Twenty-Nine #2
I raise my head. “I don’t know what I was thinking, convincing myself that coming to see you was the right thing to do.” The bitterness in my voice is palpable. “Pretend I didn’t do this. Pretend I was never here.” I turn my back to him and start to walk away without another word.
“No, no, hold on. Please,” he begs, wrapping his big hand around my forearm.
“I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry, but I need time to process this.
I’m not asking you to leave, but right now, I can’t give you the time I would like to.
But tomorrow I can, any time you want; you can pick.
But you have to give me a chance to prepare my family for your arrival first.”
His family.
Another punch to the gut.
I give him a look full of resentment. “I am also your family.”
He’s struck speechless. “Of course you are. But Bethany…she, well, I’m not sure she would understand. Not right away, at least.”
Before I knocked on his door, I felt uncertain and afraid; now, I just feel blood-boiling rage.
“What is there to understand? I’m your daughter.
It’s not up to her to decide whether or not I can see you.
I didn’t come all this way for Bethany; I came here to see my dad.
Instead, I’ve found a person without an iota of backbone or human empathy!
” I pull out of his grasp and head down the driveway.
“I’m begging you.” He runs to catch up with me, blocking my way again. “I do want to talk with you, hear how you are, how your life is going…”
I snort. “Funny that you want to know all about my life now when you haven’t bothered to take an interest in the last three years.
” My father freezes in place, not saying a word.
“Not a single text. Not a single visit. Not even a phone call, Dad. Why? Didn’t you ever think about what that was like for me?
How hard it was for me to start over all alone?
How much it hurt knowing that you moved so far away from me?
” The hurt I’ve been repressing for years breaks its bonds, flooding both of us.
He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s…it’s complicated.”
My eyes go wide. “Complicated? You find it complicated to explain why you abandoned me?”
“It’s complicated to explain to you right now, under these circumstances,” he stammers, spreading his arms wide. Then he allows his head to droop helplessly. “Please come back tomorrow. I will spend every second of my day with you; I will answer all the questions you have.”
“If Bethany lets you,” I grumble.
“I’ll do it, but promise me you’ll come back tomorrow,” he replies seriously.
I look anywhere but at him, focusing on a fir tree, its luxuriant branches illuminated by the sunlight. I grasp the shoulder strap of my bag while I think about how to answer him.
I’m angry. Extremely angry. And hurt. But the truth is, I traveled all these miles just to talk to him. To understand. If I leave now, I’ll be right back where I started. So, swallowing the lump of bitterness in my throat, I answer, “Okay, tomorrow.”
The lines on his face relax instantly, and I don’t miss the faint sigh of relief he makes. “Thank you.” He pauses for a moment, then asks me, “When did you land?”
“Forty minutes ago,” I say, checking my wristwatch.
“Do you have a place to stay?”
I shake my head no. He stares thoughtfully at me for a moment before reaching into the back pocket of his jeans and taking out his cell phone.
He calls some guy named Ralph and paces back and forth in the street as he talks, eventually wandering away.
It’s a quirk I recognize. In the past, he would pick up a phone call in the kitchen, and by the time it ended, he would inexplicably find himself in the living room.
I have so many memories of my father, and sometimes I wonder if the same is true for him.
Does he still keep them locked up safely inside his head?
And when he thinks about them, does a melancholy feeling take over until his eyes get teary like me?
After he ends the call, he comes back to me. “I talked to a friend of mine. He runs a ranch about ten-minute walk from here. He has some rooms available, and he assured me that you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”
“That wasn’t necessary; I could have found a place to stay on my own.” It irritates me to see him being so considerate of me now, when, a minute ago, he wouldn’t even let me into his house.
He smiles tightly at me. “I’d rather know you’re somewhere safe.”
“Okay, then,” I say, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “See you tomorrow.”
He starts to take a step toward me, albeit uncertainly. Maybe with the intention of hugging me? But I don’t let him. I leave before he can.
After ten minutes of following the directions on my phone, I find myself at the ranch. There’s a girl with slicked-back dark hair wearing muddy jeans and a jacket a few sizes too big for her. She’s feeding some goats in the warmth of a stable.
