How They May Be

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If my reaction seems overblown or excessive, I can say only that it seemed nothing of the sort to me. The bond I shared with Emily was one that any father would love to have with his daughter, and this unwelcome attraction threatened it in the worst of ways, a corruption from my own soul. And cutting all the more deeply was the knowledge that I did not deserve that bond in the first place, that this sickness promised to destroy a gift given in mercy and wholly unearned. A large part of my need to be a perfect father for Emily was born of the fact that, for nearly half her life, I was hardly a father at all to her. Work had been my first priority, in fact if not in principle.

When I married my wife, Irene, I was working as a financial analyst at an institution which I will not name, lest they be tainted by the association. It was difficult work, demanding, but I had time enough for my new bride and for leisure. By the time Emily was born, I had worked my way up to the position of regional development director for the southwestern United States. Such progress meant longer hours at the office, and even when I could get away, there was always some background project competing for my attention - but it also meant more money, which at the time felt badly needed. Irene quit her job as a department store saleswoman then, to be a full-time mother, and we moved into the gated community outside Los Angeles where I still live. Materially, we were quite comfortable, but I had little role in raising baby Emily, who cried for her mother whenever I held her. Eventually, I stopped trying.

When Emily was four, I was offered a promotion to the position of lead economic and infrastructural development consultant, in the corporation's international arm. I knew it would mean extended business trips far from home, a life spent on jets and taxis. But it also meant a high six figure salary, with generous benefits - a bright future for me and my family, better opportunities for my young daughter. And with the way my star was rising, I felt certain that another promotion would soon bring me back stateside, to stay. So I talked Irene out of her doubts and accepted the job.

I was fairly successful at it, as I had been in the positions before. I even think I did some good in my work. But the separation, the isolation from my wife and child, were worse than ever, worse by far than I had expected. I was able to return home for only a few days every two or three weeks. Sometimes months passed while I coordinated with local leaders deep inside Peru or El Salvador. And when I did come home, my attentions were focused on Irene, desperately trying to keep our relationship alive despite the gulf so often between us.

I always brought home gifts for Emily from my travels - tiny, hand-carved wooden animals, puzzle boxes, rings and necklaces from local traders - anything I ran into that I thought she might have the slightest chance of liking. But I also avoided her, passively, secretly uncomfortable around this daughter I hardly knew. In those days I was at best a Santa Claus, not a father, and I knew it. But all plans to rectify the situation I left for the future, when I finished climbing the ladder, when I had the wealth and the leisure to do what I really wanted in life.

The future, though, was slow in coming. Away from the savage dance of corporate politics, I might as well have been invisible, forgotten. My efforts seemed to gather no attention, good or ill, and my career was stalled at the worst possible point. Damningly, I cannot even say I hated it at the time; there is certainly something of the workaholic in me, giving a kind of contentment from burying myself in my job. The hard part was the isolation. I often found myself the only English-speaker for miles around, save for the interpreters I employed. But I did not follow in the footsteps of many other men in similar situations and sample the local flavor of woman. I cannot call myself a devout Catholic, least of all now, but I am observant enough to have no appreciation for infidelity. My libido I kept on a short leash until I could bring it home to be indulged. There was a passion between Irene and myself that I think helped sustain us, even as it increasingly felt that our love had been eroded by time and distance. So I continued onward, waiting for the break that would someday bring me back, allow me to be a part of my family again.

It was a long wait, and when the end came, it brought no joy. For nearly seven years I flitted about the third world, while my daughter grew up without me. Then one otherwise unremarkable day, in the middle of a conference with Chilean officials about logging regulations, I got the phone call that shattered my dreams for the future. My wife had been involved in a serious accident on the way to pick up Emily from school. She'd been rushed to the hospital in critical condition, they said. Her chances for survival were poor.

