And then, with victory palpably before me, I might decide to speak; I might decide to move in skillfully for my own attack, simulating an air of smug composure that seeks mockingly to impersonate her own.
"No," I will say enigmatically.
(And this will confuse her.)
"No what?" she must ask.
"No, you're not."
"Not what?" she is forced to inquire, timid and suspicious now. "What do you mean?"
"You're not trying to be frank. You're trying to be anything but frank, so please don't use that as an excuse for your bad nature."
"What do you mean?"
"Aren't you?"
"I don't know. What do you mean?"
"Don't you know what I mean?" I inquire with cool, invigorating vengeance. She shakes her head. "What I mean is that you aren't trying to be frank and that you are trying to say the most shocking and outrageous things you can think of in order to hurt my feelings and make me angry at you."
"Why would I do that?"
"Angry enough to yell and begin punishing you."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because that's the way you are."
"Why would I want you to punish me?"
"Because that is the way you are. Don't you see? And that's the way you want me to feel. Don't you see that? Don't you think I can see it?"
"What do you mean?"
"That's what I mean."
"It's a matter of supreme indifference to me," she rejoins loftily, "how you feel."
"Then why bother," I mimic just as loftily, "to tell me at all?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that if how I feel is really a matter of such supreme indifference to you, why bother to ever talk to me at all?"
"What should I do?"
"Unless you want something."
"And you wonder why I bite my nails and can't sleep well and why I eat too much."
"Don't blame your eating too much on me."
"What about the rest?"
"I eat too much also."
"You don't think very much of me," she alleges. "Do you?"
"Not right now. How much do you think of yourself?"
"I was only trying to be honest."
"Bull."
"You want me to be honest, don't you?"
"No."
"You don't?"
"Of course not. Why should I?"
An unexpected answer like that always outfoxes her, strikes her speechless for a few moments, makes her stammer and regret even further that she came barging into my study so rashly in the first place to start up with me. If she tries to continue the contest, her voice will drop to a diffident murmur that is almost too faint to be heard (I will pretend not to hear any of it and make her repeat each remark); or she will explode suddenly in a snarling, unintelligible, dramatic outburst and storm away in total defeat, banging some furniture or slamming a door. (I can outfox her easily every time.) But she never seems to learn (or she has learned and is drawn self-destructively to repeat these same cheerless defeats), so we go through innumerable repetitions of these same annoying, time-wasting, belittling (she makes fun of me because I'm getting fat. And getting bald. And I strike back by being faster, keener, and better informed in my repartee) "frank" and "honest" disputes with each other (I manage to win them all, although I sometimes feel wounded afterward) over money, smoking, sex, marijuana, late hours, dirty words, schoolwork, drugs, Blacks, freedom (hers), yelling, bullying, and insults to my wife.
"What will you do," she will ask baitingly, "if I come home with a Black boyfriend?"
This is a peculiarly ingenious stroke of hers that requires lightning dexterity to counter and with which she does succeed in confounding and vanquishing my wife. There is no way out, and I am tempted to award her accolades: if I tell her I'd object, I'm a racist; if I tell her I wouldn't, I have no regard for her. My wife succumbs by taking her seriously. I survive by skirting the trap.
"I would still ask you to clean up your room," I reply nimbly. "And to stop reading my mail and showing my bank statements to your friends."
Of course I'm a racist! And so is she. Who the devil isn't?
"That's not answering the question," she is intelligent enough to sulk. "And you know it."
"Bring one home and see," I challenge her with a snicker, because I know she is not ready to try that one on us yet.
She wants me to promise her now that she'll have her own car. She is willing to promise she'll give up smoking cigarettes in return. I used to order her not to smoke because of the risk of cancer, until I grew so weary of bickering with her over that subject that I stopped caring whether she smoked or not, despite the risk of cancer. (I did my best for a while as a responsible parent. And it did no good.) So now she smokes regularly (she says), over a pack a day (she says), but I don't believe her, for she could be lying about that too. (She lies about everything. She lies to her teachers too.) But she is not allowed to smoke in the house, which makes it easier for my wife and me to pretend that she doesn't smoke at all. And perhaps she doesn't. (Really, who cares? I don't. And I don't like to have to feel forced to pretend to. If she didn't tell us, I wouldn't have to.) "I do smoke," she insists. "I even inhale. I guess it's a regular habit with me by now. I don't think I could stop smoking cigarettes now even if I wanted to."
"It's your life," I answer placidly.
"Over a pack a day, sometimes two. I know you wouldn't want me to be a sneak about anything like that, would you?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"I do."
"You would?"
"Of course."
"A sneak?"
"Yes."
"What do you mean?" Her eyes cloud with uncertainty and her mouth begins to quiver. I have just outfoxed her again.
"I do want you to be a sneak." I continue breezily, and zero in for the kill. "About smoking, and all those dirty, really very vulgar words and phrases you're so fond of using so openly."
