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Show moving around her and through her, in her hair and ears, sloshing in her belly, gathering between her toes and the creases in her thighs, she remained in the cooling water as long as she could. They returned to Hawaii on the eve of the second cold war, just months before the election of Ronald Reagan and his vow to confront the Soviets everywhere. She likes to blame the increasing tensions between her and her father, the black depression, hers and his, the anorexia, even the way Jeff Salmon slipped his hands up her thighs while she lay on the couch watching television, on the escalating threat of nuclear war and her father's promotions. She likes to blame the loss in her life on the military rather than a bucket, or a concussion, or copper pennies on the ground. In her mind, as countries like the USSR became The Evil Empire and her father's work increased in importance and, therefore, in stress, as his reputation grew in the JAG corps and he was at the beck and call of admirals who wanted a treaty negotiated yesterday, as they were stationed in places for too short a time to establish friends and the US ramped up its ability to destroy entire continents within seconds, and as her father turned to anger as a way to express his love, whatever sense of stability she had cultivated during the nine months in Seattle, the bridge she liked to think of it as, or maybe more of a ferry, similar to the one they rode on the Sound tossing bread to seagulls who caught the crumbs mid flight, deteriorated. Destruction could happen at any moment with the push of a button, at home or abroad. Rules gave her solace: three boxes of cereal could be open at a time, you could sit in the front seat of the car only on your designated day of the week, if you failed to put your napkin in your lap at dinner you had to go to your bedroom and count to twenty five, no friends allowed in the house when your parents were gone, a coke for dinner only 115 |