Chapter7
Catalina went home from school that afternoon and when she walked into the house, she saw her father sitting on a kitchen chair watching the door, and she knew in an instant that he had been sitting there waiting for her.
She could see his work boots sitting beside him, his feet covered by worn socks, one of which had a hole in the toe. His work shirt was dirty and wrinkled from his hard labor all that day. His old ripped jeans were covered in unidentifiable dark patches. His arm was resting on the kitchen table, and in his hand there was a cold beer. She saw the condensation running down the side of it, and one drop that seemed to be picking up speed and running faster than the others down the side of the bottle.
There was silence in the room, save for the old clock on the mantle. It had once belonged to her grandmother, and the rhythmic tick tock sound that it made seemed to be announcing an approaching storm.
She met her father’s eyes and saw his tousled dirty hair, and the smudges of sweat and dirt on his face and forearms. His eyes were steady on her and his mouth was set in a firm thin line.
100“Hi, Daddy,” she said quietly.
He stared at her and took a long pull off of his beer before he set it down on the table, his eyes never leaving her. He lifted his chin and looked at her seriously.
“Sit down, Catalina,” he told her in a solemn tone.
She drew in a breath and slowly lowered herself into the chair in the living room that faced him. He took another swig of his beer and set his bottle down firmly on the table, then he looked at her and she saw the embers of a glowing hot anger that had been burning in him for a little while. Her heart skipped a beat as she wondered what was going on. She hadn’t been in trouble in longer than she could remember, in fact, it hadn’t been since she was about sixteen years old, but she knew that look on his face, and she knew that things were not good.
“Are you sleeping with one of your professors at that school you’re going to?” he asked her point blank. Her father was not one to fool around.
She felt like someone had just yanked the whole world right out from underneath her. “What, Daddy? How… where did you hear that?” she tried to speak and found herself stumbling through the sentence.
He raised his voice a little. “Just answer my question! Are you having an affair with one of your professors?”
She couldn’t lie to him. She could not sit there in front of her father and lie to him, and she suddenly felt more ashamed than she ever had in her whole life. If there was one thing she would have wished to keep secret from him, it would have been her relationship with Connor.
She took a deep breath and nodded her head, speaking quietly. “Yes, Daddy.” She wanted to add so many things to that statement. She wanted to tell him what a wonderful man Connor was, and that it was not just a tawdry affair. She wanted to tell him how much Connor meant to her and to help him understand what a wonderful thing she had found with him, but she knew that she shouldn’t say much more than whatever the basic answer to his question was, at least while he was so angry.
He shook his head slowly at her and pressed his lips together in a tight line. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing having an affair with some older man who is one of your professors? Huh?”
She felt her heart pound and her body tremble as she sucked in a breath to try to answer him. “Daddy, it isn’t really like that, it’s more like-“
He cut her off. “Don’t you dare say love, young woman. Don’t you dare. What you are doing right now is messing up your life! You are making one of the biggest mistakes that you are ever likely to make! I can’t believe you’re doing that! I can’t believe that my own daughter is sneaking around the campus having an affair with one of her professors!
“I raised you better than that! That’s something that some cheap little tramp might do, but not you! Not my daughter! I’m so disappointed in you right now! You’re letting me down, and you’re letting yourself down!”
Harold had never hit Catalina, but his words just then felt like a wrecking ball to the stomach and she could barely stand to look at him, knowing how upset with her he was. Disappointing her father was about the worst punishment she could imagine. Nothing he could do to her could ever make her feel as bad as him being disappointed in her or ashamed of her, and she could see clearly that he was both, just then. It devastated her.
He took another long pull off of his beer and rose up to his full height of six and a half feet. He was a big man; strong and full bodied, but not heavy. He worked far too hard to be overweight.
Harold began walking toward her and he stopped when he was a few feet away from her, looking down at her in outrage. “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” He waved his hand at her.
“I never had the chance that you have! No one ever did anything for me like I am doing for you, working my fingers to the bone every single day so you can have the money you need to go to school and make something of yourself; make something of your life!”
She felt guilt begin to ball up and build in her heart and stomach. He began to pace in front of her, looking down at her.
“I never got any kind of opportunity like you have! I’m not jealous that you have it, and I don’t begrudge it at all, you know that, I always wanted better for you than I had!” He raised his voice a little and she dropped her eyes to the floor.
“I know that, daddy,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t go to work and just about kill myself, spending my life toiling so that you can pull some kind of stupid stunt like this!” He kept walking back and forth in front of her, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m not about to sit here and watch you throw away the chance at a good life just so some despicable old man can lure you into his bed! You deserve more than that! You deserve better than that!” He raised his voice again and she did not look up from the floor, but instead just watched his sock-covered feet moving back and forth in front of her.
His arm went sweeping in an arc and he continued. “He probably has all kinds of young innocent girls that he coerces into sleeping with him, and you probably think that you’re special to him! Well, you’re not! You’re not anything to him! You’re nothing more than the next girl he’s screwing, and that’s all. You don’t mean anything at all to him! You think you matter to him? You don’t! He’s just using you, and I’m not about to put up with anybody using my baby, especially like that!”
