But by now, her hostility has become my addiction, a magnetic field that pulls me in. No amount of meditation can protect me from its lure. She holds out the poisoned apple of rage and I take it, I eat because it\u2019s her sole offering and I am so hungry. I climb onto my elliptical machine and trace circles in the air, panting, weeping in a futile effort to exorcise her demons.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t we have any Tylenol?\u201d she stomps into the bathroom, keys jangling, pushing her arm into the sleeves of a puffy silver metallic jacket. I can almost see my warped reflection in its bright veneer.<\/p>\n
We?<\/em> I wonder silently. Last night was the first time she\u2019d slept at our house in nearly a year. I am knitting. I mute the T.V.<\/p>\n \u201cCheck the top drawer,\u201d I say. \u201cI think there\u2019s Motrin.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t take Motrin,\u201d she growls, disgusted. Am I supposed to know this?<\/em> I wonder, searching my memory.<\/p>\n Scott walks in and hands her a plastic bottle and a glass of water.<\/p>\n \u201cThank<\/em> you dad,\u201d she flounces onto a chair, shaking two pills out of the bottle. \u201cI hate taking pills.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you sick?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n Our quiet morning has become inexplicably chaotic, and I can see from the confusion on his face that he doesn\u2019t understand what\u2019s happening any better than I do. The light was glowing under her bedroom door at 3 a.m., when I went to the bathroom. She snapped it off at 8, when she emerged in a fluster to announce that she had a doctor\u2019s appointment in an hour. A therapy appointment?<\/em> Scott had asked her gently. She shook her head no as she poured the coffee, and offered no other explanation.<\/p>\n She swallows the pills, makes a face of pained disgust, and exhales loudly.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m just nervous about this procedure. She said it\u2019s gonna hurt and I have a low threshold for pain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSweetie,\u201d Scott says, sitting beside me and leaning forward towards her. \u201cWhat is it?\u00a0 What\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n Her first semester at college has been a series of dramatic reversals, and we\u2019ve learned to play shortstop, trying to anticipate the freak bounces. She facetimed us on a Friday night, giddy with happiness, effusive about her new friends, her classes, her job. She was so psyched to have parents who were professors, she said, and she was fighting with her mom, and she was so glad that we could really understand what she was going through. But then the texts: she broke up with Andrew; her roommate turned out to be a bitch; the food is terrible so all she can eat is apples. A long, dark phone call: earlier that afternoon, she\u2019d stood on the curb of a busy street waiting for a bus she could step in front of, and a stranger saw what was happening and stopped her. Campus police escorted her back to her room.<\/p>\n Could she come spend Thanksgiving with us? Of course, we answered in unison. It was the first time she had ever asked to spend a holiday with us. This was what we had always longed for \u2013 she was choosing us for once. On the drive home, she talked nonstop \u2013 about Bernie Sanders, about Send Silence Packing, about how Andrew had said something terrible and she couldn\u2019t ever forgive him. What do you think he said?<\/em> We asked each other later, perplexed. He\u2019d been a solid boyfriend for more than a year, always polite to us, always kind and respectful to her, a churchgoing kid, one of triplets. What did he say?<\/em> Scott had asked her kindly. She wouldn\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, if you must<\/em> know,\u201d she announces now, looking him straight in the eye, \u201cI\u2019m getting an IUD.\u201d<\/p>\n I pause, smooth my forehead into practiced neutrality, and continue knitting. Her tone is a pitch. Do I swing or let it go?<\/p>\n \u201cAn IUD?\u201d Scott asks. He is stalling for time.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, dad,\u201d she laughs. \u201cAn IUD. You know, like birth<\/em> control?\u201d<\/p>\n Oh, that sneering tone of voice. I count my stitches.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you need this right now?\u201d Scott asks. \u201cThe day before Thanksgiving?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell this was her first available appointment,\u201d she replies. That tone again.<\/p>\n I think about how fragile she is, how needy, and how beautiful. I remember when she was four, three years before we had Owen, when she and I traveled together to meet Scott in Wyoming, where he\u2019d been in residence at a month-long conference. I watched in the airport how men looked at her, her soft blonde curls and her pale blue cotton dress printed with wildflowers. Back then, she loved me. Back then, she held my hand and I looked them all straight in the eye. Not this one, you bastards.<\/p>\n This morning, there is no hand to hold. There is only her anger, and now it turns to glare at me.