Page 82 of Past Present Future

His voice is eerily calm, fingers linked together on the table. A portrait of stillness. In contrast, I’m a trembling mess—leg bouncing up and down, a hand alternating between darting through my hair and attacking my cuticles. I’ve always fidgeted when I’m nervous, and I have not been this nervous in a long, long time.

“That wasn’t everything, though. There were other moods.” This man is the only person who’s ever made me unsure of myself. Even locked up, even allowed this brief time to talk to his son, he still intimidates me. I wish it weren’t true, but there it is. “Did you ever feel… depressed?”

He just blinks at me. For a moment I’m convinced he’s going to tell me his whole history of mental health, all the ways his brain has worked against him.

“I gotta be honest with you,” he says instead. “This sounds a little too personal for a school project.”

My face flames, stupid stupid skin giving me away as the bouncing of my leg reaches a breakneck tempo. My father may be cruel, but he’s not an idiot. And I am completely transparent.

Then, slowly, a strange kind of smile takes over his face. “Ohhhh. I get it. You want to know… because you’re going through it. What, you’re worried you’re going to turn out like me?”

At that, he lets out a full-belly laugh, so loud that a few other people turn their heads and a guard comes over to check on us.

“Everything okay here?” he asks.

“Fine, fine,” my dad says, practically wiping away tears as he smacks at the table. But the guard is looking at me, and when I nod my head, he retreats, giving us space again.

When my dad finally collects himself, I speak again.

“I didn’t realize it was such a hilarious question,” I say quietly.

“You’ve got to understand,” he says. “I tried so hard to see some of myself in you growing up. A natural bond between a father and son, right? I was proud of that hardware store. I wanted to work on the deck with you, show you how to safely use a power drill. But you were never interested. You wanted to read, or you took those silly dance classes, or whatever it was that your mother encouraged. And now you come to me, here in prison”—another break to chuckle—“because you’re worried we might be too alike?” He dissolves into laughter again. “You’re a smart kid. You can’t not see the humor there.”

Now I’m entirely too warm, something not unlike rage boiling inside me, and I shove my hands between my knees to keep from jumping out of my skin. And yet I keep my voice level. Maybe that’s the difference between the two of us: I can control it. “Just answer the question. Please.”

“Shit. Okay. He’s serious now.” He straightens in his seat, although years of bad posture won’t let him keep his head from drooping. The whole performance is so patronizing. “Was I depressed? Sure. Hard not to be when you can barely keep your store afloat. When you can’t take your family to the movies without calculating what meal you might need to skip the next week.” He lets out a long sigh. “But I’m sure you don’t have to worry about that, now that you’re rubbing elbows with the who’s who of society. Because you’re better than the rest of us, right? You always were. You didn’t care about anything I wanted to do with you, but if your mom suggested it, you were all ears.”

That defensiveness, that ability to double down. Of course his concept of NYU is nothing like the reality. Of course he doesn’t know about the multiple jobs I took in high school so I could save up for college, the loans and grants that made NYU a possibility. The constant worry that if I’m not careful, I might lose this life that I worked so hard to get.

This was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have come here, and all I want is to be back home, my mom and Christopher getting home from work and Natalie skateboarding in front of our house, Lucy lounging in her favorite spot on the couch. Sitting down to dinner together—as a family.

“Okay. Well. That’s all extremely helpful.”

“Neil. Hey. I’m sorry.” He holds out a hand, realizing he’s gone too far. I don’t touch him. “I’ll spend the next month kicking myself if I don’t say a few things to you.”

I steel myself, preparing for an apology or explanation that will arrive much too late.

There aren’t enough words to undo what he did to us or to the other family. The boy who miraculously woke up from his coma but needed extensive rehabilitation. Every so often, I search his name online. Social media posts about his progress, a GoFundMe for his medical care. All of it heartbreaking.

“We’ve been talking a lot about forgiveness in here,” he continues. “And I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to say this. Obviously I’m hoping I don’t have to wait three more years to see you again. But I’m not going to be in here forever. And when I’m out, I hope that we can start over, have a new relationship, even if your mom’s moved on. I don’t blame her,” he says. “Neil. Can you ever forgive me?”

I stare hard into his eyes, which are so similar to mine, dark irises and lighter lashes. The resemblance between us used to make me proud, and then uneasy, and now it just makes me uncertain.

“Yes,” I say finally, and the way this impacts him, the grin blooming across his face, doesn’t bring me any amount of relief. “For what you did to me, and only that—I can forgive you.”

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear that—”

“But I don’t want to see you again. I can forgive, but nothing else.”

I want to be the kind of person who can fix a relationship with an estranged parent. But deep down, I know that I can’t. Not this relationship. Not this parent. He had my entire childhood to prove he was a decent father. The wounds are still too fresh, scarred over but never fully healed. Bruises that never faded.

This man has so many of his own demons, and I do feel a deep sympathy for him—that he didn’t get help earlier, that apparently my mom and sister and I weren’t enough of a reason. And I have to trust that I know what’s best for me. If I have any hope of moving on, living my life without this darkness hanging over me, I need to sever this connection.

Part of me has always felt it would be wrong to remove my dad from my life. But I’ve been so focused on not being the son my dad wanted that I never considered maybe he is not the father I wanted.

“Now hold on,” he says. “That seems a little drastic.”

“Does it?” I say, my leg no longer bouncing, hands no longer shaking. “Or is it something I should have done a long time ago? Because that’s what it seems like to me. You have never respected me, not when I was a kid and not now.”

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