ABBY: I’ll tell you again, but please try not to forget this time, Cecil. This is a story about him.

###

Mom never acknowledged dad. It’s not that she didn’t mention him or didn’t want to talk about him. Yes, those things. But also, when I would ask questions about him, she would change the subject or go quiet. Sometimes I pressed her harder, but she wouldn’t bite. I would say, “Mom, stop ignoring the question. Where is our dad?” And she would say something like “You really shouldn’t smoke, Abby.” And I’d find myself telling her I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked. And she’d say “I can smell it on you. Bad habit. Tsk tsk. Bad habit.” And then she’d stare at the wall with translucent eyes.

It didn’t matter how I tried to approach the topic; I always fell into that trap. She would put me on my heels. My attempts to interrogate her would end in her questioning me about something completely unrelated. You know how it is. I remember when you were 16, you tried to borrow the car to go out with what’s-his-name, and 20 minutes later she had you repairing the leaky bathroom faucet instead of going on your date. She was good at that sort of thing.

I spent years trying to find a picture of our dad. I dug through photo albums and scrapbooks. I even waited until late at night when mom had passed out from excess. I rifled through her dresser and even her purse. No pictures of him anywhere. I believed for a long time that maybe I imagined him. That we had no father.

###

That can’t be true, though. I know we have a father, and I know it’s the same man for you and me. Look at us. We have matching noses, with these thin bridges and the upturn at the tip. And we share dimples. Mom didn’t have those features. We look alike well beyond our mother.

I can’t remember dad’s face though. And I should. I would have been old enough to see a dad around before you were born. I should have some kind of visual, but nothing. That doesn’t mean I don’t remember him. I do remember someone else in our house besides Mom. I remember a voice. A presence. A smell. A temperature. I know he was there.

When I was 4, I was lifted into the air. I could see mother across the room glowering. I squealed as I was raised and lowered. There was a voice laughing along with me, deep and resonant. More of a vibration than a sound. Mom never cracked a smile, and I never saw the face of the one who flew me around the living room like a helicopter, but I could feel his joy. It sticks with you. Like a chill deep in your bones.

I don’t need a picture of something to know those moments were real. Like, we can’t photograph love, but we know it’s there. There are no photographs of hurt, but we feel it deeply. To this day, there’s not been a single picture taken of Taylor Swift, but we know she’s a real person who sings incredible songs. I get gooseflesh every time I hear her version of The Macarena.

You believe me. I know you do. Even though dad (or whatever he was) disappeared right after you were born. You didn’t experience him in the house. You felt him there, I’m sure, but not actually there. But I did, okay?

###

I’m sorry to bring this up again – though I know you’ll forget it like you always do. I blamed you for many years for his leaving. I was a kid, of course, and I didn’t know any better. All I understood was that you were born, and suddenly the presence I called dad disappeared. Maybe you had something to do with it. I don’t know. We’ll never know, but however it went down, it was never your fault.

Before you came along, dad tucked me in at night. He read me stories. I don’t remember which ones. I can’t remember his exact voice either. It’s in my head. I know what his voice feels like, but I can’t place its pitch or pattern. Like a voice in a dream. Mom never read me stor ies, but dad did. And then you arrived, another person in the house, and I felt so alone.

Worse than dad’s disappearance was mom’s disappearance. But hers was a metaphorical disappearance. Her body was around, but she was absent. Dad was there but not. Mom wasn’t there, but was. You know? She provided nothing.

That’s unfair. She gave us a house. She put us through school. She fed us. But hugs, touch, smiles. Too few. I don’t have to tell you, right?

I don’t think I spent enough time trying to understand her. I definitely tried to reach her, to talk to her, but I don’t know that I ever asked her any questions that weren’t about me. I was too young and bitter to say, “You look tired, mom. Do you want to talk about it?”

Steve tells me not to beat myself up over it. It’s not the child’s job to take care of the parent, but it is humanity’s job to check in on each other.

Of course, I never did. I don’t think you did, either. And we’ll never know what her life was really like.

