He felt the same as he had the past 10 years, give or take the avalanche that just tumbled off his shoulders. He thought it would go differently- that she would understand how he’d felt the whole time, how guilty he’d been. After all, wasn’t she the one who understood him the most? So why wouldn’t she look at him?
What is there to understand about a lie?
Overnight he became a stranger. My vacant gaze slides off him, the way it does when you pass people you would rather not talk to at night on the street. An all-consuming quiet, terrible silence roars in my ears.
Who are you? Who are you? WHO ARE YOU?
He’d feared telling her and her sister. He worried that with their strong sense of morals, they would refuse to acknowledge him as their father. Even so, he’d never expected this. Somehow, this was worse. Clearly, she hated him.
I DON’T KNOW YOU.
Maybe became is the wrong word. He had always been this person, after all. Nothing had really changed. But the person that I thought I had known vanished like dewdrops in the midday sun. The memories I’d so cherished flicker and turn dark one by one as I think to play them in my head. I wasn’t prepared for this. What does one do when their father turns out to be a complete stranger? I don’t hate this person. How can I, when I don’t even know him?
Did the father I loved ever exist?
He loved her, and he thought he’d done right by her, for the most part. He paid for everything, after all. Whenever she needed money, he wired it to her. He paid for her and her sister’s flights home. It was only right for their mother to pay part of it too, of course. Naturally, any of their daughters’ expenses should be split evenly between them.
Is it all about money to you?
He’d give Mom two-thirds of all his assets, he said. That was good enough, he thought. Heart breaking, I sat and wrote through tears, trembling fingers typing out paragraph after paragraph of sorrow. It’s the only thing you have left to give, I told him. Do you think this money can make up for Mom’s breast cancer? Do you think the past 10 years of her life is only worth this much? You could never make it up to her, but you can at least try.
Please, show me that you can do better.
He’d tried to explain himself when he got her email. It was a long one, two and a half pages. When she was younger and had asked him to read her writing, he had never fully paid attention. He knew his English was good, but he just hadn’t been interested. What he had read in that email, though- he hadn’t realized how different her writing was from how she spoke to him him Mandarin, or texted him in English. He tried his best to address each one of her points, fully, honestly. He got no response.
Tell me in a way I can understand.
I read the reply to my email with a sinking, drowning horror. Even after hearing everything from my mother, I hadn’t truly believed that he was a bad person. A coward, maybe. I was wrong.
How can you exist?
I didn’t think it would hurt you, he said. This wouldn’t have happened if your mom and I had lived a happy life, he said. I had tried to be nice, but it didn’t work out, he said. Not all men are perfect, most of them are not, he said. Every man has his own secret, he said. That’s my fatherly advice to you, he said. Other than having an affair, I am a kind person, he said. It is what it is, he said.
How can you possibly think this?
It was with a kind of disbelief that I sat and tried to process what he’d said. I had to reread it several times in the course of the next week. Even now, I can hardly stand to remember what he wrote, how the grief hit me all of a sudden when I realized I needed to mourn the death of a person who never existed.
I guess that’s it, then.
When he got her email, originally, he had asked her if she wanted to speak in person or over email. “Email first,” she’d said. So he’d written her and waited. And waited. Each day, he felt a little more uncertain, a little more pressure. On the second day he came back home with an agreement giving their mother what he had refused to give before. But over the next 6 days, she only met his eyes once- to tell him he should give her mother more in the divorce. Her eyes had flicked to him for a short second, stunning him silent. In the email, he had explained to her that he really didn’t have much money left. Seeing her now- he found it hard to stick to that thought. Her sister still spoke to him in what seemed like a normal way. But she… Day by day, he acquiesced a little more, until finally he found himself with hardly anything left.
It could never be enough.
He seemed to think that he was doing all he could to compensate Mom and us. He seemed fixed on this two-thirds number. He doesn’t seem to realize that keeping his lavish lifestyle on the table isn’t something that he deserves. If he gave her five-sixths, or seven-eighths of everything he would still live well enough. Somehow he had the gall to say- I’ve agreed to give you so much, what if I don’t have enough to eat in the future? My mother had said- do you think your daughters would let that happen? I think I could, if only for him to realize that a lifestyle change could be in order. I wouldn’t see him starve, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
You don’t deserve this much.
He had been their father for years and years now. The affair had only gone on for less than half that time, and even then, he had been here, hadn’t he? He only wanted them to understand that he still loved them, that that hadn’t changed. He hadn’t changed.
I don’t know if I ever want to see you again.
The day I left, he didn’t get up to see me off. I’d lain awake in bed the night before, wondering what I would say if he was there at the door when I left. I never figured it out. After the 15 hour flight, I got an email from him as I was waiting to disembark.. He said he hadn’t wanted to upset me before my long flight. He said he might not see me for a long time. He said please feel free to ask if I need anything from him. I put my phone in my pocket and I opened my eyes wide as I tried not to cry, walking briskly to immigration. In line, I wept tears that stung with sorrow and confusion. I could not understand what I was feeling. I don’t know if I am glad he didn’t see me off. I am scared, and I do not know why.