even for their summer sessions. But the drudgery of that task couldn't keep my enthusiasm from growing as I began to think about the course I'd be conducting.
I'd managed to persuade the Chair of the History Department to let me offer an upper level elective on the same subject on which I'd written my doctoral thesis: vigilantism. My hypothesis was that vigilantes had played a larger role in history than is generally recognized, and that they represent a difficult moral dilemma for society. For example, American lore is filled with stories about the loner in who is forced to seek justice on his own. We Americans are usually sympathetic to such figures and find them appealing. To illustrate this, I planned to show the class excerpts from "Death Wish," the Charles Bronson film about an architect who is forced to turn vigilante after his wife is murdered because the police can't find the criminals. In juxtaposition, I'd also assigned the class to read The Ox-bow Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark's classic western short novel about a posse that strings up some cattle rustlers only to learn their captives were innocent.
My first class went well. The students seemed to grasp the moral and societal dilemma, and I know they appreciated seeing the violent movie clips. History doesn't have to be boring.
So I was in a good mood when I got home that afternoon, and I stayed that way until the front door slammed and I heard Emily running up to her room in tears.
The door to her room was closed, but I could hear her crying within. I knocked. "Can I come in, Emily?"