But how could I think of her life when she was so distant? I resented you for her inadequacies, Cecil. I resented having to be your de facto guardian, helping you with your homework, driving you around. Cooking for you, cleaning up after you. Disciplining you – and you were never grateful, and always belligerent toward me. I hated you, but only because we were both still children.

Years and years, I didn’t hide my anger well, and you didn’t either. Even into adulthood, the way you picked on Steve. In public. On your radio show. You didn’t fight with me, because you were scared of me. I’m sure my demeanor, my face reminded you of our mother, and you wanted no part of that. But Steve, he was a gentle proxy, a nice man who would take your abuse. An easy target for you to unleash your pain.

I understand, because I did it too. We all have scapegoats for our pain. And Steve… Steve is full of grace. [to Steve] Thank you, babe.

[to Cecil] We sucked as siblings, Cecil, but we’re growing up. We’re starting to suck less. I love our game nights, like tonight. I love our family outings. I love getting to see you and Carlos and Esteban so much. I love how involved you’ve been in Janice’s life, and how welcoming you’ve been to Steve the last few years. I forgive you. I forgive myself. And I hope you will, too.

###

Sorry. This shit always makes me cry.

[pulls it mostly together]

I hope you finally remember what I’m telling you tonight. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you this all before, and you never retain any of it. But I’ll tell it again.

Dad returned when you were old enough to start drawing and telling stories. Like I said, he wasn’t physically there, but he was PRESENT. You know? When you were about 4 or 5, you really took to your crayons and watercolors. You’d draw the family, the house, the sun. You drew pictures of our dog, Backgammon. I’m not going to lie. They weren’t great drawings, but I couldn’t stop looking at them. They were so familiar.

I dug up a box of my old drawings and discovered you and I had drawn the same exact things, years apart. You and I had both sketched a large tree, heavy with owls. We didn’t have a large tree or owls anywhere near us. But we’d both drawn the same thing. Weird coincidence I guess. Kids drawings all start to run together.

But then you told me about the hiking trip Dad took us on, just you and me and him. Through the redwoods. We caught butterflies, and dug holes looking for treasure, and we even saw several owls. The owls made sounds like telephones ringing and vibrating easy chairs.

I knew for sure you were lying. Childish tall tales. But then I started having the dreams. Same imagery. Owls, redwoods, digging holes. I sometimes saw other things in my dream: a sitting man with his back turned, a framed photo of the same man next to him, his face unseeable, and thin clouds moving dizzyingly fast across the sky.

You remember how I would ask you about your dreams, and you would tell me you didn’t remember them? Then I would ask you about Dad, and you would tell me these wild stories. That we had gone to the lake together and fought an octopus. That dad taught us to make our own hot air balloons. That he picked us up in his soft arms and flew us up to the top of a mountain where we could see the entire valley unfurled below like a dusty rug. That the owls told us to dig a hole beneath a tree and then crawl inside until our shoulders ached and the world smelled like worms and no sunlight could harm us. These stories you told weren’t lies or childish fabulations; they were recaps of my own dreams.

You were having the same dreams, Cecil. Only, you thought they were real. Maybe they were real. Maybe I was wrong, and you were right. I wanted to believe that. I wanted more than anything for dad to be real.

[sound of heavy rain outside, maybe even a thunderstorm; volume grows through the rest of this section]

Once, I got up in the middle of the night. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, and there was someone sitting in the dining room. It was dark, but I could make out an outline of a man with his back turned. I was too scared to approach him, to say anything. I didn’t even want to move, for fear he’d hear me and jerk around. I watched him, breathless, for a long time. Then he stood. I froze, and he turned. I shut my eyes before I could see his face. I heard him shout my name. I screamed. And when I finally opened my eyes, he was gone.

Across the table was our mother. Again, it was dark, but the ember of her cigarette lit up her face. She didn’t look at me, pretended I wasn’t there. I went back to bed and we never spoke of it.

I don’t think I dreamed that, but dad seemed to only come to me in dreams. Maybe that was the only place I could be open to receiving him.

I don’t know what dad is. In my dreams and in my drawings, I used to think he was an owl? A bunch of owls? I think that’s called a parliament of owls. Like: a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a calamity of Abbys, a paucity of parents.

