“I just came to tell you I forgive you.”
She blocked the door like I was going to burglarize her house. “Great,” she said, with zero emotion.
“You’re not going to invite your own daughter into your house?”
She stared at me for several long, uncomfortable moments, and then she stepped out of the way hesitantly. “Sure. Come in.”
I followed her through a warren of boxes and piles of stuff strewn everywhere and into the kitchen, where there was even more clutter. She was clearly an incipient hoarder of things and dogs. There were at least eight small dogs of all different breeds, jumping and nipping at her feet like hungry rats.
“Sit.” She pointed to a bar stool behind the counter. I pulled it out and dusted some powdery white stuff off of it. The house was filthy. I tried to remember if ours was like that when I was little.
“You want some juice or something?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
I didn’t know why I was staying.
“I have an appointment that I need to get to.” She stood on the other side of the dirty counter and appraised me.
“Are you a dog groomer?”
“It pays the bills,” she shot back.
“I wasn’t judging you.”
“Aren’t you, though? Isn’t that why you’re here, Emiline? To judge me?”
“No, I told you why I was here. To forgive you.”
“For what?”
“For abandoning me with him.” Did she really think she was innocent?
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘abandoned.’ You were always a daddy’s girl.”
What? “As if that’s an excuse,” I snapped. “He went to jail for child abuse and neglect.”
“You want to blame me ’cause your daddy couldn’t lay off the bottle?”
I could feel my face flushing with anger. Why am I here? It was like she had no emotions at all.
“You’re selfish,” I told her.
She looked at the clock on the microwave. “It’s time to go.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“At work.” She glared at me.
“Do you have any other kids you’ve abandoned?”
“Sure don’t.”
I stood from the bar stool and headed for the door, then I whirled around and placed my hands on my hips. “He said I was nothing like you. And you know what’s sad? I’m super relieved.” I started to get choked up. “I don’t understand. Why do you hate me? What did I do to you?”
“I don’t hate you at all. I did my best. End of story.”
“Is it?” I said. I stood there, refusing to cry, and shook my head. “How could you be so remorseless? You almost ruined my life.”
She blinked back at me. If there was something going on behind those dead eyes, I couldn’t see it.
I turned, opened the door, and slammed it shut.
As I drove back to the hotel, I thought back to how miserable my father had been after she left. Until now, I was always afraid that I was capable of what she had done, like one day a switch would flip inside of me and I’d walk out on the people who loved me. But now I remembered: her indifference had always been there. She was just a cold fish. I had never even seen her cry. The asshole in her wasn’t hiding under a sweet fa?ade. It was always there, right on the outside. I remembered her indifference even when I was a small child. There were no hugs, no special bedtime stories, no cute names for my owies or boo-boos. She had been heartless and cold then, and she was the same now. It was my responsibility to let her go, and not to expect her to wake up to her maternal instincts.
I SPENT THE next couple of days in my hotel room, writing. On the day of Jase’s event, I looked at his website. He was having a meet and greet in a bar after a reading at a bookstore. I wanted to stay away, to figure things out, but it was as if I could feel him nearby. Call it fate or serendipity, but this mission to tie up the loose ends of my past had led me directly to Nashville. Once again, Jase and I were in the same city. It all felt a bit on the nose, but then again, I had come to him. I had put myself in his electromagnetic field, and now I was being pulled forward, inch by inch. What mysterious forces tore people apart and brought them back together again? Was it all just gravitational waves, or was there something else at work here?
I ate dinner alone and then kicked a rock a couple of blocks down the street while I tried to talk myself out of going to the bar.
But for all my wanderings that night, I ended up right in front of the bar. Of course. Jackson’s Bar and Bistro. How apropos.