Free Stranger, Father, Beloved by Taylor Larsen Page B

her cheerful little face when she met one of his colleagues, and at how they gushed over her.
    What a time that had been—his life had been full of purpose when he had been so adored in the eyes of his daughter. When she had hit puberty, it had all gone south. She had become sullen in eighth grade, losing the cheerfulness that he had assumed would always be part of her personality. For the first time, she didn’t want to go out on her walks to the pond with him. That was the beginning of a series of bad moments between the two. She wanted to watch TV and requested one in her room. He said no, the living room one would do just fine, and she had refused to talk to him for days. Michael had always imagined that he would help her with her middle school and high school homework, as he was quite good at tutoring others, had done it in college, but when he tried to offer help, she scowled at him and slumped off to her room. He had felt a panic at those changes. She tried wearing dark eyeliner and cut her jean skirt so it was quite short the summer before high school, and he’d made her change her clothes and wash off the makeup. He didn’t want herto attract the wrong sort of person; he didn’t want her to grow up so quickly. Adulthood was serious, and sex had a disturbing edge to it. Beyond that, her moodiness frightened him. It reminded him of his own self. She was becoming different; she might not fit in, just as he had never fit in at her age. Where was the friendly, confident face of his beloved girl? Why were the shadows closing in on her too?
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    Michael found the guest list in one of the wicker basket organizers that Nancy kept on her desk in the kitchen. When he scanned it, he remembered being briefly introduced to a John Randolph and was fairly certain that the name matched the man whom he had seen chatting with his wife. John was an honest name, one that matched the personality of that soft-spoken figure. Since he had shown up to the party without a date, Michael assumed he must not be married. Why had he been invited? Michael certainly had never met him before that night. Wearing khaki pants, an old button-down shirt, and a worn-out blazer, he had been dressed much more casually than the rest of the guests, as if he weren’t used to formal parties. A moment of suspicion crept through Michael as he wondered how Nancy knew him. Then he laughed about the whole thing. He knew Nancy’s being devious was impossible; she would never have an affair. Michael felt he might like her better if she were the type of woman who had it in her to cheat. Danger could be precious, making the choice for fidelity all the more delicate; the marriage vows could fly off in the face of chaos if a relationship were not carefully nurtured and protected. But no, he thought sadly, Nancy would never stray, couldn’t stray on her own. In order for her to cheat, she needed him behind her, gently pushing her to do it, cleverly designing a setup that she wouldn’t be able to resist.
    Infidelity was a horrible thing, but Michael knew it was the only wayin his case. His own father, Howard, had strayed from his wife, Michael’s mother, Marilyn, causing a violently emotional scene when she had figured it out. Michael had been eight at the time, and his mother, normally so composed and elegant, had grabbed his arm one day while he was sitting at the table doing his homework and taken him and his sister out to the car. From the backseat, they had stared out at the bright and cheerful day going past them in the car, purple flowers on deep green stalks whizzing by, and sat in the hot car after she slammed the door and marched up to a small house that sat alone off of a little road.
    Before his eyes he saw the door open and a stream of yelling with flashes of a woman in a slip and his father in his undershorts, his mother stamping into the house and back onto the porch, yelling as if she had gone mad. His normally dignified