When we get to the house, I insist that Hazel sit at the dining room table and start her homework, a habit I’m trying to re-instill. In so many ways, her year away with Melanie has rusticated her; she’s like an escaped animal who’s gone feral. I have to retrain her on all her old, good habits.
I sit across from her where my laptop is already open on the table, and take a moment to watch her. She’s completely unselfconscious, her head bent over her work thoughtfully as she scrawls notes on a page. She bites her bottom lip, two white teeth stabbing the swollen flesh of her full lip, and her hair-pulled back but coming loose-drapes over the sides of her face. Her mother’s brilliant red hair. A little Melanie, but one who’s sweet, and unjaded, and sincere.
When she finishes her work, I close my laptop, too. “Spaghetti for dinner?” I ask, and she nods happily. I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure it is to cook for her, how making dinner for her night after night had always been one of my great joys. She climbs the stairs to her bedroom to change and I wish I could ask her not to. Her school uniform reminds me so much of the little girl she still is inside. The white knee socks, in particular, I can’t take my eyes off of as she mounts the circular, metal stairs. They’re so perfectly innocent, virtuously masking her legs up to the knee, her bare thighs only hinted at below the rough, plaid skirt. I make a mental note to visit the school uniform website after dinner tonight, and purchase one or two new ones.
******
I’m in the kitchen setting the sauce on simmer when Hazel comes down looking perplexed.
“Did you get rid of my underwear?” she asks.
I cover the pan and set the wooden spoon on a plate, turning to face her. She’s changed into a t-shirt and leggings, her hair combed out and loose behind her, and she looks more like a typical teenager and less like a child than she does in her ponytail and knee socks.
“Yes. You need a lot of new things, Hazel. I’m going to order you a new school uniform tonight, too.”
She isn’t accusing, just confused. “But where are the old underwear?”
“I’ve put them away,” I answer, without saying where. “I don’t want you wearing your mother’s old underpants, and they’re too sexy for a girl your age anyway. You need new, clean underwear that belongs to you alone.”
“Dad!” she laughs. “I’m eighteen! Don’t you think these underpants are a little young, though?” She holds up a pair to show me, draped over her pointer finger. It’s white cotton spattered with tiny pink flowers, and a miniature pink bow at the front of the waistband. They’re cute.
“You’re seventeen,” I answer emphatically. “And no.” I frown, but I know she can see the amusement in my eyes. “Those are proper underpants. Anyway, is there someone looking at your panties who’s going to care?”
My comment hits the mark, making her blush. “No!” she protests. “Of course not. It’s not that. It’s just that girls are my age are wearing things from Victoria’s Secret, you know.”
“Well, not you. I’m not your mother, and I don’t want you wearing sexy panties to school. Now go put that away and wash your hands. Dinner will be ready in a minute.”
She leaves the kitchen with an exaggerated huff and I strain the spaghetti noodles, aware of a low heat swirling in my groin.
Hazel wanting to appear sexy isn’t new. She was hitching up her school skirt before Mel and I separated, and she’s had a precocious interest in boys for almost as long as I can remember. But I don’t think Hazel realizes that the stakes are different now. She’s not a gawky little girl trying to grow up anymore, she’s grown.
She’s got undeniable sex appeal, pure sin on legs. The kind of walking temptation men will do dangerous things for. Plump, kissable lips, full, bouncing breasts-every inch of her holds erotic promise. I can’t turn off the genes that made her such a teenage sexpot. All I can do is try to keep her safe, and guard her childish innocence.
Even if, for some reason, that’s what I find most dangerously tempting of all.