Page 131 of Damnation
“Well, as you can see, she isn’t here. But I am. So whatever it is, I want to know. And I want to know now. You owe me that much.”
“No, Vanessa. I’m sorry, but I promised your mother I wouldn’t—”
“I don’t care about what you promised her. You’re keeping something from me, and don’t you think I have a right to know what it is? I’m not a little girl anymore, and I don’t need to be protected from the world. I’ve grown up; I’m an adult now, and I demand to be treated like one.”
He doesn’t say a word. He faithfully keeps the silence he promised to my mother.
Drained, I make one last-ditch effort. “Dad, please. I’m so tired of dealing with these half-truths. I can’t stand it anymore. You’re always trying to protect me by keeping me in the dark, and all it does is hurt me even more. I’m saying please; I’m begging you…”
He closes his eyes, heartbroken. “I can’t do that to you…”
“Tell me,” I demand, grasping the arms of the chair tightly in my hands.
“I don’t…” My father loosens his shirt collar, undoing the first two buttons. “I wouldn’t even know where to start…”
“You can start wherever you want.”
“Before I tell you anything, I want you to know that everything I have done for you and with you, I have done out of love. And that love hasn’t changed over time, and it never will. I put everything I had into our family. I tried my best to coparent you with Esther, passing on our values, giving you a good education. I did whatever I could to be everything you could need: a father, a friend, a confidant. All I wanted was to make you happy.”
I can feel my saliva drying up and my heart beginning to race. Why does he feel the need to tell me this? I already know all this; I was there with him the whole time. “Where is this going?” I ask, bewildered.
“Have you ever wondered why I chose to pack my bags and disappear from your life like that?”
“Every day.”
“Did you ever find an answer?”
“Not one that made sense,” I say in a whisper, feeling increasingly uneasy.
“I would never have left you, Vanessa. I was ready to fight; I was prepared for a legal battle. I was determined to request joint custody, anything so I wouldn’t lose you. I had a good lawyer, but Esther…she had pictures of Bethany and me. Proof of my adultery. With that kind of evidence, my case would have been DOA. She swore to me that if I didn’t disappear from your lives, she was going to ruin me. She would have asked for damages. We’re talking about a lot of money here, Vanessa, a whole lot. And with the evidence she had, she could have gotten it. But she wouldn’t have stopped there. She would have taken the house, the car, and demanded not just child support for you but alimony for herself as well. She promised me that, so long as I stayed in Corvallis, she wouldn’t work to force me to fund her life. She was furious, she felt humiliated, and she didn’t want to see me ever again. She didn’t want Bethany and me in the same city. She was very clear with me; she was going to bankrupt me if I didn’t do what she wanted me to do. Which was to go away forever and, above all else, to cut you off.”
I stare at him in disbelief. It feels like someone launched me into another dimension. This cannot be true. It’s just a pack of lies on his part. My mother is manipulative, yes, but she’d never go that far. This is pure evil.
“What…? Why force you to leave the city? Why keep you from seeing me? Or even talking to me? She was mad at you, and she wanted to make you pay, but what did that have to do with me? That makes no sense. Despite the evidence of your affair and her all her threats, you still had the same rights as her when it came to me. You could have asked for sole custody. That way, the house would have stayed with you. I could have stayed with you. I would have done it, Dad. I’ve always been closer to you than to Mom, you know that.”
“I couldn’t take you away from her,” he answered, his voice subdued. “No matter how dirty she played, I never would have done something like to her. It wouldn’t have been right.”
“It wouldn’t have been right to let me live with you? Why not?”
He lowers his head, absolutely wrecked. “Because she’s your mother.”
“And you’re my father.”
“No, I’m not.”
I am motionless, staring at him, unable to muster even a single word. I’m gripping my coffee cup so tightly that I’m afraid I’m going to break it in my hands. The low murmur around us no longer exists. I don’t even know where we are anymore as I try to make sense of what he’s just said. Then, stupefied, I loosen my grip on the ceramic mug and look directly into his eyes.
“Funny,” I scoff, trying to keep my fingers from trembling. “True, in recent years you haven’t exactly lived up to the title, but that doesn’t mean that you—”
“Vanessa,” he interrupts me, reaching across the table to take my hands in his and giving me a look full of compassion and…dread. “I’m not…not the man you think I am.”
My brain is spinning so rapidly that I can’t even remember my own name. It’s as though I’m just waking up from a nightmare, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. There’s only emptiness. A sense of emptiness that presses in on me until I can’t breathe.
“I–I don’t think I get it,” I swallow, struggling to form coherent thoughts.
“When I met your mother, she had just moved back to Corvallis.” He takes a deep breath before continuing. “You had just turned one, and Esther and I made the decision that I would legally recognize you as my daughter.”
That confused feeling is back, even stronger than before. Like a flashback in a TV show, I go through every single memory I have of him. I analyze his moves, actions, words. Looking for a single moment in all those years we lived together when I should have figured it out.
