#filicest

Kathryn had no early memories of her father, who divorced her mother when Kathryn was only six months old under the order of Kathryn's grandfather, who had never liked his son-in-law. After the divorce, Kathryn and her mother moved in with her mother's parents, who became responsible for raising Kathryn, as her mother was too busy dating and sleeping to watch over her. Despite having other relationships as time went by, her mother never fully got over Kathryn's father, especially due the fact that he continued to write letters to them during all of Kathryn's childhood. Years later, when Kathryn's mom died, would Kathryn find some letters from her dad in which he asked to see her, and even thanked her for the Valentine's Day card she had sent to "Daddy", although Kathryn doesn't remember ever having written to him, due to her being too young at the time. 

He only visited twice, once when Kathryn was five, and he and her mother took her to the beach; the other when she was ten, and despite him having remarried and had another daughter, Kathryn's parents still held hands and acted couple-like while the three of them were out, treating her almost as if she was third-wheeling their date. When Kathryn was six, her mother moved to a new apartment alone. She still stopped by to visit Kathryn, who continued living at the grandparents' house. Despite staying at a certain distance, her mother was still very demanding and often berated Kathryn for not being good enough. 

During her teens, Kathryn developed anorexia, in part because of her mother's obsession with being thin and "beautiful". Seeking to avoid being a teenage mother, like her mom had been, Kathryn was somewhat recluse, focusing on her grades and refusing to date. For some reason, this made her mom infuriated. Before Kathryn left for college, her mom insisted that Kathryn get a diaphragm, and in a strange passage of the novel, Kathryn recalls how the doctor "deflowered" her with dildos.

When Kathryn went to college, she contacted her father again, and they began to exchange letters. His letters were impersonal, more concerned about her education than her personal life, and she writes back in the same way. After not having seen him for ten years, Kathryn or her mother (each thinks it was the other's idea) invite him to visit.

"It's been ten years since I've seen him, and if my mother is right—if inviting my father to come see us was my idea—it must be that my curiosity over the hidden parent, the other half of me, is great enough to overcome the discouragement of the letters."

Later, Kathryn would learn that her parents had been meeting in secret through the years, going to places far away from where they lived, so they wouldn't be recognized (a method that her father would also use to conduct his affair with Kathryn). During the spring break of her junior year of college, her dad visits her and her mom. This would be the visit that changed everything for Kathryn. 

Kathryn went alone to the airport to pick up her dad, as her mother had (like always) taken too long showering. The air was tense as they met each other in person for the first time in Kathyn's adult life, and it's hard to tell if his strangeness was due to already being attracted to her or if it was simply because they hadn't seen each other in so long. Either way, at first Kathryn also didn't see anything suspicious with his behaviour, as she was also very nervous.

"My father looks at me, then, as no one has ever looked at me before. His hot eyes consume me—eyes that I will discover are always just this bloodshot. I almost feel their touch. He takes my hands, one in each of his, and turns them over, stares at my palms."

When they arrived at Kathryn's mother's house, she greeted her former husband with a kiss on the lips, but the meeting quickly soured and they began to argue, making it very clear why their relationship never lasted. Her father, who is an amateur photographer, takes many shots of Kathryn and her mom, which might be a small detail, but connects to Harrison's second book Exposure, whose summary reads "she cannot edit her own memories so easily; images of a childhood spent as her father's model and muse, the subject of his celebrated series of controversial photographs."

During the time spent together, her father sought out to stay as close to her as possible, watching her every movement and following her around the house, even to the bathroom. While she couldn't understand why he was so enthralled by her, as no one had ever paid close attention to what she did, she was also interested in him.

"I'm captivated by him. I've never really known who my father was, and revelation is inherently seductive. There is, too, the fascination of our likeness, that we resemble each other in ways that transcend physical similarities."

Even moments that would have been normal between families had a weird edge for them. When Kathryn fell asleep on the couch, by her father's side, she woke up to him looking at her with "his hungry eyes." Later, he cried as he told her he had never been allowed to hold her when she was a baby and that her grandparents hadn't even permitted him to say goodbye to her when he left. 

"I don't know it yet, not consciously, but I feel it: my father, holding himself so still and staring at me, has somehow begun to see me into being. His look gives me to myself, his gaze reflects the life my mother's willfully shut eyes denied. Looking at him looking at me, I cannot help but fall painfully, precipitously in love."

On the last night of his stay, Kathryn woke up to find him missing, only to discover he was sleeping in her mother's bed. Kathryn couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy, while also being a bit repulsed at the idea of her parents having sex. The next day, her father told her that he had heard her and knew what she had seen. But he justified it by saying he had only  done it because her mother had asked. 

