"Dad, can I come home and stay with you for a while?"
Sandy's voice was trembling, filled with some emotion I couldn't quite put my finger on. Was she crying? She might be crying.
"Sure, baby," I told her. "Mi casa es su casa. Any time. You know that." I was playing it cool. I was
not
going to mention that I had been waiting for this moment for nearly seven years.
"Good." Already her voice sounded stronger. Maybe she hadn't been sure about how I would react to hearing her voice for the first time in six years, ten months, and sixteen days? She continued to speak, interrupting my thoughts. "Just ... you know. Don't tell anyone I'm coming. Okay?"
Who would I tell? "Of course, Sandy. Mind telling me why—"
"Not now. When I get there. Just ... keep this on the DL. Okay?"
"'DL'? What does that—"
"It means 'down low'. Keep my visit quiet. That's what I mean. I don't want anybody to know I'm staying with you. Not a soul. Can you do that for me?"
"Of course, Sandy. You know I love—"
"
It's Sabrina now.
You know that. I told you I changed my name for professional reasons. Can you call me Sabrina?"
"Right.
Sabrina.
I knew that. Sorry. Old habits—"
She sighed. "I know. I was your Sandy—your daughter—and now I'm Sabrina, a stranger. How long has it been, anyway?"
I kept my voice even because Sandy's—I mean, Sabrina's—departure was something that still hurt. "More than six years. Nearly seven."
She chuckled, as if I had said something funny. "And you know what I've been doing since I left home, right?"
"Yes." Another attempt at calmness. I couldn't imagine there were many fathers who wanted their daughters to grow up to become actresses who were famous for showing their boobies and for having intimate sex scenes in front of thousands—if not millions—of strangers who beat their meat while watching her on their monitors or big screens.
That's what my Sandy—okay,
Sabrina
—did after she left me. She didn't run away from home; not exactly. She turned eighteen and legally became an adult. She became an adult, then moved out of my house a week after graduating high school, leaving me alone. She moved out then kept moving all the way to Los Angeles, where she found herself making the kinds of soft-core porn that no father wanted to see his daughter make. Sandy was always a bit on the wild side when she was a teenager. I suppose that came from having no female role models. Her mom left us both when she was nine years old. I suppose my only daughter acted out because of that loss. Maybe. I didn't know what caused her behavior and Sandy never wanted to go to therapy to deal with whatever issues Mary's departure created. I never went to therapy either.
Sandy grew up in my home, raised by a single father who was, honestly, pretty clueless about girls. She graduated high school with middlin'-to-average grades. She left me, moving a thousand miles away from her home town—and her home. She went to LA and became Sabrina. Then she found herself making money by making those movies and TV shows that didn't get shown during "prime time" TV viewing hours.
Nope.
Her movies and shows were shown long after the kids were tucked away safely in bed. They were shown when only horny men (and women) watched.
It wasn't just about the movies and TV shows. My daughter was famous in LA—or maybe I should say "infamous" or "notorious." She was known for who she "dated" and for breaking-up more than one supposedly solid celebrity marriage. She "dated" fellow actors and rock stars and movie stars and sports stars, and agents and producers and record executives, and even some famous photographers. Both men and women. No relationship ever lasted for very long; according to the media reports I read, she was in love for a week or maybe as long as a month—and then she was on to the next relationship. Sometimes there would be a police report but often there was no public reason given for her breakups. Here today; gone tomorrow: that was Sabrina. Her lifestyle made her famous and, I was pretty sure, financially well-off.
Some called her a "muse." There were at least two hit songs allegedly written about her by her exes. There was also one attempted suicide allegedly caused by her suddenly ending a relationship. The way I saw things, if she was a "muse" to these creative types, then it came with a steep price to be paid.
Sandy, now Sabrina, was wild, even by LA standards. She was a near-permanent fixture on the TMZ site, as well as other sites dedicated to salacious celebrity gossip. All the less-than-savory magazines loved to put her on the cover, wearing next to nothing, flaunting her tattoos and her latest conquest. My daughter's picture represented videos viewed, clicks on websites, and magazine copies sold. She was famous; but she was famous in a tawdry, tainted way. Her body—well, at least her beautiful breasts—had been viewed by millions.
I should know. After all, I had all those magazines. I visited those websites. I stared at those videos. I watched every single one of her movies and TV shows. And I had beat my meat to my daughter's image, just as so many others did. I couldn't help myself because my daughter was beautiful and sexy, and called to me as she did to everyone else.
