Page 53

My heart pounds incessantly, and my head feels ten times heavier than it did minutes ago. Suddenly, I wish I were staring blankly again at complicated words I know I could never pronounce, arranged around a circle constructed of arrows in my APES textbook.

“Sweetie…” My mom’s voice is quiet on the other side of my door. It breaks mid-sentence, and I can tell she’s been crying too. “Can I come in?”

I don’t respond. Even if I wanted to say anything, my throat feels tight, and nothing but exhausted gasps escape my lips when I open them.

“He’s downstairs, honey. It’s just me, please let me in.”

I crack the door, poking an eyeball through the opening to check if she’s being truthful. She is, so I open the door wider, letting her in but closing it quickly behind her.

“Look, I don’t know why he’s here. Or why he chose to show up and be a part of our lives now. But he is. He’s making the effort now, and he wants to take you to lunch today. He wants to talk to you.”

“No,” is all I manage to get out.

“Drew, I’m angry with him, too, okay? But he’s trying. He just wants one lunch with you. After that, you can decide how much of your life you want to let him into.”

I’m taken aback by how reluctant she is to his arrival. I know what I heard downstairs, and I know I heard her upset with him, so why is she pushing it on me now?

“I said no,” I respond firmly, finding my voice again.

“I take it you got his letter?”

I nod.

“You don’t even have to talk to him. Let him do the talking. He just wants to explain some things to you.”

“I SAID NO!” I scream, shoving my mom out of my room.

Part of me feels bad for taking it out on her. For not listening to her. But listening to her would mean listening to him, and I wasn’t about to do that. Writing a letter as if we live in the fucking 1800s was one thing. But showing up at my doorstep? He had already crossed the line, but now he’s built a wall along it, making it so that he can’t cross back and nobody can push him back.

It took so long for me to live with myself in his absence after he left us. This whole house became a shrine for him. Every cornerwas one he’d stubbed his toe on at some point because he was always too clumsy and unbalanced to walk straight. Every loose nail dented in the walls was once a happy family portrait that had been taken down.

Every inch of the kitchen counter was one my little butt once sat on when he let me stir the batter as he baked my favorite cookies before doctors’ appointments because he knew I’d always get anxious beforehand. Every room in this house held his memory as if he were dead, and every memory was a reminder of how good a dad he was when he was present.

A reminder of everything I lost.

Perhaps it would have been easier to lose him if he had been a terrible dad. But he wasn’t. He gave me everything I could ever ask for in a parent, and then he took it all away.

To me, that’s far worse than a terrible parent who stays.

******

For the rest of the day, I curl up in my bed and stare at the ceiling. On it, there are faint marks of sticky residue from all the times I threw squishy toys up there as a kid, and my dad had to rip them off after I cried to him that my toys got stuck and I couldn’t get them to come back down.

The more I stare, the more those residue marks become blurry, almost blending in with the off-white shade of the drywall ceiling itself.

Suddenly, my wallowing is interrupted by a loud crash coming from the kitchen. I jump out of bed and run to the top of the stairs, fearing the worst. I’m stopped by the sight of broken porcelain, scattered across the tiled kitchen floor. They haven’t noticed me, but I’ve definitely noticed them.

It’s unclear who threw the plate, but it’s Roy who starts sweeping up the pieces as my mom berates him. Against my better judgment, I decide to sit on the top step and listen in. I know it’s wrong to eavesdrop, but between Roy showing up out of the blue—sort of; the letter doesn’t count—and my mom trying to convince me to give him a chance, they owe me at least this much.

“What were you expecting, Roy? That we were going to welcome you back with open arms and dig up the old family photos to slide into the empty frames on the coffee table? That you could take Drew to lunch and be sitting across from the same eight-year-old girl you abandoned?” Mom says angrily, throwing her arms in the air.

“I don’t know, okay? Maybe I was! Maybe I thought you guys would still have it in your hearts to be happy for my successes? I finally have the life I always wanted!” Roy responds firmly, on the verge of tears.

“Wow.” Mom deadpans. “So we weren’t enough? Your own family, Roy! I should have known we were never what you wanted. You always wanted more. More, and more, and more, and-”

“You know that’s not true! I loved you and Drew with everything I had in me, but I just couldn’t sit here and pretend I was happy with myself. It had nothing to do with you two and you know it!”

“How does it not? How could you say you led an unhappy life when you had a wife who loved you and would do anything for you? When you had a daughter who looked at you like you hung the stars in the sky every night just for her?”