Catalina didn’t want to defy her father, but she had to defend Connor. She looked up at him then and shook her head. “No, daddy, it isn’t like that! I don’t know why you think it is, but he is really special to me, and I’m special to him! There are professors who have reputations for having affairs with all kinds of students every semester, but he isn’t one of them.
“In fact, I’ve been taking his class for four years now, and he’s never had an affair with a student. It’s just not how he is!” She hoped that her defense would ease her father’s anger and help him to see that there was another side to it altogether.
Her defense of Connor only fueled the anger in her father more. “You think you’re special to him? You’re not! Has he come by here? Has he met me and stood in my house and shook my hand and introduced himself? Has he asked me if he could see you? Has he acted with any kind of honor or respect at all? No! No he has not.
“What has he done? He has sneaked around with you behind everybody’s back and had a secret affair with you. No good and honorable man who has a sincere interest in a woman is going to act that way! You just can’t see it because you’re too wrapped up in him for any kind of common sense to get through to you! Well, I’ll tell you right now, I’m not having it anymore! Do you hear me?” he demanded, stopping his pacing and looking down at her furiously.
She sighed and stood up, getting to her feet right in front of him, and then looking up at him.
“Daddy, I’m telling you that it’s not like that with him. He does care about me and he is one of the best men I have ever known!”
Harold stood stock still and his eyes grew wide with anger. He looked directly at her and raised his voice.
“I am not about to stand here and listen to my own daughter standing before me talking to me like that, sticking up for some low life, scum bag who is only using her for her body! I’m not having it!” he demanded.
“You are going to stop seeing that man, and you are going to stop taking his classes, and you are never going to set your eyes or any other part of you on him again! Do you understand me!” he insisted, laying down the law for her.
She knew that he meant it. She knew that there would be no negotiating it with him. “Daddy, I can’t!” she found herself saying to him. Surprised by her own rebellion, she continued, “He’s the main teacher for my major; he’s my advisor, he’s the one who is making my career as a photojournalist happen! I can’t stop taking his classes!
“We already said that we aren’t going to continue having the affair, but I can’t stop going to his classes! I have to take his course the rest of the year to graduate!” She tried to reason with her father.
He wouldn’t hear of it. He shook his head and pointed his finger at her sharply. “You are going to obey your father and honor what I tell you to do! You are living under my roof, you are my child, and you are going to that college because I am paying for all of your tuition! You will listen to me and you will do as I say, and you will stop seeing that man completely, you will drop his classes and you will find another way to graduate without him. Do you understand me?
“You owe your loyalty to this family, not to anyone else! So don’t you go defending him to me, and trying to make him seem like a good man, because that is not what he is! Now, tomorrow morning I want you to go straight to the office and have them change your classes, and if he ever tries to contact you again, you tell him to leave you be or you will contact the police. Do you understand me? You’re done! The whole affair is done! It’s over! Right now, missy, it is over!”
She could not stop the hot tears that streamed down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. She tried to wipe them away, but they just seemed to keep coming. “Daddy…” she said softly and he looked directly at her.
“How did you find out about him?” she asked in a thin voice as she looked up at him. She could see the love in his eyes behind all the anger that he felt just then. She wished there was some easy way for her to get through it. She didn’t know what she was going to do.
He sighed and looked away from her. “Your friend Reggie was here earlier today. He came to talk with me as soon as I got home from work. I pulled up in the driveway and there he was, sitting on the steps waiting to talk with me, waiting to tell me that my daughter was sleeping with one of her instructors. I didn’t believe him at first. I told him he was full of it and he didn’t know you, but he told me all about it, about your trip, about seeing you at that teacher’s office. I couldn’t believe it.”
She felt rage fire up in her and in the back of her mind as her father spoke, Catalina was thinking of the multitude of ways that she could torture and kill her best friend. She said nothing and looked at her father as he continued to speak.
Harold walked over to the table and picked his beer up, taking a sip from it and pointing the bottle and his finger at her. “Now, there’s a boy that you ought to be dating. He’s a good boy, going to school and trying to make something of himself, he’s honest, he cares about you, and he isn’t out there hiding from me.
“That’s exactly the kind of boy you ought to be spending your time and efforts on. What do you do? Leave him pining after you while you go running around with some randy old man! What is going on in your head, child?” He shook his head in dismay and sipped his beer again.
He set his bottle down on the table and walked over to Catalina, who watched him in silence with tears still streaming down her face. He looked at her and shook his head, and then reached his arms around her and pulled her close to him.
“I may be mighty disappointed in you, but I love you more than anyone in the world, baby girl, and I’m harsh with you when you mess up so that you’ll learn your lesson and get right with the decisions that you’re making.
“You have to listen to me, baby, I’ve been around the block enough times for both of us. You can’t see the mistakes that you’re making right now, but I can, and the best thing I can do for you is look out for you and do my best to help you get through life. I’ve got your back, baby. Always. I love you,” he told her softly.
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, crying in confusion and pain as she tried to figure out what she was going to do. The only thing she knew for certain was that she was going after Reggie and her best friend had better run.