He wouldn't come out of the water. Sadie sat on the beach blanket, slathered in a greasy skin of lotion, as breaded with sand as a cutlet, hot and itchy and tired. The sun was in her eyes but still, she watched her father's head bobbing out in the ocean. He was so far apart from the other swimmers, he seemed alone.

The beach was cooling down. People were gathering their things: blankets, beach rafts, and the squirming hands of their kids. They were heading out to the drive-ins, the restaurants, the shade of their own cottages. They walked past Sadie and her mother, shifting the sands, laughing and talking. Sadie brushed herself off. Her mother, Louise, shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand and frowned. "He always does this," Louise said wearily. "Once again, we're going to be the last ones on this beach." She stood up, tugging down the high-cut legs of her red two piece, her stomach brown and flat, her long pale hair unfurling like a flag to her waist. Louise was thirty-nine years old and men on the beach still looked at her, women still turned their heads, appraising, more than they did at Sadie, who was built like a swizzle straw, whose suit was plain and one-piece and deep blue, with padding at the bust, whose hair wasn't the thick gold gloss of her mothers, but a dirtier blonde fizz to her chin.

Louise scanned the horizon and waved. "Yoo hoo, Bill," she said weakly. She glumly sat down. She rested her chin on her knees.
"There. Here he comes," Sadie pointed. Her father began swimming back to the shore, stepping onto the sand, water sluicing from his plaid boxers, his black hair slicked back. He was freckled and tanned both. He was thin and sharp featured. He shook the water from him, sprinkling them with droplets, the way a dog might. "Cut it out!" Sadie said, and he laughed and kept shaking. The water droplets made her feel hotter than ever. She got out of his way. He shook at her again deliberately and then picked up the blanket.

"We'd better get going if we're going to make our reservations," Louise said."I still have to shower off this salt."
"It's too late to go out," he said. "Let's just eat at home."
"It's not a vacation if I have to cook."
"Well, Louise, it's not a vacation if I have to pay for something we can do ourselves."
Bill gathered up the beach things. "Let's go," he said.

Sadie knew this scenario. Hot weather. Hot tempers. Nobody and nothing ever really cooling down.
Every July since she could remember, it went this way. Her family rented a cottage on Cape Cod for two weeks. You always knew what you were getting. Yarmouth or Hyannis Port. A too-small box of a cottage with no air conditioning, the windows flung open for the nonexistent "nice fresh breeze" Louise assured everyone was about to come in any moment. Pine needle lawns and no front porch. Crowded beaches buzzing with horseflies and kids and the tinny scratch of radios, the high point of the day being when the ice cream trunk came, and all of this because they couldn't afford the more deserted, gentile richness of Truro.

For two weeks, they all had a routine. Beach in the morning, lunch at home, more beach, maybe a little shopping and then, the one thing that gave Bill real pleasure, a drive-in movie at night, where they all sat silently together. They were all exhausted by the heat, by the things they did each day as if they had to do them. The first thing they did was hit the Cape library and stock up on books, as thick as fists. Bill grabbed non-fiction, Sadie and Louise dreamily devoured novels. Sadie liked to read on the beach, getting lost in what she was reading. She wasn't stuck on a hot beach with her parents. She was in love in Paris. She was walking on the moon. She was anywhere and everywhere else. "Let me see," Louise said, tapping Sadie. Paris vanished. A toddler screamed. Louise peered over Sadie's shoulder. Bill looked up, distracted. "Is your book good?" Sadie finally asked him. He shrugged and turned a page, looked down.

This was the year Sadie was sixteen, the summer she had her first boyfriend. His name was Danny. He had gone to Sadie's school, but they didn't share classes, and he almost always had a pretty blonde girlfriend on his arm who looked right through Sadie, the same way he did. He was smart and funny and going to MIT on full scholarship in the fall, and there was no reason for him to be interested in Sadie. He never spoke to Sadie, not until the first day of summer, when he came into the Sweet Dreams bakery where she was working, her hair a nimbus of curls, her pink uniform dusted with sugar, and he suddenly seemed to see her. He blinked, shaking his head, as if he were trying to clear something.
"I know you," he said. He put his hands in his pockets. He looked down at the cupcakes. "Sadie." It startled her, hearing him say her name. It worked its way deep into her bones. "You're always reading," he said. She drew back, stung, but then she saw that he was smiling at her, that he kept smiling even after he bought a dozen chocolate chip cookies. "Reading's good for you," he said and bit into a cookie. He stopped at the door, considering, and then opened it, and left.

Every day after that, he came in for cookies. He took his time. He talked about MIT, about the stars and sometimes, too, about his mother, a divorcee who went out every night to the Holiday Inn to husband hunt. "People think I'm golden boy, but it's not that at all," he told Sadie. "We don't have money. I had to work hard to get into school, even harder to get a scholarship, and every day, over my head, like this drumbeat, I keep hearing 'you can't fuck this up, you can't fuck this up'." He leaned on the counter. "You're a good listener. You understand me."

She couldn't tell him that he was making her so nervous she couldn't speak. Not with words, anyway. Instead, she tucked in extra chocolate cookies into his bag, a pair of mint clouds and a macaroon, her own whole sweet language. The air sugared around them, sweeter and sweeter the more he came in for cookies, and then one day, he came and put his hands, broad and flat and beautiful, on the glass case, making prints she'd have to wipe off. "I didn't come for brownies," he said. "I came for you."
She blinked at him, shocked. "I'm not blonde," she blurted, and then flushed, humiliated.
He laughed. "Who wants you to be?"
She shrugged. "Well, your other girlfriends-"
"I like you because you're different. I'd like to get to know you."
She swallowed. "I'd like to get to know you, too."
"So let's do something."
She stood still.
"Say a movie. Say something to eat afterwards. Say this Friday." He waited. "Say yes."
"Yes," she said.

