Fear Itself

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. My right foot tapped against wall of my usual perch by the window. My head fell back against the wall opposite, and my hair fell in loose spirals nearing the small of my back. I hummed along to a Bob Dylan song playing from my nearby record player, strumming my ukelele to match the melody coming from the spinning vinyl record. It was an old folk song, one of my favorites, one that my father commented my mother had liked very much. I knew more about her musical taste than I did about her life, I thought. Sometimes, I played the records just to feel connected to her. It certainly brought a smile to my face, anyway.

My left hand gripped the neck of the instrument while my right hand strummed away in rhythm. I tilted my head downward, watching my fingers with a vigilance, careful not to make a mistake. I had practiced the song more times than I could count today, and this was the fourth time I played the song all the way through. I practiced to perfection with nearly everything I pursued, though perfectionism was bred in my DNA: my father was politician, and while I didn’t know my mother’s profession, I knew that she was brilliant, much like my father and very much like me. Come to think of it, my mother’s profession was something I wanted to ask my father about.

I allowed myself to get lost in the melody, tilting my head back against the wall once more. The sun bathed my skin in it’s light and warmth; I had opened the window in my father’s absence, and the sun was just beginning to set. Colors danced around the sky in brilliant hues of pink and orange. I loved the sunset; it meant that night was about to fall. My fingers strummed away as my eyes drifted to the scenery: the trees, the sky, all the colors, and the life. Birds fluttered above the trees nearby, and I smiled a bit.

For never having set foot out there, I liked to think I knew an awful lot about it (but what eighteen year old doesn’t think they know everything?). None of it was experience; in the experience category, I was batting a big, fat zero. I knew my father was only looking out for me, but I couldn’t help the unquenchable thirst for knowledge growing in my mind. I read book after book, and it just didn’t ever seem to be enough.

Knowledge wasn’t tangible. I couldn’t hold knowledge in my hands or see it with my eyes. It could learn it, but I couldn’t learn from it. I had read plenty of psychology books, enough to know that human learned best from experience and from making mistakes, but there was no way I could ever make any mistakes to learn from when I lived in such a sheltered environment. I began strumming a little more forcefully than before, but it wasn’t on purpose; to be honest, I wasn’t so focused on the song anymore as I was on my own anger.

I played the end of the song with little to no focus, eyes lost on the outside world. I played the final chord with my eyes narrowed in utter contempt. In one swift motion, I rolled off the window sill and thrust the deep purple curtain closed. The streak of sunlight that spilled across my floor quickly vanished, and I decided that I hated having a window. The window did nothing but taunt me. It laughed in my face, and it showed me everything I couldn’t have; I hated the window more than I hated anything else. I stepped quietly across the floor and tossed my ukelele softly onto the bed, sighing quietly.

“Don’t bother, Thalia,” I muttered quietly to myself, running my hands through my hair, careful to avoid the fake red rose clipped behind my left ear. “Getting angry doesn’t solve anything.” I reminded myself with a decisive nod, but a sound from the downstairs alerted me, and I turned my head in the direction of my open door, blinking with bubbling enthusiasm.

“Father?” I asked quietly, more to myself than anyone else. Was it time for him to be home already? My head turned back and forth in a frantic swivel as my eyes searched for a clock. Settling for the one on my nightstand, I flopped down across my bed and turned it toward me. The sight of “6:00 PM” brought a grin to my face, and I scrambled from my sheets until my feet touched the floor, and I took off running down the hall and down the stairs to meet my father in the kitchen, chattering the whole way down.

I raced in a barefoot flurry, and my feet thudded rather ungracefully down the staircase. ”Father!” I called out cheerfully as I raced to the first floor of the house, practically sliding across the tiled kitchen floor until the island counter stopped me rather abruptly. I smiled at my father, my best and only friend. ”Father, you’ll never guess what happened today, or maybe you will, no matter. I read another book today, Freud’s Theories on Dreams. Really interesting stuff, Dad. Did you know that Freud interpreted virtually all dreams as representing some sort of repressed or sublimated sexual desire? I’m glad that modern psychology rejects that theory; there’s no way that’s true. Anyway, how was your day? Do anything fun? Meet anyone new? What’s for dinner?” I chirped incessantly until I hopped up on a stool, propped my elbows on the counter top, rested my chin my hands and beamed up at my father, interested to hear about his day.

“Freud was… a little obsessed,” my father mused, chuckling a little once the perplexed look on his face dissolved. I was used to that look; it meant that he was processing everything I said, which could often prove to be a chore considering my penchant for rambling on about anything and everything that popped into my mind. My mouth just tended to move a few paces ahead of my brain. “Today was just the usual, Tali,” he continued. “Don’t ever grow up. Adults are very boring,” he joked, but he paused, looking at me with furrowed brows. “Wait. When did you get old enough to spend your time reading about sex?” he asked, a small smirk playing at his lips.

