“I don’t care. Sleep on the couch. Anywhere but here.”
We began to fight. There were no apologies, only accusations and sorry-ass excuses. I’d embarrassed her. I’d overreacted. I was a paranoid, jealous dick. She’d left Lyla alone for only a few minutes.
“It takes three minutes to drown!” I shouted back at her. “One hundred and eighty seconds to lose her. Forever.”
We went round in circles, making the same points again and again. At some point, I called her a drunk. She asked me what had I expected? I’d fallen in love with a girl at a bar. Like it was something to be proud of.
“Yeah. Well, you’re a fucking mother now,” I shouted.
“It doesn’t change who I am,” she said, raising her chin defiantly.
“And who are you?” I asked. “Other than a party girl who fucks on the first night?”
She couldn’t have looked more stunned if I had slapped her across the face. “Is that how you really feel about me?” she asked, her accent thick, the way I once adored and now couldn’t stand.
I said yes, wanting to punish her for the image I couldn’t shake of Lyla sitting on the edge of the pool. I told her I had no respect for her, that she was a terrible mother, and that Lyla would be better off without her. That it was better to have no mother than to have a mother like her. I braced myself for more fighting, but she only bit her lip and said, “Well. I’m glad I finally know what you really think of me. Tom.”
As I watched her turn and walk out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her, I panicked a little, knowing I’d gone too far. That I’d been both cruel and hypocritical—after all, I’d fucked on the first night, too. I knew that part of me still loved her and would always love her, but I also knew that we were heading down a road to divorce. A lifetime of shuffling our child around between two places we couldn’t afford. I pictured stepparents and half siblings, fighting and bitterness. I pictured hate.
But in my wildest, worst imagination, I didn’t expect what I found the next morning: a sloppy note on the kitchen table telling me she was leaving us. I told myself that she didn’t actually mean it. That surely she would come home.
But days turned to weeks turned to months. I called and emailed and left her messages—some concerned, most angry—but there was no word back from her. It was infuriating and confounding and humiliating, but mostly it was just sad. I was sad for myself—and devastated for Lyla.
The fact that I had no answers for my daughter made it even harder. I tried to convince myself that Beatriz was dead, remembering my words the night she left, thinking that it actually might be better. Besides, it was the only explanation I could really wrap my head around. I mean, I got the leaving part. Hell, there were times I almost beat her to the punch—or at least fantasized about taking off. It was the not coming back that didn’t make sense, especially for a mother. Dads picked up and left all the time, whether to start a new family or just to be alone. But mothers always seemed to stay in the picture, somehow.
She’s gone was the simple explanation I always gave Lyla.
“Gone where?” Lyla would ask, sometimes through tears, though usually she would be crying about something else first.
At which point, I would answer vaguely, referencing a beautiful place (heaven? a beach in Brazil?), always careful not to lie. She was going to need enough therapy as it was without adding her father’s deceit to the equation.
Over time, Lyla’s memories of her mother became diluted, and the subject of “Mommy” arose less and less. My own mother stepped in to fill the void, helping with Lyla’s haircuts and clothing, the nuts and bolts of being a girl. That helped. But at the end of the day, I was a single parent, raising a child alone. I cooked and cleaned, drove her to the bus stop in the morning, met the bus in the afternoon, and put her to bed at night. I arranged my work schedule around her activities and virtually eliminated my own social life. I eventually dated a bit here and there—my mother was always willing to babysit so I could go out—but nothing ever got serious. In part because I never met anyone that great, but also because I didn’t have the time, energy, or extra cash for anything other than Lyla. If that sounds like I’m complaining, it’s because I am. Parenting can be a real drain, even when sharing the misery with a spouse. Alone it was hard as fuck.
But we got by just fine, and I took great pride in the fact that I was raising such a good kid. Lyla was beautiful, smart, and kind, and my world revolved around her. We both got over Beatriz and moved on with our lives.
Then, five years later, with no warning at all, she came back. It was Lyla’s ninth birthday. The timing was so messed up that it made me want to issue a memo to deadbeat parents everywhere, advising them to please make contact before or after their child’s birthday. To reappear on the actual day, or any other day of significance, was both narcissistic and wildly disruptive, particularly when there had been no expectations of your coming back whatsoever. When you’d been gone so long there wasn’t even a thought of you in the kid’s head.
Such was the case that year. I was hit or miss with the party thing, mostly because I had trouble planning in advance, but also because venue parties were too expensive. But I’d gotten it together and allowed Lyla to invite three friends for a sleepover. With a June birthday, she usually had nice weather, but this evening was especially idyllic. The girls ran around in the backyard and played in the sprinkler while I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Afterward, we had a chocolate cake, compliments of my mom, and Lyla opened her presents. The girls then hunkered down in their sleeping bags to watch a movie that looked a little bit scary for their age. I remember checking the rating and asking if all their parents were okay with a PG-13 movie (they said they were), and feeling pretty damn good about my competence as a single dad before I turned in for the night.
The next thing I knew, Lyla was shaking me awake. She looked stricken.
“What time is it?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. Because kids never do.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, noticing on my alarm clock that it was close to midnight. “Did something happen?”
That’s when Lyla sat on the edge of my bed and dropped the second biggest shock of my life. “Mom’s at the door,” she informed me. “She wants to talk to you.”
* * *
—
THAT’S ABOUT WHERE I left off on memory lane when I fell asleep in Lyla’s chair after her puke fest. I awoke in the early morning to the sound of her phone vibrating. I got up and walked to her bedside, checked to make sure she was still asleep, then picked up her phone and entered 1919—the pass code I’d glimpsed over her shoulder a few days ago. A not so small part of me hoped she’d changed it since then, but the digits worked, and I found myself with complete access to my daughter’s personal life. Short of reading her journal, which I knew she kept in her top-left desk drawer, this was the ultimate invasion. I felt conflicted—guilty—but I told myself that her safety and well-being trumped her privacy, and both were at stake here. So I clicked on the text message icon and stared down at her in-box.
Most of the names that filled the screen I recognized, and all were girls. A wave of relief washed over me, though the fact that boys hadn’t texted her didn’t preclude the possibility that something had happened with one of them. I tapped on Grace’s name. Her most recent message, the one that had just come in, read: Are u okay? Sorry I called ur dad but you scared me!! I hope ur not in too much trouble??
My thumb hovered over the screen for a few seconds before I really crossed the line. Trying to think and talk like Lyla, I typed: Ugh. So hungover. What happened?
The moving ellipses appeared, then Grace’s reply came back with lightning speed: Um u don’t remember?