"You're too young to date," Bill told her that evening.
"She is not," Louise said. She was giddy. She acted as if it were happening to her and not Sadie. "I can take you shopping, buy you a dress."
"No one wears dresses."
"Well, they should."
Bill frowned. "She's too young," he repeated.
Louise met his gaze. "I was her age when I fell in love."
Sadie moved away from both of them. She knew her mother didn't mean with her father.

Sadie's parents were a couple but Sadie didn't know why or how. They slept in twin beds with a red maple night stand smack in the middle, the same way as those 1950s sitcoms everyone was always making fun of. They didn't hold hands or do more than peck kisses at each other and late at night, the only murmur of voices Sadie ever heard was coming from the radio, from one of the talk shows her mother loved to listen to.

Sadie knew how her parents had met. Louise told her it was at an adult camp, a month after Louise had been jilted by the man she really loved. Sadie had seen his picture, a gleaming blonde with a mischievous smile, who had run off and married someone else, and if Sadie wondered why Louise kept the photo, she didn't ask. According to Louise, Bill had fallen in love with her at first sight. He hadn't cared that her eyes were red from crying, that the name she sometimes murmured wasn't his. "I was twenty-eight and already an old maid," Louise told Sadie, and so, two months later, she and Bill were married, and a year later, Sadie arrived.

Early on, Sadie knew her father wasn't like other fathers. She couldn't remember him reading her a story, taking her to the park or the zoo or anything other than a movie, and that didn't count because he was silent then, and they always saw movies he wanted to see and he didn't like to talk about them afterwards, either. He didn't laugh with her or hug her much or ask her what she had done that day. He didn't have a passion for golf or badminton the way some of the other fathers did, men who took their girls with them and taught them a little something. Instead, Sadie's father's passion was for the vegetable garden that took up half their backyard, and when she even got close to it, he shouted at her, so loudly, she burst into tears.

He spent hours ordering seeds from catalogs, whole weekends mulching and planting and spraying, whistling to himself. It was Louise who filled Sadie's days, who took her shopping and out to eat, who sat for hours talking to her. Louise who made dresses for Sadie's dolls and brushed Sadie's hair.
Bill was gone before Sadie even woke in the morning. When he came home, he sat in the leather chair in the living room and read the paper, or a book, and after dinner, he went to his den and worked. When she thought of it now, she could remember two nice things he had done for her. When she was ten, he had confronted the librarian who had refused to let Sadie into the adult section. "This is my daughter and she has my permission to be anywhere she wants. And when she can read these books, she can take out whatever book she wants," he said. He guided Sadie towards the adult books. "Don't you dare try to stop her." And once, when Sadie was coloring a picture, he walked behind her and put his hand on her hair, stroking it, and when she turned around, starting, he was already in the other room. Two nice things. It didn't seem like very much.

One night, when she was five, she woke to hear her parents arguing. "Who's her nursery school teacher?" Louise shouted. "What's her favorite thing to do? You don't know, do you? You don't have a clue?" Sadie pressed her ear against the wall. Her father's voice was low, insistent, muffled.
"Wrong," Louise shouted. "Everything about you is wrong."
Hearing them argue made her afraid. Suddenly, she saw ghosts in the closet, a big black dog growling just under the bed. She got up and switched on her light and then she padded into her parents room, her flowered flannel nightgown frilling about her knees.
The room was dark. Her parents had stopped arguing. She crawled into Louise's bed. Even at night, her mother smelled of gardenia and powder. Sadie snuggled against Louise, who sighed, and then Sadie slept.

It became a habit. She'd go to bed and wake up and crawl in bed with Louise, who never seemed to mind, who never told her she was too big a girl for such nonsense.
And then one day, Bill asked if Sadie would sleep with him, too. "You used to sleep in my arms when you were a baby," he said.
Sadie blinked at him. Her heart hammered in her chest.
"Don't you think I can keep away the boogie man as well as your mother?" He sat in the kitchen chair. He looked defeated and sad, and Sadie suddenly felt so responsible she couldn't bear it. "Yes," she said.
"Ah, that's my girl," he said. He ruffled her hair, leaving the kitchen, and as soon as he did, the enormity of what she had down struck her like a blow.

The night Sadie was to sleep in her father's bed, he came home at six, the way he usually did, but he was smiling. "Hi Sadie," he said. The three of them ate dinner as if nothing were wrong. Lamb chops and baby peas and bright yellow corn from the can, Green Giant, the kind Sadie liked. Chocolate pudding peaked with Cool Whip for dessert. Sadie dallied that night, brushing each tooth, washing her face two times, getting in and out of three different pairs of pajamas. Sadie padded into her parents room. They were both in bed, reading, both in pajamas, both smiling. "Here's our girl," her father said. Sadie climbed across her mother and into his bed. Sadie curled towards the wall and he curled against her, and where her mother was soft and warm, her father was angular and unyielding. Sadie felt the press of him against her.

"Nighty night," her mother said, switching off the light. Sadie's eyes flew open. Her father flung one arm about her, trapping her. Sadie pretended to be asleep. She made her breathing long and even. She snored, and then her father hoisted himself up. She felt his breath on her face, and then he lowered himself down again. He stroked her hair and then he slept.

Sadie didn't sleep. She didn't like her father's breath on the back of her neck. Sadie didn't like his body so close to hers. She shifted, but she wouldn't turn toward him. She didn't want to see him facing her. Sadie kept her eyes open, and on her mother, in the bed next to us. She tried to will Louise to open her eyes, to see her discomfort and rescue her. Come on, she begged. Come on. Louise stretched and pulled the blanket over her. Sadie kept her eyes wide open.