I grinned, giggling. My father was the funniest person I knew (not that I had anything to base that judgment off of). I batted my eyelashes and titled my head to right, beaming up at him with a smile. “Ever since I turned eighteen, Dad,” I told him with a wide grin gracing my features. Truth be told, I had been studying “adult” subject matters for years now. It was hard to read books about art, literature, and poetry without coming across the subject of sex. It was such a basic human experience that it literally popped up everywhere. I had never been brazen enough to discuss it with my father, but like numerous other taboo topics, it seemed to just slip out. Luckily, this proved to not be as big of a deal to him.

“Hmm,” my father hummed, shaking his head with furrowed his eyebrows. “No,” he commented. “No, that can’t be correct. You were seven just yesterday.” I rolled my eyes, which he contested with a laugh. “Besides, you’re still my pumpkin.”

I shook my head. “No, Dad,” I retorted. “You were there for my birthday. It was three months ago on the tenth, don’t you remember?” I replied rather dryly but with a bemused smirk, but I quickly fixed my face in a disgusted frown. “And I’m not a pumpkin. I’m a grown up.”

A soft smile spread across my father’s face as he leaned forward and reached across the counter, tucking a few strands of stray hair behind my ear. “You’re still my pumpkin,” he said, adding an amused, “Would you rather be a squash?” My face scrunched up, and he laughed. “I can’t help that I want my little girl to stay little forever, Tali. All fathers do.” I smiled softly at him, and his grin faded as he stood back up. “So, are you hungry?” he asked. “I was thinking Spaghetti.”

I gave him a nod. “That works,” I replied. “It’s perfect, actually.” My eyes drifted off a bit as he rummaged through cabinets for a pot. My eyes were focused on that door. I heard water pouring in the background, and I heard the stove click on. My father said something about “20 minutes,” but I didn’t come back to reality until heard his briefcase land on the countertop.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” my father announced, and my eyes widened with surprise and anticipation. I found myself craning my neck, trying to see over the top of his opened brief case to no avail. He grinned at my effort and soon presented me with two unwrapped books, a collection of work by Emily Dickinson and one by Walt Whitman. “Enjoy, Tali,” he added.

My eyes and smile widened with excitement as I looked upon the two books, and I found myself sliding off the stool and charging around the counter to my father, squeezing him in a tight embrace. I pressed my head right against his chest and couldn’t keep myself from grinning. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I squealed, gushing with enthusiasm at the thought of new books to read.

“You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome,” my father laughed, mocking me affectionately. I felt his lips press softly against the top of my head before I let him go, and he returned to cooking dinner. “Those should occupy you for about an hour,” he teased with slight sarcasm as my I pulled the books toward me again. “I think you’ll really enjoy Emily Dickinson.”

”I don’t think you know how excited I am, or maybe you do, I don’t know, whatever, these are already really cool,” I rambled on once again, opening one of the books and beginning to page through it already before I stopped myself and abruptly closed the cover. ”I should actually save these so I have something new to read tomorrow,” I said, more to myself than my father. I stared at the closed covers for a moment, thinking back to my previous questions, thoughts I’d been pondering earlier in the day. I turned my head slightly over my shoulder to glance at my father’s back as he stirred the pot.

“Dad,” I said to get his attention. “Just… out of curiosity…” My voice was cautious, soft, and gentle. I didn’t want to strike a nerve, which was very easy to do when asking about my mother. “What did Mum do for a living? Like um… like a job.”

I saw my father freeze from the corner of my eye; I knew I struck a nerve in that moment, but the tension soon left him as he tried to formulate the correct response. He was always very cautious in his explanations and answer; I could tell by the way his voice slowed and softened, like it was tip-toeing, in a way. “Well, your mother and I were very young when we met,” he began, still tending to the food. “We were just barely 20 years old, and I had my job already, but you mother wasn’t all too sure yet. She was having a hard time deciding. Your mother was a very talented woman with a lot of interests, and she was good at all of them.” My father leaned over and nudge me with his elbow, cracking a small grin in my direction. “Sort of like somebody else I know.” I giggled and leaned in the opposite direction. My father gave me a smile as he turned back to cooking.

