Even though it was almost physically painful, I pulled my head back and looked into Lennox’s eyes. With a gentle hand to keep her face level with mine, I asked her the question that hung in the air, the question I wanted to ignore, but knew I couldn’t.
“What’s going to keep you from bailing on me if this gets hard?” I asked her. “If some dumbass calls us dykes because he sees us holding hands, am I going to have to worry that I’m going to lose you again?”
She kissed me gently on my lips, her face lingering close to mine. Her breath was quivering and a small part of me wanted to reassure her that it would all be okay, but I didn’t have it in me to be someone’s cheerleader. Between negotiating my feelings towards mom, trying to be patient with Dad, being a support for Ari, it was time for someone to be there to reassure me. To be my support system. I had to know her answer. With the heat of lips still tingling my lips, I struggled to be practical, but there was no choice. I didn’t have room in my life for another person who was going to let me down the first time I really needed them not to. I had to know if she was going to be by my side when I needed reassurance, too.
She started slowly, her voice smaller than I’d heard it before. “I drove here,” she answered, and it took me a beat before the meaning of her words sank in. She had driven, even though it was terrifying for her. She continued, “If I stood here and told you that I’m not scared, I’d be lying. I don’t want conflict. I don’t want attention. I don’t want to wonder how people will react when I hold your hand,” she said. Then, she pulled me in closer, her arm tightly wrapped around my waist. “But that fear isn’t going to stop me from holding your hand. Got it?”
Tears welled up in my eyes and I was sure the rims were getting all pink again. I was really turning into am crybaby lately. Taking a step back, I wiped my eyes and nodded.
“Got it,” I replied.
Dad sat across from me again, but this time he’d come to my territory. I thought maybe that would be easier for me, but it’s wasn’t. Instead, seeing him sitting stiff and uncomfortable on the same couch that was once his own made me weepy, and I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin against them, cradling my legs as I waited for him to say what he’d come to say.
As the silence built, my instinct was to call for Mom, but she’d taken Ari to the park. She was hesitant to let Dad in the house at all, but the idea of letting him see Ari when it had been so long . . . well, Mom just wasn’t ready for that and even though my voice didn’t really matter, I wasn’t crazy about the idea, either.
When Dad lived with us, he worked in an office and wore a suit to work every day. Even when he was home, he was polished in khakis and polos instead of jeans and t-shirts. I never saw him in lounge pants after breakfast was over. Now, sitting on our couch, he was wearing a frayed button up flannel, the middle seam wrinkled. He obviously didn’t fold down the crease, iron out imperfections. His face was shaggy and his five o’clock shadow was rough and prickly. It felt shallow to care about what he looked like and I didn’t, really, except that all these minor things were a reminder that while I’d been growing up, Dad had been becoming a different person, too. Without looking up, I asked him why he’d come.
“You asked me to come here,” he answered, eyebrows furrowed across his lined forehead.
With sudden force, I slammed my feet against the floor. I was so frustrated. Yes, I had asked him to come to my house, but he had been the one who wanted to give our chat another try, he was the one who sent the message asking me not to give up. I didn’t know how to navigate all of this and I shouldn’t have to.
“Dad, I can’t be the one to lead every time,” I asked, fingers pressed against my temples. “Yes, I asked you to come here because you said you wanted to talk.” With slow, deep breaths, I attempted to steady my thoughts and voice as I went on. “What is it you want to say to me?”
His moves were slow and jerky, and he looked almost robotic as he shifted his weight onto his elbow so that he was leaning his body towards mine. Worry knotted his facial muscles and his jaw twitched as he took his time gathering his words. Seconds quickly turned into minutes, and just when I thought I was going to have to encourage him to speak, he started to talk.
“When you were about four months old, you fell off the bed once in the middle of the night,” he started, each word a gut punch that pasted a grimace across his face. “Your mom absolutely lost it. She got online and checked your head for bumps, shone a flashlight in your eyes, and refused to let you go back to sleep.”