Out of those entire seven years of my life, the only dot of pride I have is that I left the conference with barely a sentence of explanation and headed straight for the airport. I bribed an attendant there to bump me onto the next flight headed north, and worked frantically to arrange a chartered plane from my destination to bring me the rest of the way back home. Ten hours of flights and cabs passed, so shot through with panic and a sense of unreality that they seemed as an eyeblink. All I can recall of them now is praying desperately for Irene to be spared, swearing that I would be a better person, a better husband and father, that I would find a way to set everything right.

When I rushed into the hospital to be told by a grim-faced doctor that my wife had died on the operating table in her second surgery, three hours prior, I felt no surprise - just a distant, icy mix of acceptance and horror. There were forms to be filled out, papers to be signed, and while I handled them the hospital staff gave me the details of the accident. A drunk driver, apparently, celebrating the holiday season by racing through red lights at two in the afternoon. He'd been killed on impact in the crash, never seeing the repercussions of his actions. I took no satisfaction from his death. I would rather he'd have known what he did to me, to my child.

Emily had been picked up by a friendly couple Irene had trusted enough to make our emergency contact, the Laeners, who lived in the same neighborhood. I had only met them twice. I pulled up to their house just after 3:30 in the morning, but the husband, John, still managed to open the door for me before I had the chance to ring the bell. He and his wife Linda were red-eyed and somber, offering up condolences and platitudes, explaining that they'd been in constant contact with the hospital until the terminal news came. Our conversation also gave me the distinct and depressing impression that they had known Irene better than I had, talking as much to one another as to me about camping trips and concerts together, happier times that I had never even known about. Eventually, Linda offered to wake up Emily so I could take her home; I followed to the guest room while John explained, somewhat shamefacedly, that they had already informed her of her mother's passing. They were very fond of little Emily, he said, and hadn't felt right deceiving her about a matter so important. I could only accept the news with resignation.

Emily was just past eleven then, and small for her age; curled up under the covers of a king-sized bed, she looked tiny, helpless, like a wounded fawn. Even in the dim light that streamed from the hall I could see the redness about her eyes, the remnants of desperate tears wept just hours before. I began to have doubts that she should even be woken, that we should strip away from her the comforting veil of unconsciousness, but before I could voice them Linda reached out and gently shook her into wakefulness.

I can still recall the next moments with a perfect, terrible clarity. Emily sat up under the blue-and-white striped covers, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her palms. Linda, her voice hushed in the darkened room, asked soothingly "Are you awake, honey? Your daddy's here to bring you home."

Emily looked up across the room at me and my half-hearted attempts to give her a comforting smile. Then she turned back to face Linda, and in a voice tremulous with sorrow and fatigue, plaintively asked "Do I have to go? Can't I stay here with you?"

And for the first time in the entire affair, I wept. My knees buckled under me as I suddenly saw with the clarity of divine revelation how badly I had erred over the past decade. How every step I took, meant to help my family, instead brought me further and further from them, until I had only a dead wife and a daughter who was better comforted by a neighbor than by her father. As the Laeners, plainly mortified for my sake, attempted to cajole Emily into wanting to go with me, I made a vow to myself - that I would start over, that every fiber in my being would be dedicated to becoming the best father humanly possible for Emily. I knew it was too late to truly make up for my neglect, but I hoped that I might at least begin to atone.

I started by cashing in every last scrap of vacation time and sick leave I could lay my hands on, giving me something like three solid months with my daughter - and depressing me anew to realize that I might have done this at almost any time. Now I had to use it to try to mend a broken heart, a task I set about with greater dedication than skill. Despite my own silent doubts on the subject, I made certain Emily knew that death was not an end, that her mother had merely passed on to another and better world, in which she watched us still and waited for the time when we would join her. But most of the time, I tried to keep Emily's mind off the matter of death and her mother entirely. I took her to parks, plays, zoos, movies, anything that would occupy her thoughts with lighter matters, anything that could get her to smile. Above all I gave her what I had failed to give her for so long - not presents, but presence. I was with her constantly, morning to night, even to the point of sleeping on the floor beside her bed, so that when she woke up in tears - as happened all too often in the first few weeks - I would be there, with no delay, to soothe her.

