Heart Bones(6)

Things might have been different for me if damage and kindness had held equal weight in my past, but sadly, they don’t. I could count the kindness shown to me on both hands. I couldn’t count the damage done to me even if I used the hands of every person in this airport.

It’s taken me a while to become immune to the damage. To build up that wall that protects me and my heart from people like my mother. From guys like Dakota.

I am made of steel now. Come at me, world. You can’t damage the impermeable.

When I turn the corner and see my father through the glass that separates the secured side of the airport from the unsecured, I pause. I look at his legs.

Both of them.

I graduated from high school just two weeks ago, and while I certainly didn’t expect him to show up to my graduation, I kind of held out a small sliver of hope that he would. But a week before I graduated, he left me a message at work and told me he broke his leg and couldn’t make the flight out to Kentucky.

Neither of his legs look broken from here.

I’m immediately grateful that I am impermeable because this lie is probably something that would have otherwise damaged me.

He’s next to baggage claim with no crutches in sight. He’s pacing back and forth without a limp or even a hitch in his step. I’m no doctor, but I would think a broken leg takes more than a few weeks to heal. And even if it did heal in that short amount of time, surely there would be residual physical limitations.

I already regret coming here and he hasn’t even laid eyes on me yet.

Everything has happened so fast in the last twenty-four hours, I haven’t had a chance for it all to catch up to me. My mother is dead, I’ll never step foot in Kentucky again, and I have to spend the next several weeks with a man I’ve spent less than two hundred days with since I was born.

But I’ll cope.

It’s what I do.

I walk through the exit and into the baggage claim area just as my father looks up. He stops pacing, but his hands are shoved inside the pockets of his jeans and they stay there for a moment. There’s a nervousness to him and I kind of like that. I want him to be intimidated by his lack of involvement in my life.

I want the upper hand this summer. I can’t imagine living with a man who thinks he’ll be able to make up for lost time by over-parenting me. I’d actually prefer it if we just coexisted in his home and didn’t speak until it was time for me to leave for college in August.

We walk toward each other. He took the first step so I make sure and take the last. We don’t hug because I’m holding my backpack, my purse, and the plastic sack that contains Mother Teresa. I’m not a hugger. All that touching and squeezing and smiling is not on my reunion agenda.

We awkwardly nod at each other and it’s obvious we’re strangers who share nothing but a dismal last name and some DNA.

“Wow,” he says, shaking his head as he takes me in. “You’re grown up. And beautiful. And so tall…and…”

I force a smile. “You look…older.”

His black hair is sprinkled with salty strands, and his face is fuller. He’s always been handsome, but most little girls think their fathers are handsome. Now that I’m an adult, I can see that he is actually a handsome man.

Even deadbeat dads can be good-looking, I guess.

There is something else different about him in a way that has nothing to do with aging. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know that I like it.

He gestures toward the baggage carousel. “How many bags do you have?”

“Three.”

The lie comes out of my mouth immediately. Sometimes I impress myself with how easily fabrications come to me. Another coping mechanism I learned living with Janean. “Three big red suitcases. I thought I might stay a few weeks, so I brought everything.”

The buzzer sounds and the carousel begins to turn. My father walks over to where the luggage begins spilling out of the conveyor belt. I pull the strap of my backpack up onto my shoulder—the backpack that contains everything I brought with me.

I don’t even own a suitcase, much less three red ones. But maybe if he thinks the airport lost my luggage, he’ll offer to replace my nonexistent belongings.

I know that pretending to lose nonexistent luggage is deceitful. But his leg isn’t broken, so that makes us even.

A lie for a lie.

We wait for several minutes in complete awkwardness for luggage I know isn’t coming.

I tell him I need to freshen up and spend at least ten minutes in the bathroom. I changed out of my work uniform before I got on the plane. I put on one of the sundresses that had been wrinkled up in my backpack. Sitting around all day in airports and in a cramped airplane seat has made it even more wrinkled.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I don’t look much like my father at all. I have my mother’s dull, lifeless brown hair and my father’s green eyes. I also have my father’s mouth. My mother had thin, almost invisible lips, so at least my dad gave me something other than his last name.

Even though pieces of me resemble pieces of them, I’ve never felt like I’ve belonged to either one of them. It’s as if I adopted myself when I was a kid and have been on my own since then. This visit with my father feels just like that…a visit. I don’t feel like I’m coming home. I don’t even feel like I just left home.