Anger flashed though my brain, an almost electrical sensation that caused my fists to ball. A fierce loyalty expanded through my chest and I knew that if he tried to pin even one part of his absence on Mom, I was likely to punch him. The feeling was foreign; always the easy going, go with the flow girl, I could count on one hand the times I’d felt anything nearing the rage I’d been carrying for the past week or so. It was heavy and caused physical pain in my joints. This, I reflected, must be what aged people.
I guess he saw something in my eyes or in a movement of my face, because he put a hand up to stop me from speaking.
“Let me finish,” he said, his voice steady. For a second, I aw my dad in the confidence of his voice and my eyes fixed on him as he told his story. “Your mom was terrified. Even after we’d watched you for an hour and made sure that you were acting normal and staying awake, she was just so sure that she’d damaged you by letting you sleep in bed with us. She was sure it was her fault.”
Then there were tears and for the first time in what felt like a decade, I wasn’t the one doing the crying. Dad was full on breaking down, big, fat teardrops rolling across his cheeks. “That’s how I felt about Ari even when nothing happened. I felt like she was constantly in danger as long as I was there and if I didn’t leave, I would ruin her.”
There was no doubt in me that he was being honest; the emotions were etched in deep cursive line across his face. A nagging feeling tugged at the pit of my stomach and I had a small urge to go over to him and wrap my arms around him. It was big enough to move me, though, because he was still a stranger in so many ways. Yes, I was starting to get a better picture in my head of what had happened and yes, I could empathize with him, but that didn’t erase all the feelings of neglect and resentment.
“Dad,” I began, steeling my voice as much as I could. I was not going to cry. “I want you to know I forgive you for disappearing like you did.” I walked over and sat beside him. There was still a slight pull to hug him, but I decided to compromise with the split that was warring inside me and instead of embracing him, I wrapped my fingers around his clammy hand. His fingers were long and thin like Ari’s and I had a new urge.
“Hey, Dad, let me tell you about Ari,” I said. “Because I want you to know that she’d not damaged. She’s a really funny kid.”
For the next hour, we sat on the couch trading stories. I started off with tales of Ari from toddlerhood to childhood and he laughed when I described how much she’d loved to find any bottles of liquid and pour them all over the house. I described Mom’s mounting desperation as she’d bought a water table, increased bathing time, and done basically anything she could think of to fulfill Ari’s splash needs. After those stories stopped flowing into my head, I filled him in on me and all the things that had never seemed natural to say in twenty-minute-long, annual phone conversations. I told him I was gay, which didn’t faze him. It was funny; just like with Mom, as soon as I formed the words, I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal for him. I told him about Lennox and how everything that had happened since Christmas had made it harder for me to open myself up to her. He told me about living with Gram, but skipped basically everything about what his sickness had been like over the years. I guess maybe that would take time, too. Life isn’t a movie, so I’m not going to tell you some cliché, like that we had all the time in the world and there was no rush for us to catch up, but I am going to say this: the pressure cooled off a bit. There didn’t seem to
be the same urgency to repair things right there in that moment and I had a lot more faith that it was all going to work itself out.
Marley arrived at my house less than ten minutes after Dad left, her breath coming in jagged spurts that told me she’d sprinted the whole two blocks to get there. Flopping onto my bed in a huff, she looked like a starfish. It took her a minute to catch her breath, but while I waited, I crawled into my bed next to her. We looked up at my ceiling and I had a flashback to a sleepover we’d had once as kids. There had been hundreds of sleepovers, but the one that crept into my memory was one when Marley and I had made a treasure map and made Mom tack it up to the ceiling. After that, we made up stories about pirates and mermaids while we drifted off to sleep. There’d be no pirates this time, but I wished I had a map more than ever. A treasure map with a big X somewhere along an edge that would show me the shortest path to my happiness.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Marley told me as she flipped onto her side so that her knees were up against my hip. “I don’t know whether to ask about your date or your dad.”
