“Your momma’s got the house in good shape,” he said. “You’ve got a big new room with a ceiling fan and all your things are right there where you had them. I’ve lined up all your cousins. They’re waiting for you. And there’s a dandy girl right across the street. Little Irise Lane. Her father’s the assistant editor of the paper so you can go right back to being a newspaper writer if your heart’s so set on that. I told him you were coming and he and little Irise are waiting for you. She’s a KD at the University of Alabama. I wish to hell you were down there at Auburn or Tuscaloosa instead of this goddamn liberal place. I tried to talk to those people at the administration building but they’re a bunch of nuts. I swear, Sister, a college education is the worst thing a man can have. I’m about to live mine down at last.” He paused, pulled out his billfold, and laid it on the table. We were eating dinner at a campus restaurant that specialized in beef fillets on biscuits. I was proud to be there with a man as handsome as my father, in his gorgeous handmade clothes from Harold’s in Lexington. This town had belonged to him once. He had played left field for the Nashville Volunteers in the old Southern League and the sportswriters in town knew and remembered him. He had been famous and I was only a slightly overweight, wet-behind-the-ears little girl who had not been invited to join Kappa Alpha Theta. “You shouldn’t have sent me here,” I said. “You talked me into this. You should have sent me somewhere where Chi O was the best. I didn’t even have any Kappa recs. If it hadn’t been for that girl who knew Uncle Jimmy in Mobile, I wouldn’t have even been invited to the second party. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life, Daddy, and it was your fault. You got me to come here and then Dudley got in all that trouble last year and was disgraced and you didn’t even tell me that. You should have told me that. I was here for three months before the Kappa Sigs told me why he left. It’s too embarrassing. I hate it here. You can’t be at Vanderbilt if you aren’t a Kappa. I hate it all and now you’re going to make me move down there.” I pushed my plate away from me. I began to eat my chocolate ice-cream pie. I ate it as fast as I could. He sighed. He pushed his chair back from the table. He laid his fork and knife down on his plate and began to fold his napkin across his knee.