In the morning, Sadie was exhausted. She couldn't remember sleeping, but she must have, because the bed was now gloriously empty. She could look across and see Louise sleeping, her hair tumbled across the pillow. She looked up and there was her father, walking across the room naked. There was his penis! Long and dark, like poop, bumping against his leg. She recoiled and her father suddenly saw her, and he covered himself with his hands. He frowned. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Sadie?" he demanded. Sadie shut her eyes so tightly, she saw pinpoints of light. Bill walked to the closet, jerking down his robe, belting it tight, and then strode from the room. She stayed in bed until she heard his car. No one talked about that night again, but Sadie stopped crawling into Louise' bed. That night and every night after. Instead, she learned to sleep with her covers hooded over her face against the ghosts she heard whispering, calling her name. Her father never asked her to share his bed again, and Sadie never offered. "You're growing up," Louise said, approvingly.

Sadie didn't realize you could have a different sort of father until she was ten and became friends with a girl down the street named Judy Harper. Judy was skinny and pindotted with freckles. She had long red hair and laughed with her mouth wide open. She was an only child and her father was warm and funny, with the same red hair as Judy's, the same bountiful laugh. He always gave Sadie a hug. He seemed genuinely happy to see her, genuinely interested in what she had to say. He'd sit opposite her and lean forward. "Tell me what's going on in Sadie's world." Mr. Harper piled Judy and Sadie into the car and took them to the park and the diner. He joined in when they sang hit tunes in the car. He gave Sadie and Judy bites of his sundaes, fries from his plate. "Now, what do you say we go shopping?" he said. Judy clapped her hands.

They went to the mall, to the TeenScene shop. All the new sweaters were in, rows of golds and greens and blues. Sadie flipped the price tag over on one of the sweaters. $80. Louise would never pay that. She got all their clothes in Filene's Basement. "This, and this, and this-" Judy said, piling sweaters into her father's arms. Sadie leaned along the racks, feeling her heart split with yearning, and then Mr. Harper came over and studied Sadie. "You know, I think blue is your color," he said, and then he whisked one off the rack and held it up against her. "I was right," he said. "I'm going to have to buy it for you as a present."

"Oh, yeah, get the blue!" Judy called, grabbing down a two-tone stripe. Sadie threw her arms around Mr. Harper. "You're the best father in the world!" she said, and he laughed, and she meant it, but not the way he thought.
She wore the sweater home. She modeled it for Louise and Bill, her face shining. "You have to take it back," Bill said. "You want sweaters, we'll buy them for you."
"Mom-"
"You're bringing it back," Louise said. "It's too expensive to keep."
"Fine," Sadie said, bunching up the offending sweater She never brought it back. Instead she had brought it to school, she had kept it in her locker and changed into it until it got so dirty and stained, she couldn't wear it anymore.

After that, it wasn't as much fun being at Judy's house. She began to hate Judy for having a father who asked about your day, who talked to you and took you places and gave you hugs just because he felt like it. She began to hate Mr. Harper, too, for being so kind, so open. 'Honey, is something bothering you?" he asked the last time she was there. He sat down opposite her. He tried to get her to look at him. "Well, I'm always here to talk. You know that, don't you?" His voice was kind, but she couldn't listen. She couldn't hear. All his kindness did was remind her how much she was missing. It hammered home what it was she didn't have. It was better not to see him, better not to be reminded of what you did and didn't have.
She stopped going over to Judy's. "But why not?" Judy asked. "I never get to see you anymore." Her voice was soft, plaintive.
"I can't," Sadie said. "I have to go to the dentist." Then, while Judy was bowling with her father, or eating out with her father, or watching a movie with her father, Sadie sat in the backyard leafing through magazines, thinking about her parents being killed in an accident. Killed suddenly, before they knew what hit them. The cops would come to the door, or maybe a kindly social worker. They'd tell her and then before they could take her to an orphanage, because there was no other place for her, no living relatives, Mr. Harper would come to her rescue. "I've always thought of her as mine," he'd say.
Sometimes she imagined her parents divorcing, instead, arguing over who would take Sadie. The Judge, a kindly man with long white hair and blue eyes would call Sadie into his study. "So Sadie, who would you like to live with?" No matter how many times she played the game, she always said Louise.

It wasn't until Sadie began dating Danny that Bill suddenly seemed to take new interest in her. The week of her first date, he began to ask her questions. "What does this boy do? How did you meet him?"
"He went to my high school. He's going to MIT next year. you, I met him at the bakery."
"Who are his parents?"
"I'm not marrying him!"
"Things happen."
"Bill, for God's sakes," said Louise. "It's a date."
The night of Sadie's date she wore new blue jeans and a tight black tee shirt. "Don't you think your guy would love to see you in a dress?" Louise coaxed. Bill frowned. "You be home by eleven," he said. Danny was supposed to come inside, to meet her parents, but as soon as Sadie heard his car, she was so keyed up she bolted outside to meet him. She jumped in his car. He was in a black tee shirt and jeans, too. He smiled at her.
"Go, go, go," she ordered.
He buckled her in beside him in the car, tightening the seat belt, tugging her close.
They didn't do much that night. They walked by the Charles River and when she stubbed her toe, she pretended nothing had happened. Her whole foot throbbed, and she was grateful when he suggested they sit on the banks.
They didn't talk much, but it didn't matter. She was already so in love with him he could have suggested they bay at the moon and she would have, so when he took her back to his house, to his parent's basement, she followed along. He lowered her onto he black leather couch so that when she looked up she saw the a Venus paint by number deer on the wall. He undid her blouse a button at a time, and he shook his head in admiration. "I have never seen anything like you in my life."