“H-hi, I’m…” I start, trying to get her attention. But then I just leave the sentence hanging there because I realize that I don’t actually know how to describe myself. Given the way my father greeted me, I doubt the neighbors know about his past. Even if they do, I don’t know how much they know.
“Clark’s daughter,” she finishes for me, impatient. So he didn’t keep me a total secret. That’s a small consolation at least.
I sigh. “Yeah, that’s me. Vanessa.”
She scatters one last handful of goat feed and comes over to me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Beth, Ralph’s niece. Huh…” She looks me up and down, tilting her head slightly. “I pictured you differently.”
I shake her hand and give her a puzzled look. “Differently?”
“Yeah. More like him, I guess. Daughters usually look like their dads. At least, that’s what my grandma always said. But you probably take after your mother.”
I nod to appease her as she leads me deeper into the ranch. The only things I got from my mother are my pale complexion and my all-consuming need to control everything. And that’s plenty.
“Is Ralph here? I’d like to introduce myself and thank him for his hospitality,” I say, walking behind her up a set of stairs.
“He’s not here right now, but you’ll see him tonight. He should be back in time for dinner.”
When we stop at a room on the top floor, Beth explains that the ranch has five rooms in total.
Three are occupied at the moment, mostly by families.
Still, the mood is pretty quiet. When she leaves me on my own, I lie down on the mattress and stare up at the ceiling.
I still feel shaken and troubled by my interaction with Dad.
I didn’t have many expectations for it, yet I was still disappointed.
And that was what I’d been most afraid of.
I send a text to Tiffany telling her everything that’s happened, and I update Alex while I’m at it.
Then I pull out one of my favorite paperbacks and spend the afternoon reading.
Later in the evening, Ralph appears and invites me to have dinner with everyone and get to know them better.
I don’t say much during dinner. It’s all a bit foreign to me, very foreign.
I just listen to them talk, and when we’re done, I thank them once again for their hospitality.
Before I crawl under the covers, I take a hot shower in the hopes of loosening up some of my accumulated tension.
Since I know I’m going to have trouble sleeping, I try to listen to some playlists.
But it doesn’t help much. My head is just too full of stuff.
With a sigh of resignation, I roll over and look out the window.
It’s a full moon, and it’s so beautiful outside that I can’t help but get up out of bed and approach the window to get a closer look at the landscape.
The white blanket of snow gleams in the moonlight, even the trees are still snow-clad.
The colorful lights on the nearby buildings give off a familiar magical Christmas-y feeling, and in the background, the dark sky is punctuated by millions of stars.
I wonder if my father is looking up at them right now as well. Or if, when he left Corvallis, he left everything to do with me in Corvallis. I close my eyes, feeling a pang in my heart.
Thomas.
The last time I stargazed was with Thomas.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him. I shouldn’t even allow my brain to veer in that direction. I was doing so good today; I managed to keep him out of my head almost all day.
But apparently all I need to do is realize that I haven’t thought about him for memories of him to roar back from my subconscious. The more I try to force myself to banish him, the more he insists upon lingering. It’s a vicious cycle that brings me—and has brought me—only more pain.
I breathe out through my nose before grabbing the curtains and pulling them closed. I don’t have to let him sneak into my head anymore. And if those damned stars make me think about him, then no more stars for me. No more moon. No more anything.
I go back to bed, and finally, exhausted from fighting him from my thoughts, I fall asleep.
***
It’s half past eleven, and I’ve been pacing the room for about forty-five minutes now, staring at my phone the whole time.
We don’t have a precise appointment, but I think this is a more than reasonable time to go knocking on my father’s door again.
So I gather my courage as well as my coat and head out.
Soon, I find myself walking down his street and ringing his doorbell again. When he answers the door this time, he invites me to come in and sit down, but I tell him that I’d rather go somewhere else.
“Sure, whatever you like,” he says, after some initial surprise. “I’ll just get my keys and wallet and let Bethany know.”
I nod, biting my lip. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this morning, and while it is true that I really wish he invited me in yesterday, I don’t know how comfortable I could have been with Bethany there.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks, shutting the door behind him. From the somewhat stilted way he moves, I can tell he’s still quite nervous.
“Anywhere’ll do.”
“A coffee shop?” he suggests, sticking his hands in his pants pockets.
I nod.
We get into his new pickup and drive to the city center in silence.