Dad wasn’t that sad after Mom left.
“It’s for the best,” he said when I curled up next to him in bed the first few nights after. I hated the way that sounded, like I was never meant to have a mother at all. I’m pretty sure he’d already met Janie, because she was on the scene pretty quickly. Her dark hair curled perfectly at the ends. Her nose was so small I was worried she wouldn’t be able to breathe through it. Her body shifted so much in the first year of their marriage that I believed Arizona when she said Janie was an evil monster and not a real person. That her magic power was changing shapes and that we had to be careful.
So I was very, very careful around Janie.
But when Janie started getting melancholy and strange a few years later, Dad freaked out.
“I did it again,” he said to Arizona and me late one night, in the basement. I was eight and Arizona was ten, and we were watching movies and eating popcorn and asking to call Mom, which we still did once a month even three years after she left.
“Daddy? Are you okay?” Arizona said.
“I wanted Janie to be around forever,” he said. “I wanted her boys to be your brothers.” Dad leaned his head back so that it rested on the top of the couch and he stared at the ceiling.
“She’s gone?” I asked. Dad wasn’t very good in those days at telling us when things were ending. We’d learn in abrupt moments like this. We’d learn by accident. We’d learn by eavesdropping.
“She’s gone,” Dad said. “She left. I can’t seem to keep anyone.” I was pretty sure dads weren’t supposed to be this sad in front of daughters. Something felt bruised and wrong, but I couldn’t identify what. I hid my face in a couch cushion.
Arizona was better than me, even then.
“We won’t leave you!” she said.
“I hope not,” Dad said. “You’re my girls. I need you.”
He pulled us in for hugs, each of us under one of his arms. I brought the couch cushion with me. I liked the title. His girls. Arizona did too, I could tell from the way she hugged Dad back, so forceful he coughed a little, her arm too strong around his middle.
We’d been wondering who we were, I guess. Trying to piece together all the strange bits of our lives and not liking the results. Kids at school made fun of my dad’s job. Said it was gross and creepy. Counselors at school felt bad for us. We weren’t sure who was right.
Being his girls, being needed, watching movies from the crook of his arm in a room that smelled like popcorn and aftershave felt right.
“Do you want to live with your mom?” Dad said then. His forehead never really wrinkles, but there were lines that wanted to pop out at that moment. His eyes were sad. I wished he could have lines around them. I wished his face moved like other daddies’.
Arizona and I didn’t answer.
“You look so much like her. Both of you.” I took the cushion away from my face then and wondered what I could do to look less like her. Dad sounded sad when he said it, and I didn’t want any more things making Dad upset. “You must miss her,” he said.
We still didn’t reply. Even Arizona couldn’t come up with a perfect thing to say. We knew we weren’t supposed to lie, and saying we didn’t miss her or didn’t sometimes want to live with her in the house with the big tire swing that she sent us pictures of the year before would be a lie.
“Girls?” Dad said. His voice was so small. The little tears in the corners of his eyes that never came out were streaming down his face. “Would you rather be with her? Sometimes she thinks she wants you back. And if you hate it here, if you want to be with her, I can make that happen for you. I can try.” He sniffed. It was awful. Worse than Mom leaving and the side of the closet without her clothes in it. Worse than the sad birthday cards that came in the mail, the kind that were from CVS and not even a nice stationery store. The fact that she wrote our names and her name and let the Hallmark message in the middle be her note to us, instead of writing her own.
“You’re my girls,” he choked out, the words making us nod with recognition. Yes! Yes, we are! That’s who we are! “You know how lucky I feel that I got to keep you.”
Arizona and I looked at each other over his stomach. We’d talked before about running away to find our mother.
It’s terrible and strong, the pull toward a mother, even if she’s not the mother you deserve. Even if she’s across the country or across the world or telling people you don’t exist. Even if you have a father with strong arms and soft pajamas and an easiness with the words I love you.
“You still want her more,” Dad said. “Even though I’m right here.” He stopped asking it as a question. And that’s when we both snapped to it and realized we had to answer him.
“No!” Arizona said. I mimicked her.
“No, no!” I said.