Return to Normal

I am almost eighteen when I return to the US after nearly a full year as an exchange student in France. My father picks me up at JFK airport, driving me around Queens and Long Island without specifying his intent. We visit Oyster Bay. But we do not leave the car, except when we look for the bookstore so that I can run in for something to read. On this same day, we drive back from the island up toward Vermont. He takes me through Montpelier, silently driving on our way to Canada. After crossing the northern border, my father insists I draw out my own cash from what is left of my grandmother's small inheritance. We stop at a bank, at a gas station and anywhere we can find. As usual, he stays in the car while I carry on my efforts at his whim. We rarely leave the car on our trips, only stopping for fast food or at gas stations. This is how my father travels through time. In perfect Parisian French, I ask a stranger for a distributeur de billets—an automatic teller machine, which no one seems to have in this land—or at least will not admit to understanding. Increasingly sweaty under a hot summer sun, a lady takes pity on me in my search, "Ah! Vous avez besoin d'un A-T-M." You need an ATM. Yes, in fact, I was looking in vain for an ATM.

We drive into Montréal. I experience new and different ways of reverse culture shock. I find myself an outsider in Québec because of how incomprehensible I am to this new culture. Instead of being properly shocked back into my own country's culture, I see a PFK fast food restaurant: Poulet Frié de Kentucky. Kentucky Fried Chicken. I am confused because in France, we call it KFC, though most do not eat there. My father points out signs for me to notice, but what I see is incomprehensible. Putain de merde. Fucking shit. He checks us into a low-graded Montreal motel, the name of which I cannot not recall. He buys wine at Wal-Mart for our BYOB steak dinner at a local restaurant.

We are in another dingy motel room in Augusta, Maine. I feel him watching me, but moreover I watch him. I always watch him. He walks around in his underwear the minute we hit a motel. Watching is a habit that stays with me and I often find myself gazing at strangers only to face an uncomfortable visage, looking at me blankly, wondering why I’ve broken the social code. In France, staring is permissible and even encouraged. Traditionally, women like to be looked at, to be watched.

We have a nice drive there while making fun of things and signs we see on the road, making jokes about their wording or usage. “Always remember that ‘bridge ices before road’, a fact that I never do forget, repeating this saying under my breath while traveling over bridges in the winter as an adult. But he slips his mind into me. He buys me alcohol. He repeats to me that I don’t have to close the door when I get dressed.

“Jenny, have you ever heard of genetic sexual attraction?”

“No,” I brush off his incestuous suggestion. In fact, I had heard about it. From him.

Sometimes blatantly inappropriate, his personal revelations never make me doubt him, even when he makes me feel uncomfortable. Years later, I piece my own mental composite drawn not from crystal-clear memories, but from puzzle pieces my body has not seen but felt—senses drawn by my father's presence over time.

“You can change out here, Jenny,” indicating that he won’t look at me if I change outside of the bathroom. “No, thank you, I’m fine changing in here.” I feel my father looking at me, playing with his camera and it clicks at random, capturing me in a single moment in time. He talks to me about his dreams for a new house, for a better future with me. He says he wants to give me everything that I want. We scarcely mention my mother, especially when he says, “Jenny, don’t tell your mother,” no matter how small the lie. We return to the states via Booth Bay in Maine. He tells the lobster shack employees that I am old enough to drink. Besides, didn't the French drink wine during meals in France?