“She had a degree in journalism, but she was still in school when we met.” I knew all the stories. They had met at some fancy government party; her father had been feeling under the weather that night, so she had gone in his stead. My father fell head over heels from the first moment he saw her, and she tried her hardest to shake him off. They met about three other times before she finally agreed to give him the light of day. It was like a fairytale romance from what I had heard, like something out of a storybook. “She changed her mind quite a few times, but she was fixed on being a talk show host for awhile. I think she liked the idea of getting to interview all of the important people in the world, so everyone in the world could know more about us and think of us as neighbors or… friends, perhaps.” My father’s eyes never left the cooking food, but a nostalgic smile crept onto his face. “As soon as she had my approval, she decided she wanted to be an actress. That was short-lived too,” he chuckled.

“So, what you’re saying is that she wanted to interview people like you?” I asked curiously. “Like… politicians… and the wealthy… people like us. That’s who we are, right?” I paused only to furrow my eyebrows inquisitively. “Why wouldn’t she also interview the impoverished? Wouldn’t the voice of the majority be interesting to hear as well?”

I saw my father’s body tighten as though his stomach was twisting up inside of him, and his face seemed to tense up as though he was fighting to will a scowl away. His right hand gripped the handle of the spoon for a moment with an unfamiliar intensity. “No, no, no,” he quickly corrected, finally turning to me and addressing me with full attention as he spoke. “The poor are not educated and don’t work to better themselves. The masses are very much like a herd: always following. If you tell them something, they’ll believe it, even if it isn’t true. They hate people like us for our intelligence and our hard work. The government can’t even trust them with many books because they tend to misinterpret them and manipulate them to use against us.” He paused and nodded to me to make sure I understood.

“If your mother spoke to them, all their lies would have been put on television for the world to see. The world is not in a good state right now, Tali. It’s very touchy, and it’s been this way for a while now. Lies are not what the public needs. They need people like us, men like me, to get the truth out to every part of the world. The poor people believe everything they see and hear. They would make things up and spread rumors. My colleagues and I do our best to spread the truth because we want to fix the world and clean up this mess. It isn’t safe out there yet, and it won’t be until the majority realizes that we’re only trying to help. Our decisions will benefit everyone in the end.”

I was suddenly sorry I even asked in the first place. While my father had given me a generous explanation, I didn’t necessarily like what I heard. The whole idea was very demeaning, and it was hard for me to imagine people being that unmotivated or… bad. He seemed to be vilifying them, and I highly doubted that he knew all of these people. This was probably just a stark generalization. “You’re right,” I replied, nodding and turning back to my books, really just agreeing to appease my father. “They sound awful and lazy. I suppose they’d be rather disastrous should they be in charge.” I paused, and I suddenly decided that a change in topic would be nice. My father had gone back to cooking, so I skirted my way back around to my chair. “So, Father,” I began to say, drawing my words out in a sing-song fashion. “I was thinking…”

“Yes, Thalia?” my father asked, probably just to amuse me. That was a rather common occurrence too.

“The Autumn Festival is coming up, as you know, which means that the fireworks are coming up, and I was thinking that since I’m eighteen now that maybe—“

“Thalia,” my father quickly interjected, seeming to quickly nip this idea in the bud. “No.”

“But Dad,” I retorted, trying to stay calm and rational. “You could go with me, or maybe we could even just stay in the yard, nobody would even have to know!”

“Tali, we’re done talking about this,” he said coldly, not even looking at me. I furrowed my eyebrows, and I struggled to keep the frown off of my face. The muscles in my face told me I was losing as my lips began to curve downward.

“Dad, please, just—“

“We are done, Tali,” he reaffirmed, turning his head to me with a piercing glare. My face fell swiftly, and I withdrew any and all arguments I had been preparing for the last week. My shoulders slumped forward a bit, and I dropped my gaze to the floor. My father heaved a sigh as he dumped the pasta into a strainer. I could hear the boiling water rushing down into the sink drain. “I really hate to play the villain, Tali, but I hardly think fireworks are anything worth getting worked up about. There are people who have it far worse than you do, especially with everything I do for you. This is very disrespectful, and I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.” Next thing I knew, a plate was placed in front me. “Dinner’s ready,” he said to me as though we hadn’t just been arguing at all.

I glanced down at the plate, and I suddenly didn’t even want to eat. My appetite, much like my hopes and dreams, had been utterly squashed with my father’s dismissal. “Thank you,” I told him quietly as I picked up my fork and spun it around the pasta, watching the sauce spread. I hardly heard my father announce that he needed to be in his office for a bit to finish some work. I glanced up as he left, but I felt unaffected by his departure.

When he disappeared from my line of vision, I dropped the fork and sighed. I forced myself to clear the plate before cleaning up and heading back up to my room. I closed my bedroom door behind me, and I scurried back to my perch in the window. I gazed out at the dark night sky, and I imagined what it would be like to watch the fireworks from here. Not that it was difficult; I had done it eighteen times.

Perhaps it was eighteen times too many.