Nancy

 

“Do you really think I want to spend the rest of my life trying to make you a better person?”

 

Dad shakes his head slowly, looking at me with his bloodshot eyes. He was drunk last night, way too wasted to drive, and yet he drove anyway. He drove straight into a tree, luckily going only a few miles per hour, and of course he blames me for it. I’m his daughter, and if my childhood taught me anything, it’s that fathers blame their daughters for things their daughters had no part in. We stand in the garage, me with my back to the wall wishing it would swallow me, Dad leaning against the vending machine and pointing a righteous finger at me.

 

For the millionth time, I ask myself, why do I put up with this?

 

“Do you think that’s my big wish in life, Nancy?” Dad grins at me sideways. It’s a mad grin. Once or twice he’s grinned like that before smashing a bottle or a glass, and perhaps once or twice is an understatement.

 

Behind him, the window shows a glimpse of the garage. The mechanic working on Dad’s car is shirtless, oil flecking his chest and face. He has a slightly punky look about him, his hair bleached blond and spiky, but this is offset with his massive muscles and the leather jacket slung over a stool. I look closely and see a patch on the jacket: Sons of Wolves.

 

“Are you even listening to me?” Dad barks.

 

You should be in jail, I think but don’t say. You were drunk driving and they should have locked you up for a little while, but of course the one-time sheriff gets special treatment. Of course the one-time sheriff can do anything he likes and get away with it.

 

“I’m hearing you,” I mutter.

 

“So why haven’t you done as I’ve asked?” He throws his hands up in a familiar gesture: one that proclaims to the world that there’s nothing to be done with me. I’m a lost cause. Et cetera. “It’s a simple request. I’ve tried talking to the man but he just won’t listen. Aren’t you a lawyer? The last time I checked, you were a lawyer! My daughter the lawyer won’t help her own father!”

 

Dad is a big, burly man with a tangled gray beard and a bald egghead with a purple vein running through the middle. His chest is a barrel, his belly is a beach ball, and his arms are steel pipes. He looks imposing and ridiculous at the same time, a unique combination I’ve never seen anybody else pull off.

 

“The worst daughter in Salem,” Dad says. “I mean that. That’s how you’re behaving.”

 

“You keep insulting me and insulting me,” I say, struggling to keep my voice level, my head level. “How is that productive?”

 

“Don’t use your fancy lawyer speak with me!” he snaps.

 

“Fancy lawyer . . .” I trail off. I won’t get drawn into the argument.

 

Through the window behind Dad, I see the mechanic glance up. We meet eyes briefly. His eyes are light green and penetrating. He chews his lip, glances at Dad and then me, and then turns back to the car.

 

“Hello?” Dad says. “Are you there?”

 

“He won’t change the price,” I mutter. “He’s made that very clear. The price is the price.”

 

“I remember when you were nine years old and Miss Havisham was giving you a hard time at school. Do you remember that?” When I don’t reply right away, he prompts, “Well, do you?”

 

I nod. I know what he’s doing and yet I can feel its effect working through my mind. That’s the cruel paradox of Dad’s manipulative tactics: I understand them and yet they still function.

 

“Your mother—that coward hiding in California, I should say!—told you that you were just imagining it, and that she was just behaving as a teacher ought to behave. What did I do? I went in there and I had a talk with her and I got to the bottom of it. That’s what I did.”

 

I remember that episode with confused emotions. At the time I was thrilled when Miss Havisham stopped berating me in class, but later I understood that the only reason she’d stopped was because Dad had frightened her, and that she had never really been berating me in the first place. She had been educating me just like Mom thought. Dad sees this as some victory, a moment to be weaponized when he wants to bend me to his will. But when I stand up, it’s not because of what happened with a teacher over a decade ago. It’s because I know he won’t stop.

 

I leave the waiting area and walk across the garage to Sal’s office. The mechanic looks up at me and smiles, a wicked glint in his light green eyes. “Hello,” he says.

 

“Hello,” I reply, a little flustered. Sweat and oil make his well-formed chest glisten.

 

I knock on Sal’s door.

 

“Come in!”

 

Sal, just like my dad, is a big man. But he’s more like a teddy bear, soft and cuddly with thick hair on his arms. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and moves slowly and ponderingly as if each movement has been well-thought-out years before. He’s the owner of the garage.

 

“Miss O’Neill,” he says.

 

“Call me Nancy.”

 

“Okay, Nancy. Call me Sal.”

 

“It’s a good job.” I smile, hoping to make this a modicum less uncomfortable than it will inevitably be. “The sign only has your first name on it.”

 

He laughs good-naturedly, though I can tell he didn’t find it funny. Which is understandable because I didn’t, either.

 

“What can I do for you?” he asks.

 

I want to flee this room. Not because I dislike confrontation, but because I dislike confrontation not of my choosing. I work in a law office, it’s true, but I’m not a courtroom lawyer like Dad insists on believing. I spend most of my time combing over documents. I never learned how to shut off my feelings and argue the point no matter what. So I cannot help but sound awkward when I say, “The price . . .”

 

He flinches as though I just slapped him. The look on his face makes me want to flee from the office, but I’ve committed to this now and I won’t retreat. “Miss . . . Nancy.” His shoulders sag. “Your father was in here trying to negotiate the price a few minutes ago.”

