One Good Turn by Judith Arnold

penalty. What mattered was that he was smart and articulate, he challenged her, and he respected her opinions.
    He’d come to talk tonight, and Jenny knew intuitively that her desire for him would be aroused not by the nearness of his body or the warmth of his hand around hers but by his words, his trust, his willingness to confide in her.
    She sat quietly beside him, waiting for him to speak. After a while he did. “I just dropped my father off at the airport.”
    He had told her his father would be spending a couple of days in D.C. “Did you have a good visit with him?” she asked.
    He grimaced. “I don’t know. God, Jenny, it’s so hard to be with him sometimes. I used to dream—when I was a kid, I used to dream he and I would have times like this, special times when it was just the two of us, no Elliott getting in the way, just my old man and me. And now, at last, we’re having those special times and...” He let out a long, doleful breath. “Shit,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
    From anyone else such a statement would have seemed unexceptional. But from Luke it was the most agonizing confession, each word wrenched from his soul, a devastating truth he had suppressed for as long as he could. He appeared haggard and pale, as if he was awaiting divine punishment for having cursed.
    She rose onto her knees on the couch cushion and tucked her hand under his chin. “Look at me, Luke,” she commanded gently, turning his face to her.
    Slowly his eyes came into focus on her. She had no difficulty reading the torment in them.
    “This is not such a big deal,” she said.
    “Right,” he grunted.
    “Lots of people don’t want to be lawyers.”
    “Lots of people don’t have James Benning for a father,” he argued. “As a matter of fact, only two people do have James Benning for a father, and one of them moved five thousand miles away just to get out from under him.” He grimaced again, as if he were suffering the worst sort of pain—which, Jenny had to admit, he probably was. “Oh, Jenny,” he whispered. “I wanted this. I wanted it so badly. I wanted him to fuss over me the way he fussed over Elliott. And now I’ve finally gotten what I wanted...and it’s destroying me.”
    “It’s not destroying you,” she murmured. “You’ve grappled with it for a while, and now you’ve finally figured out what’s right for you. That’s not destruction.”
    “But my father—”
    “Your father can’t live your life for you, and you can’t live yours for him.”
    “Right,” he grunted again, putting a wildly sarcastic spin on the word. When he next spoke his voice was soft, almost plaintive. “I want him to love me, Jenny. Is that such a terrible thing?”
    It was the most natural thing in the world, but Jenny couldn’t figure out what it had to do with Luke’s choice of career. If his father loved him he would accept him and give him the emotional support he needed. Jenny’s father loved her, and the only real demands he’d ever made on her were to do the best she could and take pride in her efforts. When she’d wanted to play in the Little League as a child, he’d fought long and hard to get the local league to admit girls onto the team. When she’d wanted to take an afterschool job at one of the fast food joints in town, he’d expressed his reservations about the effect it might have on her schoolwork, but he’d let her take the job. When she’d gotten accepted to Smith College, he hadn’t balked at the fact that it was expensive and far from home. Instead, he and her mother had hung a sign in the window of their agency proclaiming, “Jenny’s Going To Smith!” and filed a zillion complicated forms so she would qualify for financial aid.
    Even when she’d been among a group of kids rounded up at a high school graduation party and escorted to the local police station because they’d been drinking beer, her father hadn’t stopped loving her.