He kissed her stomach, her knees, knobby as teacups, her feet, her flossy hair. Sadie had had never had a real boyfriend before. "I'm not ready," she whispered, and he nodded at her. He lay back down and cradled her in his arms. "That's ok," he told her. "I can wait."
She could tell he was asleep by the way he was breathing. His arm was thrown across her, his eyes rolled in dreams and then she looked up and saw the time. One in the morning. She bolted up. His arm fell from her. ""What?" He blinked at her. She grabbed her purse. "I'm half an hour late," she said, panicked.
"How can you be so beautiful?" he said, but he got up, he pulled on his clothes and helped her with his, and then right before they got to the door, he leaned her to him and kissed her again.

She was nervous all the way home, but he played the radio. He tapped his hand on the dashboard. "I'll come in with you," he said.
"No, yes-no-" she said, flustered.
Inside, the house was cool and dark. "They're out looking for me," she said humiliated. Danny smiled. He tilted her face up to him. "Then we have time," he said and started kissing her again. She shut her eyes and then she heard something and her eyes flew open and there was her father, in his grey robe, striding out, his face set and furious. His robe opened up. You could see his underwear, and Sadie flushed, shamed. "Where were you?" he said. "Your mother is out looking for you."
"Sir," Danny held out his hand. Bill looked at it for a moment and then back at Sadie. "It's very late," he said. "You were supposed to come inside and meet us before you took our daughter out." He looked at Sadie. "And you were supposed to be home on time."
"Sir, it's my fault-"Danny said.
"You had better go now."
Danny nodded. He opened the door and stepped out, and then Bill shut and locked the door behind him. "How could you do this?" Sadie asked.
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. " How could you?" he said.

She was grounded for two weeks. She had to apologize to Louise, apologize to her father, but she didn't care, because every day during her lunch hour at Sweet Dreams, she met Danny and they drove someplace. They went to the next town and had coffee, they went into Boston and walked around and went on the Swanboats, and they sat in his car and kissed.

When she wasn't grounded anymore, he made sure to show up on time, to talk to Bill and Louise and show them the itinerary for the dates he had planned. "Dinner in the Square, then a movie at the Brattle," she said

They never went. Instead, they went to Danny's house, because his mother was never home. They sprawled on her bed and watched TV or cooked dinner, and then ten minutes before Sadie's curfew, he drove her home. It was a whole secret world no one knew about but them.
The first time they made love was in his den. She felt small electric shocks. She tugged back, panicked. "I'm still not ready," she whispered. He stopped, so suddenly she felt stunned, and all she could think of was how much she wanted his hands touching her again, telling her secrets she didn't even know about her own self.
She didn't know what to do.
"You're everything to me," he said. And then he kissed her neck, her face, her fingers, and then she forgot to stay his hands, to protest. Instead, she shut her eyes. "I'm not ready," she whispered, but she arched her back, and moved toward him, as if he were her fate. She memorized every part of him she could touch and see.
Afterwards, she was silent. "Did I hurt you?" he asked. She looked up, rolling to her side, her face away from him, and he leaned over to her, brushing her hair from her face. "Sadie?" he said, and then she looked at him,. She lifted up one hand and put it against his face. "Mine," she said.

It was that summer, just a month after she had started dating Danny, that Bill decided to go on vacation three weeks instead of two. "Three!" Sadie said. She couldn't imagine being away from Danny for three days, let alone three weeks. "I'm seventeen. Why can't I just stay home?" she said. "I could watch the house, get the mail, water the garden."
Bill shook his head. "This is a family vacation."
"That's right. " Louise nodded.
Sadie argued and fought and finally Louise said, "well if you really hate it, you can leave after a week, I suppose. You could take a train back. " and Sadie threw her arms about her mother. Already, she was seeing it. The whole house and no one but her and Danny in it. This was it, she told herself. This was the last vacation.

The ride up to the Cape seemed longer than before, crawling with traffic. The drone of the radio bothered her. Bill was now completely silent, and Louise was talking far too much, making Sadie respond when all she wanted to do was sleep and dream about the way Danny kissed her. Sadie felt cramped in the backseat with the suitcases, the wicker picnic basket of sandwiches everyone was too hot to even nibble at. Her legs were too long. Her arms too ungainly. She sat in the car and thought about Danny. She stared out the window, while Karen Carpenter crooned that she had always just begun.

Sadie had taken her time packing for the beach, but once they got there she found that she had forgotten essential things. Her favorite sunglasses with the fake jewel tips. Sun dresses. Sun block with such a high SPF factor she could go on the surface of the sun and not tan. The library hadn't had any books she felt like reading so she was forced to take a trilogy about a young French wife living in Paris with her husband Pierre. Sadie kept the suitcase on her bed like an open mouth, telling everyone just how Sadie felt about being there. She kept Danny's photo tucked in the bleary mirror over her dresser and every night she kissed it. She whispered endearments to him, as if he could hear her. I love you. I want you. I need you desperately. Desperately. She liked that word. It fit her. "Desperately," she said out loud.
Her parents got ready to go to the beach and she sprawled on her twin bed reading. Louise came in and frowned. Her curly red hair was pinned up with a flower clip. She was in a bright yellow bikini and flip flops and she smelled of the Skin So Soft she used to keep the horseflies off her. "You're not in your suit?"
"I'm not going. I hate the beach," Sadie said.
"Since when?"
"Since now."
Bill walked by, an armful of the ice cream colored shorts he liked to wear folded across his arm. "Come to the beach."
"I don't feel good." She put her hand on her head.

It was four days into the family vacation and her parents were fighting again over what to do about dinner. Louise wanted to go to Thompson's Clam Bar. Bill wanted to have corn on the cob at home. Bill sat silently in the kitchen, drumming his hand son the table and finally Louise jerked open a cabinet and slammed two plates down on the table, so forcefully one of them broke in two. "Fine," she said. "Here's your plate." They fought all that evening and that night when Sadie woke up to get a drink of water, Sadie found her mother sleeping alone on the couch, her back to her, the sheets thrown off. Sadie crouched and picked up the sheet. Sadie put it over her. She didn't stir.

