Chapter 3

In some ways, Charlotte Miller is the same girl who left Moorhead four years ago. She is still the middle child of three, still a daddy’s girl who sleeps with the stuffed animal he gave her, still a simple Midwestern girl at heart. Her ambition after college is the same as every woman she’s directly related to: To be a mother and wife to a caring man. There is a sense of destiny in that path for her. She doesn’t resent it, nor begrudge any other lifestyle choice, but she considers no alternative in her own life.

Her father was the model of a good man for her. He worked hard at his car dealership in Fargo her whole childhood, making enough money to dote on her mother. He celebrated anniversaries and special occasions, never yelled at his children, and always ended a punishment with a heart-to-heart. He was always driven by kindness, gentleness, and hospitality. And the occasional dad joke. She still vividly remembers the night a drunk man hit their hydrant. She was too young to fully understand much, and a great deal of the moral lesson she only understands in retrospect, but her father had invited the man in. In the kitchen, her mother made coffee, but complained loudly about people making their own choices and personal accountability.

“You understand that you pay for your own actions, right, Charlotte?” No, Charlotte had no idea what that meant, but her mother’s eyes told her to simply confirm. She nodded. Oddly, mom hadn’t said such a thing to Charlotte’s older brother. “Your father doesn’t seem to think so. Bringing drunkards into our house.”

On the other side of the door, she heard her father let out a hearty laugh. She wondered what was so awful about the strange man if daddy was in the other room having fun. The coffee finished brewing, and her mother’s face and tone instantly changed as she went into the living room.

From there, she doesn’t remember much. She listened to the three of them for a while, understanding very little, until, before the strange man left, she was introduced to him. He was tall and wore a camouflage hat, and she found him scary in the way a child finds any strange adult scary, but she didn’t know why her mother had reacted so negatively.

Their marriage was otherwise strong, but their competing view of human nature and the world beyond their borders was a source of tension. They married not long out of high school, and though Charlotte knows only what they tell her, she wonders if they drifted apart politically over time.

Though she gravitated to her father’s warmness, she knew her mother better. She gave very little resistance to the social norm that she would be raised mostly into a woman’s role. She learned to cook from her mother, and she was pressured into feminine interests, while her brothers were celebrated for their academic achievements. Charlotte learned to ignore her mother’s comments about changing populations and liberal socialists and groomers; she was a child of the internet, and had different views about people, even if she couldn’t much imagine their lives.

It was that curiosity that made her summon the courage to apply to a school in Boston. She didn’t tell her parents when she sent in the application. She could be rejected, and why have the fight when it might not be necessary? But the acceptance letter meant she’d have to come clean. Could she summon the courage? Her desire to see something outside the Midwest bubble motivated her. She had the voice of an explorer inside her, a voice that longed to experience something, even if briefly, that wasn’t curated by her mother’s prejudices. She would end up back on her path, she knew, but she wanted to take a side street, just briefly, to get there. One meaningful detour in life.

The night she told them, she listened to her parents through the walls of the bedroom. Her mother rarely protested her father’s decisions in her presence, and didn’t ever win when she did. “I don’t want her going there. She can find a perfectly good husband at a school around here.”

“I don’t think it’s the big deal you think it is, Celia.”

“You don’t think it’s a big deal?” her mother shot back, more as statement than question. “Boston? Where crime is rampant and migrant gangs run the streets?”

“Charlotte is a smart girl.”

“It’s not Charlotte I’m worried about. I’m worried about the people around her.”

“And if she’s smart and stays in safe places?”

“Safe places? Like a university that wants her to turn gay? Like a city full of perversion and drugs and sin?” As she often did, Charlotte tried to parse her appreciation with her anger. Her mother cared, but she expressed it through such closed-mindedness. She spoke so often about sin, but had never even read the Bible all the way through.

There was a long pause. “Charlotte’s not going to turn gay or into a drug user,” her father said dismissively. That tone of voice meant the conversation was over and he’d made his decision. Charlotte cheered silently. She’d won. But something did rankle her a little. Though she agreed with her father - she had no plans to change her sexuality or use anything harder than cannabis - the fact that he defended her that way made her uncomfortable, for reasons she couldn’t place. Still. Boston! It was coming!

The next months were filled with harsh-worded warnings from her mother, mixed with the kind of hugs reserved for a dog being put down. The comments were more bearable when Charlotte knew they were ending soon. There was a liberating feeling. She loved her family and had every intention to stay close to them, but in the months leading up to her moving, she felt a looseness in her body that she hadn’t known before.

Boston kept her as stimulated as she’d hoped. She learned that walking down a sidewalk often meant weaving left and right to avoid people. That theater wasn’t just light musicals, but could challenge society. That there were more types of food - and types of people - than she could even keep track of. That straight people could go to gay bars. And that, actually, a diverse and progressive place wasn’t dangerous, even if it was overwhelming at times. She couldn’t make a life of this, but she could make a few years of it. A “wild phase,” of sorts.