“I didn’t leave you,” I say, softer. “I’m coming back. Soon. There’s something I need to do. Something I need to find out, okay? I’ll be back. I promise.”
He sniffles. “People don’t come back.”
The line between me and my father feels like a thin wisp of hair being pulled tight. I don’t want it to break. He’s dying, and as much as I hate him sometimes, I cannot allow it to break. “I’ll be back,” I say, in a heavy accent like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and my dad laughs, so I laugh. But then I listen more closely and he isn’t laughing.
He’s sobbing. For the second time in my life, and the second time in a week, I hear my dad weep. He sounds like a wounded animal.
I bite down on my lip, hard. Harder. I keep pressing until it breaks and I taste the salt flow of my own blood seep into my mouth. I run my tongue over the open cut, over and over.
“I screwed it all up,” he says through his tears. “I screwed up.”
“You didn’t,” I say, but I can’t finish the sentence.
Deep sobs seep through the phone. “I’m sorry,” he says. “My boy. My boy. I’m sorry. My boy.”
I lose it. I lose my shit. The tears don’t just dribble out of my eyes, they cascade. They soak my cheeks. I am suddenly three in his arms on the couch watching cartoons, and I am six and sitting alone on the radiator in my New York bedroom, and I am twelve and standing in right field alone, and I am fourteen and wanting to tell someone, anyone, about my first wet dream. I am fifteen and wondering how to shave and my grandfather teaches me and it’s not the same. My dad. Who has always been missing. My dad, like a hole in my heart.
“Dad,” I whisper. “Daddy.”
Aisha pulls over, turns off the ignition, and leaps out of the car like there’s a bomb about to go off. I am alone in a Dodge Neon, on the side of the road in western Utah, and my dad and I are having The Conversation. The one I’ve wanted my whole entire life. The one I’ve dreaded my whole entire life.
“I ruined it all. Is it too late now?”
“No,” I say. “Never.”
“I want to do better,” he says. “I want to be a dad. Will you let me try?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I don’t have that long, but I want to try. Will you please get back here so I can try?”
“I will, I promise,” I say. I wipe my eyes and in the silence I picture him doing the same. In my mind, I see the line between us becoming thicker, fuller, just by a little bit, but still, it’s changed.
“So where are you?” he asks after a while.
I tell him the truth.
“Western Utah?” he asks. “What the hell’s in western Utah?”
“Absolutely nothing. Heading west. Don’t tell Mom. She is going to kill me.”
“She said you were visiting friends in Wyoming,” he says, and that surprises me. “What are you doing out there?”
“Long story.” Knowing the way he feels about his dad, I don’t want to upset him further right now. “I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back.”
“Okay. Don’t wait too long, all right?”
As my mother might say, I hear what he’s saying, even if he’s not saying it. “I won’t.”
“Promise? I’m not doing too good, you know. Not guiltin’ you. Just true.”
“I promise. You promise to hold on?”
“I promise,” he says. “I will.”
“Mom driving you crazy?”
This makes him laugh. “I’m an asshole,” he says. “Your mother is a saint.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Your mom’s the love of my life, Carson. Always was, always will be.”
I so want to ask again, Why? If she was the love of your life, why didn’t you stop drinking and come with us all those years ago and avoid this? I don’t get it. But I don’t want to hurt him and he’s tender right now and we’re talking, so I don’t say anything like that.
“Wow,” I say. “Do you think she feels that way too?”
“I aim to find out,” he says.
“You have to stop drinking.”
“I know. I am. I will.”
I close my eyes and imagine my family as a puzzle. There’s always been a missing piece in the center, and now the piece is loosely in place, not quite clicked in yet, but it’s flickering. And I know that I can’t just assume my mom feels the same way as he does and she’ll take him back or that he’ll ever really stop drinking, plus there’s the dying thing, so it’s very, very complicated. But just knowing that the piece is there soothes me like a warm, heavy blanket. It feels like the midafternoon heat from the sun through the windshield.
“If you want to call me tomorrow, or you want me to call you, that would be okay,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I will.”
I smile. Warm blanket. “I gotta let Aisha back in the car. She’s probably frying.”
“Sure,” he says.
“And will you maybe not drink before you call?”
“I’ll try, Carson,” he says. “Every second is hard. You get that?”
“Kind of. Not really,” I say. “But I’ll try.”
“I love you, my boy,” he says, and the words are hard to squeeze out of my mouth in return. I love him and I hate him and I have so much hope now and it’s totally futile and if we get close, unless he miraculously recovers, we’re doing it just in time for me to miss him the rest of my life.
“Love you too, Dad,” I spit out, meaning it and not meaning it. Because it’s what you say.
I hang up and look out the window. Aisha is on the side of the road, ahead of me and to the right, plugging away on her phone, texting God knows who. I knock on the window.
She doesn’t hear.
I knock again.
She waves me off. She is intently typing away, and since she let me have my time, I give her all the time she needs. I close my eyes and recline in the passenger seat, allowing the hot sun to bake me, to be my warm blanket.
I wake up when she opens the door and settles into the driver’s seat. She turns the ignition on and blasts the A/C. The car is really hot, but I was deeply asleep and it was a good sleep, hot or not. I felt at peace in a way that I have never felt before. The hole, the homeless feeling in my heart: Its throb is missing.
She turns toward me. “So you want to hear what I wrote my dad?”
I had a feeling. I nod.
She smiles, a scared, grief-stricken smile that trembles at the corners. She reads: “Dad, I know you raised me to be your baby girl. You raised me good and you raised me right, and you raised me never to raise my voice to you, which is the right thing for a father to teach a child. But I am afraid if I don’t raise my voice this one time, I’m gonna lose my daddy, and my daddy is gonna lose his baby girl. So here goes.”
The next part she says really loud, her voice filling every inch of the Neon.
“YOU’VE KNOWN WHO I WAS FOR A LONG TIME, DAD. I DIDN’T JUST GROW UP AND ONE DAY DECIDE I WAS GONNA BE A DYKE. I WAS LIKE THIS WHEN I WAS LITTLE, AND YOU KNOW THAT. YOU KNOW IT.
“I’M YOUR BABY GIRL AISHA, AND I CAN’T BE ANYBODY OTHER THAN YOUR BABY GIRL AISHA. YOUR BABY GIRL AISHA LIKES OTHER GIRLS, ALWAYS HAS, ALWAYS WILL. YOU REALLY THINK I’M THE DEVIL, DADDY? THIS IS HOW I WAS BORN, AND IT’S OKAY, DADDY. IT IS. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT, AND IF IT IS YOUR FAULT, I THANK YOU BECAUSE I LIKE ME. MAYBE NOT IN BILLINGS, BUT THERE’S OTHER PEOPLE LIKE ME IN THE WORLD, AND I’M GONNA FIND THEM, I KNOW IT. I WILL FIND OTHER PEOPLE WHO LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND KNOW ME.
“SO THIS IS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN, DADDY. YOU’RE GOING TO WRITE ME OR CALL ME. WE ARE GONNA FIGURE THIS OUT SO THAT WE CAN BE IN EACH OTHER’S LIVES. SO THAT WHEN I HAVE A BABY GIRL OR A BABY BOY, THEY CAN HAVE A GRANDDADDY WHO IS THE GREATEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WERE. ARE. I THINK YOU ARE THAT, AND THE ONLY THING YOU EVER DID WRONG, DADDY, WAS MAKE ME GO. I CAN FORGIVE YOU, BUT ONLY IF YOU CALL ME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT ALL THIS.”