J A M E S

 

He fought the urge to turn off the lamp and sit in the dark. Everything else was dark. The TV. The kitchen. The hallway. The street of tidy but modest homes beyond the bay window. The world had silenced itself, snuffed out the cars, muted the crickets, drawn an invisible zipper across the lips of his neighbors—as Lilly used to do, when she wanted him to promise to keep her secrets.

He longed to turn the lamp off and sit in the dark. But didn’t, because that was something desperate people did in the twilight of their defeat.

His fear was unforgiveable, a betrayal worse than any misdeed of his thirty-four years. He was afraid of Lilly. Afraid that she was fundamentally something…else. In spite of his efforts to affix his apple-of-my-eye smile of approval, more and more it dribbled off like milk over the edge of a table. Somewhere on the floor were a thousand quivering mouths. Worse, he saw his rejection in his daughter’s eyes. His hesitation. The mourned loss of their physical language of hugs and squeezes. Even ordinary words had become too fragile to hold. In the absence of an explanation there was only the obvious: unknowable and slack-jawed. It stank of danger. Of something primordial he couldn’t comprehend.

Eight weeks ago they’d cuddled in this very chair, her legs draped across his lap; they’d watched her favorite show about a girl who could fly. She was too big for that now. The chair too small. When the growth spurt first started Lilly crowed her delight. She’d been nervous about starting sixth grade and a bit more height—“a more impressive stature”—gave her confidence. But by the time school started, barely three weeks ago, Lilly was taller than the teachers. Taller

than her father.

Lilly once asked, her voice seesawing between horror and awe, “Daddy, am I a monster?”

And he said “No no, just a friendly giant.”

That was mid-August, when she went from four-foot-nine to five-foot-seven and her height still seemed within the realm of possibility. They bantered about the new sports she could try. Volleyball. Water polo.

But Lilly kept growing and the doctor stopped joking about the healthy effects of the summer sun. A weed. A stalk of corn.

James surrendered and switched off the lamp, afraid his daughter would stumble in needing a drink of water or another Tylenol—her eleven-year-old bones hurt—before falling asleep. Sometimes she forgot to duck and hit her head on the doorjamb. It pained him to see it. He wondered if she was right.

A monster.

Unsure what to do, he shut his eyes.