The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson

win over a bored class. Clowning often worked. “Italian? Indian? Nicaraguan? Greek? Pizza?”
    “Honestly, just grub.”
    “We’ll head down to the café, then.” He’d save any fancy waterfront dining or expeditions into the city for later.
    They were back in the car when she said, “So, what am I supposed to call you?”
    “What?”
    “I mean, I don’t think I can manage ‘Dad.’”
    “Well . . . Art, then. And when you figure out what name you want to go by, let me know.”
    He’d meant that to be a joke, sort of, but she wasn’t going for it. He was beginning to see how having a teenager might be the equivalent of having a bad class in permanent session. There was much that seemed typically kidlike about her, the studied boredom and remoteness. Then there was the odd flash of wised-up humor, and the suggestion of something else unknown, down there deep in the water.
    It was only a five-minute drive to the downtown district and the café, but he felt the need to break the silence. “It’s kind of a neat little town. We have a big film festival. Art festival.” That didn’t sound nearly as interesting as he’d wanted it to. “This place, the café, sometimes they have live music.” He was pretty sure it would be the wrong kind of music. “There’s a bookstore too,” he added. Bookstores, the last desperate throw of the dice.
    The sun had gone down, the soft coastal fog was blurring the twilight, and lights were bright in the plaza and the shops surrounding it. The tops of the mountains overhead were black and mysterious. All in all it was just about the prettiest place he’d ever lived, and he hoped his daughter would see it with friendly eyes. She took in downtown’s lineup of superheated boutiques—apparel, jewelry, antiques, gourmet pet food—without comment. Art said, “We have real stores too. Like, Safeway.”
    “Ha-ha,” Linnea said politely.
    In fact Mill Valley was one of those odd mixes of wealth and distress. The truly rich had houses up in the hills, while those like himself got by in their odd corners. People in tennis clothes drank white wine in the restaurants at one o’clock in the afternoon. But in the parking lot adjacent to Art’s apartment building, a man had lived for some months in a huge stationary white Lincoln, attending to his private business in the line of bushes between the parking lot and the busy street. The scruffy man seated at the café’s entrance, slurping coffee, might have been down on his luck, or just as easily a famous inventor of computer software.
    Art and Linnea stood in line to order their dinner (he got pasta, she salad and a cup of soup), then found a table. Their food came, and they ate. Louise was right, she didn’t seem to be finicky about her food, just bore down on it. He was trying to decide if she was pretty. If you had to think about it, he guessed the answer was no.
    They were nearing the end of their meal, and Art felt a rising panic: they would have to speak. Linnea was poking at the wet remains of her salad, slouching in such a way that he was reminded posture was one of those things parents were meant to monitor. He decided he’d skip that one. “So,” he began, a dumb, lurching start. “There’s probably some things we should talk about.”
    “Mom told you to get after me about my hair, didn’t she?”
    “No, that didn’t come up.”
    “Because she’s been this huge, frigging bitch about it. Is it OK if I swear?”
    “We can get to that later,” Art said, already feeling helpless. Nothing was going to come easy here. “I think your hair’s fine. I assume it will grow out eventually.”
    “Huh. So what did she tell you?”
    “That you were unhappy.”
    For a moment her face was a child’s face, something you could love and protect. Then the wised-up expression descended like a screen. “So? That’s not some crime.”
    It was going to be trench warfare. Hand-to-hand combat. She wasn’t going to give any