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My mother had called him a monster. Granted, if anyone had firsthand experience with monsters, it was her. I wanted to crawl out of my skin thinking about what her own father had done to her as a child. Still, that didn’t mean she was right about mine.
I, myself, had been eaten by a monster earlier that night.
My father was not a monster.
“No, you’re not. She thought you were going to abuse me, and that’s not what this is at all. We love each other. We just love each other differently than most people.”
“Different is just a nicer way of putting it.”
I pressed my hands to his chest. “Is that why you won’t have sex with me? Because you think it’ll prove her right?”
“What I’ve done has already proven her right a thousand times over.” He guided my arms to my sides and then kissed my forehead, as if that simple fatherly gesture were enough to soothe me. “I shouldn’t have let this go on. That was my mistake. I’m sorry I let you believe I could be the father you needed.”
Panic scratched along my spine at the finality in his words. “But you are. You’re exactly what I need.”
“No, sweetheart.” His voice splintered. “You deserve someone who’s capable of loving you like a normal father.”
“I don’t want a normal father. I want my father. I want you.”
A small spark of hope ignited and then fizzled in his eyes. He looked defeated.
My mother was dead-wrong about him, but she was right about one thing: there was no going back for either of us. It didn’t matter if he never touched me again. We’d altered each other irrevocably, like mixed paint on a palette. You couldn’t take violet and separate it back into blue and red. Once blended, that was it, the colors persisted.
I reached for him again, and he guided my hands away. My eyes filled with tears. I fought to keep them there, convinced that I wouldn’t be able to remain standing if he saw me crack.
But I was already broken.
As desperate as I was to be with him, I couldn’t bear the thought of my father hating himself for loving me too much, or too intensely, or whatever my mother would accuse him of next.
We were either in this together, completely and unabashedly, or not at all.
“You say you can’t love me like a normal father. Then don’t. Love me like a father and a lover and a mentor and everything else, because I need all of you. If you can’t give me that, then I don’t want any of it. Loving you halfway hurts too much.”
I turned to go. He caught my arms, his grip tight enough to pinch through the terrycloth. For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. Please, I thought. Kiss me. Ask me to stay. I held my breath and waited for him to make a choice.
He released me.
A sob shook my chest. There was no stopping the flow of tears.
I wiped my eyes and stepped away from my father, who looked like he’d aged ten years in the last ten seconds.
“I guess this is goodbye then,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “At least I got to say it this time. That has to count for something.”
Chapter Nineteen
I cried in the shower and while brushing my teeth and then went to my room to cry some more. Not my father’s bedroom, but the guestroom he’d brought me to the day I arrived in New York.
I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few hours before I was awoken by nightmares of roasting to death in a hot car like a forgotten dog. The sheets felt cold against my legs, a startling contrast considering I’d been burning in my sleep. I stared at the ceiling and flinched as the night came rushing back.
My father was exiting my life again, only this time, I was the one walking out the door.
I had tricked myself into believing I’d forgiven him on the first day of my visit, when in truth, I had only set my pain and anger aside. Yet, in doing so, I’d made room for other things, like hunger and curiosity. Admiration and desire.
And love, so much love.
It wasn’t until I heard the real story that I was able to truly forgive him, which was undoubtedly the opposite of what my mother had intended by coming here. But my forgiveness was irrelevant as long as he refused to forgive himself. In my naiveté, I’d assumed that learning the truth would bring us together. When instead, it became the wedge that ultimately tore us apart.
Had I been patient and waited until I’d started college to visit my father, my mother wouldn’t have shown up at his door with a bag of old drawings and accusations. He wouldn’t have had to confront the awfulness she saw in him.
