I look around the table. James is checking his reflection in the spoon he holds in his left hand. My dad is attempting to feed Mrs. Clay a piece of lobster. Elizabeth is scrolling on her phone, no doubt looking up mold poisoning symptoms. Lily is staring at James in disgust, holding her knife upright in the fist of her right hand, ready to stab.
As the waitress leaves us, I think about her words. “Nice family gathering” all right.
Chapter Twenty-ThreeLily
July 11
The following morning, Mom and I decide to complete item one on Lottie’s bucket list. We had it on the schedule already, so despite the news from yesterday’s lunch, we keep the plan.
I wake up early, restless. I can’t believe my father is here, unannounced and uninvited. After years of not seeing him, having no clue where he is or how he’s doing, it’s bizarre to have him right outside our door, sleeping on the couch.
Sometimes when I was walking around New York, I was struck by the fact of his existence. Most days I didn’t think of him at all. His absence was nothing, like trying to miss someone you never really knew. It didn’t matter.
Except, occasionally, it did.
Once in a while, when I was crossing a street or forcing my way into a packed subway, it suddenly dawned on me: I have a father. I have a father—living on this very same planet as me at this very same astrological moment—and he doesn’t know where I am. He doesn’t know if I am well or unwell. He doesn’t know if I’m madlyin love or heartbroken, if I’m thriving in my career or living on the streets.
I wouldn’t say the realization hurt so much as it confused. When we’re apart, I call my mom upward of three times a day. She knows every meal I eat. And yet, I have this other parent—this whole other half of my family tree—who doesn’t have a clue.
I always hated the termdaddy issues. It feels like just another way for us to blame women for the sins of men. For most of my life before Henry, I closed myself off to boys. I didn’t want to play into any preconceived notions of what people think it looks like to live without a father. Eventually, I didn’t want to be abandoned, so I abandoned people first.
Three years ago, when I first moved to the city, my father reached out. We had talked here and there over the years, but I was determined to ignore him—still angry about the Mistress.
Then came the emails. Subject lines with “Can we talk?” appeared in my inbox: malignant ghosts. I couldn’t tell if my father was drunk or sober at first, but upon reading more, I realized he had entered into a sober living program in Palm Springs, where the desert had physically dried him out, wrung him out like a dish towel. He realized his mistakes. He wanted to make amends. I marked the messages “Spam” and ignored them all.
Henry couldn’t comprehend why I didn’t answer my father. “He’s trying to make amends,” he said. “Why are you closing yourself off to that? You’re making your life smaller.”
Work with Clive was piling up. One day, I got off at the wrong subway stop and ended up having to run ten blocks to make it to the office on time, arriving in a cold sweat. My clothes sat in boxes on the floor; my furniture from Ikea was only half-assembled, always missing one bolt or screw so everything wobbled, off-kilter.
I was in no shape to have this conversation with my father. I was barely taking care of myself.
“You complain about not having a large family, but then you throw away the family you do have,” Henry said smugly.
After the fifteenth email from my father, I gave in. I did this for Henry’s sake as much as for my own, to prove to him that I was lovable—that I was trying to let people love me.
My father didn’t answer. His emails stopped arriving. I didn’t hear from him again.
At first, it made me laugh, like, really laugh: a deep, throaty, soulful bellow. My laughter was rage and it was relief and it was even a little smug, the smugness of being proven right.
Henry didn’t like the way I laughed. He found it unsettling, because he thought I should be crying. He thought I should be crying because he didn’t know what it is to run out of tears for someone.
Pretty soon after, work got worse. That’s when I had my first panic attack. Clive needed me to send out emails to some potential photographers. He needed me to make a dinner reservation. He needed a thousand tasks all at once. It was an unseasonably warm October day when everything first came crushing in. At first, I thought I was fainting.
My old therapist later suggested my panic attacks were “unprocessed grief.”
“The emotions you suppress have a way of popping up, no matter how much you try to bury them,” she told me.
Now, looking at my father, asleep on the couch—slightly drooling on Lottie’s favorite pink quilt, the one with ladybugs printed on it—I wonder if she was right.
It’s early and Rose still isn’t up, so I decide to get a head start on the day by going to the local diner, Downyflake, to pick up donuts. It’s strange being the only one awake in the house; I’m not used to the feeling. I throw my hair into a claw clip, pull on jeans and a sweater, and grab the keys from the hook in the entranceway.
At Downyflake, I’m one of five people waiting for the owners to open. A few construction workers stand outside in a silent, makeshift line. We can smell the donuts wafting out. My eyes are dry and hurt when I blink, my eyelids sticking together as if in protest of being awake. It is dark outside, and everything looks purple around the edges, humming with energy.
When a young woman with a tall bun opens the door, I select five donuts: some tossed in sugar and cinnamon, others covered in chocolate frosting that sticks to the side of the white bag. The latter are my favorite. The former are Lottie’s. I grab two coffees, one for me and another for my mom.
Back at the house, Rose is awake and already ready to go. She sits outside on the small steps that lead to the front door, still in her silk pajama pants and a tan sweater.
“Wow.” Her face lights up when she sees the coffees and donuts. “You’re a lifesaver.”
