Chapter 3

"Mary Anne darling, urmm, are you really going to go out dressed like that?"

"What's wrong with my outfit, dad?"

"Don't get me wrong, but I think your skirt is a little bit sluttish. I mean, I can see your ankles."

These kinds of conversations my father and I have almost every day. He is a bit overprotective sometimes, because before he and Dawn's mother got married he had to take care of me all alone. My mother died when I was still a baby.

My father has really put himself out for me, and has done a great job. When I was a toddler he even used to put on my mothers old clothes and make up his face, just to make me feel more familiar! Since he's so humble he denies it every time I try to bring it up. Then he flushes and mumbles something about how he could have known how much a two-year-old child is able to impress.

"Oh give her a break!" Dawn shouted from the living room. "You are treating her like she was brain-dead and going outside naked!"

Dawn lives in California but is now here in Stoneybrook to take part in a demonstration that demands the local government to illegalise both selling and using all insecticides, which are, as she says, "an extreme way of torturing innocent animals."

My father ignored her, as he always does nowadays, since Dawn burned his new leather jacket in a garbage can in our backyard while singing Paul McCartney's Golden Earth Girl, and refused to apologize.

"You don't want Logan to get a wrong impression, do you?" he asked and wrinkled his forehead.

"He's a gentleman, dad, and you know it!" I defended my boyfriend. "He did ask for a written permission from you to kiss my cheek on our 16th date, remember?"

"And he certainly didn't get it!" father said and even the thought of it made him look upset. "I don't know what he was thinking. You are a way too young to get pregnant."

"Yeah, that's how it happens!" Dawn yelled mockingly. "Logan's sperm comes from his mouth and he could have accidentally fertilized Mary Anne's face!" She burst out laughing, and it was hard for me to keep a straight face, although I hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about.

In protest father closed the door between the living room and the hall where we were standing. "What about those people you and Logan are going to visit?" he went on. "What do we know about them? You should follow my advice and not go to their home. They could turn out to be.. to be.. well, some kind of perverts and, well.. they could try to rape you."

"We're having tea with Logan's grandparents, dad!" I exclaimed. "They are both over 80 years old!"

"Old people can act unexpectedly", father said. "You are yet too naïve to understand that."

He sighed. "Listen, you better take this, just in case", he said and handed me a pepper spray can. "And don't hesitate to use it if that grandpa gets crazy ideas. Remember that I'm a lawyer, I can get us out of it like I did last time."

I slipped the spray into my purse. "Whatever makes you feel better, dad", I said and smiled at him. "But now I must go, Logan has waited for me over 15 minutes outside our front door."

"Alright", father responded. "But don't take your coat off under any circumstances. Flashing isn't appropriate for a young lady."

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I came home three hours later. It had been a pleasant evening; Logan's grandparents were really charming people. It didn't matter that the tea had smelled like someone had peed in the teapot before serving, and that the cookies were evidently baked when the U.S. was still a colony of Great Britain.

I was sure they had liked me, and were looking forward to get me a relative some day, in spite of what had happened when Logan and I were leaving.

While shaking my hand for farewell Logan's grandfather had had some kind of a seizure. He had started to shake uncontrollably and couldn't let go of my hand. It hadn't help that I had, instinctively, pulled out the pepper spray can and squirted both his face and crotch, as my father had taught me to do.