He hovered in the door with his arms crossed, eyes flitting back and forth between Grandma and me. I guessed that he was as nervous as I was, but when I noticed the sweat outline my palms were leaving on the kitchen table, I figured maybe not quite as nervous.
Grandma rose slowly, wobbling a little as she stood. Again, she grimace/smiled as she said, “It’s the knees. I’ve been thinking about having surgery on ‘em, but I don’t think I’ll have to use ‘em too much longer.”
I stared at her. It felt like I should say something encouraging, but what do you even say to that? Nah, you’ll probably live a few more years? I tried to look sympathetic, but much like Grandma, my expressions weren’t quite behaving, and I think I gave my embarrassment away. After an awkward pause, Grandma excused herself to give me and Dad some privacy and I exhaled a too-loud sigh. I don’t know if it was more in relief or in anticipation of more awkward conversation to come.
As Dad walked over to the table, I cursed how unnatural everything was. I had no idea how to act when you see your estranged father who you’ve recently learned was suffering from mental illness when he abandoned you. Should I hug him? Should I throw things? Why couldn’t life come with a script?
I was fortunate that I didn’t have to debate the hug question long. Dad quickly settled into Grandma’s former spot and I was at least confident that getting up to hug someone who’d chosen to walk by me and sit would be the wrong social move. That was something to be thankful about at least.
In my head, I could hear a clock ticking as the time passed and neither of us spoke. Why had he been so enthusiastic about seeing me again if he was just going to stare me down? But maybe that’s all he had needed. Maybe he wanted to have the opportunity to assess me, make sure I was growing up okay and looked healthy. Maybe the hope that something revelatory would happen during this terse, stilted meeting was all in my head.
I couldn’t stand the thought of my trip being so wasted. I wouldn’t be just a check mark on his to do list. I had spent all year desperate to make something happen and trying to force it with random trips and a to-do list: this was my moment. If something was going to change today, it would have to be because of me.
Before I even spoke, the tears started leaking. “Mom told me that you’re sick,” I said to him and his face fell. “I didn’t know when I sent the letter.”
His breath got louder, and his eyes were glued to the table. He didn’t talk, but his cheeks were turning red. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was scared. Was he turning red from embarrassment or anger? If he’d left because he was so scared that he might hurt Ari, was there any chance he’d hurt me now? It was too much. The air was all being sucked from the room and I could taste copper as my heart drummed against my throat. With each beat, I felt myself choking a little more and I wished it was possible to cough up your own heart when it was taking up too much space.
“Dad?” I begged. I didn’t know what I was asking him. What could I need from this quiet, crimson, weak man sitting across from me? He was a stranger to me. No matter how much I believed he couldn’t help what had happened between us, no matter how much I understood why he had to leave us behind, none of it changed the result and the result was he’d missed seeing who I’d become.
His eyes flitted up to mine and they looked like coal burning themselves from the inside out. Fear, I realized. He wasn’t angry or embarrassed, he was scared, too.
Something about the look in his eye worked like a time machine and a memory popped into my head as clearly as if it were playing over a projector. Dad, his eyes full of fear as he sat next to my mom on the sofa. She was crying into her hands, so I couldn’t see her face, but as I sat on the steps and peeked between two slats, I could tell she was breathing ragged, choking gulps of air while Dad was frozen.
“I didn’t trap you,” my mom was saying. “You’re free to go any time you want.”
Not understanding the complexities of marriage and children, I’d thought she was talking about a literal trap and my eyes darted back and forth between my family on the couch and the solid, oak front door. Dad didn’t get up to go even though Mom said he could, and I waited for something to happen, feeling a static pop in the air that told me something was going to. Any minute, someone was going to scream or leave and even though neither of my parents had ever acted like that in front of me, I felt as sure as I’d ever been that it was coming.
It was something in the air, or maybe just my belly: a churning feeling that set my muscles on edge, willing me forward when there was nowhere to go. In that moment, I could understand what dad was saying about feeling stuck because that’s how I felt, too: stuck on these stairs when they felt so dangerous, so close to caving in underneath me that I wanted to be anywhere else.
Dad’s voice jarred me from the memory; it was the first time I’d remembered anything from before that had made all of this make sense and I wanted to know more, but I was there to hear it from him. His voice was slow when he started talking and he sounded like there were cotton balls in his mouth that dried everything out. Again, I wondered if it was because of his medication. Maybe it was from not using his voice so much. I just couldn’t picture him and grandma talking that much.
“I wish I had something easy to say that would make everything make sense to you, Hannah,” he said. “I know that’s kind of a cop out thing to say, but it’s just true. There are no easy answers. I read your letter.” He was so still, his hands never lifting from the table. His eyes were back glued to that damn table. It reminded me of Lennox and the way she’d never make eye contact and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. How dare they tell me things that cut me to my core without even having the decency to look me in the eye to do it? Well, I’d had enough of that.
“If you don’t look me in the eyes, I’m not staying here,” I said, voice shaking. “You can give easy answers, you can avoid serious talks, but you have to at least have enough respect to look at me.”
My statement shocked me even as it came out from between my lips. I never demanded things from people, and I hadn’t planned to do it just then, but the words escaped before I could stop them. Dad looked up at me and a wry grin started to spread across his face. I recognized him a little in that moment and it changed everything.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied with a bob of the head and a rap of his knuckles. There was something about that ma’am that set my teeth on edge, but I decided to pick my battles. We probably wouldn’t get that far if I screamed at him every time he talked.
I looked down at the surface of the table imagining all the meals he’d eaten here away from us over the years. I thought of all the ones we’d eaten at the kitchen counter and how happy it had been even without him. All our lives had moved on and there was no getting back what was lost.
“Do you think of me? Of Ari?” I asked, and I realized that even though she had made the confession about forgetting Dad, it was Ari I was most curious about. How did he see her now? Was he still scared of my elven little sister with the wild hair and gangly limbs? Did he realize he’d left her without so much as a memory of a father?
“Of course I do,” he said, but the answer came a little too fast. “Of course. What kind of person do you think I am, Hannah?”