When I looked at that picture, I flashed back to she and I in my bedroom, our legs tangled together and our lips raw from kissing. It seemed like I formed a plan right then, but honestly, I didn’t even think it through. I just knew that I had to find a way to fix what I had broken, and I had to do it before she met someone else. I would make a profile and I would woo her and then, when we met in real life, I would apologize for ever hurting her. I would tell her that hurting her even a little made me feel like absolute shit because I was pretty sure I was falling in love with her. The website prompted me to enter a name.
My name is Lennox, I’m on a Mac, all that’s left is Windows, I thought, typing Window into the rectangular box. The joke was silly and probably wouldn’t translate to anyone who was reading my profile, but it made sense to me. I could be like so many of the others online and try to make my name something profound or something clever, but in the end, fail miserably. At least mine would be something that didn’t make me cringe every time I logged on.
Was it catfishing to reach out to someone who already knew you without letting them know your identity? It felt deceptive somehow, even if it wasn’t really a lie, because to some degree I was stripping her of the choice. I told myself that it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like she had rejected me and I was finding a way to insert myself into her life against her will. If anything, it was that type of grand gesture that everyone secretly wanted, the kind that would show her how much I meant it. How ready I was to stand with her, hand in hand, in front of any crowd.
I must have typed out a dozen messages, trying them on like last year’s gloves. I tried to be funny, but wasn’t, tried to be flirty, and ended up creepy. Everything I knew about online dating told me my message had to be something that would stand out and grab her attention, that would earn me an immediate place at first in line for her affections. The message that I ended up sending wasn’t like that at all. There was no charisma or humor in it. It was just sincere: You look so thoughtful and lovely in this photo. I would love to know what (or who?) you were thinking of while you stared off into space.
I didn’t have any right to after everything, but I really hoped the who was me.
Chapter Fifteen
Hannah
As soon as I walked in the door, the smell of Grandma’s house caused serious déjà vu. It wasn’t like I’d spent a lot of time there as a kid; even before the divorce, my grandma had made it pretty clear that she didn’t approve of my agnostic, big city mom and Mom had pretty well reciprocated the lack of affection. Not that she had ever been rude; even the one time when we had finally agreed to visit on Christmas and Grandma had made so many snide comments about Mom that she had stormed off, on the whole drive home, any rude comments I made were greeted with a sharp scolding. While she was never mean, she wasn’t a pushover, either, and didn’t expect me to let others treat me badly. Mom was just of the opinion that you let things go and don’t spend a lot of time venting about the negative stuff.
After the divorce, I’d been thrilled when Mom didn’t push me to go back. I wasn’t forbidden from seeing her or anything, but the unspoken rule had pretty much been I see my dad’s family on his time and Mom’s on hers. Since Mom didn’t really have any family and Dad was absent, that had ruled out a lot of holiday travel.
None of that kept the house from being familiar to me, as if I had been there a thousand times rather than a dozen. The couch was still the first thing I noticed when I walked in, floral and overstuffed up against the back wall of the living room. The dining room was on the other side of the staircase filled foyer; the whole downstairs still felt cramped and strangely laid out. I didn’t have much time to take it all in, though, because Grandma led me straight for her blue Formica kitchen table and pulled out one of the vinyl padded seats for me to sit on.
She sat across from me and I wondered how she had gotten so old over the last six years. It took her over a minute just to sit down in the chair and it was obvious her bones ached as she leaned on the table to support her lowering body.
“Your dad doesn’t look the same as last time you saw him,” she said, and I wondered if she’d had to prepare herself for my visit. Even after one sentence, I felt like I was hearing something she’d rehearsed many times. “Then again, I guess no one in this house does.” Her mouth spread into what looked like it was trying to be a smile. I wondered if she was out of practice.
Before she could go on, I heard footsteps on the stairs. They landed heavy against the old, creaking wood. My heart quickened and I had the urge to run right back through the door I’d just entered.
