Chapter 16 Liz #3
“Sounds about right,” Liz said with a forced bravado.
“She called me months later and said she had changed her mind and was due with our child in a few months. She told me that when she went to see her parents, they gave her a choice: leave and don’t come back, or let them raise her baby.”
Liz listened, rapt. She’d never met her grandparents. Angela had never offered any explanation and always became annoyed whenever Liz asked about them. Finally, one day, Angela told Liz they were dead. Unless Liz wanted to visit them six feet under, she should stop bothering her.
“Angela went to crash with some friends in the city and called me from a street corner on the Lower East Side, asking for money. I sent as much as I could. When you were born, I flew across the country to meet you.”
“You did?” Liz asked.
“I held you in my arms and I was absolutely terrified, but you were also the most miraculous thing I had ever seen, and I was prepared to step up and do what was necessary.”
Liz considered this, unable to digest this information that went against everything she had known. “I don’t understand. She always told me you didn’t want anything to do with us, and we were better off without you.”
Ace sighed. “She told me that second part too.”
“She lied? She kept you from me?”
“No,” Ace said, his face creasing with the difficulty of this admission.
“Not exactly. I told Angela I wanted to be part of your life as much as I could. That said, I couldn’t move across the country.
Professionally, I was finally starting to make headway in LA, and Angela said she wasn’t going to stay in New York anyway.
She wasn’t going to stay anywhere too long. ”
There was a light breeze, but Liz felt like she was suffocating under a blanket of stagnant air. She wanted every detail, but she also wanted it to be over.
“We made it work, for a while. Angela sent pictures when she remembered. I sent money when I had it. I flew back and forth every few months, to wherever you two were living. Over time, Angela got tougher to deal with. She wouldn’t answer my calls for weeks.
I didn’t know where you were. If I said anything about the situation, Angela would fly off the handle, furious that I was criticizing her parenting.
What did I know? I flitted in and out of your life.
I wasn’t responsible for taking care of you day and night. ”
“And then what?” Liz said.
“I went to see you in Woodstock for Thanksgiving. You were almost four and Angela was smoking a joint around you. We got into a screaming match. She told me that having a father who was half in, half out wasn’t good for her daughter—not ours, hers.
She said she was dating someone and it was getting confusing for you.
She had found you a new dad and you were better off without me in your life. ”
“And you believed her?” Liz asked, dismayed. Who would value Angela’s opinion above their own good sense? “You handed me over to one of her boyfriends? One of the guys who lasted as long as a carton of milk? You just…gave up on me?”
“Not right away. I did fight to be part of your life. Angela changed her phone number, so I didn’t have a way of contacting her.
I flew back to Woodstock, but you were in the wind.
” Ace paused and his face filled with sorrow.
From the neighboring backyard, the distinctive intro of Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” emanated.
“I should have kept trying. I should have done whatever it took. I tried to convince myself that Angela was right and you were better off without me. But there’s no excuse.
There’s never a justifiable reason for a parent abandoning their child.
I’m sorry, Liz. I am so sorry I failed you. ”
“I never even knew you met me,” she said somberly.
Ace’s expression deepened with the imprints of regret.
“I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “For all of it.” He wrung his hands, and the way he looked at Liz cut her.
And even though Liz couldn’t absolve her father of his sins, she now knew that the narrative she’d been spoon-fed her whole life wasn’t the full story.
Like Victoria had said, nothing was black and white.
Still, it was overwhelming to confront the expanse of gray.
Liz was flooded with questions: Would Ace have ever found her if they hadn’t been reunited by sheer coincidence?
Would Angela admit to her wrongdoing? Was Liz, keeper of secrets, loser (or winner) of birth-control roulette, able to claim the moral high ground over her father?
Was a predilection for making messy life decisions an inherited trait?
Liz looked at her father. “I knew your name so I used to look you up online when I was younger. I would fantasize about you coming to find me. But that wouldn’t have happened, would it? We wouldn’t have met if this hadn’t happened.”
Ace startled for a moment, as if this hadn’t occurred to him. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
“Thanks for your honesty, at least,” Liz said. She stood up. Her wrists ached, her bladder was screaming, and her head was pounding. She needed to hibernate like a bear and emerge from her cave into an alternate reality where she had an upstanding nuclear family and a Maltipoo.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a part of your life,” Ace said.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t your dad. I can never make up for the past, but maybe we can have something different, going forward,” Ace said.
He reached into his pocket and handed her a piece of paper with his phone number written on it.
“When you’re ready. If you’re ready. Call me anytime, day or night. ”
Liz looked at Ace dolefully. Then he turned and left.
Long after the father Liz had never known walked out of the backyard, she stared into the charcoal nubs in the firepit and wondered if there was a world in which she could forgive him so this exit would not mean that he was walking out of her life once again.