31 CARTER
C ARTER
Her father. He was a piece of work. I realized later that I should have never given him the money that day at her apartment.
But I didn’t see any other way at the time.
I would be back on the road and she would be back at her apartment alone, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him harassing her.
I had no idea at the time what the background story was, but watching her that day—she just withered.
This vibrant woman full of light, suddenly small and pale before my eyes.
I think the most difficult part was the moment I watched her reach out and give him this sort of half hug as he left, and instantly I saw her as a child, hoping for whatever crumbs of affection and care she could get.
Here he was being such an asshole, and her response was to hug him anyway.
I don’t think she even realized she was doing it.
It was instinctual. Hopeful, despite it all. It killed me.
So I gave him a few hundred dollars. Lied and told him we were moving in together, leaving town, so she wouldn’t be around anymore.
He wouldn’t be able to find her again. He was going to come back no matter what I did, I suppose.
But maybe he wouldn’t have paid so much attention to me.
Maybe he would’ve forgotten my face. But people like that, opportunists, they don’t forget things like that.
Money. I knew from other stories that he wasn’t always a terrible man.
We tend to make out characters like that in life to be monsters, but that’s not the case.
There are gray areas, and he was no exception.
He was just a selfish kind of guy who didn’t know how to be a father and got lost.
She used to say he stole the light from her world. I just didn’t realize how strongly she believed it. And eventually, she was right.
I heard he got sick some years later. But by that point, the damage had already been done and it was too late. Ripple effects going on for years.
In the dark cabin of the airplane, Michael has been working, taking notes on everything I’ve been telling him, while my thoughts drift to those early days. We’re about halfway to Rio, and just about everyone but Tommy, Michael, and me are asleep.
Over the years, I couldn’t remember what city I was in from one night to the next—Amsterdam or Berlin?
I couldn’t remember what I’d eaten for dinner the previous night or any number of trivial things from just the past week, and yet, despite every aggravating attempt to erase it, I can still remember the exact sound of the gravel outside her apartment as I drove away that day.
It was like being separated from a part of myself, tearing me in two.