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The age lines in his brow deepened. “You still haven’t explained why you’re here.”
“You’resick.I’m yourdaughter.” Irritation seeped into her voice. It tasted bitter, like too much ginger on her tongue. “I thought you’d want me here.”
He shrugged.Shrugged.
Why wasn’t she enough, or too much, or whatever it was about her that made him care so little? Her bones felt broken with the weight of it. Or maybe it was that she was shrinking. Because sitting in that chair beside him, clutching her purse to her lap, her eyes wide on Jed’s bland face, Allison could have been a toddler lost at the mall.
She couldn’t swallow it back anymore, all these things she was feeling. “Why don’t you care about me?”
“Allison, don’t start.” Jed reached for the remote again, but she batted it away.
“Don’t start what? Don’t start saying how I feel? How you’vemademe feel for the last twenty-three years of my life?”
Pushing a rough breath from his nose, Jed groaned. “Ah yes. You’ve had such a tough life. What with the roof over your head, and clothes on your body, and all the food”—he gestured at her in a way that saidlook at all that food—“on your table.”
Allison wanted to erupt like a volcano, or maybe to turn him into a tree, like Nimue had done to Merlin, to punish him for his entire existence. But Jed didn’t respond to emotion. She tried derision instead.“Congratulations on fulfilling the bare minimum of parenting. Wait here while I get you your participation trophy.”
“I’m not sure what you want from me.”
She closed her eyes. In her head, she saw her father’s heart rate monitor perform its endless dance:132, 139, 134.“To care. About anything,” she whispered. Then her eyes snapped open. She was tired of holding things in, tired of lying, of pretending. She’d finally stopped with Colin, and look at where that had led her. Maybe it was time to stop with Jed, too. In person, not a faceless email.
“I want you to care that I’m in an important Ph.D. program, that I’m going to be a college professor someday, that I’m doingexactlywhat I promised you and Mom I would. Not everybody does that. Not everybody is able to grasp their dreams in the palm of their hand and make them real. Some people try, so so hard, and all they end up with is dust. But I’m doing it. Me, your daughter. I want you to care about that.”
Allison was on her feet, gripping the end of her father’s hospital bed as if that would somehow make him look her in the eye. He picked at his nails instead. His mouth moved like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
“I want you to care about how much you’ve hurt me.”
At that, Jed balked. “How have I hurt you? I gave you a good life.”
Allison had never known that rage could be painful, but her bones seemed to crack. “Mom gave me a good life. You tried to make me hate myself.”
Jed’s lips thinned. “You’re having a fit again.”
“This is not a fit. It’s the truth. Do you know what it was like to live with you? The constant remarks about my weight? The diet printouts everywhere? The way you’d buy junk food and stock the house with snacks and then shame me for eating what was available? The way you brushed aside everything I cared about?” Her fingers ached from their grip on the bed frame. “I guess I should thank you, since your disinterest motivated me. But there’s always been this part of me that was empty, a hole I couldn’t fill because it was yours.”
Sometimes, when she was feeling especially self-reflective, Allison wondered if her lack of relationships over the last few years had less to do with Colin, and more to do with Jed. Or at least with the scars he’d left her. When Colin broke up with her, it had activated something left festering from her father. This idea that she wasn’t enough, that she wasn’t worth the hassle of holding on to. How many guys had she pushed away after one date, one hookup? Allison had convinced herself none of them were right for her, but maybe she was too afraid she wasn’t right for them. That there were too many holes in her for her to fit anywhere.
Even when she’d tried to cut Jed from her life, he’d clung like barnacles. Like mold. Like the errant pen strokes on illuminated manuscripts that left permanent imperfections.
Her father stared at her. He lifted his hand, and for a blip of time, Allison thought he was going to reach for her, but all he did was grab the TV remote. “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”
Allison threw up her hands. She felt hollow. Maybe, now that she’d said everything she’d been holding in for years, this feeling would be permanent. Maybe she’d never feel full again.
The thought was exhausting, and when she heaved a labored breath, the fight left with it. Jed was an insurmountable rock. A surface with no pores. He’d never let her words in. If Colin had shown Allison that people can change, her father was a reminder that this wasn’t true for everyone. Some people were born etched in stone.
She dropped her hands to her sides, her pulse throbbing in her fingers. “I want you to say that you hear me. That you understand. That you’re sorry.”
His mouth was a tight, unmoving line. His heart rate followed it.130, 130, 129. 128.
“I want you to say you love me, Dad.” Her voice was frail and that last word didn’t quite form on her lips. It was like something in another language, the meaning of which she couldn’t quite grasp. If she still had her word wall, it would be underlined in question marks.
And yet, he said nothing. Just looked at her, like he didn’t understand its meaning, either.
A moment later, his doctor swooped in, her perfume sharp and citrus against Allison’s runny nose. She hadn’t realized she was crying until Dr. Friedman put a hand on Allison’s shoulder and said, “No need for tears. He’s going to recover. The meds have been doing a good job lowering his heart rate and all his labs look good. A little shock this afternoon and then everything should be ticking at the right speed.”
Allison nodded as she swiped her wet cheeks. Dr. Friedman’s words were a relief, but probably not in the way she’d intended.
If Jed was going to be fine, then there was no need for Allison to stay.
