No shit, Sherlock, I thought, bewildered that a man his age was only now coming to these conclusions.
“Anyway,” my father said, “this thing…this idea that I have to talk to them in a different way…it’s giving me anxiety. Before I talk to anyone, I worry about it. What if I don’t do it right? It makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. You’re the only person I can talk to. You’re the only one. I just want to die. I think about it all the time now. Maybe I should just die.”
Even though I was talking to him while walking in circles around my office building on a busy Midtown Manhattan sidewalk, the vaguest mention of suicide from a parent triggered me. I yelled into the phone. “You cannot say shit like that to me! It’s so selfish! You cannot put that kind of pressure on me! The pressure of your life! It’s not fair!” An elderly woman and her small dog both looked at me quizzically.
“Okay,” he said, his voice tired. “Okay, okay.”
It took me a few minutes to calm down, but when I was back on an even keel, I brought up an old family friend we often complained about. “Look at Henry,” I said. “He never worked on himself. He just lives his life being an asshole, pissing everyone off, without ever looking in the mirror. If he did, he’d see what you’re seeing now. He’d see a need for change. He’d be upset about the way he treated people. But he’ll never do that because he’ll never look. You, at least, are looking. It’s very brave. But change is hard. It’s possible. It just takes practice.”
I spent half an hour telling him things I’d learned in therapy. Things I wished someone had told me in my twenties. Things I’d learned from my mistakes. Mistakes I made because I was acting like him.
“You’re right,” he said in astonishment. “Of course you’re right about it all. How did you become the parent and I became the child?”
How did he not understand that this had always been the arrangement?
I told my dad that I had to go. I’d already been away from work for too long. “Okay,” he said, sounding reluctant. “But if there’s one thing that comes out of all of this, it’s that I want to repair my relationship with you. I want to be better to you.”
“If that’s the case…in the past three times you’ve called, have you ever asked me how I am? Have you asked me a single question about myself?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Well, why not? Part of caring about people is asking them questions about how they are.”
“But I know you’re fine. You’re successful, you have Joey,” he protested. “I know you’re okay, so what do I have to ask you about?”
I slumped against the faux-wood-paneled wall of the elevator as it took me back up to work. It was just sad. Just so sad that he never seemed to grasp the basic concepts of what it meant to be a father.
* * *
—
My father and I had always seemed to struggle with what our relationship was to each other. I felt as if I had to take care of him growing up, even as I looked to him for food, shelter, advice on math homework. As adults, we could not find a middle ground. Were we strangers? Acquaintances? But, of course, there was that pesky genetic tie of obligation.
I was indebted to him in some ways. There was the whole conception thing. Then, providing for me financially as a child. My dad paid for college, and though I held jobs here and there and shoplifted most of my books and meals, he also paid my rent until I graduated, when I was twenty. If we’re going to take out the bill and tally it, then I’d have to add those free dinners he gave me in my twenties. He let me buy $100 worth of groceries at Trader Joe’s for my birthday month (though he never remembered the actual date or my age). He bought me a fancy camera in high school, a camcorder in college. I stayed on his family cellphone plan for years. Did the thousands of dollars he spent on me allow him to pay off his sins? But I went to a state school, I tell myself. But I graduated in two years. But I didn’t take money from him after graduation. I count and recount, as if I can nickel and dime my way out of having to love him.
* * *
—
There were periods of six months here and there when I would not talk to my dad at all. There were so many blow-up fights with him that ended with me screaming that I never wanted to speak with him again. But I always went back. I always took him up on his offers when, after months of no contact, he asked me to go out for a free meal, especially when he said he needed to talk because he was going through something. I would return home afterward feeling grumpy and short.
So many boyfriends, dragged unwillingly to these awkward meals, asked me why I bothered going in the first place. So many therapists asked me why I retained a relationship with my father when it was clear he put in the bare minimum of effort. But I always snapped back that they didn’t understand. That it was my choice. That it was my duty. That this is just how Asian people are.
Of course, I was fulfilling my filial duty only in that I continued to show up. While I was out to dinner with my father, I’d criticize the sweat on his brow, the food on his chin, his terrible sense of direction. I’d clap back at every small annoyance, I’d call him stupid, I’d snort with impatience if he took too long to order or stumbled over his words. I struggled mightily to mask my rage. Two of my boyfriends said, while breaking up with me, that if I was capable of being so cruel to my own father, I would one day turn that cruelty toward them.
* * *
—
For years, I had a recurring dream of my father dying. In my dreams, I felt deep remorse and guilt that I hadn’t done enough, that I hadn’t fixed things before he left this earth. In my dreams, I sobbed shamefully at his funeral, throwing myself over the casket, but I would always wake up confused and disconnected from any of those emotions. I could not discern which feelings were real—the grief in my subconscious or my deep indifference in the light of day.
In either case, I wanted to be good. I wanted to be able to forgive. I kept going to dinner after dinner, thinking that forgiveness would come with the generous platters of steamed fish and fried squid and tender pea shoots my father bought me. I hid my clenched fists underneath the table.
* * *
—
During one of our infrequent dinners, he had a revelation. After an awkward pause, he stammered, “I’m afraid I ruined your life.”
It was the closest he ever got to admitting fault. He looked so small underneath his too-big white polo shirt. He had always been fragile, but now he looked it.
“You’re very lucky,” I said. “I turned out fine.”
But still, he must have had the sense that there were amends to be made. Because months later, he asked me, “What can I do to be closer to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Make a list,” he replied. “Make me a list of what you want, and give it to me, and I’ll do it.”