EXTENDED EPILOG: LOLITA
Almost nine months to the day after moving in with Ryder and Cody, I gave birth to our daughter, April Marie Ryder. She was eight pounds, six ounces, with pink rosy cheeks and a headful of dark peach fuzz. She had my nose and her daddy’s dark eyes. She truly was a miracle baby, given that I was on birth control when she was conceived. Ryder said she was like a little SEAL. She was determined to be born and nothing was going to stop her.
“She’s beautiful,” Ryder said, standing by the bed watching our daughter nurse. She was less than eight hours old and we were both madly in love with her. He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re beautiful, too.”
“I don’t feel beautiful,” I said with a tired smile. “In fact, I feel like shit.”
Ryder smiled. “Yeah, well, ten hours of labor will do that to you.” He gently rubbed his fingers across April’s wispy hair. “Cody is dying to meet his little sister. I thought I ‘d bring him by this afternoon.”
“That would be awesome,” I said. “He’s going to be such a good big brother.” April let go of my nipple (thank God!!) and immediately fell asleep with a milky smile on her face. I shoved my sore tit back into the gown and held my daughter to my breast and rocked her gently.
“There’s something else,” Ryder said. He got to his knees beside the bed and reached into his shirt pocket. He came out holding a ring box. I felt the breath catch in my throat as he lifted the lid off the box to reveal the beautiful diamond engagement ring inside.
“Oh my god,” I said, putting a hand over my mouth. “What are you doing?”
“Lolita Anne Carter,” he said, holding out the ring. “Will you marry me?”
I immediately started to cry, partly from the hormones that were raging through my body and partly because I was so incredibly fucking happy. I sniffed back snot and tears and held out my hand with fingers splayed. My hand was shaking. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Ryder smiled as he held my hand steady and slipped on the ring. I held up my hand to admire it. It was perfect, just like everything in my life. I put my arm around his neck and pulled him in for a snotty kiss.
“You make me so happy,” he said, clutching my hand, kissing my fingers. “I love you so much. We’ll tell Cody together this afternoon.”
“Tell Cody what?”
We both looked up to see my mom peeping around the door. When I held up my hand, she covered her mouth with both hands and screamed like a giddy teenager. She ran into the room and hugged me, then hugged Ryder. It had taken mom a while to get over the age difference, but when she saw what a great guy Ryder was (and Cody started calling her Nana), she came around.
Mom put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. She had tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. She was happy for us, but I could tell there was something else going on.
“Mom? What is it?”
She glanced toward the closed door, then braced her hands on the foot of the bed as if she had to hold it down and looked into my eyes. “Lo, I brought your dad. I thought, well, now that you’re all grown up with kids of your own, it was time to meet him.”
For some reason, knowing that my father, a man I’d never even met, was standing just outside the door, filled me with both expectation and dread. I glanced up at Ryder, who was staring at the door with such intensity that it almost frightened me. “Ryder? What do you think?”
Ryder thought about it for a moment, exchanged looks with my mom, then blew out a long sigh and said, “Can’t hurt to meet him, I guess. If that’s what you want.”
“He just wants to say hi and see his granddaughter,” Mom said quietly. “I called him when you went into labor. He had no idea you were even born because I left school and never went back. He was very upset that I never told him about you. I think he feels like his life might have turned out better if he had known he had a daughter.”
“What do you think, Lo?” Ryder asked, laying a hand on my shoulder. I looked down at the perfect baby sleeping in my arms. I would never want her to go through life not knowing who her father was. I took a deep breath and gave my mom a nod.
“Okay, I’ll see him,” I said. “But I want to talk to him alone.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” mom asked, a sudden look of alarm on her pretty face. “I mean, you don’t even know the man. Don’t you want me here to—”
“To what?” I asked with a shrug. Ryder handed me a box of tissue and I plucked out a couple to dry my eyes and wipe my nose. “This is between my father and me.” I gave them both a confident smile. “Don’t worry. I got this.”
* * *
My father’s name was Percy Hall. He was a forty-two-year-old English teacher when he knocked up my mom when she was just sixteen. Mom said that back then, he was handsome, funny, flirty, and the object of every teenage girl’s desire. Ironically, Mr. Hall—Pervy Hall the kids called him then—was my English teacher in the tenth grade. I had no idea at the time he was my dad. I just thought he was this creepy old guy who had a reputation of eyeing the young girls, hence his nickname Pervy.
My mom just told me last year who my father really was (she claimed she didn’t know who my father was before that) and I learned everything there was to know about Percy Hall, thanks to Ryder’s ability to do deep background checks through his job at Blackwell Security. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to really meet my father, but I wanted to know all about him, just in case, as Ryder said, “There were skeletons rattling around his closet we didn’t know about.”
Percy Allen Hall was now sixty-two-years old and about to retire after forty years of teaching. He lived alone in a tiny house, had never married, never had children, and had never broken the law or done anything even remotely over the line, other than sleeping with my mother when she was just sixteen. None of us could really slam him too hard for that. I was nineteen and Ryder was thirty-two when we first had sex. My mom admitted that she had initiated the sex, seducing him in his classroom one day after school, and given that she was hot as fuck when she was sixteen and a raging nympho, I really couldn’t blame Mr. Hall for jumping at the chance to fuck her.
