She seems to think he’s murdering her, but she’s mad, isn’t she, this woman I recognize and don’t? What can I do but look, while my father’s left us alone, gone off to the cafeteria for lunch, outside for a walk? He must be numb with it, he must be nearly mad himself with grief; he’s inert, passive, a cork floating on water so much larger than him, its direction nothing to do with his choosing. He fills me with such a combination of rage and sadness that I can hardly talk. I want to get away from him, I want to drive around alone in his car and look at the desert, at the town I’ve left, I want to touch a stranger till I am senseless with it, I want to get lost. What comes out of me are tears, then silence, then nothing. We are null and blank when we’re together, he and I, though he is also seething. We go to the Red Lobster for a seafood dinner. When the waiter says, “Are you finished, sir?” a little too soon, he says, “If you touch my plate I’ll stick this fork in your hand.”

She also thinks everybody wants to hurt her; every man wants to—I’ve never before heard her say it—fuck her, penetrate or violate the ruin of her. Every man but me. I discover I can not only look at her but talk to her, and she to me, and though she thrashes when she talks about my father and the conspiracies against her, there are little openings, moments when something crosses her mind that seems to calm her, if only for a second. Soon I find that if I can keep her attention fixed on these topics, her body will relax a bit, grow still.