"You use them."
"I'm an adult. And a man."
"Mommy uses them."
"Not the same ones you do."
"Mommy's a prude."
"You're a child."
"I'm sixteen."
"You're fifteen and a half."
"I'm nearer to sixteen."
"So?"
"Can't you say anything more than that?"
"Like what?"
"You always like to give short answers when we argue. You think it's a good trick."
"It is."
"You're so sarcastic."
"Be a sneak," I tell her sarcastically. "I'm not being sarcastic now. It will make things easier for all of us. I give you that advice as a pal, as a really devoted father to a young daughter. Sneak outside on the porch or into the garage when you want to smoke or burn that crappy incense or do something else you don't want us to know about. And close the door of your room when you're on the telephone so we won't have to listen to you complain about us to all of your friends or see those crappy sex novels you read instead of the books you're supposed to be reading for school. You can get away with much more that way. By being a good sneak. Just don't let me find out about it. Because if I do find out, I'm going to have to do something about it. I'm going to have to disapprove and get angry and punish you, and other things like that, and that will make you unhappy and me unhappy."
"Why will it make you unhappy?" she wants to know.
"Because you're my daughter. And I really don't enjoy seeing you unhappy."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Ha."
"And because I don't like to waste so much time fighting with you and yelling at you when I have other things I'd rather be doing."
"Like what?"
"Anything."
"What?"
"Working. Reading a magazine."
"Why must you say that? Why must you be this way?"
(I don't know.) "What way?"
"You know."
"I don'
t." (I do.)
"Why can't you ever pay me a compliment without taking it back?"
"What compliment?"
"You always have to have the last word, don't you?"
"No"
"See?"
"I'm not going to say another word."
"Now you're trying to turn the whole thing into a big joke, aren't you?" she says reprovingly. "You always have to try to turn everything into a big joke, don't you?"
(I'm contrite. I feel a little bit shamed. But I try not to let it show.)
"Let me work now," I tell her quietly.
"I want to talk."
"Please. I was working when you came in."
"You were reading a magazine."
"That's part of my work. And I have to prepare a program for the next company convention and work on two speeches."
"Where is it? The convention."
"Puerto Rico again."
"Can I help with the speeches?"
"No, I don't think so. Not yet."
"Is it more important than me?"
"It's something I want to get done tonight."
"I want to talk now."
"Not now."
"Why?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"No."
"You never want to talk to me."
"Please get out now."
(I know by now that I don't have too much in common with children, not even with my own, and that I dislike getting involved in long conversations with them. I really don't enjoy children for more than a couple of minutes at a time. It is difficult for me to keep interested in what they say and difficult for me to think of things to say that might interest them. So I no longer try.) Sometimes, when my daughter is in buoyant spirits (for some reason) and feeling exceptionally strong and sure of herself, she will sweep into my study audaciously without any pretext or apology and, as though she and I were commonly on the most familiar terms, settle herself imperiously on my couch as though for a lengthy, top-level consultation, and begin complaining to me about my wife, grossly miscalculating my response, assuming mistakenly, I guess, that because my wife and I fight so much, I will welcome her allegiance. (I don't allow her to speak disrespectfully about my wife; she ought to know that by now.) It used to be that when my daughter was small, and it sounded so beguiling and precocious, I would encourage her to find fault with my wife (my wife would delight in this also, because my daughter really was so bright and entertaining), which may be one reason she reverts to it so frequently now. But I don't like it now; and I will defend my wife (even when my daughter's complaints and unflattering comments are accurate and justified). Or I will cut her off curtly almost as soon as she begins, and kick her out with a stern admonition. My daughter's impression about me is correct: there are times when I simply don't want to talk to her. (She is generally so contentious and depressing. My boy is always easier to take--everybody says that. He is more straightforward and generous and much more likable; unlike my daughter, and me, he never rejoices in the misfortunes of other people; instead, he grows grave and worried in the presence of anything woeful, watching always to ascertain if any in the ungovernable whirl of events around him pose any danger to his own existence.) There are times now when I'm plain fed up with her, when I have had all I am able to take, when I just don't want to hear my daughter tell me one more time that I'm no good as a father and my wife is no good as a mother, that the home is no good as a home and the family no good as a family, and that Derek (our idiot child, of course) and all the rest of us are spoiling her life, even though it all might be true.
So what? What if it all is true? (My mother wasn't much better; and my father was much worse, ha, ha. He was hardly around at all after he died. Ha, ha.) Maybe it is my fault that she does so poorly at school and lacks confidence in herself and bites her fingernails and doesn't sleep well, and even my fault that she eats too much and is heavy and is having a boring and excruciating time of it. But, so what? (I've got my excuses ready too.) What good does it do anyone to know that? Even if I agree (and I often do agree, just to frustrate and befuddle her), it doesn't change anything, it doesn't make anything easier for her. So why must she dwell on it? It has grown so boring by now--it never leads anywhere--just plain boring to the point of maddening irritation (which is obviously all she hopes to achieve with me now, all she feels now that she can obtain from life, to goad me ruthlessly into these states of furious and intolerable resentment in which I stammer, spit, bellow, and launch myself into blustering denunciations that cannot be concluded with dignified grammatical coherence, and which are enough to bring that detestable, unmistakable glint of baleful satisfaction into her cunning eyes).
