And the day that I consciously realized, for the first time, just how stunningly beautiful my daughter was, I felt like a fool. Not a single thing about her had changed and yet everything about her was suddenly different. I had seen it all along and never noticed. And noticing her beauty wasn’t a sudden event, but a culmination of years spent watching her grow and appreciating, in a detached sense, all of her finest attributes in bits and pieces. But a thing of beauty is the sum of all its parts and there was no part of her that wasn’t absolutely beautiful. It was with trepidation and excitement that I quickly realized that there was no number of cold showers I could take which would hide or assuage the lust that was slowly, menacingly growing for my own daughter. Dear God, I remember thinking to myself as I stood under that first cold shower, what have I wrought?
I did what any father in my position would do: I immediately withdrew. My withdrawal wasn’t, in any way, like what I had gone through during my depression, but it was definitive. I never spoke harshly or distractedly with Amity when she engaged me in conversation, and I didn’t exactly hide from her, either, but I likewise didn’t make any special effort to seek out her companionship. When she came to me for something, I didn’t turn her away, but when whatever she wanted was done with, I’d quietly go back to my office or another part of the house, anywhere I could go that would keep my eyes off her increasingly distracting beauty.
About a month of that and Amity had finally had enough. She called me into the kitchen for breakfast one sunny morning and, when I arrived fully dressed and subdued, she slammed a frying pan into the kitchen sink. “What the hell, Dad?” she cried out of the blue.
I just stared at my daughter stupidly and then looked down at myself, to make sure that I hadn’t somehow forgotten my pants or something. When I looked back up at her I was perplexed. “What?”
Amity glared at me hotly. “You KNOW what, Dad. A year ago you would come to breakfast in boxers and a t-shirt, smiling bright as the sun and happy to see Mom and me. Now… now you just mumble good morning at me like you’re in a soup kitchen! What the hell is going ON with you?”
I blinked at Amity uncertainly. Had I been that obvious about it? But no, I thought to myself. I hadn’t been rude or cruel. I just… distanced myself from her. For her sake. I couldn’t refute the fact, to myself, that I was beginning to lust after her, but I wasn’t about to put pressure on her or invite her to help solve a problem that wasn’t hers to begin with. “I…” I had no idea where to begin, so I decided to just go with a half-truth. “I’ve been… struggling with some things, that’s all.” I placed my hands on the back of a chair and leaned forward a little bit. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable or anything. I’m just… going through things right now that I need to work out on my own.”
“Bullshit,” she replied flatly. I arched a cautious eyebrow at her in a non-vocal but obvious attempt to remind her that I AM still her father. She brushed it off with a wave. “Oh, don’t give me that look, Dad. I know you. Hell, I probably know you better than you know yourself, sometimes. You’ve been hiding from me. I think I know why, but I want to hear you say it. Say it out loud, so we can get it out in the open. Because that’s how Mom did things and just because she’s gone, that doesn’t mean we should change something like that. So out with it, Dad. What’s eating you?”
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