He didn’t answer. Stood up, cleared his plate. I knew why he didn’t want to look at me. Who could blame him? He would remember my ankles rising up in the air, my eyes closed, lips parted, letting out the long sigh.

I had to do something drastic to get the image out of his mind. Only, I couldn’t think of anything to do. I stared at the roses, remembering how the slit in Justine’s skirt tore when she ran away.

Finally, my dad spoke.

Did you ever keep in touch with any of those girls—from the—Oregon, you know, the—Family?

Why would I keep in touch with those girls? I hadn’t seen them since I was eight. That’s when we took off from the Pleasure Family. Three in the morning, leaving the commune, never saying good-bye. Pleasure is one thing, my father said, chaos is another.

Then we drove away in the Leader’s van, switched the license plates in Portland, and drove in darkness toward Canada.

Even though Vietnam was long over, my father was still hiding from the FBI. So, after we made it over the border, my father made me promise to never, never, contact anybody in the Pleasure Family. Your mother is a traitor, he said, they’re all traitors. You can’t trust anybody, darling, even the people who were once your family.

Even if he hadn’t warned me, I would never have wanted to keep in touch with the daughters. They used to call my dad Daddy. He was the only man who paid them any attention. Their real fathers were lolling around with my loving mother on the Leader’s bed, or they were wandering naked down by the water looking for Pleasure in the Pacific.

Seamus never got into that sordid scene. He cooked pancakes for the girls. Daddy, they’d say, and they’d clutch on to his jeans, his flannel shirts. Sometimes I wondered what became of those girls, but most of the time, I really didn’t want to know.

Why would I keep in touch with those freaks? You told me not to.

I just thought, if I needed to go away, you might want to have some friends around.

I have friends, I said, and then I stood up and started on the dishes. Always, I did the dishes. I kept our house clean. Paid the bills, did the laundry. I loved the safety of bank balances, the sharp smell of bleach.

You remember how I told you I was born with a fever? And that it returned for the first time around when I saw Justine? That’s not quite true. There was one other time, but it’s just not relevant to the case. Still, if I tell you, you might think my father less crazy.