When the time came to take him to the airport, once again it fell to Kathryn, with her mother telling her that "he seems more interested in your company than in mine", and indeed, she was right, as when Kathryn told her father she would be taking him alone, he told her "I'm glad to have you to myself for a little while". In the airport, her father told her he loved her, before he kissed her on the lips. She stood there in shock as he embarked the plane, having promised to see her soon.

"With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen. [...] My father pushes his tongue deep into my mouth: wet, insistent, exploring, then withdrawn."

Kathryn was confused by the kiss, she knew it to be wrong, and in present day compares it to a "drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed." They talked on the phone almost everyday, planning when they would meet again.

Once the college term began, Kathryn was unable to concentrate and missed registration, not only that, but her whole behaviour was weird and eventually she opened up to her boyfriend, telling him about the kiss. He asked if she told her mother, but she hadn't, because she feared what her mother would do. She then backtracked and said that her father hadn't really kissed with tongue, and they don't discuss that subject again.

"She would prevent me from ever seeing my father again. And I can't not see him again. From the time he left me, my first thought, the one that pushes aside my fears about the kiss, has been When."

Kathryn decided to take a break from college, although she didn't return home, rather renting an apartment in town, in which she continued her daily phone calls with her father, where they talked a lot about her mother, whom they both had a love-hate relationship with. 

"We talk for hours every night: a courtship encouraged by the paradoxical intimacy of long-distance calls, the telephone's invitation to say anything, to be more forthcoming, passionate, reckless in ways we might not be if we were meeting face-to-face."

When Kathryn's grandparents discovered she had withheld from the semester, they got angry, blaming her dad, and tried to make it so they wouldn't see each other again. Her mother, on the other hand, was giddy that he would visit again, as she claimed that he was the only man she ever cared about. As Kathryn's father is a pastor, he managed to make a visit to the university, under the guise of meeting with the religion professor, and stayed with Kathryn in her apartment. 

The moment he arrived, he was already possessive, claiming that she belonged to him. At night, not wanting Kathryn to sleep on the floor, he convinced her to share the bed with him. Nothing happened that night other than her falling asleep in his arms, but he had successfully reduced the distance between them, and learned how to get his way. 

"He cannot keep from touching me, looking at me, reaching for my hand, my sleeve, my hair. In restaurants, his food grows cold as he stares across the table, his hand holding tight to mine. Tears gather behind the lenses of his glasses and fall silently down his cheeks. They convince me that what I want to believe is true: his love is genuine."

They drive to her mother's house, as Kathryn had promised her she would take him to see her. During the drive, they had their first argument, with her father accusing her of spending too much money on shampoo. At first, she denied it, but little by little he wore her down until she agreed he was right. Once again, he has won.

"In my mother's home, both of us her guests, my father and I forsake her, our former object of devotion, for each other."

This time, her father didn't even pretend to care for his ex-wife, focusing all his attention on Kathryn, despite them having driven there just to see her mom. Instead of Kathryn being the third-wheel, now they are trapped in a love triangle, and Kathryn's mom quickly made notice of it, but when confronted, Kathryn instead makes it seem that her mother is self-absorbed and is jealous of Kathryn finally getting love. And while her mom is indeed self-absorbed, she was also smart and knew the man, and could tell that his love for Kathryn was more than paternal, even insisting that he was just doing all of that to get his revenge on her. 

"What I hear is that not only does my mother not love or admire me, but she will find a way to reinterpret my father’s love, to make it all her own."

Kathryn's life began to revolve around her father, on finding ways to meet with him and talk to him. They met in places far away, far from anyone who knew them, where they were free to do as they pleased. On a trip to the Grand Canyon, he pressures her to consummate the relationship. She was reluctant and despite him telling her that God had sent her to him, she continued to reject him for the time being.

"Neither of us is satisfied with anything less than the total possession of the other. My father doesn’t care if he has interrupted my education or cut me off from my friends; he delights in any evidence of my enslavement to him. And I never consider his work or his family, the money spent on phone bills and airfares instead of on his children's clothing."

Once they return home, Kathryn comes to realise that she prefers having him at a distance, as in that way she could have his attention without having to deal with the physical side of it. However, he was still controlling, demanding to know where she was when he called and she didn't pick up, and getting angry when she told him she had been with her boyfriend. Due to Kathryn having become more and more recluse, her boyfriend broke up with her, much to her father's pleasure. 

"As frightened as I am to be with my father, I can't not see him. My need for him is inexorable. I can't arrest it any more than I could stop myself from falling if, having stepped from a rooftop into the air, I remembered, too late, the fact of gravity."

On their next trip, her father took her to meet his parents, who are divorced. In a moment alone with Kathryn, her grandfather placed his hand on her thigh and told her that if he had been younger, she would have been in trouble. Kathryn immediately confessed that to her father, but he gave little reaction, leading Kathryn to joke it must be genetic. In their shared motel room, Kathryn allowed him to kiss her, even kissing him back.

