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CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

arden

Have you ever been to a funeral where you’re the center of attention, but somehow the most out of place?

I don’t recommend it.

All day, seated in the front row, shaking hands and accepting condolences that don’t belong to me. Words that I don’t want. I begged my sisters to let me sit behind them instead, but one look from Anya told me that was not happening.

The first row of a funeral is the most agonizing seat you could ever take in life.

Ahead of the service, my sisters and I went into the chapel for a private moment together.

I don’t know why anybody chooses an open casket, but my Dad did.

It was almost a relief, seeing the same face I remembered.

There he was. Looking like himself, only older.

His hair now speckled with gray, a little smile pulled on the corner of his mouth.

Dad.

I imagine I was supposed to feel something in that moment. The world should have come crashing down at the sight of his face. I should have been debilitated by regret and grief and all the things I should have done differently.

I felt nothing.

Anya crumbled. Serena and I had to hold her up by her elbows to keep her standing.

Rena was shaking so badly and got so pale that I had to force her to sit before she passed out.

Then Anya reached out to touch Dad’s arm, expecting to feel his warmth and not a solid slab of stone.

She rushed out of the building in full-blown hysterics.

My aunt and uncles spent half an hour trying to calm her down.

Then, there was me. Feeling nothing. Nothing at all.

I went to him, though. I placed my hand on the side of the casket and looked down at my father, who I wish could have been my dad.

People romanticize a lot of things in life, even more so in death.

Forgiveness is one of them. I was expected to forgive him because he was sick.

Now, I’m expected to because he’s dead. It feels like his ability to rest in peace is relying on me giving him that peace from beyond the grave. It’s what I’m supposed to do.

But I can’t.

He doesn’t deserve it.

This man and all his handsome edges, the markers on him that I see in my sisters, he never gave me peace while he was here.

He created a monster inside me, one that used to be a little girl with hope in her heart.

She already lost her Mommy. There was no way she’d make it out alive when her Daddy turned on her.

And boy, did he turn. He doesn’t need my forgiveness.

He’s never needed anything from me. He’ll be just fine.

I picture myself in my favourite pyjamas, hanging onto Stinky in the doorway of my parents’ room. I was eleven, but losing Mom made me feel five again. My Dad was sprawled out on his bed, empty liquor bottles on the nightstand, sobbing into his arm loud enough that he was scaring my sisters.

I wanted to comfort him because even at that young age, I knew the depth of the love he had for my mother.

I padded toward the bed and placed my hand on his arm.

He swatted me away so violently that I flew onto the floor.

He didn’t look to see if I was okay. He barely lifted his head.

He just covered his face with his arms and wept.

“Can’t I get one moment of fucking peace to mourn my wife!” he hollered in his drunken stupor.

His wife. Not my mother.

His peace. Not mine or my sisters’.

His pain. Not ours.

That was the moment I knew that life was truly going to be different from that point forward. There wouldn’t just be an absence of Mom, but there would be no father, either. Fortunately for my sisters, he got better with them as time passed. I wasn’t as lucky.

So, no. I don’t think that I am obligated to give him some peace now.

I don’t think it would make me feel any better or any worse.

I don’t think he would care either way. He never gave me an ounce of it when he was alive.

He can find his peace in begging my mother for forgiveness when he gets up there.

I stared down at my father, felt nothing, and dipped my chin. “Rest easy, Dad.”

Carter sat behind me throughout the service. I felt his presence like a warm hug. He’d reach up and squeeze my shoulder every so often. He made sure my sisters and I had water and tissues, and always checked in to ensure we didn’t need a break from the crowd.

The lunch was small, but people still wanted to talk.

They wanted to pay their respects, to tell stories of a man that never existed to me.

Their funny tales made my sisters get some colour back in their faces and some light in their eyes.

It made me feel even more distant and isolated, reminders that I only ever got one side of my dad, and it wasn’t this one.

But I’m glad that’s the version they had.

When we got home, there were mountains of food that had been delivered while we were out.

My dad’s sister, Aunt Jazz, had set it all up for us so that we didn’t have to prepare a single thing after such a long day.

I wasn’t hungry. I silently excused myself and retreated to my childhood bedroom instead of joining them in the kitchen.

Sucking in a breath, I walk to my closet and slide off my dress.

I put my sweats back on, my eyes surveying the room.

I try to remember being a kid, but I can’t.

The awards from my swim team, the posters that I tacked up, it’s like they belong to someone else.

I don’t remember any of it. There is no nostalgia about being a child for me.

