Notes about my Father, a Young Adult fanfic

Notes about my Father

My dad is a good cook. When he bought our house he made sure he liked the kitchen because he spends hours in there most afternoons. He still invites me over for dinner at least once a week, and I still go.

Tonight he’s made eggplant parmesan whose recipe he’s been working on for ages.

What do you think? he asks.

It’s good, I tell him.

That’s all I get? You always say that, he complains.

It’s always good, I say, but he thinks I’m just flattering him. Dad, I begin to explain, if your cooking isn’t good, why would I even be here?

Because I’m good company? he jokes, and I smile.

Sometimes late at night back when I still lived at home, I’d press the shell of my ear against my bedroom wall. On the other side I could hear my dad talking to no one. He’d say words over and over. Horrible, he’d say. Horrible horrible.

He hates having an accent. He hates that people always know where he’s from. All he ever has to do is talk and they ask if he’s from New York. He hates that they know so much about him without ever knowing him. He’s never told me so, but I’m his daughter and these things I can just tell.

Horrible, he practiced.

And then the next day he’d pronounce it hahrible by accident.

My dad’s voice sounds far away when he calls me on the phone. I’m going to New York City tomorrow for work, so I’m packing and I tell him I don’t have a lot of time to talk. He tells me he’s worried about his mother. She’s old now; she won’t live forever. And she’s lonely.

Will you visit her when you pass through New York? he pleads. Talk to her for a few hours, take her out to dinner. She would really enjoy the company.

Sure, I say. Sure, I’ll visit her.

My grandmother’s apartment looks very much like it belongs to an old person. She has all these knickknacks lying around, like little glass angels and porcelain girls in pastel colored bonnets and skirts. I stoop down to give her a hug when I come in and then we sit down on her lumpy floral sofa.

Dad says hi, I tell her, like he instructed me to.

Oh, he’s a good boy, she responds. You know, she continues, he grew up so much when Lily died. I think he resented us for it.

I don’t know what to say, so I just nod solemnly. Lily was my dad’s baby sister who he never talks about.

On the end table next to me there’s a stack of folded papers and I notice that the one on top is the program from my grandpa’s memorial service. I rifle through the stack and see that the rest are programs from the services of all her friends. There must be ten or twenty.

I never see him anymore, she says sadly. I swear to god my heart breaks. She lifts a bony hand to rub the sagging, wrinkled skin of her cheek. He calls me, she says, but I never see him anymore.

My dad doesn’t go to Brooklyn anymore. He hates it there. I don’t really know why. He’s only been back once since we moved away. He went for his father’s funeral, and even that took some convincing. My dad and his father never really got along. The funeral was ten years ago.

I used to ask him why he doesn’t like New York City. We can go to Broadway, I’d tell him, or see a Yankees game. We can visit old friends. You lived there most of your life, so what are you so afraid of?

I’m not afraid, he’d insist. I just don’t like it there.

I’d be unrelenting. I’d keep asking why. Why, why, why, why, why?

Then once he said, Brooklyn never gave me anything.

And I stopped asking, because I guess he has a point.

My dad is in the kitchen washing dishes when I come over.

You have to visit your mother, I say.

Why? he asks, worried, Did she look bad?

I shrug. She looked okay for her age, I say, but she’s living all alone and she misses you.

Her neighbors take good care of her, he argues. I tell him to stop being so stubborn. Sure, her neighbors look after her but her neighbors aren’t her son. How would he feel if I stopped visiting him?

Can you stay for dinner? my dad changes the subject because he doesn’t like where the conversation is headed.

I can’t tonight. I have plans, I say.

Like a date? he asks, and I can feel that I’m blushing like I did when I was a kid. What’s his name? he asks next.

Jordan, I say. We’ve been seeing each other for almost three months.

Bring him over some time, my dad offers.

Sure, I say. I give my dad a kiss on the cheek and head towards the back door.

Delia? he says, and I stop. Then he tells me, I’ll visit her soon.

My dad named me Cordelia after one of the characters in a Shakespeare play, King Lear. I used to think it was an ugly name. All of my friends were named Jessica and Alexandra and Emily and Katie. Delia just sounded weird next to all their neat, normal names.

Then when I was in college, I read the play. And ever since then I’ve understood.

Cordelia is the daughter who is always faithful to her father.

My phone never rings after midnight, so when it does I know my grandma has died. My dad is almost crying on the phone because his mom is the one who always took care of him when his dad got mean.

I’ll be right there Daddy, I say. I haven’t called him that since I was twelve.

At a red light I pull open my glove compartment. There’s a bag of M&Ms inside, but I can’t remember where they came from. My dad likes M&Ms. Maybe, I think, maybe there’s a reason that they’re in there. Maybe they will make him feel better.

Do you want some M&Ms? I ask after I’ve given him a hug and we’ve sat down on the couch.

He looks at me as though I’ve spoken in a foreign language. Then he shakes his head slowly.

I shrug and look at my knees, realizing that I’m still in my pajamas. It was dumb to think M&Ms could fix anything, anyway.

Sometime during the funeral it occurs to me: I am all my dad has left. The first funeral he ever went to was for his three-year-old sister when he was ten. Now his mother is being laid down next to his dad. My mom’s grave is in Connecticut, and sometimes I visit it with him, though I never even met her. I started breathing right after her heart stopped.

I’m unbearably sad for him for a moment when I realize everything he’s lost, but then I remember that it was never really about keeping a tally of miseries.

I think for a moment but can’t come up with what it really is about. I reach over, take my dad’s hand, and squeeze. He squeezes back.

Maybe it’s just this.

My dad keeps a garden. He has since we moved to a house with a backyard and he always has dirt spots on the knees of his jeans. He grows wisteria and rhododendrons and marigolds and rosemary and basil and oregano and other plants whose names I never remember even though he tells me them all the time.

I visit him unannounced one afternoon and find him crouched in the backyard, pulling at weeds.

Those are pretty, I say, indicating a new blue flower.

They’re forget-me-nots. They were my mother’s favorite, he informs me.

What’s your favorite? I ask him.

My favorite flower? he repeats.

I shrug. Your favorite plant in your garden, I specify.

Rosemary, he answers, I love the smell of rosemary.

I wrinkle my nose because I hate the smell of rosemary and I always have. But I say, Someday I’ll have a garden, and I’ll grow rosemary for you.

And though I don’t have even the palest green thumb, I’m pretty sure I mean it.

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