My first thought when he walked into the room was that my grandma hadn’t been kidding when she said he looked different. He had lost a lot of his muscle tone and while he wasn’t fat, his body was less lean. His face, though, was completely round and I recognized it as a symptom of anti-psychotics that I’d read about while trying to learn more about what I should expect of him. The forums had called it “Moon face” and as I noticed the fullness of his cheeks and the loss of angles in his chin, I had to agree the term fit what I was seeing.
He hovered in the door with his arms crossed, eyes flitting back and forth between Grandma and me. I guessed that he was as nervous as I was, but when I noticed the sweat outline my palms were leaving on the kitchen table, I figured maybe not quite as nervous.
Grandma rose slowly, wobbling a little as she stood. Again, she grimace/smiled as she said, “It’s the knees. I’ve been thinking about having surgery on ‘em, but I don’t think I’ll have to use ‘em too much longer.”
I stared at her. It felt like I should say something encouraging, but what do you even say to that? Nah, you’ll probably live a few more years? I tried to look sympathetic, but much like Grandma, my expressions weren’t quite behaving, and I think I gave my embarrassment away. After an awkward pause, Grandma excused herself to give me and Dad some privacy and I exhaled a too-loud sigh. I don’t know if it was more in relief or in anticipation of more awkward conversation to come.
As Dad walked over to the table, I cursed how unnatural everything was. I had no idea how to act when you see your estranged father who you’ve recently learned was suffering from mental illness when he abandoned you. Should I hug him? Should I throw things? Why couldn’t life come with a script?
I was fortunate that I didn’t have to debate the hug question long. Dad quickly settled into Grandma’s former spot and I was at least confident that getting up to hug someone who’d chosen to walk by me and sit would be the wrong social move. That was something to be thankful about at least.
In my head, I could hear a clock ticking as the time passed and neither of us spoke. Why had he been so enthusiastic about seeing me again if he was just going to stare me down? But maybe that’s all he had needed. Maybe he wanted to have the opportunity to assess me, make sure I was growing up okay and looked healthy. Maybe the hope that something revelatory would happen during this terse, stilted meeting was all in my head.
I couldn’t stand the thought of my trip being so wasted. I wouldn’t be just a check mark on his to do list. I had spent all year desperate to make something happen and trying to force it with random trips and a to-do list: this was my moment. If something was going to change today, it would have to be because of me.
Before I even spoke, the tears started leaking. “Mom told me that you’re sick,” I said to him and his face fell. “I didn’t know when I sent the letter.”
His breath got louder, and his eyes were glued to the table. He didn’t talk, but his cheeks were turning red. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was scared. Was he turning red from embarrassment or anger? If he’d left because he was so scared that he might hurt Ari, was there any chance he’d hurt me now? It was too much. The air was all being sucked from the room and I could taste copper as my heart drummed against my throat. With each beat, I felt myself choking a little more and I wished it was possible to cough up your own heart when it was taking up too muc
h space.
“Dad?” I begged. I didn’t know what I was asking him. What could I need from this quiet, crimson, weak man sitting across from me? He was a stranger to me. No matter how much I believed he couldn’t help what had happened between us, no matter how much I understood why he had to leave us behind, none of it changed the result and the result was he’d missed seeing who I’d become.
His eyes flitted up to mine and they looked like coal burning themselves from the inside out. Fear, I realized. He wasn’t angry or embarrassed, he was scared, too.
Something about the look in his eye worked like a time machine and a memory popped into my head as clearly as if it were playing over a projector. Dad, his eyes full of fear as he sat next to my mom on the sofa. She was crying into her hands, so I couldn’t see her face, but as I sat on the steps and peeked between two slats, I could tell she was breathing ragged, choking gulps of air while Dad was frozen.
“I didn’t trap you,” my mom was saying. “You’re free to go any time you want.”