My date or my dad. I didn’t really know which one of them to start with, either, but I felt a dense, physical relief in my stomach as I realized that both of those topics were finally on the upswing. With Lennox, I had to shut my eyes to catch my breath because the joy of our meeting was still too large to contain inside me. With my dad, things weren’t quite as good, but I’d found a way to release the past I had been gripping so tightly. With my dad, I finally felt some hope.
“Know what?” I said, curling up to face my oldest friend. “I want to hear what’s going on with you. Any news about Sean?”
Marley let out a snort of disgust. “Sean? No, no. Sean is definitely not the one. I texted him a flirty text the other day and that boy didn’t respond for almost two hours. No, I’ve got my eyes set on someone else.”
Playing coy, Marley waited almost five minutes to reveal that she had a crush on Jake. It was weird; a month ago I would’ve been upset by the risk that her crush would upset the whole balance of our friend group. I would have discouraged her from attempting a relationship with so much potential to complicate everything in all our lives. Now, though, complications just didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“You know I’m extremely pro-Jake,” I told her with an authoritative nod. “That’s a quality guy.”
She laughed and for the next half hour, we lounged in my bed planning the upcoming summer and imagining what it would be like in our new couplings. Marley was all about impromptu trips to the lake or to concerts. She was in the place I’d been when winter break had started: desperate for something new. For me, that time had changed; it wasn’t that I didn’t still want to go places and have fun, I just didn’t have the same urge to force everything. Sitting on the couch with Netflix and snacks, hanging out listening to music, just chilling sounded great to me.
When Marley went home, I sat on the edge of my bed thinking about the one thing I hadn’t managed to fix. Things with Mom were still weird and even though most of the flames of our anger had gone out, there was still a stiffness between us that there’d never been. It was my fault. It was her fault, too, but mostly mine. I was still hurt that she’d lied, but it probably wouldn’t have been a bad move to at least try to see how hard her decision had been.
I found her in the kitchen heating some water in the microwave and I giggled to myself as I remembered a recent Buzzfeed article about how scandalized Europeans were that Americans microwaved water. The comments had been wild; people thought it was intensely gross that we heated our water that way. I’d never really given it a second thought before reading that, but there was something shocking about the backlash. Was it the convenience or time saving they found so off-putting?
I broke my weird, rabbit hole of thoughts by sitting at a stool and watching mom dunk her teabag. Breaking the ice was hard. I’d let things go for too long and when she’d tried to put things behind us, I’d stopped just shy of slamming the door in her face. Every time I thought I’d settled on something to say, I’d change my mind, and after the third time I opened then shut my mouth, Mom sighed ia loud, guttural groan.
“Hannah. You look like a fish with your mouth popping open and shut like that. Is there something you’d like to say?” She blew on her tea before taking a sip, her eyes steady on mine. Her face gave away nothing, her expression totally blank. I had to hand it to her, Mom could wait it out. No silence was too awkward, no lull too uncomfortable. If I were in her position, I would already be desperate to fill in the gaps the quiet left. I think maybe that’s what finally got me talking, even though I still wasn’t sure what to say.
“Dad’s really different,” I told her. It occurred to me that maybe she wouldn’t want to hear me talk about Dad. Maybe it was too painful or just brought up memories that she’d rather forget. Instead she shocked me again.
“I know,” she said. “We talk every week. At least once.”
Every time I felt like I was starting to see the full picture, starting to finally grasp the dynamic my parents shared, everything changed on me. Here again, I’d pictured Mom as pining away for Dad, missing her best friend, and they talked every week?
“Since when?” I demanded.
Although her eyebrows rose at my tone, Mom didn’t comment on it. “Forever,” she said. “That was one of our earliest agreements and he’s always kept to it. Even if it's just for five minutes, just to check in. I mean, there have been a few times his illness made him go AWOL, but for the most part, he’s been incredibly consistent.”
