Page 141 of Untying the Knot
Baseball will always be first.
I tell her that I’ve felt so lost, so confused, so wretched about losing my father, a man who I wish had stood up for me more but I know loved me with all of his soul.
I tell her that because of this empty feeling, mourning my father, and the bitterness, I’ve started to . . . to hate myself. I hate everything about myself. Why didn’t I ask my dad those important questions? Why didn’t I plead for him not to leave me alone with my mom? Why didn’t I confront him later in life to clear the air?
Why didn’t I beg Ryot to stay?
Why am I avoiding him now?
All of it has led to self-loathing, which has caused me to hole up in this house, this toxic, meaningless house that offers absolutely no value to my life. And, worst of all, it’s led me to sink back into a world I never wanted to revisit, a world I thought I was too strong to ever see again.
Yet...I’m not.
I’m weak.
I’m defeated.
I’m lost.
And I’m not sure anything will help me get out of it.
* * *
“You were a disappointment to him,you know?” Mom whispers as I stare at the picture of Dad next to his gravesite.
The ceremony is over, everyone has retreated, and because my mom is such a cold-hearted bitch, she canceled the reception because she didn’t think it was necessary. I heard rumblings that a lot of Dad’s friends were meeting at his favorite pub, but I feel frozen, like stone, unable to move.
“Why did he let you do the things you did to me?” I ask, trying to find an answer from the wrong person.
“Are you playing the victim once again?” Mom asks. “You realize it’s your father who died, not you.”
I turn to her as I see Nichole in the distance, pulling up her car. “It’s a simple question.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And if your father wanted any say in the discipline that I was forced to serve on a constant basis because of your insubordination, then maybe he shouldn’t have been tied to his second family.”
“Wait . . . what?” I ask.
“Oh, sweetie, you didn’t know?” Mom taunts in a condescending tone. “You thought he was away on work trips?” She tsks. “No, he was visiting his other family. His mistress and his two sons. Twins, actually.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’re lying. I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Because you hate me, because you’re cruel, and because you haven’t taken enough of my childhood and want to take this away too.”
“I have better things to do with my life than worry about taking away what pitiful life you have. You wonder why your dad and I fell out of love? Because he fell in love with someone else, that’s why. And his mistress, she followed us around to every duty station. He would spend long nights and days with her, and when the boys were born, his time with us diminished even more.”
“I don’t believe it. Why didn’t you divorce him, then?” I ask.
“Because I don’t believe in divorce,” she says with snobbery.
“You’d rather make your life and everyone else’s around you miserable? Is that why you beat me as a child? Because you were mad at him, and you took it out on me?”
“I hit you because you were disobedient,” she growls.
“So why do I have two black eyes now?” I ask, feeling the throbbing of where she hit me last night across the eye with a shoe. “I wasn’t disobedient last night.”
“You were late to dinner, and that’s unacceptable.”