While at her grandmother's house, Kathryn's father crept into the room she was at, and laid on her bed. Instead of hugging her or even kissing, he went straight into lifting the hem of her nightgown and placed his mouth between her legs. She didn't stop him, but she felt mentally trapped.

"He doesn't speak, and neither do I. Nor do I make any attempt to stay his hands. Beneath the nightgown I am wearing no underpants, and he opens my legs and puts his tongue between them."

After this happened, Kathryn made her way to Europe, where she travelled around for a while, trying to not think about her father. Still, she was unable to resist the urge and called him a few times, only for him to berate her for not calling more often. Once she returned home, under pressure from her grandparents, Kathryn re-enrolled in college, but she continued to meet her father in secret. Her father has become constantly displeased with her, from her communications with her now ex-boyfriend to her desire to focus on her studies. His words to her read as textbook lovebombing and gaslighting. 

"Is it possible that you don't realize my devotion? You say I'm disrupting your studies, but don't you see that you've wreaked havoc in my heart! Only you matter to me!"

Broken down by his constant pressure, Kathryn relented and the next time they met, he had sex with her. She's unable to recount any of those encounters, as they have become fuzzy to Kathryn after years of suppressing the memories.

"In years to come, I won't be able to remember even one instance of our lying together. I'll have a composite, generic memory. I'll know that he was always on top and that I always lay still, as still as if I had, in truth, fallen from a great height."

Overridden with guilt, Kathryn began to visit her mom more. One of those times, her mother took Kathryn to a psychologist, to confront her about her suspicions of incest. Kathryn denied, telling the doctor that actually, she was just going through what all girls go through as children, but she was experiencing that later in life. The doctor believed Kathryn, and she delighted herself in knowing that she had taken not only her mother's lover, but also her confidant.

Kathryn continued on her long trips with her dad, with him becoming more controlling and starting to shout at her whenever she didn't follow his orders or wore something he disliked. Their arguments became so frequent that not even being in public would stop him from yelling at her, once calling her a "slut" at a diner, before tearing up and apologizing.

After Kathryn graduated, she initially moved to New York, where she planned to become an author. She was, however, unable to find inspiration to write. When her father visits her in the city, he asks to take naked pictures of her. Like usual, he ended up convincing her to let him.

"I gave you my flesh and blood, my spirit. It is my heart that beats within you. I have as much right to you as any one, as much as you have to yourself."

Before he went home, he offered to let her live with him while she worked on her book, and having been unable to find a job, Kathryn found herself with no choice but to accept.

Kathryn and her father's new wife didn't get along, as his wife knew about the affair, which indeed persisted even though now she lived under his roof as a daughter. To find privacy, he often took her to his office in the Church.

"My father's possessing me physically seems increasingly to be just that: Each time, he takes a little more of my life; each time, there is less of me left."

Sometimes, Kathryn thought of confessing to someone what was happening to her, but she didn't want her step-siblings discovering the truth about the kind of man their father is. When she started to get suicidal ideations, she finally went to a doctor and told him about her relationship with her dad, and the doctor prescribed her antidepressants.

When she told her dad about her depression, he tried to avert the blame, telling her that the sex is no big deal, just a show of commitment, but that they could stop if she didn't enjoy it. She explained how she wants a life that isn't just about him, she wants a family of her own, but he told her she could never have it.

"You've done what you've done, and you've done it with me. And now you'll never be able to have anyone else, because you won't be able to keep our secret. You'll tell whoever it is, and once he knows, he'll leave you."

Shortly after that, Kathryn's grandfather passed. Her mother got diagnosed with cancer, and Kathryn began to put more focus on helping her mother, and pulled away from her father's grasp for a while. Kathryn however, is unable to ever tell the truth to her mom before she dies.

"My father knows, too, that it’s over. He looks at me and sees that I am no longer his. He reads it in my eyes that return his gaze levelly, that suddenly don't find his eyes passionate or even mysterious, only bloodshot, weary. They narrow as he looks at me looking at him, and I see that he knows. "

After her mother's funeral, Kathryn enrolled in a graduate school far away. Her father realised their relationship was over, but didn't protest. Their last interaction was a phone call in which he has her choose to either continue as they were or have no contact at all. She picked no contact.

"The loss of my father will haunt me as it did in the days long past, when I saw a man with no face walk the halls in our house. Somewhere in the world is a father I can't know. Once he was unknown in his absence, and now that I have known him, and he me, the rest of my life depends on our exile from each other."

The book stops there but as we know that Harrison indeed went to become an author. In the press tour, she confirmed that she had never spoken to her father again, and had no desire to do so.