She was reticent around me in the early days, quiet and often reluctant even to express her grief. I was powerfully relieved when this eventually dissipated, and she seemed to accept me as her father, no longer hiding her tears but allowing me to hold her while she cried, to stroke her hair as she poured her sorrows into my shoulder. I wept often at these times as well, and we grew closer from our mutual grief, the catharsis of these moments allowing us to bond more quickly and deeply than I had any right to expect.

I had been prepared to quit my job entirely at the end of my few months of freedom, and to live upon our savings until I could make real progress in getting through to Emily. But by that time, she seemed by a miracle to have achieved something approaching happiness again, and we two were getting along better than I could have prayed for. So I did the next best thing, calling in a dozen favors to get myself reassigned to a position as a department manager back in Los Angeles. It paid almost an order of magnitude less than my previous assignment, but it meant barely thirty hours of work a week, a maximum of flex time, and ample opportunities for telecommuting, which was becoming fashionable in those days. I was determined to never again allow my career to distract me from my family, and this seemed the best possible way to guarantee that.

Time, now, was an ally, instead of the enemy it had been. As it dulled the pains and regrets of the past, I heard more and more often the high, tinkling laughter of my newly-known daughter, saw more frequently the small smile that danced around her face and twinkled in her eyes. Beneath the scaffolding of familial obligation, my time with Emily built a monument of genuine love. She was, is, a wonderful girl; clever, beautiful, and with an ineffable something about her that seemed to light up a room whenever she entered. Her emotions were mercurial, shifting readily between dolorous sadness and radiant joy, and very occasionally an anger that I found adorable. Physically and mentally, there was a lot of her mother in her, but Emily seemed somehow to carry hidden depths that I could not honestly say I had known Irene to possess.

But ultimately, as the years began to pass and the harmony between us persisted, I knew it was Emily's spirit, her forgiveness and her good nature, which moved me the most. We never fought, hardly even quarreled, and always made up afterwards, and I knew that beatific peace could not be credited to me, with my clumsy and much-delayed parenting. After the way I had neglected her, I knew that I did not deserve her love - thus, every day that I had it, every moment that she looked at me with those eyes full of adoration that any parent would long to have, was an unearned benefaction which warmed me to my soul.

Now I saw all that threatened by this untoward desire, springing from some forgotten, bestial quarter of the mind, a temptation more compelling than it had any right to be. I dearly hoped that my feelings that night would prove transitory, that they would vanish like a nightmare in the cold light of dawn. And for a time, I almost thought it so. Morning found me with a calmer cast of mind, free from the fixation on Emily's liaison which had consumed me the previous night, and I felt greatly relieved at the thought that the depraved desire which had possessed me had merely been some queer aftereffect of surprise and wine. But my relief lasted no longer than the time it took me to go downstairs and find Emily fixing herself a bowl of cereal. For some years, she had been using oversized t-shirts for her pajamas - that morning, all I could see was the way the very bottom of her panties peeked out beneath the hem of her shirt, a thin cotton palisade to protect her secret kingdom. The white fabric accentuated the creamy hue of her thighs as they gave way to her smoothly rounded buttocks, just a fine layer of fat over firm gluteal muscle. It was all I could do, as she turned around and greeted me with an angelic smile, to tear my eyes away to meet hers.

"Good morning, daddy!" Stepping up, she gave me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek that crackled like electricity against my skin. "Did you sleep okay?"

"I...yeah." Swallowing hard, I lied uncomfortably. "Yeah, honey, I slept just fine. How about you?"

"Mmm," Emily hummed pleasantly and raised her arms in a stretch that gracefully curved her spine and lifted her pert breasts into prominence. "Wonderfully. I had a very nice dream - I think you were in it, too."

"Oh?" An unhealthy interest gripped me. "What was it about?"

A moue settled on Emily's face, and she shook her head. "I don't really remember. You know how dreams are." But a smile soon swept away her faint annoyance. "Maybe you can tell me what it was about. Did you have any dreams with me in them?"

