I walked down the hallway like an automaton, so focused on my own thoughts that the outside world barely seemed real. It was impossible, for me, to associate this timid woman walking down the hallway and the mad wolf from the night before. This woman was quiet, shy, scared of everything. The wolf was daring and did things that I would never do.
It was a trick of the light, of course it was, but when the elevator opened and the mirrored wall came into view, for a brief flicker of a moment I thought I saw the lion, standing behind me in the hallway. Then I blinked my tired eyes and he was gone. I started slightly, taking a step back, but there was an old couple in the elevator, eyebrows raised, waiting impatiently.
I kept my eyes down as I made my way to the restaurant. Dad was sitting at a table near the window that overlooked Bristol Bay. “It used to be a slave city,” he’d told me, smiling widely. “And tobacco, and—well, everything. Fourth largest city in the Elizabethan era.” Dad, with his farmer accent (which was similar to the Bristol accent) was so proud of knowing its history because he had grown up near here as a boy. Just fifty or so miles to the west, in a town called Weston-Super-Mare which I had never been to. For some reason that came to me when I greeted him that morning. Maybe I was trying to distract myself.
He stood up, his chair making a low screeching noise on the linoleum floor, and walked around the table. His shoes, shining as usual, clopped toward me. “Jess!” he smiled, and threw his arms around me.
“Dad,” I said.
Nobody looking at us then, I thought, would have judged us to be father and daughter. Here was this tall English man with a farmer’s accent in a pristine suit, balding slightly on top, hair stuck down to his head, a few grays here and there, a few lines here and there, booming across the restaurant so that people turned in surprise. And here was this young Texan woman, short, blonde, and timid. Yes, timid. I could tell I was not the wolf today by the way I flinched, their eyes like burning coals, their sneers like gargoyle’s grins, peering at him like some twisted faces from a horror novel, when the people from the nearby tables turned to look at us at Dad’s loudness. I rushed him to the table. I couldn’t stand the angry stares of the Brits any longer. That was one thing I had observed in my travels. Brits hated public noise like that.
He ordered a full English breakfast. I ordered toast and some orange juice. “Best sausages in town, here,” Dad said. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m sure.” I smiled. Maybe I was being too miserable. Maybe he would sense something. The idea made me clench my knees under the table. It was completely irrational, but I suppose it was that kind of morning. “I’m still a little hung over.”
Dad laughed and nodded. “Okay-dokey.”
He talked for a while about his job. Maybe it sounds bad, but I often tune out when Dad talks about his job. He works with numbers, manipulating numbers for big corporations so that they can analyze statistics (or something like that). Truth be told, I have never been exactly sure what he does, only that he gets paid extremely well for it and it was a good decision for him to start up his own firm. My mind, which was used to delving into Hardy and Scott Fitzgerald and Shelley and Bronte, was not built for business; few English literature students’ minds were, I found.
When the breakfast came, he abruptly stopped the business talk.
He crunched a sausage in half in one bite, laid the remains on his plate, and then rested his chin on his clasped hands. “Jess,” he said. It was the Jess which came before your mother left us or I found a cigarette in your school bag or you need to work harder at school or any number of horrible childhood moments. The tone was unmistakable. He wanted to tell me something big. Dread immediately invaded every part of me. I clasped my knees harder. My toes wriggled in my sneakers as though they wanted to crawl away. Heartbeat, that’s one word for it . . . it was like a giant was jumping up and down in my chest. Anxiety’s a bitch, I thought in the haze.
“Yes?” I asked, my voice wobbling.
Dad didn’t seem to notice. He barreled on with the air of a man repeating a well-learned speech. “As you know, I have been single now since you were four, when your mother left and moved to Australia with her lover.” There was no bitterness in his voice. Both of us had gotten over that long ago. Mom was happy in Australia. Dad was happy to let her go. And I was happy because I barely remembered her and she had never tried to take an interest in me. I had long ago stopped worrying about the woman who had once sung to me in a half-remembered dream. He took a deep breath and went on. “Since then, I have not had a girlfriend. I know it’s not something you want to hear from your dad, but I’ve been lonely. Well,” and here he paused dramatically, looking out at the bay for a moment before turning back, “I’ve found somebody!”
His face lit up, and I unclasped my knees. “Is that the news?” I dared to ask.