Her parents fought when they went to Trader Vics, a tacky three-story souvenir shop Sadie had loved when Sadie was in grade school. Her father refused to come inside but sat out in the broiling heat, waiting for us, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. They fought at dinner, a cheap Italian restaurant with checked oilcloths on the tables because her father still thought it was too expensive. "Look at these prices."
"This is a vacation!" Louise hissed.
"Can't you please just stop?" Sadie said.
"Watch your tone," Bill said.
"Eat your fries," Louise angrily ordered.
"What did I do?" Sadie demanded.
"Your fries--" Louise said. Sadie bolted up to find a phone, to call Danny, and found one in the back, and when Sadie picked it up, there was no dial tone.
She came back to the table to find Bill handing the waiter the money, Louise shaking her head at the dessert menu, getting her sweater.

On the ride home, no one spoke. Bill turned on a droning ball game, and in minutes, Louise and Sadie began to sleep. Sadie dreamed. Danny was in front of her, telling her something, his words getting lost in the ball game. "Look," he said. He pointed to the highway which had forked in two, which was suddenly alive, curling up like a serpent about to strike. And then she heard a shout, and a scream and her eyes fluttered open and she saw that Louise was screaming, too, and that Bill was careening the car down the grassy embankment of the highway, frantically trying to steer, his feet banging on the breaks. The car rolled and bumped. Sadie's head snapped back. Louise braced her hands along the dashboard and then Bill jerked the wheel to the side and the car stopped. For a moment, no one moved, and then Louise scrambled out of the car, panting. She jerked open Sadie's door and then Bill's. She waited for him to climb out, and then she struck him so hard in the chest, he fell back a step.

"You fell asleep!" Louise screamed. "You fell asleep on the highway!" Stricken, he stepped back. He ignored her. He crouched and studied the car.

"We're alive," he finally said, but he kept looking at the car, touching it. He reached for Louise and then for Sadie, holding her so close she could feel his heartbeat. But Sadie didn't feel alive. The sun broiled her. The air was thick with its heat. Sadie wanted to be anywhere but where Sadie was and then Louise whirled around and glared at her. "Look at that face on you. You don't care if we died, do you?" she demanded. And for a moment, standing there in the shimmer of the heat and the road, the cars moving past like a river, Sadie didn't know.

They got back in the car. "I'm driving," Louise announced, and then Bill sat beside her, not saying a word, not commenting on the way she drove five miles below the speed limit, the careful way she took her turns. As soon as they were back at the cottage, Sadie went outside and called Danny from the phone at the convenience store. "Come before I kill herself," Sadie urged.

He was driving to see her the next day. She kept repeating it to herself, imagine, he was driving all that way to come and see her! He couldn't stay, but he'd be there just when her parents went to the beach, which was perfect timing. He'd leave a half hour before they usually got back. She wouldn't tell them a thing.

The day Danny was due to arrive, Sadie rushed her parents out of the house. Louise looked at her doubtfully. "Maybe I'll meet you at the beach later," Sadie faltered. Louise beamed.
They were gone only half an hour when Danny showed up, and then Sadie didn't quite recognize him. Sadie couldn't tell if anything was different or not.. Sadie had never seen anyone so beautiful. Sadie wanted to touch him, to swallow him whole inside of her. It was as if he had a sheen about him, like a kind of suntan oil, glossy and inviting, and if anyone had told her you couldn't fall in love more than once with the same person, Sadie would have told them they were nuts, because that was exactly what was happening to her.

Danny leaned forward and kissed her. His mouth tasted like salt, but not ocean salt. More as if he had been eating french fries. They went inside and sat on the couch and he smoked a cigarette and then he leaned forward and touched her, and then they were tumbling. They rolled on the ground, the windows wide open, they made love, and every time she dared to look at him, he had his eyes wide open. He was watching her.
"Well," Danny said. He stood up. Beautiful and naked, so easy in his own skin, Sadie couldn't help but admire him.
She listened to the water in the shower. One of them had to stand as lookout otherwise she would have just gone in there with him. Sadie tapped her fingers on the glass. She bent and picked up Danny's denim shirt and held it to her face. It felt as if a whirlpool had formed within her, spinning deeper inside. She put the shirt down, dazed. She picked up his pants and his wallet flew out. She knew she shouldn't. What kind of a girl was she? Didn't she trust him? She opened the wallet. A stick of gum. A driver's licence with his blurry face. And a piece of paper. Evelyn, it said, 666-4577. Sadie felt sick. She went over to the phone and called. A girl answered. "Hello?" she said, and Sadie hung up. When Danny came out, his hair slick like a seal, his face sunburnt, Sadie was crying.
"Did I miss something?" Danny said, puzzled.
"Who's Evelyn?"
"She's no one." He looked around. "Why would you even say that name?"
"You had her name on a piece of paper. It-it fell out of your wallet when I was picking your things up."
He sighed. "Sadie, I want you to come home."
He cupped her chin in his hands. He kissed her. "I'll call you tonight," he said and then Sadie made a decision. "I'm coming home," she said.

She was sprawled on the couch reading when her parents came back in. "You missed a wonderful day," Louise said.
"I'm going home," Sadie blurted. She stood up. "I'm going to take the train. I hate the beach. I hate the sun. No one else her age has to take vacations with their family." She looked at Louise. "You said if I stayed the week, I could go home. We agreed."
"You're staying here," Bill said.
Sadie shook her head. She looked at Louise. "You said if I had a bad time-"
"Sadie-" Louise said, wearily. " can't you just stay?"
"You are staying. I'm your father and I say you're staying."
Sadie turned around, grabbing her purse, and headed for the door. "My father!" she cried angrily. "I'm going."
And then Louise was suddenly crying, suddenly grabbing for Sadie's arm. "Don't leave me here with him," her mother whispered and Sadie walked out the door.