Did I dream about her? Gazing at her mischievous face, I suddenly wanted to agree, to engage in a flirtatious fancy - I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that I was talking to my daughter. "No." That much, at least, was true. When I finally fell asleep the previous night, after hours of agonizing, my slumber had been an uninterrupted blackness. "No, I didn't dream last night."

"Oh." Emily returned to her cereal with a deflated look. "Um, do you want me to make you some shredded wheat?"

"That's okay, sweetheart," I replied heavily, "I'm not really hungry this morning." Indeed, I felt sick to my stomach. How had this happened? What was wrong with me? And how long had I been hiding it from myself? While before the previous day I had never consciously felt any attraction towards Emily, I could now recall certain actions, certain feelings, which in retrospect seemed suspect. How many times had I happened to be near the bathroom when she emerged rosy-cheeked and moist from her showers, her towel enfolding her like a lover's arms, reflecting her womanly contours? It seemed to me now that I had always taken any opportunity to touch her, to hold her, never thinking that there might be some darker impulse behind it, never questioning the gratification I felt when her body was next to mine.

"Are you sure?" She persisted, ever attentive. "Remember, it's the most important meal of the daa-aay." Her voice rose in a sing-song trill as she drew out the final syllable playfully.

Even my inward turmoil could not entirely quash the elation her levity normally inspired in me, and I managed about half of a laugh. "All right, honey. If you insist."

"That's more like it," she flashed a quixotic smile, and pushed her bowl across the counter to me. "Here, you can have mine, and I'll make myself a new one. I promise I don't have anything too contagious."

I could return only a feeble smile as I sat down at the counter and stirred listlessly at the sodden chunks of wheat and sugar. Emily busied herself again with the refrigerator, and a silence grew that to my ears felt awkward, unnatural. What could I say? The subject that filled my mind was no fit topic for idle conversation. In my preoccupation I could not recall what we normally talked about in the mornings, or even if there was any pattern to it. Perhaps -

I looked up again and immediately regretted it. Emily stood barely over five feet tall, and we kept the cereal in the far back of the cupboard - to retrieve it, she was bent almost ninety degrees over the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen, her perfect posterior wobbling slightly in the air with only the tight cloth of her panties struggling to protect it from view. I stiffened at the sight, in more ways than one. Those slim hips looked as delectable to me as a twelve-course banquet to a starving man; I wanted to grab hold of them, tear off her wrappings and gorge myself upon her body. To take her with a savage tenderness, make her scream with joy...

"Oh," Emily spoke suddenly, glancing back over her shoulder and jolting me back to reality, with a panicked shame at the avenue of my thoughts. "I was thinking we could go out to the beach today, if you want. It could be a fun little outing, you know?" Retrieving the cereal box, she mercifully stood up again, her shirt dropping back down to give her a modicum of modesty.

"I don't know, sweetheart," I stalled, my heart beating faster at the thought of her in a bikini. And me in trunks - no, it was impossible. Emily was too inclined to spontaneous affection; her impulsive hugs could readily reveal this horror that I had to keep hidden. "Are you sure it's even a good idea? It's a bit of a drive. Plus, you know how fair your skin is. I'd hate for you to have to suffer through another sunburn."

"I know," she answered quietly as she poured the milk. "We could bring the beach umbrella, though, and sit in the shade. And I mean, we should go before winter and it gets too cold to go in the water, right?"

"I..." Hesitating, pained, I shook my head, hating to deny her so simple a request but unwilling to risk exposure of my shame. "I'm sorry, princess, but I really can't. I have some, some paperwork from the office that I have to finish and mail off today. You understand, right?" I felt hollow inside, lying to her, but did not see that I had another choice.

"Yeah, of course." Emily smiled wanly, the lilt jammed into her voice. "It's fine, daddy. Don't worry about it. I'll just, um, head out to the mall or something instead."

"Another time, honey. I promise." I insisted with quiet desperation. Once this perversion had passed. Once I was in control of myself again. "Next weekend, maybe, huh?" In the face of her plain unhappiness, I foolishly upped the ante. "Or even tomorrow."