“I’m sorry, Eleanor,” Dad said gently before turning to my mother. “Sylvia, isn’t it time we told her the truth? She—”
“No.” My mother looked me up and down. “You know what you’re implying, don’t you, Eleanor? You’re saying your father hasn’t been enough for you.”
“No, I never—”
“Hasn’t he always treated you well?”
“Yes, but—”
“Hasn’t he always done everything for you?”
“Of course he has.” I raised my voice again as I stared back at her. “I never said—”
“Then why does it matter, Nellie?” my mother snapped. “This is exactly why I insisted we never tell you. I knew you wouldn’t be mature about it. I said you’d overreact and—”
“No.” I shook my head, held up my hands, palms facing her. “No. I won’t let you turn this around and blame me. Not today.” I looked at Dad, who lay in his bed with a pained expression on his face. He seemed so small, so sick and defeated, and yet all I could think of was I needed to leave, that I had to get out of there. Now. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Dad, okay? We can talk then, and—”
“You don’t have to go,” he said.
I looked at him, and then at my mother, trying to come to grips with the fact they’d lied for my entire life, both of them complicit. That my mother had withheld the truth didn’t surprise me, but my father’s betrayal, that he had—yet again—been unable to stand up to her, made me want to scream. My heart thumped, blood whooshing in my ears as I understood he was never going to tell me unless she agreed. If I hadn’t overheard their conversation, he’d have taken this secret to his early grave. I couldn’t believe what he’d almost done. Couldn’t accept he was going to die. It was unfair. All of it was so unfair. The cancer. The fact it was taking him instead of her. The lies. Everything.
Decades of hatred and suppressed anger I felt for my mother—coupled with the last two months of grief, despair and sleepless nights—all billowed and surged inside me. The feelings strained against the shackles I’d tried to tame them with, snapping their chains one by one with their pointed teeth. When the last one broke, red-hot fury shot from my belly and raced up to my mouth, where it transformed itself into twisted words of disgust, spewing forth like lava.
“How could you do this?” I said to Dad. “That she—” I pointed at my mother but kept my eyes firmly on him “—would treat me like utter shit is nothing new. But you? I trusted you. You were supposed to be on my side. You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry, Eleanor, I—”
“I don’t care you’re sorry,” I shouted, hating—detesting—myself all the more, but unable to make myself stop, to regain control.
“Freckles, please.” He held out his hand but I stepped back, shook my head.
“Who’s my real father?” I said, and watched Dad wince at the word real. Still, both he and my mother stayed silent, making me back away toward the door, because, I realized, I was terrified they might answer. My next words came out a trembling whisper. “I can’t deal with this. I need to get my head straight. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Dad pushed himself up with his elbows and opened his mouth to reply, but the only thing coming from his lips was a string of deep, chesty coughs, like sounds of gunfire bouncing off the walls. His chest rose and fell at an alarming pace as his face turned more ashen. Before I got to him, a machine went off, beeping loudly, adding to the noise and confusion. Dad opened his eyes wider, transforming them into sunken black holes.
“Dad!” I shouted as two people rushed into the room. “Dad!”
“You need to step outside,” Nurse Jelani said, shooing me and my mother in no uncertain terms into the corridor while continuing to talk to her colleague in medical terms I didn’t recognize, let alone understand.
“But I have to—”
“Let us take care of him, Eleanor. I’ll come and find you when he’s settled, okay? It’ll be all right.” She gave me a final push and pulled the door shut.
If we’d been anything resembling a normal family, my mother and I would’ve hugged each other, offered support, whispered words of reassurance and comfort. Instead we stood ten feet apart, eyes locked on each other, waiting for the other to attack. We were about as far away from normal as you could get.
She adjusted the perfect creases in the sleeves of her deep red silk blouse and looked at me, her eyes lethal daggers. “This is your fault. Yours and yours alone.”
“I didn’t—”
“Your father, because that’s exactly who he is and don’t you forget it, is sick.”
“I know, I—”
“You pushed him. You upset him.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Tears pricked the backs of my eyes and I swiped at them with my hand. How many times had this woman, my mother, made me cry? A thousand? Ten thousand?
“Go home,” she said. “Leave.”
“I want to see Dad and—”
“Why?” she snapped. “So you can upset him again? No, Nellie, you’ve done quite enough for one evening, don’t you think?”
I wanted to answer back. Willed myself to put her in her place once and for all. As I looked at her fury-filled face, my determination dissolved like honey in hot tea. My mother had always come out on top as far as the two of us were concerned. She’d always won. I was weak, pathetic, unworthy of the love and attention she bestowed on Amy, unworthy of being loved by anybody else, too. I wasn’t deserving. Wasn’t good enough. Had never been good enough.
And so, clutching to Nurse Jelani’s reassuring words about Dad going to be all right, I fled. Down the corridor, where I flung the stairwell door open, making the handle bounce off the wall before I flew down the steps as fast as my feet would allow. When I stumbled past Brenda at reception and out of the hospice’s main entrance, I grabbed hold of the steel trash can with shaking arms and bent over, trying not to throw up.
As I gulped in the cool, misty air, and with it the faint smell of garbage and stale cigarette butts, I vowed I’d call Dad when I got home. Surely he’d be settled by then, and, with any luck, my mother would have left, too. The trip back would give me a bit of time to figure out how to apologize to the man who’d always taken care of me, who’d been the best father a girl could wish for. I owed him that, and so much more.
If I hurried, I decided, taking quicker steps, I’d soon be making amends.