Not understanding the complexities of marriage and children, I’d thought she was talking about a literal trap and my eyes darted back and forth between my family on the couch and the solid, oak front door. Dad didn’t get up to go even though Mom said he could, and I waited for something to happen, feeling a static pop in the air that told me something was going to. Any minute, someone was going to scream or leave and even though neither of my parents had ever acted like that in front of me, I felt as sure as I’d ever been that it was coming.
It was something in the air, or maybe just my belly: a churning feeling that set my muscles on edge, willing me forward when there was nowhere to go. In that moment, I could understand what dad was saying about feeling stuck because that’s how I felt, too: stuck on these stairs when they felt so dangerous, so close to caving in underneath me that I wanted to be anywhere else.
Dad’s voice jarred me from the memory; it was the first time I’d remembered anything from before that had made all of this make sense and I wanted to know more, but I was there to hear it from him. His voice was slow when he started talking and he sounded like there were cotton balls in his mouth that dried everything out. Again, I wondered if it was because of his medication. Maybe it was from not using his voice so much. I just couldn’t picture him and grandma talking that much.
“I wish I had something easy to say that would make everything make sense to you, Hannah,” he said. “I know that’s kind of a cop out thing to say, but it’s just true. There are no easy answers. I read your letter.” He was so still, his hands never lifting from the table. His eyes were back glued to that damn table. It reminded me of Lennox and the way she’d never make eye contact and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. How dare they tell me things that cut me to my core without even having the decency to look me in the eye to do it? Well, I’d had enough of that.
“If you don’t look me in the eyes, I’m not staying here,” I said, voice shaking. “You can give easy answers, you can avoid serious talks, but you have to at least have enough respect to look at me.”
My statement shocked me even as it came out from between my lips. I never demanded things from people, and I hadn’t planned to do it just then, but the words escaped before I could stop them. Dad looked up at me and a wry grin started to spread across his face. I recognized him a little in that moment and it changed everything.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied with a bob of the head and a rap of his knuckles. There was something about that ma’am that set my teeth on edge, but I decided to pick my battles. We probably wouldn’t get that far if I screamed at him every time he talked.
I looked down at the surface of the table imagining all the meals he’d eaten here away from us over the years. I thought of all the ones we’d eaten at the kitchen counter and how happy it had been even without him. All our lives had moved on and there was no getting back what was lost.
“Do you think of me? Of Ari?” I asked, and I realized that even though she had made the confession about forgetting Dad, it was Ari I was most curious about. How did he see her now? Was he still scared of my elven little sister with the wild hair and gangly limbs? Did he realize he’d left her without so much as a memory of a father?
“Of course I do,” he said, but the answer came a little too fast. “Of course. What kind of person do you think I am, Hannah?”
I shut my eyes and saw a blending of the frozen man from the couch and the smiling man with the puppets. I couldn’t reconcile the two images in my head. I mean, I knew people had moods. I knew people could be happy and sad, joyful and grim, but the way he’d been so stark still, so unmoving when Mom was a heap of sobbing flesh right there beside him . . . that man wasn’t the Dad I knew. The memories just didn’t marry up.
“That’s the thing Dad,” I said, pulling my purse from the top of the chair and standing up to leave. “I have no idea what kind of person you are.”
The whole drive back I sat in silence, trying not to zone out and wreck while I puzzled out a way to make sense of our visit. Maybe if I could find some sort of takeaway, something that had even made it worth the gas money I’d spent to get out there, then I’d know what to do next. The clock told me I’d been in that house for over an hour. How was that possible? How was it possible I’d spent so much time readying my nerves, forcing myself forward when everything in me felt frozen to my spot, just to have Dad and I exchange what felt like five sentences of actual dialogue?