Sadie wasn't sure where she was going. She had ten dollars in her pocket, and she jabbed her thumb out to hitch, but the only person who picked her up was a woman who scolded her for hitching and a guy who wanted to know if Sadie knew what fellatio meant. He smiled at her, clean scrubbed, friendly. "It means I call the cops," Sadie told him, and he peeled to a stop. He leaned across her, making her stiffen, but all he did was pull up the button and jerk open the door. "Get out," he said, still smiling.
There was no place to go but the beach. She'd think what to do. Maybe she'd hitch. Maybe she'd get to the Greyhound Station and have enough to get somewhere. The beach was cold and dark and deserted. Kind of spooky, she thought. And then she heard a car slowing behind her. Great. The fellatio guy come back to show her what he meant. Some other pervert. Some maniac. Well, she was in no mood to take anything from anybody. Sadie jammed up her third finger. She kept walking along the road and then she heard someone speak.

"Sadie." Her name pulled like a hook deep in her throat. "Sadie." Sadie turned and there was her father in the car, and he was crying, his face crumpling. It was the first time she had ever seen him weep. It pinned her in place. "Please," he said. "Please get in, Sadie. Oh God, please."

He started to put his head on the wheel and then looked back at her. His face was streaked with tears. Sadie got into the car. He turned the motor off. He swiped one hand across his eyes. "I thought you had gone." His voice sounded different to her. "I didn't know what to do." His shoulders shook. His eyes were so swollen they were pin dots. He touched her and Sadie jolted back. "You're all I have."
"You have Mom."

He shook his head. "I never had your mom." He swiped at his eyes. "Your mother has no use for me. She never did. You think I don't know that?"

Sadie looked at him, shocked. Her side of the door was unlocked. She could jump out again. All she had to do was put her hand on the door and turn it. All she had to do was move one leg after the other.
"You said I don't know anything about you," her father said. "But do you know anything about me? Did you know I wanted to be a doctor? That my father said fine, pay for it yourself. Did you know that? I tried to. I went to work, I saved, but I couldn't make enough to do more than go to community college and be a salesman. Did you know I suffered, too?" He looked at her. "Don't you love me? I know I'm not your mother's dream. I'm not the doctor I wanted to be. If you say I'm not your father, then what am I?"

He pulled her against him. She felt herself stiffen.
"Your mother said if I couldn't find you she would divorce me. She said I couldn't expect her to be in the cottage if you weren't with me." He kissed Sadie's face, her chin, the tips of her fingers.
"She wouldn't leave."
"She got the suitcase out." He held Sadie's hand in his right hand, and with his left, he snapped on the radio. A peppy tune chirped on. "You like this song?" he said hopefully. His grip tightened.
She had never heard it before. It sounded like an advertising jingle to her."Sure. Sure I like it."
"See? Now I know something about you. I know you like this song. And you know something about me. That I like it, too. Now we know something about each other. It's something to build on, isn't it?"
He was staring at her, pinning her in place. Sadie nodded.
"Do you want to talk more? Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
"No." All the questions she had ever had about him folded back like a row of dominos.
"Well, then, let's head back." He smiled at her. He stroked her face.

The drive home, he had one hand on the steering wheel, the other clasping her hand, tightly, as if he'd never let go. She sat as closely to him as she did with Danny. He parked in front of the cottage and ran around to her side to open the door, and as soon as she stepped out, he put his arm about her shoulders. His grip was tight. He was standing so close she could hear him breathe. He guided her back into the cottage, matching his steps to hers.

Inside, Louise' suitcase was open in the middle of the room. It was almost packed, blouses and swimsuits crammed in, shoes, and when Louise strode in, Bill pulled Sadie closer to him. "Everything is just fine now," he said boisterously. Sadie couldn't have moved even if she had wanted to. Sadie saw the look on Louise's face, an expression which struck her like a slap. Trapped. Louise was trapped. Sadie had given her a way out by leaving. And Sadie had betrayed her by coming back.

That evening, they went to dinner at The Clam Bar, the place Louise had been trying to convince Bill to go to all week. Bill ordered wine and they all clinked glasses and no one talked about anything. When Bill got up to go the bathroom, she leaned towards her mother. "Are you mad I came back?" she said.
Louise looked at her.
"I didn't know what else to do-" Sadie said.
"Why would I be mad? I was worried sick about you." Louise looked away, down at her plate, at the left over lobster.
Sadie pushed her plate away from her. The lobster looked suddenly glutinous. "You could still leave." She made her voice low, as if she were telling a secret she didn't dare have anyone else know.
Louise laughed. "You think it's so easy?" she said, and then there was Bill, sitting down, and Louise seemed focused on something else now: her lobster, the napkin, the waiter.
"Who wants dessert?" Bill said. He looped one arm about the back of Sadie's chair, one arm about the back of Louise's. "Let's all get some."

They drove back to the cottage, the radio on, Bill and Louise talking about the beach, the weather, the things they might do the next day. Sadie pretended to doze. As soon as they got to the cottage, she yawned loudly. "I have to go to sleep," she said. She kissed Louise. She kissed Bill and then she sat in her room, listening, trying to hear what they were talking about, and then after a while, the cottage was silent.

She couldn't sleep. She quietly got up and went outside, walking to the payphone by the beach. She squinted at her watch. It was two in the morning, but she had to call Danny.
"Yes?" A woman's voice, soft with sleep.
Danny's mother, Sadie thought, and it suddenly struck her suddenly that in all the time she and Danny had been going together, she had never met her.
"No. No, this is Sadie"
"Sadie?"
"Sadie London. His girlfriend."
Danny's mother was quiet for a minute. "What's the matter, Sadie?"
"Please." Sadie couldn't help it. She started to cry. She sluiced at her tears with her fingers.
Danny's mother sighed. "Don't make this a habit," she said, and then there was the clunk of the phone and silence and then Danny got on, his voice slow and heavy.