Now she was coming home.
*****
"Can I put my car in your garage?" was the first thing she asked me, after giving me a brief hug. Afterwards, she brought a large suitcase into the house. I pointed up to her old room. It looked exactly the same as the day she had left me, nearly seven years ago. I dusted the room every so often and that was it.
The house was nearly paid off. When Mary left us, I owed plenty. She had racked-up the credit card debt. Through living frugally and working my ass off, I paid off the credit cards and was working on paying off the house. It had taken me twenty years of effort but soon I would be debt-free, and then I could think about retirement. Not too bad for a mid-forties mid-level manager at IDACORP, supporting the Idaho Power segment. The only mistake I had made along the way—excluding marrying my high-school sweetheart who left me a decade afterwards—was to let Sandy become her wild self and then move to LA. If only I had a time machine ....
Sandy came downstairs and I could tell she had been crying again. Whatever was bothering her was still on her mind; she hadn't left it behind when she left LA to come back home for this visit or whatever it was. She had flown or driven a thousand miles but still couldn't escape her issues.
"Thanks for this, Dad," she said to me, as if suddenly reappearing in my life was no big deal. "I needed a place to get away. Things were getting out of control."
"What's going on, uh, Sabrina?" I was proud I got her name right.
She shrugged. "Just life. Life in LA. You know. Got a drink around here?"
"No, I don't know about life in Los Angeles. And it's too early to be drinking. It's barely two in the afternoon."
She huffed a quick chuckle. "You know I'm nearly 25, right? My birthday's in April."
"Yes; I do know how old you are. And I also know
exactly
when your birthday is. After all, I was there at the time. But I also know you didn't answer my question, just as I know that day drinking isn't going to help you solve whatever problems you have." I put on my old Dad face. "So ... tell me what's
really
going on, young lady."
We looked at each other for a long time, trying to see who would back down first. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. A mid-forties man, going bald, with lines on his face and a belly that was probably bigger than it should be. Did she see the concern I felt for my daughter? Or was that concern hidden by the façade of calmness I was maintaining, the façade I had maintained ever since she left me? The façade that hid other, less savory, thoughts of my daughter. I wasn't really sure what San—uh,
Sabrina
—saw when she looked at me.
What I saw was easier to describe. I saw an older version of the daughter I helped raise, the one who took off as soon as she was legally able to do so. The one who had pretty much kept our two lives separate for nearly seven years. She sent me a birthday card (but not every year). I received a Christmas card (but not every year). There was an occasional email. But no phone calls; and no texts. The first time in seven years that I heard my daughter's voice speaking to me was when she called to ask if she could come back home.
Now she was here. I took my time looking over the stranger my daughter had become, this Sabrina who had replaced my Sandy. Five feet and nine inches tall. Thirty-six-inch breasts; a D cup from what I recalled. Long, shapely legs. Hair a multi-colored tangle of blonde and purple and blue and red that reached below her shoulders. Piercing blue eyes, now puffy and rimmed with red. Multiple piercings in her ears. Gold ring in the nose.
And the tattoos.
Sabrina's arms were covered with tattoos. So many, I couldn't see where one ended and another began. Symbols, pictures, shapes. Sabrina had arms of many colors. I knew her legs were the same, though I couldn't see them at the moment. I knew, because I had seen her legs in a hundred different pictures and a dozen different videos. My daughter's beautiful, smooth skin was hidden under the ink of her tattoos. Thank God her neck and face were ink-free.
I didn't like them, though it wasn't my place to say. Sabrina was a big girl now, an adult, a woman. What she did to her body—or who she let into her body—was one hundred percent her own business. I had lost my right to have an opinion when she turned eighteen and walked out my front door forever.
We looked at each other, taking the other in, and then suddenly we fell into each other's arms. She was holding me tightly, sobbing against my shoulder, and my arms were around her back, pulling her against me, my hands rubbing and smoothing—trying to soothe whatever aches were in her heart. Just as I had done sixteen years ago when her mother walked out of our lives.
We held each other for a very long time.
Finally, I pulled back a bit. "Tell me about it," I said, though it was more of a question than anything else.
Sabrina fell back into the sofa cushions and told me her story as the tears trickled down her cheekbones, dripping off her jaw.
*****
"Okay," she said. "You know about FansNFun, right?"
I nodded. Who
didn't
