9th
chapter 4 : DEAR DAD
My dad was always adventurous, good-humored, and loved to play tricks on my brother and me. Like when we’d take a hike in the woods and he’d find something gross like a huge spider or dead squirrel, he’d call us over to examine it with him. As we hovered over it, he would grab one of us from behind and shout “BOOOO!” It’d make me squirm and scream louder than ever, but we all got a kick out of it. We’d laugh about it for days.
My father always looked at me with these warm, caring eyes, as if he would touch me I would break. What ever happened to the girl who believed you when you claimed the seeds in kiwis were tiny black bugs? I’d always wonder. My worst memory is of when I thought he hated me. He didn’t convey disappointment easily and I was just a wafer frame heavy with emotion. The only time we would genuinely fight was when we’d see ourselves in each other. We were so alike it was beautiful. But I had also inherited potentially negative personality traits: witty-but-sarcastic, loving-but-attention-seeking, determined-but-stubborn, thorough-but-persnickety. Our fights were usually passionate, yet almost silly, like we knew there would always be closure. But there was this one time we were fighting and it stopped seeming like a fight because he told me I was breaking his heart.
It started off as a normal weekday morning. The sun was barely peaking over the naked trees, the dawn sky untouched and saturated. I went downstairs to the breakfast table to kiss my father good morning, and poured myself a cup of coffee.
He smiled at me from behind his newspaper. “Morning honey, mom went to work early. There’s some cereal out if you want some?”
“No, coffee’s good, I’m getting breakfast with this boy Noah before class.” These words rolled off my tongue like second nature, and I was offended by his eyes full of skepticism. Offended he could see straight through me.
My dad kept silent and I continued defensively, fervently, and unprovoked: “Why do you have to ruin my morning like this? Seriously, WHY? What’s so weird about getting breakfast with a friend? Is there something weird about that?”
I kept going and he kept quiet. He never accused me of lying, but I was so convinced I was telling the truth and that I was truly actually really getting breakfast with this boy Noah. And at the time, maybe I thought it was true, wanted it to be true, and I wasn’t lying even though I was. So I kept fibbing and yelling at him for accusing me of something he never even used words to accuse me of, until I lost my breath to tears. That’s when he said I was breaking his heart.
Right then and there I was three years old again, lost in a queen-sized blanket, a fort built along my parents’ sea foam carpet. I always thought my father found me more pleasant when I was napping, but Polaroid images constantly fell to the ground between each of my giggles and after each flash. We used to shake them like salt and pepper until I claimed I could recognize the blurry peach circles as familiar faces of ‘you’ and ‘me.’
Right then and there I wanted to tell him, You see, Dad, I keep flashing back to when ‘roids’ were merely Polaroids and my best friend didn’t do drugs to bulk up. When the press of a finger meant capturing a moment in time and I wasn’t violated by our neighbor down the hall. That’s what I wanted to convey. But I didn’t. I was breaking his heart, he said. And I kept lying to myself and to him, but all I really wanted tell him was, You see, Dad, I am to blame for my bones and blunders, for my missed meals and dirty laundry. For all the hastiness and for when I threw up all Christmas day in my bathroom. I guess maybe at 15 I should have been able to handle my red, but I was used to white wine and the vodka was more comforting than the food.
I had all this to recite but all I could give to him were my irrelevant truthful lies, my tears… when all I wanted for him was to remember… before my adolescence grabbed us both by the neck; when my eyes were never red and my hands would feel warm between his own. Before, when my heart was just an organ that no one could weigh down. Before we left our old home to find safety in the countryside, Mother Nature garnished with mansions and materialism. Before I sobbed to mom about boys and thought heartache was just a disease for the elderly. I used to cry to you when I fell from the monkey bars. Remember, dad? I wanted to say. You and I were best friends.
I was breaking his heart, he said. I knew it now. I was breaking his heart.
I wanted to say sorry.
“The school bus is here. See you this evening.”
There was never really any closure.
