“We’ll start with something easy,” I say. I pull a chair over, placing it across from the couch, a setup reminiscent of the many contestant interviews I’ve conducted over the years.
I ask for her name, where she was born, and her favorite flavor of ice cream. I do a couple more of my standard warm-ups until I see her posture loosen and she’s a little more at ease.
And slowly, I pull her story out of her, a natural flow of conversation as she tells me about her first love, how he left, how she raised her son alone. How she never thought she’d find love again until she met my father.
“My son met him first,” she says. “And it wasn’t love at first sight. He and my son were both going through chemo. Romance wasn’t even on our minds. All we thought about was survival. And Ajit was quiet. James was the one to pull him out of his shell. He had a way of doing that. And it was…little things. The way Ajit didn’t leave any of us after he got better. The way he kept coming to James’s appointments. He didn’t say much, but he’d bring snacks. There’s a magazine I love, and every time there was a new edition, he’d bring me a copy so I had something to read while I sat in the waiting room.”
She tilts her head. “The first time I fell in love, it was like being struck by lightning, but this was…gradual. Less intense, but also less painful. And there’s something to the fact that we’d both tried this before. Tried and failed. We’d made mistakes, and we’d changed, and we talked about all of it. Things we wish we had done differently, things we’d do differently now if we had the chance.”
I nod, encouraging her to continue, even as a lump forms in my throat.
What would my father have done differently?I suppose that’s something I can ask him when I speak with him next.
Maggie tells me about their first date and the proposal, and she doesn’t skip over the bumps in the road. The time they took a break because she was scared, the reason she ran from the wedding, and how they came back together, how she’s excited for the future now.
“Is that all right?” she asks. “I know I talked for a while, but—”
“Yes,” I tell her. “It was perfect.”
I get up and pause the recording. And Maggie smiles, giving me a quick hug and telling me that she’ll send my father in next.
I shuffle through my notes, jotting down an additional question or two to ask, and then my father enters.
There’s a faint sheen on his forehead. I try to smile, to make him comfortable, but inside, I’m on edge. Just as nervous. And even after my standard introduction questions, the ones that have been tried and tested, designed to make anyone talk, there’s still an air of discomfort.
“This is a little awkward,” I say. “Right?”
And my father starts. He opens his mouth, clearly about to lie, but I stop him, raising my hand.
“It’s fine,” I say. I get up and switch off the recording. “Maybe we should just talk first.”
He’s quiet for a beat, and then he nods. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to—I didn’t know if you’d want to, but after we talked in the car, I didn’t know how to say…”
He trails off, but I don’t rush to fill in the silence. I let him take his time.
“What you said about me being an absent father…you were right. I didn’t come see you enough. I didn’t call enough. I didn’t know how to be there for you when I was all the way over here, and that guilt…it ate at me. Paralyzed me. And I thought you were probably better off with your mother. That you were happy over there. I always…I seemed to make everything worse. I didn’t want to, but I did.”
He pulls on his sleeve, looking down, not meeting my eyes until I begin speaking.
“I was happy with Mom,” I say. “But that didn’t mean…” I swallow, my throat constricting. “I needed my father too.”
“I know,” he says, his voice breaking. “I know that now. But I didn’t…Sometimes I don’t know what I was thinking then. I don’t understand how I could’ve stayed here. How I didn’t try harder to move. To be closer to you.” He pauses. “I don’t know if you remember, but when you had appendicitis, when you were ten, your mom called me, and she patched me through to the doctors there. Everything was fine, they kept me updated, but I was so angry at myself. For not being there. Your mother handled everything, and your recovery was great, and she agreed for the first time to let you visit here, but when you came that summer…it was too late. All that time I spent apart from you, I’d ruined things. Even if I moved then, if I tried to find work in California, I realized I’d never be able to repair it, never be able to fix what I’d done.”
He wipes a hand over his eyes, and it’s only then that I recognize I’m on the verge of tears too, my nose starting to run.
“I can’t change anything now, I can’t make up for all of that time, but I didn’t know…I didn’t know what the distance would be like. It’s not an excuse, I could have tried harder even though I was all the way over here, but if I could go back…I only thought about finding work, and it was hard then, especially in L.A., but I could have kept looking. I could have looked wider. I tried to come for the big things, but I know I missed seeing you place second in the spelling bee, and so many birthday parties, and your appendix surgery, and I don’t…Looking back, I don’t understand how I could’ve missed those things. How anything could’ve been more important.”
I open my mouth, wanting to say something, but it’s hard. It’s hard hearing him say all these things that I’ve thought about too, that I’ve held against him for all these years.
Though I didn’t realize he was holding it against himself too.
“Dad.” I get up, and I take a seat beside him on the couch. He’s hunched over a bit, and I can feel it, the shame radiating off him. Before, in the car, when he told me he had regrets, I didn’t fully believe him. I looked at what he’d found with Maggie and Jacob and thought he’d found a family, created one of his own, even though he wasn’t able to create one with me, but now…
I place a hand on his back, and I feel a shudder go through him. My vision blurs, tears beginning to fall.
“It’s all right,” I tell him, my voice shaky. I pat his back, the gesture turning into a stilted, strange sort of one-armed side hug, but he reciprocates it, and it’s messy, and a little odd, but it’s a step. One that’s been long overdue. One I can try to reciprocate too.
28
