If I Forget You(13)

Margot finds a boyfriend—a sophomore named Danny, an attacker on the lacrosse team. He is a Theta Delta Chi, like her father was, and is square-jawed, stout, and fit, with a perfect head of curly hair. His nickname is “the Face,” the result of an episode in which, during a game of pickup lacrosse on the quad, he was smiling at girls sitting and watching nearby rather than paying attention and completely missed a pass intended for the basket of his stick. It instead caught him square in the eye and he began to yell, “My face! My face!” It is also a nod to his obvious handsomeness and is only slightly ironic.

One night she arrives at Danny’s frat house. She often spends the night here, since he has his own room and Margot shares one with a girl from Sri Lanka who never seems to leave the room other than for classes and has made it clear in her own passive-aggressive way that Margot is not to have anyone else in her bed.

As she comes through the main door, the familiar smell of beer and men hits her. She hears the sound of voices and the television in the large living room. A game is on. Margot comes into the room and a group of boys are on the couch watching football. Jeff, one of Danny’s friends, nods to her and says, “Danny is in the poolroom.”

“Thanks,” Margot says. “Who’s winning?”

“Giants, baby,” one guy says.

Margot walks past them and into the large study, where the pool table is. It is dimly lit, and when she comes in, two figures are standing next to the pool table, Danny and a well-dressed man, tie askew, holding a pool cue in one hand, his other arm dangling around Danny’s shoulder, talking closely to him. Her father.

It is a startling intrusion into her young life. Why is he here? How could he be here?

Danny and her father look up at the same time. Margot takes in the glasses of scotch on the rim of the table, half empty, and the two of them smile at her as if this is an entirely normal occurrence.

“Here she is,” her father says cheerfully.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” her father says with a laugh. “Shooting some stick with my friend Danny here. Showing him how it’s done.”

Danny smiles that dimply smile. “Mr. Fuller refuses to let me win any games.”

“Call me Tom, will you? Christ, we’re brothers.”

Margot holds it together to ask her father if she can talk to him alone, outside. Her father gives Danny this goofy smile and says, “Uh-oh,” as if to say, I am in trouble now, and she hates him for it. She hates him for this whole thing, for tumbling into her life like this, at this moment when she is learning to fly and at a time when she has done exactly what he has asked.

For his part, Danny just gives her a look and shrugs and then goes back to considering the pool table, the lay of the balls scattered across the felt.

Outside, a waxing harvest moon casts a blanket of silver on the long lawn in front of the big brick house. In the half-light, she is struck again by how handsome her father is, his close-cropped gray hair and the line of his jaw and those feral pale eyes. All her life, Margot has heard this from her friends, how hot her father is, and she knows it is a big source of his power, what allows him to lead others the way he does, but also what allows him to bully his way through the world.

They stand close together, huddled like lovers. It is another of her father’s techniques. He eliminates space to intimidate. Margot says again what she said inside. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a meeting with the president. Decided to stop by the house. I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

Margot is afraid she is going to cry. She doesn’t want to. It is hard, this act of holding it all back, but the thing about fathers is that they have this ability to reduce one to an earlier state, to a time when a daughter first realizes her dad exists as a man in his own right, someone with a life that transcends her and her mother and the family. That there are lives he lives she knows nothing about. That he is capable of cruelty and people fear him.

“Hey, hey,” her dad says. “Come on now.”

Margot looks up at him and in the dark she bites her lip.

She grits her teeth and says, “Just go. Leave me alone. I have done everything you asked. Why do you have to be here?”

“Really?” her father says, grabbing her arm now. “I don’t know what you are so upset about.”

“What do you want me to do? You don’t go here anymore. Why can’t you just let me live my life?”

Her father’s voice softens. “Listen, I’m proud of you. That’s all. I’m going, okay? Just calm down, honey.”

“Don’t tell me to be calm,” Margot says. “I don’t want to be calm. And I don’t need your approval.”

And he tries to hug her then, puts his arms out, as if taking her into his arms can bridge the gulf that exists between them now. But Margot is not having it, not tonight. She does not want to hear about how he approves of Danny, how he has the stuff. She does not want to bend to his will, which everyone is used to doing.

“I’m leaving,” Margot says, and she turns and walks away. She expects him to follow her, but he lets her go. And as she walks back to her dorm across manicured lawns freshly stiff with frost, Margot starts to cry and then she stops, and for a moment the tears make it hard to breathe and she wonders if anyone ever escapes.