Underwater(28)

“Fine.”

“I think it would be good for you to write a letter to your dad because there is something freeing about getting the words out. It’s helpful to put the hurt and frustration onto the page. When you write it, you can think, I’m letting this go.”

I listen to her, but I don’t look at her.

“It helped when you wrote the letter to Evan, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not mad at Evan.”

She nods. “I hear you. But anger is a horrible thing to cart around. Let’s see if we can do something to help you with that.”

“Okay.”

The clouds move across the sky, leaving behind streaks of blue. The barely damp edges of pavement around a rain puddle have dried up under the sun since we’ve been here.

I thank her.

I go inside.





chapter nineteen

After I say goodbye to Brenda, I sit down at the computer to work. I finish up a paper that’s due next week, and then our home phone rings. I answer. It’s someone from a mental health facility in San Diego. They ask for my mom. They say they’re calling regarding a Mr. Richard Grant. I know what this person would tell my mom if she were here.

They would say Richard Grant was found drunk.

They would say he was disorderly.

They would say he was deemed a danger to himself.

They would say he is on a seventy-two-hour involuntary psychiatric hold.

This is not the first time my mom has been my dad’s emergency contact.

They can’t tell me these things even though I could recite the details from memory.

They can’t tell me because I’m a minor.

The woman on the phone is kind and has a Southern drawl. The words ooze out of her mouth. “Please have your mama call us,” she tells me.

I scribble down a number my mom can call when she gets home from work and is tired and dirty and has a headache. I refuse to bother her with it right now. If it were the first time, like a year and a half ago, then maybe. But it’s not. I won’t interrupt her during her shift. I thank the lady on the phone.

“You take care now,” she says before we disconnect.

I slip to the floor and don’t move. I don’t do anything. I can’t. I stay still to try to keep my heart from beating out of my chest like I’m in a movie about some freaky zombie invasion.

The thing is, I sometimes have to remind myself that my dad was good once. He was fun. And inspiring. He took me to play in the rain. He taught me things. He was a dad.

Ben was three months old the first time my dad met him. My brother, my mom, and I stood among hundreds of others on the blazing hot asphalt of the parking lot of the Army base, waiting for the buses to roll up with all the soldiers returning from deployment. We were lost in a sea of red, white, and blue pom-poms and miniature American flags. I held up a homemade WELCOME HOME sign. I’d made it the night before using glitter glue and rainbow markers. I was eleven.

The buses finally rolled up, and the soldiers exited in camouflage uniforms and scanned the crowd. They looked for their families. They looked for the ones they loved. I waved. I jumped up and down. I couldn’t spot my dad in all the people who looked the same. I wanted to find him. Desperately. Somehow I thought spotting him instantly would prove I hadn’t forgotten him. Because sometimes I was afraid I had. Like weeks before when my sixth grade science teacher had told us how people either had attached or unattached earlobes. I felt mine. They were unattached and had tiny ladybug stud earrings in them. I knew my mom’s earlobes were unattached like mine. So were Ben’s. But I had to dig up a picture of my dad from our computer when I got home from school in order to see what his earlobes did. They were attached. I hadn’t remembered.

But that day in the parking lot, I knew my dad when he started running toward us. He pulled me into a tight bear hug that made me safe and whole again. My mom cried happy tears and put Ben in his arms. My dad looked down at him in awe. Amazed. Our family was on the local news that night because reporters always like to find the soldier returning from deployment who is meeting their baby for the first time. It tugs at heartstrings. It makes people cry. It drives home the fact that military families make huge sacrifices. We were that family that day. My dad was that soldier. Ben was that baby.

When we got home, everyone was hungry for lunch, but my mom had to nurse Ben and put him down for a nap. So my dad told me with a wink and a squeeze of my shoulder that it was about time he taught his favorite girl how to make grilled cheese sandwiches. And tomato soup. It had always been his first-choice meal. It had always been our meal. He called it comfort food. He said it was the thing he craved when he was sitting in the desert eating an MRE in the dusty dirt. He got the soup started and lined everything else up on the counter. Bread. Butter. Cheese. Piping hot griddle. He made the first one and we shared it right there in the kitchen, laughing as we wrapped the oozing cheese around our fingertips and sucked it into our mouths. He helped me make three more sandwiches and manage the soup after that. And when everything was done, the three of us sat down to eat. We were together again. Things were as they should be.

It was good until it wasn’t.

Over the next four years, my dad was deployed again. Eight months, then twelve. He’d enlisted when I was in preschool. As a twenty-three-year-old father, who’d kicked around for four years trying to provide for his family, I imagine the Army seemed like an honorable way to do what was best for us. But the after-effects of 9/11 lasted longer than anyone had anticipated, and every time my dad thought he’d finally have extended time back with us, he was redeployed sooner rather than later. It took its toll. He returned from the last tour angrier and more distant. He drank too much. More than I’d ever seen. He didn’t spend time at home. He stopped hugging me and coming to my swim meets. We didn’t make grilled cheese sandwiches. He fought with my mom in hushed tones that grew louder through the walls. When he was around, he paid more attention to Ben than to me. I decided this was because Ben was only four and too little to know a better version of our dad existed. I think my dad liked that. I was fifteen. He knew the only thing he could give me was disappointment.