A Brief Conversation Between Christina and Her Father

THEY WERE HALFWAY HOME ON THEIR SECOND TRIP FROM THE AIRPORT when Mr. Williams made his objection clear: he would not have a child at the age of forty-seven. His twenty-three-year-old daughter, petite and pretty in her papaya whip summer dress and soft navy bandana, remained hushed behind the wheel of her blue sedan. Although she did not quite agree with him, her reticence had stemmed from another issue, a thornier affair concerning her uncle she needed to discuss with him that Sunday afternoon before they got home. She figured that her revelation of this secret shouldn’t shock him anymore because he must have known of her skepticism by now, perhaps way before she even went off to school to study meteorology.

The small luggage responsible for their swift U-turn to Fort Lauderdale now sat in the rear passenger seat of the brand-new 2002 Volvo. For a man who had traveled the world, Mr. Williams could not recall a single time when he had left his luggage at the airport. This must have been a sign of the times, he thought—a day he should mark regardless of his age that perhaps he was coming down with the unfortunate symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Christina begged to differ, given the recent developments concerning her mother’s gestation. Her mother was in her early forties. Unlike her younger brother, Avian, she believed her muscular-looking father would live to see a hundred years. He would not just outlive her, but also that spook from Langley, whom she had spotted once and whom Mr. Williams still regarded as friend and mentor. She could not explain that line of thinking; she just knew it like a good old fortune teller.

“How you figure she’s gonna take it?” Mr. Williams asked, tucking Christina’s curly hair behind her ear as if he had missed that sweet face of innocence for too long.

“Dad…I have no idea. You know mother.”

“How about you, sweetheart?”

“I’m pretty sure you know where I stand on this.”

Still sullen, Mr. Williams chuckled. He still believed a part of Christina wanted him to reconsider. It had not been made official, but he suspected that Christina’s husband did not wish to or couldn’t have any children.

“First and foremost, this should be about you and mother, not me.” Christina forced a smile. “Whatever makes you happy makes me happy. You know that.”

Mr. Williams awaited his daughter to make eye contact with him in vain. He slackened his black tie with a grunt. The muffled traffic noise of the highway made him more ill-at-ease. Although it was unlike the voices he sometimes heard screaming in his sleep, he needed to be somewhere else now. He felt like swimming or taking a barefoot stroll all alone in the wet sand on the beach. They had driven for several miles now, and still, Christina had not said anything else. “Why do you think she’s doing this to me?” Mr. Williams asked. He made no effort to disguise the increasing ire in his voice.

Taken aback by his ignorance, his tenacity even to ask, Christina frowned. “I’ll pass. I think you’d have to ask her that one yourself.”

“To get under my skin. What else?” His face stiffened even more. “Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to quit just so I could be home? Just wasn’t that simple. I’m sorry.” His stern black eyes moved from the windshield to the glove compartment. “And what was I supposed to do, huh? Gave her a nice, sweet little lecture on what I used to do for a living whenever I had a chance to stop by?”

“Don’t have the faintest idea,” Christina said, surprised that her father had not yet mentioned the word classified, regarding his precious little government assignments. Not twenty seconds went by, she continued, “Of all people, you should know how I hate to sound like a sanctimonious cunt—pardon my French. It’s just that I think you should try to live in her shoes a minute. See what it’s been like. Hell, maybe all you guys should try this for a change.” Christina didn’t just miss her father’s bedtime stories as a little girl, she needed him to be there on graduation day to see her in her prom dress and even dance with her.

Mr. Williams’ lips parted to suggest that this was unfair. But nothing escaped his mouth except for a slight yet lasting wheezing sound that vexed the living hell out of his daughter. To Christina, this projected an image of a victim being strangled with a garrote in a gangster movie. Mr. Williams removed the tie and loosened one button of his shirt. This impelled Christina to decelerate. She brought the car to a graceful halt on the shoulder in the mild sun. She unbuckled her seatbelt and watched her father open the door to gasp a gulp of fresh air of the Sunshine State spring.

“I’m okay,” Mr. Williams said and shut the door. Christina had offered him her water. “God, I thought I was gonna throw up making a hell of a mess in your car. All right, you can take off now.” But staring off through her window at the office towers and high-rise hotels or the highway itself, Christina did not resume driving. She did not hear her father this time. Mr. Williams had to call out her name twice for her to remove the hand she had curled up under her chin and turn to him. It was at this very moment he noticed what his wife had confided in him over the phone about their daughter: the discontent gnawing away at Christina for the past few years.

“Dad, let me ask you something. But let’s not fight over it. Please.”

“Okay.”

“Did you have something to do with that horrible car crash that killed my uncle?”

His face flushed in outright disbelief. He could only scoff at her.

Christina glowered at her father, her left hand gripping the steering wheel, her right hand moved behind his headrest. “Avian is not your son. I know. Avian isn’t in the dark neither.” She would accept and respect his decision if he so chose to keep his silence. He was just not permitted to do one thing, and one thing only: deceive her by twisting the truth in a way to suit him.

“Your mother believes so,” Mr. Williams said. “Doesn’t matter what I say. Twenty-four goddamn years and she still thinks I’m this living monster who—”

“Leave her out of it! That’s not what I asked!”

The harshness in Christina’s voice, followed by the look of resignation on her face, nettled Mr. Williams. The sweat on his forehead had increased twofold by the time he produced a cigarette from his chest pocket. He lit the cigarette, drew from it, and opened his window a little. He looked his daughter in the eye and said, “No, I did not.” Mr. Williams reached over to stroke Christina’s cheek while she tried to process all this. Her eyes had already welled up with tears. “Why don’t we have dinner tonight?” Mr. Williams asked. “We don’t have to go out. I’ll cook.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Well, I was counting on you to give me a hand.”

Christina granted her father a little smile. After a while, she took the cigarette from him and lowered her window. They smoked in complete silence while she mulled over whether to inform him that she and her husband had been seeing a marriage counselor for the past two months.