I shut my eyes and saw a blending of the frozen man from the couch and the smiling man with the puppets. I couldn’t reconcile the two images in my head. I mean, I knew people had moods. I knew people could be happy and sad, joyful and grim, but the way he’d been so stark still, so unmoving when Mom was a heap of sobbing flesh right there beside him . . . that man wasn’t the Dad I knew. The memories just didn’t marry up.
“That’s the thing Dad,” I said, pulling my purse from the top of the chair and standing up to leave. “I have no idea what kind of person you are.”
The whole drive back I sat in silence, trying not to zone out and wreck while I puzzled out a way to make sense of our visit. Maybe if I could find some sort of takeaway, something that had even made it worth the gas money I’d spent to get out there, then I’d know what to do next. The clock told me I’d been in that house for over an hour. How was that possible? How was it possible I’d spent so much time readying my nerves, forcing myself forward when everything in me felt frozen to my spot, just to have Dad and I exchange what felt like five sentences of actual dialogue?
I don’t know what I expected. Was I thinking we’d have a little meet and greet and it would be like in a movie where we would share a crying jag over some sort of hot beverage and the past would just be forgotten? That we’d just sweep everything under the rug and pretend like nothing had happened when we tripped over the giant lump looming right below the surface? Even worse than the totally useless feeling that was settling into my bones like a deep winter chill, things that had felt clear before didn’t anymore. Especially with Ari. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure what to do about telling her what I knew. I had been so quick to accept the idea that it wasn’t the same with her as it was with me. That she was a child and as a child, it was my mom’s choice to keep it from her or clue her in. That there was no way she could understand that her dad had a mental illness that made him abandon us in the middle of the night and mom had kept it a huge secret while I seethed, thinking he just didn’t want us. I couldn’t understand those things, so how would a little girl?
The closer I got to home, the more my guilt nagged at me. This was the same kid who fell asleep in my room right before Christmas because she couldn’t remember her own dad. Maybe she wasn’t old enough to really, fully understand what happened all those years ago, but the whole notion that we were somehow protecting her by lying to her was clearly bullshit. She was a lot more wounded than Mom or I had known and the closer I got to home, the more certain I became that I couldn’t keep it from her. She couldn’t just think we’d had a dad one day and then didn’t anymore the way I always had.
Mom was waiting for me when I got home. I jumped a little when I saw her because she’d never been the kind of mom who waited around to check up on me. She talked to me more naturally, having conversations over cooking dinners and in the car from point a to point b. Here she was, though, legs folded underneath her in the stiff green armchair that no one ever sat in right in the foyer.
I crossed my arms around my chest and looked down. I couldn’t meet her eye and I realized I was angry; there was no more question of whether I should be or whether I had the right to be because I just was.
For years, she’d lied to me. A lie of omission more than a bold-faced lie, sure, but still a lie. I had believed my father was this absentee dad who was off gallivanting with nineteen-year old kids and partying his life away because he couldn’t stand the responsibility of being a dad. I pictured him the way he’d looked just hours before, sitting at his mom’s kitchen table barely able to face his own child. I pictured the life he’d lost because he got sick. My throat constricted and the air I took into my lungs felt like it wasn't quite registering, like I was going through the motions of breathing, but my body wouldn’t acknowledge that it was happening.
“I think it’s a cop out,” I said, my voice shakier than I was going for, my eyes not moving from the floor in front of me.
Her head snapped up and she looked shocked. “You think what’s a cop out?”
I shook my head. There was so much to say. So much of it had just been the easiest road for them, not a care given to what would make things better for me and Ari. Had she really believed it wouldn’t hurt like hell when I found out that not only had one parent been absent, but the other one, the one I had always trusted, had always been able to talk to, the one who had been my friend, was a liar?
My body moved towards her like my brain was no longer in control and I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from shaking her. She was just gaping at me, her face a mixture of baffled and injured, and I couldn’t help but want to slap all those feelings off her face. Who was she to look hurt? She’d had years to process this. She’d had years to get over losing her husband to a disease. I’d had a day. Ari’d had nothing.
Like our roles had reversed, even worse because she would never dream of shaking a finger at me, I pointed my index finger in her face. “I will not keep this a secret from Ari,” I said. I knew how cold my voice was and I hated it. I hated the steel that was spreading through my body, navigating the map of my veins.
Mom looked down at her lap, eyes welling with tears. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she said, and just like that, it was over.
This was Mom. This was my crazy, loud mouthed Mom who had been there every day. Mom, who’d pieced everything together and yes, kept a secret without thinking of the consequences because she was just a flawed, frazzled person doing the best she could. Feeling like I was about four years old, I dissolved into a puddle next to her, letting her wrap her plump arms around me. She smelled like coconuts and lavender, a mixture of nothing but soap and laundry detergent. She’d never used perfume, almost never wore makeup. What you saw was what you got and I’d always loved the comfort she’d found in her own skin. I’d so much wanted to be like that. It hurt so much to think that this raw, naked woman had spent so much of my life telling me lies.
“Why did you really do it?” I asked, my voice muffled against her chest. “I know you didn’t really believe that a lie was best for us. You have never believed that about anything.”
She sighed and stroked my hair in long, lazy strokes. It felt so nice to allow myself to seek comfort in my mom with no worries about acting like a baby or seeming strong. I had no reason to feel strong just then.
Her hands still moved through my hair, fingers gliding across my scalp as she answered. “If I’m being honest, Hannah, I didn’t hesitate.” Her jaw jutted out and, in that moment, she reminded me of Ari with her stubborn defiance. “Here was your dad, the only man I’d ever loved, and he was suddenly sick. He was a good man and he was scared. God, Hannah, he was so scared and so vulnerable, and I’d never seen him weak.”
Her voice broke and I was scared for her, worried that she would carry him in her heart even after she found love with her pudgy, bald man, even if they married, even if she stopped being alone. My dad was like this ghost in our house; a presence Ari had never known, a series of memories for me, and for Mom . . . well, for Mom I think he was still everything.
Ari was laying in her bed when I walked into her bedroom. She was staring at the ceiling and focusing so hard that she didn’t even notice me standing in her doorframe. I watched her for a minute, smiling to myself as her lips moved wordlessly to some song only she could hear.