"Hello?" he said and Sadie burst into fresh tears. Please, she wanted to say. She wanted to tell him about her parents, to tell him how lonely she was, but instead her mouth just opened, it had a life all its own. It said what it wanted.
"Who was Evelyn?"
"Sadie, do we have to do this now? Can't this wait?"
"Look, I love you." Her own words shocked her. "If you can't handle it, tell me now. We can just forget everything."
He was silent. She could hear his breath moving through the wires. What have I done? She thought.
"Say it!" She screamed. "Just be honest!"
There was silence again. She heard something clicking through the wires. She'd hang up the phone, she'd walk right into the sea and hope for sharks. Or maybe she'd just hitch to New York.
"Okay," he said.
"What, okay," she said wearily.
"I love you." His voice was quiet. "OK, I love you."
"What?"
"I love you."
"And you'll stop seeing Evelyn?"
"Evelyn who?" he said.

Sadie hung up the phone. Her heart was racing. She couldn't catch her breath. She turned and kept walking, to the beach. No one was there. The sand felt gritty. The water looked black. She thought of the movie Jaws, the first time she had seen it. There was a whole media blitz about it in Boston. Some theaters said right in their ads that they were going to hire ambulances to wait outside for customers who might faint, the same way they had for the opening of the Exorcist. She had gone to the movie alone. Before the movie even started, someone had run out screaming and the woman next to her had laughed and said, "that's a good sign." Sadie had watched Jaws with her feet up on her seat. She hadn't gone to the beach all the rest of that summer. She had been so terrified Louise had called up a marine biologist friend of hers and put him on the phone with Sadie. "Sharks don't act like that. That's the movies," he assured her.
"Oh." Sadie pretended to believe him.

She walked to the water, let it lap at her toes. A shark would be a huge white flash under all that water. You could disappear in ways no one could even imagine. She kept walking. She sat down, close to the waves. She thought about all the ways a family could configure, how you could spend your whole life just wanting to get out from under.

And then, she remembered this one time. She was six, her buttery curls flying about her head, untamed, playing this game with Louise. They ran around and around the house, racing out the front door and back again through the back door, zooming through the messy kitchen, the dining room where the breakfast dishes still sat, the living room with Louise's fashion magazines sprawled across the floor. Nothing cleaned up. "Run!" Louise called, her voice a challenge. Sadie ran, tumbling and bolting up, scampering, the two of them laughing harder and harder. Stamping their feet, making a mess. "Run!" Sadie screamed. And then Louise zoomed out the door, and Sadie banged into the front door, smashing it into a million pieces. Everything went still. Glass sparkled across the front steps, through the front lawn. Sadie kept her head down. She clapped her hands over her ears waiting.

And then Louise laughed, a bright bell. "Don't touch anything," she said, and then she crouched down. She cleaned up the glass herself. She called a glass man to come and fix the door and by the time Bill came home, he hadn't even noticed that anything was different, not even that the glass looked cleaner. Sadie waited, but Louise didn't say a word. Instead, when Bill was plunking down in the big brown chair by the window, leaning over to untie the shoes he hated, Louise winked broadly at Sadie. It was funny, but every time after that, every time Sadie passed the glass door, she remembered the chasing game. She remembered Louise's wink. The bright chiming bell in her laugh.

Sadie stood up. In a few hours, this beach would be mobbed again. Families. Lovers. Kids. Louise and Bill. And Sadie. She shucked off her shirt, her shorts, everything but her panties and bra, and then she ran into the water. She swam. Sharks or no sharks. Danny was coming again. They'd make love. He'd say sweet things, and maybe, if she was lucky, she'd believe them.

In the end, Sadie was right. It was the last vacation. The week before Danny was to leave for MIT, a girl named Betsy called her up and told her she was Danny's new main squeeze and had been for months. Why couldn't Sadie leave him alone? Why couldn't Sadie see how desperately Danny wanted to be free?
"Why couldn't you just tell me?" Sadie asked Danny, and he shrugged, embarrassed and that was that. He went off to MIT and she went off to highschool. She left early and came home late, and at night, she always said she had studying. Weekends, she had papers. Nothing changed in her family. The only change was that every time she looked at her parents, she knew what was keeping them in place, and it was too big a responsibility.

When Sadie went to college, she went to Stanford, as far away as she could get, and she found reasons not to come home. Summer school. An internship. New boyfriends, none of which ever worked out. She came home every Christmas, every May, just for a week, and every time she did, Louise had a million things planned, and Bill said hello and then went into his garden. Sadie sat in the kitchen, watching Louise peeling the skin from a chicken before she cooked it. "Fat," Louise said, tossing out the skin. "Your father's blood pressure has hit the roof. We eat like Spartans these days. The days of Cape Cod lobster dinners are over."

Sadie told Louise about a woman her mother's age who was taking classes, going for a new degree. She told Louise how a friend of hers had seen Louise' photo and exclaimed about her beauty. "Isn't that nice," Louise said.
"You could do that," Sadie said and Louise rolled her eyes. "Don't start with me, please," Louise said.
"Are things better? Are you happy?"
Louise laughed again. "Oh, to be young again," she said, "and believe in everything being possible."

Sadie spent all her time at home crazy to get away, but as soon as it came time to leave, she felt herself coming undone. It hurt her the way Louise looked so tired. It hurt her the way her father, even on his special diet, seemed to be putting on weight. She hadn't even left and already she missed them, but it maybe it wasn't them she missed, maybe it was just the idea of them, the idea of family. She got back to her dorm room and flopped on the bed, depressed. She thought about her father, thought about the divorce/car wreck game she used to play, and then panic set in. What if there really was a car wreck? What if something really happened? She bolted up from her bed. She didn't have a boyfriend. She didn't have a best friend at school. She couldn't make the right connections, not the ones that stuck. She was alone in the world. She thought of her father saying, "if I don't have you, what do I have?"

