Steel Me Away by Vivian Lux Page A

squeaky floorboard directly outside of the master bedroom and I was instantly a child again.  My senses went into high alert.  I began rehearsing my greeting in my head.  Should I call him Dad or Daddy?  Which would make him more likely to greet me happily? 
    I took a deep breath, looking at myself in the distorted mirror.  "I'm a fighter," I reminded my rippled reflection.  The girl in the mirror just wavered like something fleeting and insubstantial.
    I stepped out of the powder room just as my father entered the kitchen.  We all saw him before he noticed any of us.  Andy was already at the kitchen table.  He leaned back in a feigned show of nonchalance, raising a challenging chin in my father's direction.  My mother's pace at the stove quickened tenfold, until she was little more than a blur of motion.
    As for me, I froze behind him, taking him in.  Taking in his effect on us.  He was the sun, and we orbited him nervously.  Our own weird little solar system, contained right here in the yellow-linoleumed kitchen.
    "Hi Daddy," I called, breaking the spell.
    He turned at the sound of my voice as I stepped forward. For a minute his face was a blank.  I sank inward, folding over inside of myself. 
    If my mother had barely changed, my father had done all her aging for her.  His eyes, once so clear and piercing blue, had gone yellow around the edges.  His skin sank around his mouth, giving me a clear view of the outline of his gums. His face had a sunken, sallow look and the smell around him was worse as he came closer.  I felt tears prick at the corners of my eyes.  My Dad was killing himself with drinking.
    Then he broke into a wide smile and opened his arms.  I went to him and he put one arm around me in a shallow embrace.  His grip was still strong.  I could still feel the iron strength in his arms.  Years of hard labor hadn't left him yet. 
    "Hi Princess," he croaked and his voice was choked with emotion.  "Welcome home."
    My cheeks were suddenly wet.  "Oh Daddy." 
    There were a million things I had planned on saying to him. I wanted to give him hell for my hell.  But all that went out the window when I heard the vulnerability in his voice.  My father, the drunken, unfeeling asshole, was practically weeping at the sight of me.
    "I've missed my little girl," he whispered in my ear.  I smelled the liquor and the smell of decay, but under that I smelled my father.  Dial soap and Electro-Shave. The smell of the man who loomed so large in my life but was now diminished by his own hand.
    "I've missed you too, Daddy."  As soon as I said it, I knew that I meant it and it shattered something fragile that I had been holding carefully inside of me.  I felt Andy's eyes on me the moment the words left my lips, I squeezed my eyes shut to ignore his incredulity.
    "Your room is still the same," he whispered in that same ragged voice. 
    I couldn't reply.  I only nodded as the tears continued to fall.  I loved him.  I missed him and I loved him and it made me nauseous to realize it because it was not what I had told myself for so long.  It went directly against one of the central lies I had built my life around.
    I looked over his shoulder and saw my mother smiling at the touching tableau in front of her.  I could tell she was storing it away in her head, where she kept all the moments that to her made us a normal, happy family.  She nodded, beatifically and widened her arms.  "Dinner is ready," she called, her tone benevolent.  The matriarch she believed herself to be was having her moment in the sun.
    I sniffled and nodded.  I didn't recognize the tears that were falling.  They kept falling, unbidden, like a dam had burst.  I stepped out of his embrace and blew my nose loudly into a napkin, hating how crying took over my body.  I felt Andy staring at me in mute confusion and could only sob louder as I sat heavily in my chair at my normal place at the table.
    "It's good to have you home." My