(What does she want from me?)
"You know," she might begin with deceptive tranquillity, "I really don't think I have anything in common with Mommy anymore. And I don't think you have, either. I don't know why you still stay married to her. I know you're incompatible."
(She doesn't even know what incompatible means.)
If I do (to her enormous surprise and chagrin) cut her off right then and kick her out of my study, it is not improbable that she will go straight to my wife (pals with her, all at once) and begin complaining to her about me! (And she, of course, is the one who never wants to be a sneak!) And then my wife, who is manipulated all too easily by my daughter, will come barging back into my study unsuspectingly to take up the cudgels for her, emboldened in her adventure by her sense of mercy. My daughter, smiling surreptitiously, will lurk in the background, anticipating with gleaming relish the fight that she hopes will now break out between my wife and me. (My boy, on the other hand, is appalled when any two of us quarrel and always looks unnerved and nauseated.) It is my daughter's brazen look of gloating expectation, I think, more than anything else, that inevitably fills me with rage, and with a vicious need to retaliate.
"She says," my wife says, "that you kicked her out of your study just now. She says she came in here to talk to you and you wouldn't listen to her, She says you never want to listen to her. You made her get out before she could even say anything."
I hold my breath for a second or two and pretend to meditate.
"Did she?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Uh-huh."
"Didn't you?"
"He did."
"Uh-huh."
"Did he?"
"Why would I say so?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"You just heard her, didn't you? You kicked her out."
"Is that right?" I ask my daughter tonelessly, staring at her with a look of frigid scorn.
"Didn't you?"
"And did she chance to tell you," I say to my wife, "what it was she wanted to talk to me about?"
"That isn't fair!" my daughter blurts out in alarm. Her startled gaze shoots to the doorway as though she wishes she could run out.
"No."
"Oh."
"What?"
"I kind of thought she might have been careless enough to leave that out. That she wouldn't mind very much, for example, if you got sick and died. She didn't tell you that?"
"That's not true!" my daughter cries.
"Or that she really doesn't think she would care very much if you or I got killed in an automobile or plane crash, like Alice whatever-the-hell-her-last-name-is Harmon's mother, or passed away from a stroke or a brain tumor."
"I didn't say that!"
"You could."
"I didn't."
"You have."
"That isn't what I wanted to talk about!"
"I know. What she does want to talk to me about is that she doesn't think you and I have anything in common and wonders why I continue to stick it out with you instead of getting a divorce. Is that it?"
"I only began that way."
"No? Then let's continue. What was it, then, that you did want to talk to me about?"
"Oh, never mind," my da
ughter mumbles in moping embarrassment and lowers her eyes.
"No, please," I persist. "I want to. I want to give you that chance to talk to me you always say I never do."
"Why can't you leave her alone now?" my wife demands.
"She's trying to tear us apart, my dear. Don't you see?"
"Why can't we all be nice to each other?" my wife wonders aloud imploringly out of the innate goodness of her heart.
"Must I listen to a sentence like that?"
"What's wrong with it?" my wife retorts sharply.
"What's wrong with wishing we would all try to get along once in a while instead of picking on each other all the time?"
"We don't 'pick' on each other all the time," my daughter interjects condescendingly in a tone of sulky contempt (trying to insinuate herself back onto my side in opposition to my wife). I am familiar with this tactic of hers. She flicks her gaze to my face tentatively to see if I am going to let her succeed.
I ignore the overture.
(That's what my wife's innate goodness of heart gets her.)
"I'm tired," I remark deliberately with an exaggerated sigh.
"That's because you drink too much before--"
"I'm tired," I interrupt resolutely, letting my voice get louder in order to drown out my wife's, "of listening to you tell me I drink too much before I come home, and listening to her tell me over and over again how bad you and I are and how much she hates me. I've got better ways to spend my time. Let her hate me. Hate me if you want to, and if you think it solves your problems for you. You've got my permission. I don't care if she hates me. But I do mind, God dammit, if she comes in here to tell me about it every God-damned time I sit down in here and try to do some work."
"He was reading a magazine."
"That's my work."
"She doesn't hate you!" my wife declares.
"What do I care?" I answer. "It's a matter of supreme indifference to me whether she hates me or not."
"And you're supposed to be so intelligent!" my wife exclaims.
"What does that mean?"
"She wants you to pay some attention to her once in a while. Can't you see that? And you're supposed to be so intelligent."