II
I realize that I cannot wait indefinitely to reclaim my relationship with Rachel. As much as it may seem as if there is nothing going on there – as if she has simply been asleep in her room for the past three days – I am not quite so dense as to trust in that impression. I have gone to her bedroom door half a dozen times and every time I crack the door she seems to be asleep. Driving up to Quebec, as I was trying to burrow back into my memory of Mary Kate, hoping I would find comfort and meaning there, I began to settle into a dangerous inertia regarding my relationship with Rachel. I felt helpless to reach her, unsure of my identity with her or hers with me. Now, finding her asleep or playing possum on me, I have experienced a not very credible feeling, something almost akin to relief if it could be trusted, as if I were eager to be convinced that it would be okay to wait until each of us felt better able to deal with the other. But she has apparently been awake enough of the time to have a conversation yesterday with Sam about leaving home, so this time I walk into her bedroom, sit down on the end of her bed, and gently jostle her foot.
“Come on, honey, time to get up.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“It’s a beautiful day outside. Let’s go for a run along the river.”
It is actually a little overcast, but I have decided I am going to give this the hard sell.
“I don’t want to run any more,” she says. She burrows. She has yet to open her eyes.
“Rachel, come on. We need to do this.”
“You need to do it. I don’t need to do anything.”
“I’m not going to let you get away from me.”
She pulls her pillow over her head, but she answers me.
“Barn door. Horse is out. You went away from me first.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I thought I had to. If I was ever going to be able to get you back, I thought I had to go away. I was wrong. We need to hold on to each other. Even when it feels like one of us doesn’t want to hold on. Let’s go.”
“Okay. Just give me a fucking minute, Daddy.”
It is the first time she has ever used the word directly with me, but I am thrilled to have made progress, and I am not inclined to quibble about vocabulary.
“Okay,” I say.
Half an hour later we are zipping along the Cambridge side of the river headed for the Harvard Bridge.
“Sam says you might be going away.”
“I’ve been thinking I might move in with Lia for a while, or maybe one of my friends.”
“Why?”
“Are you kidding, Daddy? Why?”
“We didn’t do this to each other, Rachel. We can get through it. We’re all we have.”
“I’m not all you have. You have all these multiple fucking personalities.”
“Is that how it seems?”
“Yes. Instead of just being my Dad you have to be Stanley T. Branford and Chet Spiro and God knows who else. Whoever the fuck you are when you are with Amy. For that matter, whoever the fuck you are when you are with Diana. And I still have friends asking me how that could have been you in the newspaper, walking out of that ‘Little Girls’ place with those girls doing whatever to you. All my friends have one Dad. I have to have half a fucking dozen.”
She is pushing the pace a little now and I am straining to keep up.
“I just want to be one Dad. One man. I feel like I let somebody take that away from me, but I am fighting to get it back. My connection with you is an awfully big part of that, of who I am.”
“So you’re asking me to help you get it together?”
“Rachel, I need you. We can get through this together.”
“I feel like I may have a better chance if I just focus on myself.”
“Would you feel safer by yourself?”
“Safer? I don’t know.”
“But if you leave me, I won’t be able to leave you again.”
“Something like that.”
“Or let you down again.”
“You didn’t let me down. I let you down.”
“And that didn’t feel very good.”
“No. It felt horrible. Worse than the other way around.”
“You didn’t let me down, Rachel.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Why can’t I?”
“One, you weren’t inside my head so you don’t know the things I was thinking about you or feeling about you.”
“I have an idea it wasn’t very flattering to me.”
“And two, you’re just saying it to make me feel better, and I wasn’t fucking born yesterday.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“This experience seems to have expanded your vocabulary.”
“Not really. It’s just that I’m not trying quite so hard to censor myself for your benefit.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic about it.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. I promise you. I’m thanking you.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Sometimes there’s nothing more difficult than being yourself with the people you love.”
“Then why would you think that you could get away with saying whatever you want to me just to try to make me feel better?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“If you say so.”
“Or I did it without thinking.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“I did let you down.”
I strain a little to fill my lungs with oxygen. She has not backed off her pace at all.
“Okay. You did let me down.”
“Tell me how.”
“You thought I was a creep.”
“Yes.”
“Not that you had much of a choice.”
“No.”
“But I still felt let down. I wanted you to believe in my integrity regardless of any and all evidence to the contrary.”
“Would it mean anything then?”
“Well, that’s the catch-22, isn’t it? Sometimes what we need and what we need are two different things.”
“Mumbo jumbo. You let me down, too.”
“By leaving.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wanted you to stay and fight for me.”
“Even though--?”
“Even though I said the opposite.”
“I should have,” I say. “But I didn’t know who to fight.”
“Do you now?”
“I have an idea about it.”
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