It’s more likely, though, that he’s just a ghost, and he’s haunting us. I was always scared to dream about him. I couldn’t sleep well for days after one of those dreams. I don’t watch horror movies, but I know enough about them to be terrified of vengeful spirits.

Is he vengeful, though? The way he shouted my name when I closed my eyes that night? “ABBY!” It scared me. But, he might have just been surprised. Like, he was shocked to see me there. “ABBY!” He wanted me to go back to bed. He didn’t want me to see he and mom arguing, or whatever they were doing.

Who knows? The separation between worlds is not a veil, but mud. He can’t make himself as visible or tangible as he wants. I wish he could.

But you, Cecil. When you were younger, your contact with him was much more substantial. Maybe you’re the key to reaching him. Or do you not want to? I don’t want to pressure you to…

Oh wow, can you hear that? It sounds like rain. Steve, hon? Can you pop your head out the front door and check the weather?

###

WEATHER

###

[to Steve] No rain? Just the wind, you think? Wow, it really did sound like rain. No one else heard that?

[to Cecil] Every time I tell you a story about dad, Cecil, I think I hear rain outside. Or maybe, it’s the owls.

[beat]

I don’t know what all of this means. I wish I had a satisfying, definitive answer for you about who our dad was, where he went. When? What for? Why? How?

I am pretty sure our dad is dead, and I think our dreams and drawings are doorways for his ghost. Does he want something? These days I’m pretty sure that whatever he’s doing is innocuous. That more than anything he wants us to know him, to not be forgotten. (Though, you have forgotten him so many times).

I say “ghost,’ but not the ghost of horror movies. A real ghost, the kind that actually exists. Ghosts are watermarks, stains. They’re the wear and tear of repetition over millennia in our physical world. Hiking trails are ghosts, footpaths from months, years, centuries past. The laughter and applause, night after night, decade after decade, in an old theater still resonates through the floorboard and roofbeams. The vibrations are ghosts.

Dreams are ghosts. Language is a ghost. Faces of children are ghosts.

People laugh, cry, get angry, fall in love, and those emotions are like tire tracks on their souls. But unlike tire tracks, people can’t see these marks, so they can’t understand them. They get scared (like me) or avoidant (like you). Ghosts would be a lot easier if they just looked and talked like a person. But they’re not people. They’re ghosts.

And now I want to go back to what I said about Mom earlier. I didn’t ever try to understand her. I tried to understand Dad through her. You and I, Cecil, we’re haunted by him. We’ve talked about it a million times. But he haunted Mom, too. I don’t know what he did to her, or what he was like around her. I’ll never get that information. I can only guess. It’s not incomprehensible that two living, physical people could haunt each other.

She never shared anything about their relationship. She grew quieter and more solitary in her later years. She was angry at the world, at us, at herself, and we never got the chance to be with her in those feelings. We never really tried.

I’ve tried spending more time with dad in my dreams and in my art. But he’s… god he’s impossible. Just give me a straight answer, man. A word, a gesture, a look at your face even. I think he was like this in real life, Cecil. I think his ambiguity, his vagueness, is why mom hated talking about him. He is not enigmatic or magical. He is fucking frustrating.

All these cryptic images, but I don’t think there’s much to understand about an absent father.

I’m looking for mom’s ghost now, but I don’t think she wants to be found. I think she’s happier, far away from the ghost of our father.

That’s my journey though. You should keep looking for dad in dreams and in drawings, if that’s what you want. Like I said, I don’t think he means any harm. I don’t think he means anything at all. He’s a smudge, a haze, a feeling, a tire track. But he is there.

Now! Can we please finish our game of Scrabble? It’s my turn to try to spell the name of God. Let’s see, off of your M, Carlos, I’ll play AKIMITSU. Oooh, that’s worth 33 points and loud footsteps in the attic. So close.

Your turn, Cecil. Cecil? Cecil!

You better not have forgotten my story again.

###

PROVERB: Dress for the job you want (Senior Accountant), not for the job you have (Naked Accountant)