The lights dimmed. The gold curtain parted. A group of children in colorful dresses and shorts entered from a stone house, nestled among the trees, and began to sing. A man sang back. The voices pulsed through the room, raw as muscle tendons. It was nothing like it had been on the speaker. The hairs rose up along my forearms, my shins, my thighs, my scalp. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes closed or lean so close I could melt into those trembling notes. Both, at once.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to my father.

He raised one finger and arched his eyebrows, his way of saying, Aha! Then he reached across me to that rectangular screen on the back of the seat I faced, his forearm grazing my skin. I stared at his pointer finger as he pressed the button, the black hairs curling toward his knuckle.

“What is it?” I said, to make him stay near.

“Watch,” he whispered, sending warmth through my right ear and through my skull and down my neck and arms.

The screen lit up with red capital letters, translating the voices.

“It’s new,” my dad whispered, gesturing to the box.

“Cool!” I said—but he put his finger to his lips, then angled his body away again. I stared at the two of them, just barely making out my mother’s face in the darkness, the lovely angle of her cheekbone highlighted in the light from the stage, her eyes in shadow. My dad, sensing my gaze on them, looked over at me, his eyes glowing like a cat’s, and jutted his chin toward the stage.

Into the emptiness entered Werther—his thick dark hair, the two spheres of his ass flashing from beneath his coat. Ass, ass, ass, I whispered to myself—my throat went tight, and I swallowed so loudly I was certain the whole room could hear. I turned toward my father and laid my head on his shoulder. I tried to telegraph that I wanted him to reach around me and squeeze my shoulder or smooth my hair or lay his head upon mine.

“To telegraph?” Freud said.

“To ask him without having to speak,” I said, thinking he didn’t know the word in English. But that wasn’t what he meant.

“Why didn’t you ask him?” he said. “Why do you think you needed him to read your mind?”

“Because I knew already,” I said, and my throat caught.

“You knew what?”

“I knew he didn’t want to touch me.”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve always known.”

I’d learned this as a child. The first time I could remember was crawling into his lap, picture book splayed open next to us, my thumb in my mouth. He had pushed me off, onto the couch, so quickly it was as if by reflex. “Sit next to Daddy,” he’d said, patting my knee, tap-tap.

I had tried never to break the rule. But there, in the opera, insane and drunk off the music, off my searing aloneness, I couldn’t help myself and let my ear graze the shoulder of his suit jacket. I willed myself to stop, Sit next to Daddy, told myself to lift my head, lift it!—but Touch me, I said in my mind, unable to make myself budge an inch, hoping if I thought it loudly enough, he would hear. I needed him to hear me. I needed him to touch me; I needed him to read my mind. It wasn’t impossible; there were those rare moments he placed his hand on my neck. It could happen, if just for a moment. But he sat still, like a plank of wood. My neck began to cramp; I realized I hadn’t relaxed onto his shoulder, I was just resting my head lightly, not wanting to burden him with the weight of it. Finally, I lifted it back up and sank into my seat.