My head was pounding. The vein on the side of my forehead thumped in time with my heart and I wondered if this was it: the moment my head would just explode from being fed too much information too quickly. I mean, clearly my brain should be atrophied from underuse since in all the years leading up until now, I’d been told nothing. I guess my indignation was written all over my face because Mom rolled her eyes and told me not to be melodramatic.
“Oh, sure,” I answered sarcastically. “I’ve just found out my life is basically a daytime soap opera, but why be melodramatic.”
Mom let her hair down from her ponytail and began massaging her scalp, eyes shut tightly. Lines branched away from her eyelids and it was like her face was carrying all the different secrets of our family tree. Some branches were thin and barely holding, while other lines went deeper. Mom’s deepest wrinkles were clearly the branch that had formed me and Ari.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a brat about all this,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I know it’s been hard for you.”
Opening one eye to peer out at me, Mom nodded. She sat upright suddenly and began making a second cup of tea. I assumed it was for me because she used a fresh mug to microwave the water. As she stretched onto her tiptoes to pull the cup from the cabinet, her hair cascaded down her back and I noticed the grays that were starting to really make their way through the red. While we waited for the water to boil, Mom clicked her fingernails against the counter, and I noticed that they were painted a pearly pink. It was a subtle color, but cheerful.
“Hey,” I teased, “What’s the occasion? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with nail polish.”
Bowing her head forward, she chuckled lightly. With a small nodded, she told me that she’d gotten a manicure for her upcoming date. Apparently, it was the next night. I’d been so caught up in my own stuff with Dad and Lennox that I had forgotten all about Mom’s chubby, bald man and her plan to pursue him.
“Wow, so you guys are going out?” I asked. “Where are you going?”
She shrugged and pulled the water from the microwave, and then she went to work putting my tea together. Honey instead of sugar, applied with a heavier hand than should really be used on my drink. She clunked it down in front of me and I immediately wrapped my hands around it. Fresh and hot, it was hard to keep my hands resting against the ceramic, but since I’d been a kid, I’d always tried to outlast myself and s
ee how long I could stand the burn.
“Don’t know,” she confessed. “Michael told me he’d take care of planning everything. He said to dress casually and be ready at seven.”
As I watched the corners of her mouth tilt into a grin, I really got how happy she was and how much she liked this guy. Warmth radiated through my belly, and it wasn’t just from the tea. Maybe things were never going to be exactly like I wanted them to be and maybe Dad still didn’t have it together, but it seemed like things were going at least a little better for everyone in my house. Even though curiosity about what Dad had seen and where he’d been still pulled at me, I knew that now that we were talking again, it was a lot more likely that I would be able to find out. Dad had a story to tell just like anyone else and even though I knew it would be hard, I was going to have to let him tell it in his own time.
Really, it felt natural that Dad was the one with a story to tell because when I was a kid, I thought Dad was the best storyteller in the world. Mom would always try to match him, but she could never master the buildup or the pacing. It was funny because he was an accountant and most people consider accountants pretty dry. Mom would tease him that he’d wasted all his talents when he could have been the next Faulkner or Hemingway. Looking back, I think she was onto something. There was a quiet beauty to Dad’s stories. Even though he was fantastic at weaving together fantasies about dragons and princesses, spacemen and Martians, and all the fantastical things you could imagine, those weren’t the stories I would beg for. Instead, I would beg him to tell me the story of his great-grandma whose father had been a miner up kind of near Fayetteville.
When Grandma Helen was a little girl, she knew her Daddy was special. Not just because he was strong and big, but because he was a miner. To Helen, miners had to be superheroes because they were the only people who could go down into the world below, underneath the mountains and into the coal mines. Helen was just a little girl, so she didn’t understand how dangerous the mines were. She had never heard of explosions or collapses, had no idea about canaries carried in cages. To her, being inside the mountains meant that her daddy was warm and safe, protected from rain and snow or anything outside that could hurt him.
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