Big Bad Wolf_ # _CHAPTER_ _8_ # _The Lover's Disciple_ # _After_ the day she broke off the engagement, Alison went home and spent the next five days in bed, mostly crying. She did this because it was the weekend and her parents were away and she could safely stay in her room without having to eat with them. Alison always spent weekends with her parents, even on vacations, but this one was a special treat. The day after the breakup her mother had called her and told her to pack her bag and she and Alison were off to Disney World in Florida. Her father was supposed to join them there, but when he said he couldn't make it he cried—actually cried—and told his wife she could go without him, for a change, but that his daughter shouldn't, and also that maybe they should reevaluate their relationship. He was referring to their marriage, although he didn't call it that, and at that point he told his wife that, if he went to Disney World with Alison, she should divorce him because he was too depressed to be anywhere but home, and if he stayed home and she went to Disney World she should divorce him because he was too depressed to be with her. There was silence after he said this, and for a few moments Alison and her mother sat frozen like two people awaiting a punch line in a bad joke. "That's funny," she finally said, "that's just so funny." "Why don't we put the tickets on hold," he said. "I'd like to see if I can work things out." "Yes," said the woman. "That would be nice. Thank you, John." Her voice was dry and emotionless, almost as if she were calling someone with a broken telephone. This time around, he said, he'd be a changed man. No, not _this_ time around. She agreed and got off the phone, then waited a long time for him to get back on, and when he finally did she made him promise to call her if he ever changed his mind. She'd still take the tickets, and then he could work out a new plan. He also agreed to pay for her to take the time off from work and pay for their tickets on one condition: he was responsible for the cab fare and all other expenses. "I'll pick you up at the airport," he said, "and I promise you we won't go to Disney World." "Thank you," she said. "It's not a promise," he said. "It's a condition." And then he hung up, because he couldn't think of any other way to end the conversation without the words sounding bitter and accusatory. For that reason he stayed on the phone for nearly an hour and a half, repeating the phrases, "It's not a promise," and "I'll pick you up at the airport." The first time he ever saw Alison cry was at the airport. Her father, mother, and stepmother were all at the gate waiting for her. There were tears in her father's eyes and on her mother's cheeks, but it was the tears in the woman's eyes that scared Alison, and that, more than anything else, made her sad for her parents. There was a heaviness to the room, as if the sun had suddenly changed position. There was a strange sound in the room as well, a buzzing sound. When Alison walked in, the buzzing stopped, as if a switch had been flipped. She took one look at her father, a look so cold that he looked as if he were on fire, and she knew that whatever conversation she had planned to have with him, whatever words she had rehearsed to say to him, would have to wait. Her mother and stepmother got off the train and the two of them hugged. He was too choked up to cry but his tears fell anyhow. The woman said something to Alison, but the words drowned in the buzzing sound and the buzzing sound drowned in her heart. This was a sound she had been hearing for so long that she now thought it was only that, a sound. She was hearing something that wasn't a sound at all but something worse, which was a sound's opposite. No sound. The day after, when she arrived home from school with the word _cancer_ scribbled in red across her notebook, she found her father and mother sitting together on the couch with the television on mute. He was in an armchair and she sat across from them, not sure what the mood was, but knowing it couldn't be good because he wasn't watching her the way he used to. They were in the middle of watching _The Waltons_. Some old episode they were halfway through, the one about the girl with a doll, and when Alison tried to tell them about the cancer they all watched it like they had been watching the TV all along. But as she told them about the cancer and about how the girl could hardly lift her doll's head— _can't look at it, it scares her_ —her father would cover his eyes with one hand, saying, "Stop," as if he were in pain. She asked her father if he was okay, and he said yes, he was, but he'd watch the episode after that without her. He put the same kind of sadness in his voice when he said that that she'd heard in his voice a lot of times before. After the buzzing stopped at the airport she wasn't allowed to cry and her father wasn't allowed to cry either. She and her mother went to Disneyland in Florida without him. She thought that was odd at the time, but later came to understand it as a kind of kindness. Her father and her mother had only been married for a little more than two years when her mother got pregnant with her. She had known at the time that her father was probably the father, because he had always smelled the same way he did that day on the couch, but she kept the knowledge from him as long as she could, because she didn't want to make him sad. — AT THE BEGINNING of the second year of college, Alison and her parents separated. Her father went back to his place in the city and her mother moved to the house, where Alison lived alone until she went off to college the next year. Her father, like a man walking out of prison, went back to work and stopped eating. He only ate leftovers from other people's plates, and even then, he seemed intent on making the whole process as difficult as possible for himself. He ate so slowly that it was a full hour before he was through. The only thing he still did all the time was watch television, especially _The Waltons_ , with Alison's mother. When Alison was in high school she could walk in the front door and sit on the couch without her father saying a word to her, but after her freshman year she no longer had that luxury. He kept saying things like "If you knew how alone I was, you'd see," or "I'm so lonely, it's killing me," and when he said these things it meant her mother would start crying, which she did, but only because she wanted Alison to think there was an actual connection between them. There was no connection, of course. Her mother rarely even called her anymore. It wasn't that Alison didn't love her, it's just that, from the moment she could speak, she told herself that the love that her mother showed her was a gift, a form of generosity, and so as long as she lived under the same roof as her father she felt like she had to pretend to love him too. For a while she thought it would be better for everyone if her father and her mother were separated, because he wouldn't eat and she didn't know how to make him happy anymore, but she knew it would be impossible to think of her father ever being happy again without her mother around to see it. That's why she let her father move back in. Alison told herself that, as far as she was concerned, the two of them—her father and herself—were like an empty box, which could be filled with anything. The box was full with memories. That's what she told her father when he asked if she wanted the house to herself. She told him that there was only one kind of box for her, and she would be happy to live in it for as long as he needed it. He laughed and asked if she was planning on building a house with her stepmother so that they could be together, and when she told him no he got quiet and started watching _The Waltons_ , the same episode she and her mother had watched when she was in high school. The episode always makes Alison cry, which is why her mother never let her watch it when she was growing up. Alison sits with the television off and her father sits with his television on, which he says is what he did before his wife left him. Once, when Alison brought up the fact that his wife and her father were divorced too, his eyes lost focus and she couldn't tell if he was angry or sad. She thought he was angry, but she wasn't sure anymore. "The man loves those kids," he said, "but do they love him?" Alison doesn't know how to answer that question, so she keeps quiet, leaving