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I thought you and Andrew broke up,\u201d I say, genuinely confused.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did,\u201d she jangles her keys. \u201cWhat does that have anything to do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo why do you need birth control?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d she laughed, \u201cI am<\/em> sexually active, you know.\u201d\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t say, you idiots,<\/em> but it\u2019s in there.<\/p>\n \u201cOK, but why do you need birth control right now if you\u2019re not in a relationship?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d Her question is a challenge, a gunshot. She combs her fingers through her hair, and pauses with the strands in her fingertips, scrutinizing her split ends. I remember girls like her from when I was in school, girls who acted as if their beauty was something they deserved.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just worried about you,\u201d I say. \u201cThis has been a tough semester, and you\u2019ve been really vulnerable. I worry that you\u2019ll be putting yourself at risk for getting hurt in a sexual encounter that\u2019s not part of, you know, a relationship. What\u2019s the rush?\u201d<\/p>\n The keys stop jangling. Her jacket rustles as she stands up abruptly, jamming her bag\u2019s strap across her shoulder.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t believe you,\u201d she glowers at me. \u201cSo, what, are you, like, saying I\u2019m a slut?\u00a0 I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re calling me a slut.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSweetie….\u201d Scott pleads, but she is already at the door, and then she pauses, opening the door, looking back at me, shaking her head. And then she is gone.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n It is in the summer of 2010 and she is 14, and Owen is seven, that she\u2019s becoming disenchanted with all three of us. For several years now, she\u2019s been choosing her own clothes. When we take a summer trip together, she brings clothes that she keeps at her mom\u2019s house, the sort of outfits we would neither buy for her nor encourage her to buy for herself. Scott advertises this as a family vacation, but it\u2019s not: she, Owen and I are keeping him company on a trip to St. Louis, where he\u2019s directing in a fairly intensive academic conference. He\u2019s staying at the Four Seasons, however, and it\u2019s swank, so he\u2019s invited us to join him and enjoy the room\u2019s luxuries in his absence. In theory, it\u2019s great; in reality, the room becomes claustrophobic. She is bored, angry, unhappy.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s go for a walk,\u201d I say. \u201cWe can explore the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n She changes into super short white cutoffs, so tight the front seam presses into the folds of her vulva. A cutoff t-shirt, baring her midriff and stretched across her precocious breasts.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure that\u2019s a good outfit to wear here,\u201d I say as neutrally as possible. \u201cThis is a city, things here are different.\u201d I am remembering my own experiences with catcalls when I lived in Chicago, the unexpected ass grabs from strangers on the subway, and the realization that if I played my Walkman too loud as I walked along certain streets, I might be in danger.<\/p>\n She purses her lips, flings the strap of her bag across her shoulder, and huffs, wordless, to the door. Outside, she stays two steps ahead of us, so I see everything: I see the teenaged boys, who jostle and guffaw as they pass her, and I see her shoulders clip up a tick as she tightens her posture. I see the twitching around her hips as she tries to adjust her shorts as she walks, see her flip her long hair behind her in the studied gesture we know so well. And I see her hesitate, and then stiffen as the grimy pickup passes by her, raucous workmen reaching out from every window, grabbing at her, sneering, howling. Mamacita, Mamacita, Marry me, baby! <\/em>Owen reaches for my hand, grips it tightly. We watch as the truck swerves through an intersection and circles around so it can pass by us again.<\/p>\n Heart pounding, I speed up my pace and claim the outer edge of the sidewalk, positioning myself and then Owen between her and the road.<\/p>\n She looks at me with disdain and walks ahead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kathleen Pfeiffer was named 2012 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts.\u00a0 She has dedicated herself to writing and teaching narrative nonfiction and memoir. Her creative work has appeared in the The Sun Magazine<\/em> (Readers Write), Bateau,<\/em> and The Bear River Review. <\/em>In 2018, she won the Michigan Writers Chapbook contest for her memoir Ink.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" But by now, her hostility has become my addiction, a magnetic field that pulls me in. No amount of meditation can protect me from its lure. She holds out the poisoned apple of rage and I take it, I eat because it\u2019s her sole offering and I am so hungry. 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