“Can’t I get one moment of fucking peace to mourn my wife!” he hollered in his drunken stupor.
His wife. Not my mother.
His peace. Not mine or my sisters’.
His pain. Not ours.
That was the moment I knew that life was truly going to be different from that point forward. There wouldn’t just be an absence of Mom, but there would be no father, either. Fortunately for my sisters, he got better with them as time passed. I wasn’t as lucky.
So, no. I don’t think that I am obligated to give him some peace now. I don’t think it would make me feel any better or any worse. I don’t think he would care either way. He never gave me an ounce of it when he was alive. He can find his peace in begging my mother for forgiveness when he gets up there.
I stared down at my father, felt nothing, and dipped my chin. “Rest easy, Dad.”
Carter sat behind me throughout the service. I felt his presence like a warm hug. He’d reach up and squeeze my shoulder every so often. He made sure my sisters and I had water and tissues, and always checked in to ensure we didn’t need a break from the crowd.
The lunch was small, but people still wanted to talk. They wanted to pay their respects, to tell stories of a man that never existed to me. Their funny tales made my sisters get somecolour back in their faces and some light in their eyes. It made me feel even more distant and isolated, reminders that I only ever got one side of my dad, and it wasn’t this one.
But I’m glad that’s the version they had.
When we got home, there were mountains of food that had been delivered while we were out. My dad’s sister, Aunt Jazz, had set it all up for us so that we didn’t have to prepare a single thing after such a long day. I wasn’t hungry. I silently excused myself and retreated to my childhood bedroom instead of joining them in the kitchen.
Sucking in a breath, I walk to my closet and slide off my dress. I put my sweats back on, my eyes surveying the room. I try to remember being a kid, but I can’t. The awards from my swim team, the posters that I tacked up, it’s like they belong to someone else. I don’t remember any of it. There is no nostalgia about being a child for me.
I swallow, glancing at my old bulletin board. My heart throbs in my chest, studying the pictures, the different versions of me throughout my life.
I reach up and pull a photograph off a tack.
Mom.
She was so beautiful. Her hair always had the look of a perfect blowout. She never went anywhere without her favourite brown-red lipstick. I’m in her arms in this photo, clinging to her with chubby little hands. My red, thin hair is in a bow on the top of my head. I’m smiling from ear to ear, but I’m not looking at her. I’m staring at my dad, who is gazing down at me with a smile that I would never be able to recollect now. Looking at me like I’m the most magical person in the world.
He was handsome, too. He had a whole life before us. I wonder who he was when he was younger. Before Mom. I don’t know the man in this picture. I never learned who he wasbefore us, either. I don’t even remember who he waswithus. I only remember him after Mom died, and the ‘after’ was a horrible time.
I flip the picture over, and my heart sinks to my toes and shatters at my feet.
I may love your mother, but you’re the one who stole my heart.
Arden Vera Doll. Daddy’s Little Girl.
I run my finger over his penmanship. My eyes burn, furious I can’t recall any of this love. I know he wrote this, but I can’t comprehend why. I don’t remember him ever caring about me enough to be this kind of father.
Daddy’s little girl.
But I’m not, Dad. I tried to be. I tugged on your pant leg, sat next to you on the couch, helped you to bed, just in hopes that you’d remember you loved me. I endured your cold dismissals, your reminders that you’d rather have Mom around than me, and your inability to look me in the eye when I needed my daddy.
I needed my daddy.
I run my finger over my tiny face in the photo.
She needed her daddy.
I sink to the floor, my trembling hand coming to my lips. Why was the love of an eleven-year-old girl not enough? What did I ever do to deserve that?
A sob explodes from me, and it’s ugly and tormented. I haven’t been able to cry, not even after seeing his face for the first time in years, still and cold. But this? This photo, and those words written by his hand, have reopened all of those wounds I’d learned to stitch and heal on my own. It’s a painrooted in the fact that there isnone. I feel no agony toward that man in the casket, but I wish I did.
He’s a stranger.
A hand slides along my shoulders. I whirl around just as Carter lowers himself onto the floor. He doesn’t look at me. He ignores the tears. He reaches for the photo and takes it from my fingers, a smile touching his lips as he gazes at the three people in the picture.
