Free Taking It by Michael Cadnum

his nose and gave it a little twist.
    We used to rent Three Stooges videos and watch them while Stu’s parents were in Europe, and it was a routine between us, grabbing an ear or a nose and saying Why, you in that sadistic mean-kid way.
    â€œYour dad’ll send you away to college,” he said. He made himself sound optimistic. “Life will be wonderful.”
    I like the way we simplify the world when we want to cheer someone up. Life and wonderful , balloon-size, Disneyland words. Stu was worried that he was responsible for me needing Kleenex, blowing my nose.
    I said, “I’m afraid.”
    â€œReality’s confusing,” said Stu. He considered his words and must have recognized how pointless he sounded. “A state of flux,” he added. We were veering into areas Stu didn’t like to discuss. He was going to talk about the laws of thermodynamics, telling me that systems devolve, that chaos is at war with structure.
    â€œHave you ever been to Banff?” I asked.
    Stu didn’t even know where it was.

17
    My dad was on the phone.
    I could tell as soon as I was through the front door. He was talking to one of his girlfriends, wandering the house, phone to his ear. He was using his special sexy voice, reassuring, warmhearted.
    I tried to shut the door quietly. I stood still, right where I was, eavesdropping. He was telling someone everything would be all right. He was telling someone what a wonderful person she was. “You’re an exceptional human being,” he said to the person on the phone.
    But he had heard the front door shut, despite my efforts, and it was crimping his style. He put his head around a corner and said he’d call right back.
    He put the phone down in the dining room. Then he stood looking at me with his hands on his hips, the way one of the policemen had looked at me, blank.
    â€œWhere were you?” he asked.
    â€œOut with Stu.” I flung myself into his chair, the big recliner. I picked up the mail off the side table. There was nothing for me.
    â€œLeave a note next time,” he said.
    â€œI thought I’d be back before you were. As usual.”
    â€œDid you eat anything?”
    â€œA little cold spaghetti before I went out.” It was still in the fridge, a large cold brain of pasta.
    He sat in a dark, wooden piece of furniture, an antique, like a chair’s skeleton. My mother had bought it when I was in preschool, light-years ago. “Did you have a good time with Stu?” my dad said.
    â€œStu’s a lot of fun.”
    He didn’t know how to take this. He took his handheld tape recorder out of an inner pocket. He ran it fast-forward, the voices high-pitched. It might be someone confessing to raping his own daughter, and there his voice would be, sounding like a demented rat.
    He got to the place he wanted in the tape. I had the oddest feeling that he wanted to record our conversation. I experienced that shiver of self-consciousness I often feel when someone pulls out a camera.
    He put the recorder down on a leather folder at his side. He had work to do that had nothing to do with me.
    â€œI’m thinking of going with you, like we used to as a family.” When he saw that I didn’t know what he was talking about, he said, “Kaiser Hospital, family counseling. If you want me to.”
    Poor man. Orbiting some distant legal sun. “I don’t think it would do any good,” I said.
    â€œYou might as well express it, Anna.”
    I thought: He can read your mind.
    â€œExpress what?” I heard myself say.
    â€œYour anger with me.”
    â€œAm I angry with you?” I wasn’t being coy—I didn’t know what my lines were supposed to be.
    â€œYou should be.” He took a moment, getting ready to say it. “I’m not much of a father.”
    This was painful. The look in his eyes, the roughness in his voice. He had it all backwards.
    Or maybe he expected