 

“I’m aware of that,” I say. I stand up straight with my shoulders back, looking confident even if I don’t feel it. I’m horribly aware of how I must look right now: tight-lipped, tight-muscled, tensed-up, and vaguely angry. “I was just wondering if there was any leeway.”

 

“Not really,” Sal says. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I know your dad’s a big deal with some folks in this town. I get that. But I can’t lower my prices for every big deal who comes through here. What if word gets out that Sal’s garage is a one-stop shop for bullying and cheap prices? How long will my business survive if that’s the message I send?”

 

“I understand that,” I say. “But . . .” His eyes flit to the desk. There’s a defeated look about him and I know, truly know, that if I keep pushing I’ll get him to lower the price. He’s big and strong but I imagine he’s been pushed around many times in his life. He has the look in his eyes I often saw in myself growing up. He’s just waiting to be nudged. And I could nudge him, but then I’d be no better than Dad nudging me to come in here.

 

“Don’t change the price,” I tell him. “Even if Dad comes in here again. It’s a fair price, cheaper than most places. You don’t need to change it.”

 

He smiles at me gratefully. “Sorry if this seems out of line, Nancy, but why . . .” He cuts short. “Sorry, I shouldn’t ask.”

 

“What is a girl like me doing with a father like that?” I laugh, a little erratically. “I guess I’m a loyal person, or a stupid person. Or I’m loyally stupid, or stupidly loyal.”

 

I leave the office, walking across the garage toward the waiting room. The mechanic looks at me again, his bleached-blond hair flecked with black dots of oil. “Nice dress,” he says.

 

I’m wearing a pencil skirt with heels and jet-black opaque tights. “Uh, thanks,” I say. I wave at his chest. “Nice . . .” I immediately regret it, and walk away without saying anything else. He has my heart thumping like crazy. I wish he’d put his shirt on even as I pray that he never does.

 

“So?” Dad barks.

 

“He won’t change it,” I say. “It’s a fair price.”

 

“A fair price,” Dad whispers, massaging his jaw. “That’s what he calls a fair price, is it? That’s how this works? A man works twenty years keeping a place safe and gets spit on for asking for some goddamn respect. I ought to go home and get my gun and—”

 

“Stop that right now!” I hiss, marching up to him and aiming my forefinger at his face. “I won’t hear that sort of talk! I’m nice enough to come down here on a Tuesday afternoon, to risk making my boss angry, and that’s how you talk?”

 

“Don’t you point at me like that!” he breaks out, pushing past me and kicking a chair. “Who exactly do you think you are? I’ve already had all that nonsense from your mother. I don’t need it from you!”

 

“Just sit down.” I massage the bridge of my eyebrows. “Just stop, Dad. I’m tired and I have a headache.”

 

“How hard it must be for you,” he says bitterly. “Working in a big fancy law office and lording it over your father like you’re some kind of queen! Are you forgetting who checked under the bed all those years, or who made sure there was food on the table every night while your mother was messing around with her goddamn collages, or who took you to the hospital every day for half a year when you had that immune system problem? Have you forgotten everything I’ve done for you, Nancy?”

 

He’s exaggerating. It was once a week for a few months. But something strange happens within me as he talks. Even being aware of it doesn’t stop it from happening. I’m thrown back a decade and a half to when I was nine years old and this always-drunk, ranting man was a hero to me in that confused childhood way adults can be heroes even when they’re cruel and scary. I remember thinking he was essentially good even if he was blackout drunk every night and shouted more than he spoke. I remember thinking that it was my fault, and Mom’s fault, if he broke a glass on the wall. I remember feeling lucky that he never hit either of us.

 

I battle those emotions—they are irrational, I know that—but they have all the power of childhood behind them.

 

“Well?” he says, taking a step forward. “Don’t you have anything to say? I usually can’t shut you up!”

 

I turn away from him, tears forming, unbidden and unstoppable. I choke them back and that’s when I see him, sitting on the chair with his leather slung over it, watching me with his hard green eyes. He runs a hand through his hair and stares at me, his jaw muscle working. I don’t know what’s going on inside of him but it looks like something dark, and intriguing, and oddly attractive. I want to place my hand on his chest, run it down onto his flat, muscled belly, and down . . .

 

“Well?” Dad snarls. “Are you a statue now?”

 

I jolt out of the spell.

 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” I turn to him. “Everything I say seems to make you angry, which is confusing to me because I feel as though I am always reasonable with you. At least I try to be reasonable with you. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve tried to be reasonable with you. But you still find things to pick at.” My lips are trembling. I don’t want to cry. Sometimes I hate my emotions; the way they’ll run along their own track without me seems like a betrayal.

 

“The only reason you’re almost crying right now is because you know that’s no way to talk to your father, the man that raised you. You’re just a silly, pathetic girl, Nancy. I hate to say it!” He waved his hand wildly. “But it’s the truth and we can’t shy away from it!”

 

The door creaks open and the mechanic steps in, watching Dad as though watching a wild dog, utterly attentive, and ready for anything. “You need to show your daughter some respect.”