Page 80 of Past Present Future

Though I know it won’t be an instant salve, this is the closure I need, as much as the idea of coming face-to-face with him sends waves of panic through my body. When I was sixteen, I was awkward and uncertain, mumbled my way through our conversations. I didn’t want my interests or personality to disappoint him, never mind the fact that he’d already disappointed me.

Three years later, I am more sure of myself than I’ve ever been, even if lately, I haven’t felt very sure of anything.

“That letter he sent me at school… I haven’t exactly handled it well. Maybe I’ll be able to move on once I tell him to stop contacting me—and that this will be my last visit.”

My mom is quiet for a few moments as she pulls onto the freeway.

It’s then that I realize something.

Every time my mom has taken Natalie to see our dad, it’s always been at Natalie’s request. She has never pushed us, never pressured us to have any kind of relationship with him.

“You haven’t wanted to see him either.”

The sound of her sigh just about rattles my bones. “I go for Natalie, of course, though I know she’s feeling similarly to you these days. But it took me a long, long time to be able to make my own peace with the situation. If you think this is what you need, I support you, one hundred percent.”

“It is,” I say. “And thank you. Thank you so much.”

“If you want me to drive you, I could take the time off work. I wouldn’t be able to go inside with you, I don’t think—I’m not sure I’d be able to see him. But if you want me to be there with you, just say the word.”

“I need to do this on my own,” I tell her, half because it’s true and half because I don’t want her to take the time off, and I think she understands both my rationale and my unspoken gratitude.

The rest of the drive home, I assess my own moral compass. I believe in forgiveness, in growth and facing mistakes. But there are some things I don’t believe people can ever come back from. Things that are unforgivable. Unforgettable. Has he ever truly put his kids first, or were we only accessories for him to mold? To impart his own views?

I want to have empathy for this person who was so clearly struggling—with his shop, with money, with his own brain. Human beings are too complex for any of us to be one-dimensional villains. But it has been so long since he was a proper father to me, and I cannot repair a relationship that’s never been healthy—since long before he went to prison. And I cannot have the life I want with him hovering over me.

Even if he were still living with us… Well, that’s a difficult path to go down. Unless something had drastically changed, I don’t think I’d want that version of him in my life either. My family was small to begin with, but if I’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that we have an interminable strength, too.

This weight I’ve been carrying around for nearly half my life—I thought I could ignore it, make myself into the poster child overachiever and everyone forgetting about it would help me do the same. I could outsmart it the same way I aced my exams.

As it turns out, and as I’ve been learning in psychology, that’s not quite how the human mind operates.

Before we get out of the car, maybe it’s the jet lag or the lack of sleep, but I ask my mom, “Do you think there’s a chance of me turning out like him?”

Her gaze is steady. Unwavering. “I’ve been afraid of a lot of things over the past ten years,” she says, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “But I have never been afraid of that.”

* * *

Four and a half hours on a Greyhound to Pasco, a small city in the southeast pocket of the state. Then two buses taking me deeper southeast, nearly to the Oregon border. I’ve spent the past couple days curled on the couch with Lucy, her head in my lap while I sketch patterns in her fur, and I’m already missing her comfort. I’m cursed with a sensitive stomach, unable to read in a moving vehicle, so I stocked up on podcasts and listen to a few episodes of one about linguistics. Then, needing something lighter, I switch over to one about Star Wars. I draft and delete a dozen messages to Rowan, unable to come up with the right words.

Hopefully the next time I see her, I’ll have a chance to try.

By the time I arrive in Walla Walla, I’m bleary-eyed and unfocused, every nerve in my body twisted in an anxious knot. I haven’t eaten anything except a sad sandwich in Pasco. At four o’clock in the afternoon, there’s only one hour left for visitation. I doubt I’ll need that long.

Washington State Penitentiary looms ahead, tucked behind a white crisscrossed gate. The landscape out here is drier. Rural. Yet on the prison grounds, the grass is green and healthy, trees stretching past the power lines. As though all of it has been properly cared for, while the surrounding areas surrender to nature.

I wonder what he’s going to say about my clothes. If he’ll think my major, whether it’s linguistics or psychology, is a waste of time or somehow not masculine enough. If he’ll try to make me feel guilty for not coming sooner, for not responding to the letters.

Three years. Three years I haven’t seen him, eight years since I lived with him down the hall, and I’m still wondering what he’ll think of me.

I shove all of this out of my mind as best I can, square my shoulders. Head toward the entrance, up the concrete path, heart banging so viciously in my chest that I nearly grow dizzy from it.

The place hasn’t changed at all. Stark beige walls, concrete floor, fluorescent lighting. Clean. The last time I was here, Natalie tried to get a bag of Skittles from that vending machine, but it jammed and got stuck. A janitor paused mopping the floor and walked over to give it a shove. “Happens all the time,” he said as the candy dropped into the slot.

At the front desk, I present my ID to a security guard, who uses it to confirm that I’m on Lyle McNair’s approved visitors’ list.

“Backpack, belt, wallet, phone all go in here,” she says, gesturing toward a plastic tub to the left of a metal detector, and I quickly comply.

I know there is so much wrong with the prison system in the United States. There are too many people locked up, many of them for crimes they didn’t commit, disproportionately impacting people of color. We studied this in my civics class at Westview while I raised my hand far less than in any other unit, worried someone might draw a connection, and I’ve read plenty on my own. I believe that prisoners can be rehabilitated and reenter society—I support all of that.

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