I don’t know what I expected. Was I thinking we’d have a little meet and greet and it would be like in a movie where we would share a crying jag over some sort of hot beverage and the past would just be forgotten? That we’d just sweep everything under the rug and pretend like nothing had happened when we tripped over the giant lump looming right below the surface? Even worse than the totally useless feeling that was settling into my bones like a deep winter chill, things that had felt clear before didn’t anymore. Especially with Ari. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure what to do about telling her what I knew. I had been so quick to accept the idea that it wasn’t the same with her as it was with me. That she was a child and as a child, it was my mom’s choice to keep it from her or clue her in. That there was no way she could understand that her dad had a mental illness that made him abandon us in the middle of the night and mom had kept it a huge secret while I seethed, thinking he just didn’t want us. I couldn’t understand those things, so how would a little girl?
The closer I got to home, the more my guilt nagged at me. This was the same kid who fell asleep in my room right before Christmas because she couldn’t remember her own dad. Maybe she wasn’t old enough to really, fully understand what happened all those years ago, but the whole notion that we were somehow protecting her by lying to her was clearly bullshit. She was a lot more wounded than Mom or I had known and the closer I got to home, the more certain I became that I couldn’t keep it from her. She couldn’t just think we’d had a dad one day and then didn’t anymore the way I always had.
Mom was waiting for me when I got home. I jumped a little when I saw her because she’d never been the kind of mom who waited around to check up on me. She talked to me more naturally, having conversations over cooking dinners and in the car from point a to point b. Here she was, though, legs folded underneath her in the stiff green armchair that no one ever sat in right in the foyer.
I crossed my arms around my chest and looked down. I couldn’t meet her eye and I realized I was angry; there was no more question of whether I should be or whether I had the right to be because I just was.
For years, she’d lied to me. A lie of omission more than a bold-faced lie, sure, but still a lie. I had believed my father was this absentee dad who was off gallivanting with nineteen-year old kids and partying his life away because he couldn’t stand the responsibility of being a dad. I pictured him the way he’d looked just hours before, sitting at his mom’s kitchen table barely able to face his own child. I pictured the life he’d lost because he got si
ck. My throat constricted and the air I took into my lungs felt like it wasn't quite registering, like I was going through the motions of breathing, but my body wouldn’t acknowledge that it was happening.
“I think it’s a cop out,” I said, my voice shakier than I was going for, my eyes not moving from the floor in front of me.
Her head snapped up and she looked shocked. “You think what’s a cop out?”
I shook my head. There was so much to say. So much of it had just been the easiest road for them, not a care given to what would make things better for me and Ari. Had she really believed it wouldn’t hurt like hell when I found out that not only had one parent been absent, but the other one, the one I had always trusted, had always been able to talk to, the one who had been my friend, was a liar?
My body moved towards her like my brain was no longer in control and I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from shaking her. She was just gaping at me, her face a mixture of baffled and injured, and I couldn’t help but want to slap all those feelings off her face. Who was she to look hurt? She’d had years to process this. She’d had years to get over losing her husband to a disease. I’d had a day. Ari’d had nothing.
Like our roles had reversed, even worse because she would never dream of shaking a finger at me, I pointed my index finger in her face. “I will not keep this a secret from Ari,” I said. I knew how cold my voice was and I hated it. I hated the steel that was spreading through my body, navigating the map of my veins.
Mom looked down at her lap, eyes welling with tears. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she said, and just like that, it was over.
This was Mom. This was my crazy, loud mouthed Mom who had been there every day. Mom, who’d pieced everything together and yes, kept a secret without thinking of the consequences because she was just a flawed, frazzled person doing the best she could. Feeling like I was about four years old, I dissolved into a puddle next to her, letting her wrap her plump arms around me. She smelled like coconuts and lavender, a mixture of nothing but soap and laundry detergent. She’d never used perfume, almost never wore makeup. What you saw was what you got and I’d always loved the comfort she’d found in her own skin. I’d so much wanted to be like that. It hurt so much to think that this raw, naked woman had spent so much of my life telling me lies.
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