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“She told me to go fuck myself. I’d say that’s progress, considering she wasn’t even speaking to me a month ago.”
I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother since the night she’d shown up at his apartment. “Why would you want her here? She’d hate all of this almost as much as you hate each other.”
“I could never hate your mother.”
“Why not? She gave you plenty of reasons to.”
He stroked my arm. “Because she also gave me the greatest gift I could ever ask for. No matter how angry I get when I think about all the years of your life I missed, I’ll always be thankful for that.”
I gazed down at the miniature me on the floor. Round and sleepy and oblivious to all the pain and confusion that would inevitably follow. If my father could forgive my mother for driving him away from this child, maybe I could find it in me to forgive her, too. Because none of this, what we had now, would’ve been possible without my mother’s intervention.
She would never understand us. Most people wouldn’t. Our love wasn’t clear and crisp like a photograph. It was messy and abstract. It belonged on a canvas.
“Henry!” Michelle weaved her way through the throng, trailed by a short, bald man whom she introduced as a writer for ARTnews magazine. My father shook the man’s hand and presented me as his daughter, the inspiration for tonight’s exhibit, and a talented artist in her own right.
“I’d love to see some of your pieces,” the journalist said to me. “I’ve been following your father’s career for some time. I have to say, Henry, I think this might be your best work yet.”
My father thanked him and graciously answered all his questions. The journalist smiled like a little boy gazing up at his hero. As soon as he’d wandered off, my dad leaned in conspiratorially and said, “Don’t tell that guy, but he’s wrong.”
“About what?” I asked.
He kissed the shell of my ear and whispered, “The greatest thing I ever made was you.”
* * *