She got up and grabbed a sheet of paper. She drew little hedgehogs on it, a summer garden sprouting from the margins. Hi Daddy, she wrote. I just wanted to tell you I love you and miss you! And then before she could change her mind, she mailed it.
A week later, she called home and Bill answered. "Did you get my letter?" she asked.
"Oh yes," he said. "Very nice." There was a silence. "Oh, here's your mother," he said. "She wants to speak to you."

That night, she got out her watercolor paper, two dollars a page, and painted a garden of Eden. She put in Adam and Eve and the serpent, too. She gave him blue eyes and a bright red tongue. She wrote a one page letter to her father. We should have dinner together when I get home, just the two of us. We could talk. She mailed it to Bill. She put on a return address so it wouldn't get lost. "Did you get my card?" she asked when she called, and he always said yes, as if it were the most usual thing in the world.

She began sending him more and more cards, each one more elaborate than the next. She bought special watercolors from France, she bought sable brushes and a rapidograph and handmade paper with blue threads running through it. She felt guilty and made some for Louise, who gushed and carried on and called the moment the cards arrived. Finally, Sadie asked Louise, "Does Daddy look at my cards?"
"Of course he does, honey," Louise said.
"Does he say anything?"
"Oh. You know your father," Louise said. "What does he say about anything?"

Sadie was a senior in college when the call came. Stroke. In the garden, releasing a mail-order praying mantis Bill had special ordered, just as Louise was calling him in for the special non-fat healthy meal she had prepared for them, the no fat desert. Sadie flew home to for the funeral.
She stayed two week. Her father hadn't had many friends that she knew of, but the house was crowded with people Louise knew, all of them rubbing Louise's back, fitting cups of tea into her hand. "It wasn't a love affair," Sadie heard someone say to Louise, and Louise snapped up. "I liked him," she said furiously. "He was my husband."

Sadie drifted through the house. People were polite. They asked her how school was, if she had any boyfriends, and she was polite back. They told her stories about her father that she had never heard before, and then they waited, but the only story she could think about was that last Cape Cod vacation, and she didn't want to tell that. She felt as if she should be weeping, as if she should be telling stories, but instead, the only thing she felt was numb.

It wasn't until everyone left, until the house had emptied out, that she felt panicked. Louise looked around. "Let's just try to sleep. People will be here again tomorrow," Louise said.
They slept in Louise and Bill's bedroom. Sadie hesitated and then crawled into her mother's bed, the same way she used to when she was a little girl. Louise smelled of powder and sweat and starch. "I'm so tired," Louise said. "I'm so tired of everything." She shut her eyes. She looked to Sadie as if she were a hundred years old.

All that night, Sadie lay awake while her mother slept, watching her, and then, towards morning, Louise bolted up, crying, terrified, her hands washing over her face. "I'm, here!" Sadie cried. "I'm here!" Louise blinked, and flung herself into Sadie's arms. "I want him back," she wept. "I want him back."
Sadie soothed her mother's back. She clutched her mother's hand. She said whatever she could think of. "I'll come back more often. I'll call every night."
"I want him back!" Louise wept. Sadie spooned as close as she could, rocking Louise, until morning, until it was time to get up all over again.

Sadie stayed for another week, until she had to go back for finals. The house was always crowded with people, the phone never stopped ringing, and Louise began thanking God for what she had. "Thank God I have my work," she told Sadie. "Thank God I have the neighbors. Thank God I made so many friends."

Sadie waited. Thank God I have you, she heard, but her mother didn't say it.
"Go. I'll be fine," Louise said. "Really. Thank God I'm not the kind of mother who lives through her kids."

On Sadie's last day, all the company began to be too much for Sadie. She was tired of dressing up, tired of having to avert the plates of food handed to her. Her mother was sitting on the couch, deep in conversation with a neighbor. Someone touched Sadie's arm. She turned. "You're so thin," a woman Sadie didn't know said to her, and Sadie half-smiled, thinking it was a compliment. "You look like a skeleton," the woman said.

Sadie excused herself. She went into her parents' room and shut the door tight.
Sadie sat on the bed, staring around the room. Her mother had made arrangements for Goodwill to take Bill's things away. "I don't want to have to touch anything. I don't want to be reminded," Louise said. Sadie slowly got up and opened her father's closet. There was his heavy jacket. There was his grey ties. She opened his drawers. Tucked under his socks, she found a high fat candy bar, a half eaten bag of potato chips, a package of Chips Ahoy cookies. She pulled them out and threw them into a wastebasket. She opened the second drawer. Socks, balls of color, lined up like little soldiers. She ran one hand over them and as they parted, she spied something. An envelope.

She pushed the socks aside and pulled it out. She opened the clasp and there, inside were all the letters she had sent him, all the decorated envelopes. She sat down on the bed. The edges of her letters were dog-eared, as if he had read them more than once. Sadie fanned through the letters and began to cry.
"Sadie?" Someone rapped on the door. "Sadie, are you in there?" She didn't recognize the voice. Sadie swiped a hand over her eyes. She rubbed at her drippy nose. And then she pulled out her suitcase from under the bed and opened it, and gently lay the letters in it, under her blue sweater, carefully, so they wouldn't crush. "Sadie?" the voice called again. Sadie shut the case and pushed it under the bed. She stood up.

"I'm here," she said, "I'm right here," and then she opened the door.

Copyright 2000 by Caroline Leavitt. Originally appeared in the anthology FATHER (Pocket Books)