Mr. Sweetly Indecent
By Bliss Broyard, first published in Ploughshares
When a young woman in a contemporary American city witnesses her father cheating on her mother, her entire world crashes down around her.
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Plot Summary
In an ambiguous American city, a young woman sits at a restaurant with her father. The air is tense: a few nights ago, while having sex with a man she’d just gone out on a date with, the daughter spied her father with a woman other than her mother. At dinner, the father has nothing to say for himself, other than that he won’t see the woman again. The daughter thinks back to how her parents met. Her mother was a dancer at a club in West Berlin, her father a client to asked her out. Sick to her stomach, the daughter tries calling the guy from the other night. He doesn’t pick up the first few times. She calls her mother but can’t manage to tell the truth. She resolves to cut her long hair off, but ends up only getting bangs. Finally, she gets a hold of the guy she went out on a date with, but he doesn’t want to see her again. The weekend comes, and she takes to the train to her parents’ house. There, they act as they always do, while she feels separated from them. After dinner, she sees them speaking to one another, her mother pulling her father up from off the floor. She remembers a similar childhood memory. She wonders how many times her father has transgressed.
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