Something Happened

would regret it if it happened to anyone she knew, but she just doesn't think it would be the biggest tragedy in her life if I did get a stroke or a brain tumor, provided I died quickly and didn't need someone to take care of me for a long time, like some of those people who have brain tumors or strokes and go on living like vegetables, and is not saying all this just to start an argument with me or make me feel bad, but is only saying so because that just happens to be the way she feels, and she knows I want to know the way she really feels — don't I? — because I am her father and she is my daughter. And then, if I have let her progress that far (sometimes I cut her off gruffly as soon as she begins and kick her out right then), she might volunteer the information (again), with that same affected air of casual, unmotivated reflection (still struggling to keep her small voice from wavering and her trembling fingers from picking at things) that if my wife and I ever do get divorced, as she knows we have considered doing, and feels we should consider doing, since we are not so happy together anyway and are not very much alike, she doesn't think she would want to have to live with either one of us but would prefer to be sent away to boarding school, like Christine Murray, who is very happy now that she doesn't have to live with either one of her parents anymore, or even maybe to school in Switzerland, where she knows she will be content. In fact, she has arrived at the conclusion by now that she would be much better off living away from us, anyway, even if we don't get a divorce, and that we would probably be much happier without her too, since she can tell we don't really want her there. Wouldn't we?

Sometimes (with spiteful goals of my own) I will hear her through with the silence of a stone, letting her go on this way for as long as she is able, saying absolutely nothing and gazing at her all the while with a heavy expression that yields no flicker of emotion, forcing her to go on and on with increasing dismay and befuddlement (although I look at her, she must wonder if I am listening to her, if I hear her) as the smug, malevolent composure with which she entered crumbles away into terrified misgivings and she is left, at last, standing mute and foolishly before me, shivering and exhausted, bereft of all her former confidence and determination. (I can outfox her every time.) And then (when she has run out of all things to say and I know I have outfoxed her) if I maintain my silence and continue to stare at her oppressively with my dull, heavy, unresponsive look, she might stammer lamely, in a final, desperate attempt at bravado that fails:

'I'm only trying to be frank with you.' And then, with victory palpably before me, I might decide to speak; I might decide to move in skillfully for my own attack, simulating an air of smug composure that seeks mockingly to impersonate her own.

'No,' I will say enigmatically. (And this will confuse her.)

'No what?' she must ask.

'No, you're not.'

'Not what?' she is forced to inquire, timid and suspicious now. 'What do you mean?'

'You're not trying to be frank. You're trying to be anything but frank, so please don't use that as an excuse for your bad nature.'

'What do you mean?'

'Aren't you?'

'I don't know. What do you mean?'

'Don't you know what I mean?' I inquire with cool, invigorating vengeance.

She shakes her head.

'What I mean is that you aren't trying to be frank and that you are trying to say the most shocking and outrageous things you can think of in order to hurt my feelings and make me angry at you.'

'Why would I do that?'

'Angry enough to yell and begin punishing you.'

'Why would I do that?'

'Because that's the way you are.'

'Why would I want you to punish me?'

'Because that is the way you are. Don't you see? And that's the way you want me to feel. Don't you see that? Don't you think I can see it?'

'What do you mean?'

'That's what I mean.'

'It's a matter of supreme indifference to me,' she rejoins loftily, 'how you feel.'

'Then why bother,' I mimic just as loftily, 'to tell me at all?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean that if how I feel is really a matter of such supreme indifference to you, why bother to ever talk to me at all?'

'What should I do?'

'Unless you want something.'

'And you wonder why I bite my nails and can't sleep well and why I eat too much.'

'Don't blame your eating too much on me.'

'What about the rest?'

'I eat too much also.'

'You don't think very much of me,' she alleges. 'Do you?'

'Not right now. How much do you think of yourself?'

'I was only trying to be honest.'

'Bull.'

'You want me to be honest, don't you?'

'No.'

'You don't?'

'Of course not. Why should I?'

An unexpected answer like that always outfoxes her, strikes her speechless for a few moments, makes her stammer and regret even further that she came barging into my study so rashly in the first place to start up with me. If she tries to continue the contest, her voice will drop to a diffident murmur that is almost too faint to be heard (I will pretend not to hear any of it and make her repeat each remark); or she will explode suddenly in a snarling, unintelligible, dramatic outburst and storm away in total defeat, banging some furniture or slamming a door. (I can outfox her easily every time.) But she never seems to learn (or she has learned and is drawn self-destructively to repeat these same cheerless defeats), so we go through innumerable repetitions of these same annoying, time-wasting, belittling (she makes fun of me because I'm getting fat. And getting bald. And I strike back by being faster, keener, and better informed in my repartee) «frank» and «honest» disputes with each other (I manage to win them all, although I sometimes feel wounded afterward) over money, smoking, sex, marijuana, late hours, dirty words, schoolwork, drugs, Blacks, freedom (hers), yelling, bullying, and insults to my wife.

'What will you do,' she will ask baitingly, 'if I come home with a Black boyfriend?'

This is a peculiarly ingenious stroke of hers that requires lightning dexterity to counter and with which she does succeed in confounding and vanquishing my wife. There is no way out, and I am tempted to award her accolades: if I tell her I'd object, I'm a racist; if I tell her I wouldn't, I have no regard for her. My wife succumbs by taking her seriously. I survive by skirting the trap.

'I would still ask you to clean up your room,' I reply nimbly. 'And to stop reading my mail and showing my bank statements to your friends.'

Of course I'm a racist! And so is she. Who the devil isn't?

'That's not answering the question,' she is intelligent enough to sulk. 'And you know it.'

'Bring one home and see,' I challenge her with a snicker, because I know she is not ready to try that one on us yet.

She wants me to promise her now that she'll have her own car. She is willing to promise she'll give up smoking cigarettes in return. I used to order her not to smoke because of the risk of cancer, until I grew so weary of bickering with her over that subject that I stopped caring whether she smoked or not, despite the risk of cancer. (I did my best for a while as a responsible parent. And it did no good.) So now she smokes regularly (she says), over a pack a day (she says), but I don't believe her, for she could be lying about that too. (She lies about everything. She lies to her teachers too.) But she is not allowed to smoke in the house, which makes it easier for