I swallow, glancing at my old bulletin board. My heart throbs in my chest, studying the pictures, the different versions of me throughout my life.

I reach up and pull a photograph off a tack.

Mom .

She was so beautiful. Her hair always had the look of a perfect blowout.

She never went anywhere without her favourite brown-red lipstick.

I’m in her arms in this photo, clinging to her with chubby little hands.

My red, thin hair is in a bow on the top of my head.

I’m smiling from ear to ear, but I’m not looking at her.

I’m staring at my dad, who is gazing down at me with a smile that I would never be able to recollect now.

Looking at me like I’m the most magical person in the world.

He was handsome, too. He had a whole life before us.

I wonder who he was when he was younger.

Before Mom. I don’t know the man in this picture.

I never learned who he was before us, either.

I don’t even remember who he was with us.

I only remember him after Mom died, and the ‘after’ was a horrible time.

I flip the picture over, and my heart sinks to my toes and shatters at my feet.

I may love your mother, but you’re the one who stole my heart.

Arden Vera Doll. Daddy’s Little Girl.

I run my finger over his penmanship. My eyes burn, furious I can’t recall any of this love. I know he wrote this, but I can’t comprehend why. I don’t remember him ever caring about me enough to be this kind of father.

Daddy’s little girl.

But I’m not, Dad. I tried to be. I tugged on your pant leg, sat next to you on the couch, helped you to bed, just in hopes that you’d remember you loved me.

I endured your cold dismissals, your reminders that you’d rather have Mom around than me, and your inability to look me in the eye when I needed my daddy.

I needed my daddy.

I run my finger over my tiny face in the photo.

She needed her daddy.

I sink to the floor, my trembling hand coming to my lips. Why was the love of an eleven-year-old girl not enough? What did I ever do to deserve that?

A sob explodes from me, and it’s ugly and tormented.

I haven’t been able to cry, not even after seeing his face for the first time in years, still and cold.

But this? This photo, and those words written by his hand, have reopened all of those wounds I’d learned to stitch and heal on my own.

It’s a pain rooted in the fact that there is none .

I feel no agony toward that man in the casket, but I wish I did.

He’s a stranger.

A hand slides along my shoulders. I whirl around just as Carter lowers himself onto the floor. He doesn’t look at me. He ignores the tears. He reaches for the photo and takes it from my fingers, a smile touching his lips as he gazes at the three people in the picture.

“Jesus, you’re going to be a hot mom one day.”

I can’t help it, a laugh breaks through the tears. He’s right. My mother was the otherworldly type of beautiful. Timeless. I snatch the photo back, shoving him gently, but his grip around me just tightens.

I flip the photo over and hand it back so that he can see the whole truth.

He stills for a moment, reading my dad’s words to me. After a long moment, he leans forward to press his lips to my temple. “You deserved the love that you needed, Red.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, another ugly sob tearing through me. Carter tugs me into the crook of his arm. I let him. I curl into him, weeping into the fabric of his shirt. I mourn for my sisters. For the little girl in the photo. For myself now.

He’s right. I deserved more.

She deserved more.

“I hate him so much.”

“I know,” he whispers, his hand stroking the length of my arm. “You’re allowed to feel how you feel. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. But you were incredible today, and you are a fantastic sister.”

I’m not, but I’m trying to be. I wish I knew how to be the woman they needed. It’s like I always miss the mark by a couple of inches. I’ll never fill the role of what we lost on that sunny day, seventeen years ago.

“I want my mom,” I sob.

I physically hear Carter swallow at that comment. He brushes his lips against my hair. “I know.”

I cry harder, and he shuffles us backward on the carpet.

For a moment, I think he’s going to pull me onto the bed to make me more comfortable, but he doesn’t.

He sits with me on the ground, our backs against the mattress, and reaches upward onto the bed.

A moment later, he pries a little space between our bodies.

I don’t open my eyes. I feel the rough fabric that I have memorized, identifying the different patterns between the black fur and the white stripe with a simple touch. I melt into this man’s arms as he pushes that toy skunk between us, before he completely engulfs me in his hug.

“She’s right here,” he reminds me, and I realize something terrifying in that moment.

This man understands. This big, temper-driven, bleeding heart of a man comprehends what this stuffed animal means to me, what he represents, the placeholder that he is.

He doesn’t judge me for it. He doesn’t find it stupid or immature.

He knows Stinky is important. He knows the power he holds.

And I love him for it.

I’m in love with him for it.