“You’re sure about this,” Ryder asked just before opening the door.
“I’m sure,” I said, holding my sleeping daughter close to my chest.
Mom and Ryder exchanged a quick glance, then Ryder opened the door and let my father in. I had not seen Percy Hall in four or five years. I remembered a creepy old guy who wore short-sleeved white shirts and bad ties who lurked in the hallways ogling the young girls’ asses as they walked by. When he came through the door I realized my recollection of him as the pervy old teacher was not accurate. He was nothing like I remembered. I guess I had seen him through the eyes of a judgmental, gossipy teenager and formed memories as such. Now that I was an adult, I could see him for the man he truly was. I must tell you, that realization was like a weight being lifted off my chest.
The man who walked through the door was still handsome, though his once black hair was now totally gray and receding high on his forehead, and little lines webbed from the corners of his eyes and mouth. Mom said he was a track star in college. He was still lean for his age, though he had a bit of a belly spilling over his belt. He was wearing khakis that were a little too short and a short-sleeved white shirt and loud tie. I smiled. Some things were just as I remembered, after all.
“Lolita, this is your father,” mom said, holding out her hands like a Price is Right model. She put a hand on his arm and softened her voice. “Percy, this is your daughter and granddaughter, Lolita and April.”
* * *
Mom and Ryder stepped out of the room. Percy—Dad— pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed with his hands in his lap. He had a cautious look on his face, like he wasn’t quite sure what he had gotten himself into.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, rocking gently to keep April asleep. “You were my English teacher in the tenth grade.”
“Honestly, not really,” he said quietly. “I’ve had a lot of students over the years. I mostly remember the bad ones because the good ones didn’t require much attention. I guess you were one of the good ones.”
“I got an A,” I said.
That made him smile proudly. He had a nice face, not creepy at all. We would have to work on his fashion sense, but there would be plenty of time for that… maybe.
He said, “That’s what I figured when your mom told me you were in my class. I’m afraid teaching has become a bit like an assembly line. You do the best you can, hope the kids learn something along the way, and move them on down the line.”
“Did you know the kids called you Pervy Hall?” I asked without really meaning to. I gave him a tentative smile, hoping he’d take it as a joke.
“I know,” he said, nodding, rolling his eyes. “With a name like Percy, it’s to be expected.” He sighed through a sad smile. “If my name had been Robert or John or even Edgar, maybe the kids would have come up with a nickname that wasn’t so degrading. Thank god the school administrators never took it seriously. That kind of thing can end a career.”
“I know,” I said, guilt chewing its way through my conscience. “I’m really sorry. Kids can be so mean. I know. I was one not that long ago.”
“Ah, it could have been much worse,” he said with a dismissive wave. “They called Eddie Filo, the math teacher, Pediphilo for years. And Harry Cochran, the girls’ softball coach was… well… you know.”
“Yes, I remember Coach Hairy Cock,” I said with a grin. “So, I guess Pervy Hall wasn’t so bad, after all.”
“It could have been worse,” he said.
I nodded at the sleeping baby in my arms. “Would you like to meet your granddaughter?”
Percy’s face lit up when he looked at the baby who was sleeping peacefully against my chest. He reached out to touch her little hand. Her tiny fingers instinctively wrapped around his finger. I watched his eyes fill with tears.
“I wish I’d known about you,” he said quietly, gently pulling his hand back and taking a deep breath. “I never had kids, I mean, other than you. I always thought it would be nice to be someone’s dad.”
“Why did you never get married?” I asked, sticking my nose right in again. Did you know they called you Pervy Hall? Why didn’t you ever get married? Are you gay or just hard to live with? Blah blah blah… Screw it, we had twenty years to make up for. There wasn’t time for beating around the bush.
“I guess I just never met the right person,” he said with a long sigh. He fingered his loud, ugly tie and looked away. “I mean, I dated some nice women over the years, but nothing long-term ever came of it. I was engaged once, in my twenties, to a woman named Carla, but it didn’t work out.”
“Why didn’t it work out?”
His shoulders slowly rose and fell. “I was just starting out as a teacher here in Arlington and she was finishing med school at Johns Hopkins in Maryland. We were together for nearly three years and engaged for six months, but when she graduated med school she broke it off. I think her parents were pushing her to marry someone more equal to her stature in life. Her dad was a rich doctor and never really liked me much.” He gave me a sad look. “I think she wanted to be married to something more than a simple high school English teacher. She wanted me to get my Ph.D. and teach college, which I wasn’t really interested in doing. So…”
“Carla sounds like a real bitch,” I said. I felt myself getting pissed at this woman I’d never met on his behalf. How dare she do that to my dad?
He shrugged again. “Yeah, I guess. It was probably for the best. To be perfectly honest, I’m a bit of a recluse. I’m not really that comfortable around people.” He bowed his head and stared at his hands in his lap. “But if I’d known about you, well, things might have been different.”
“There’s still plenty of time to be a dad,” I said, holding out my hand to him. He blinked at my hand for a moment, then slowly set his hand in mine. “I mean, this whole parenting thing is new to me, too. Maybe we can learn together.”
“I’d like that,” he said, squeezing my hand as tears flowed down his cheeks. “I’d like that a lot.”