The Fatherhood Fail: A Short Long Story

I never regretted not having a son of my own. I’m the last of my line. High time, I’m thinking. We’re too much to deal with mostly. Still, somehow, I fell, quite literally and deeply into the last responsibility I ever wanted, something akin to a daughter.

She was 12 when I met her. She liked me. I liked her, fresh and unspoiled yet already wise to the world’s goings on. Her mother was in the anguish of a bad marriage and was also infatuated with me. Michelle seemed to take all this for granted. She visited my sad beige apartment 30 miles from where they were holed away from the husband and she was happy just to be with her mother and me.

Came a night when I, with no alternatives, had to move out of the beige apartment and Michelle’s mother made it happen, three trips in a Cadillac, in a single long night, stuffed with my few remaining goods, all the way into the Jersey countryside from Delaware. Michelle was cheerful. This was different, this was fun.

What happens next is seven years plus fifteen. Seven years I lived with Michelle, her surrogate father, but powerless because Mom said so, and then the next fifteen because to me she had become my daughter and I didn’t always like where she was going.

She went through a thing you mostly know from Forensic Files, a boyfriend when she was still thirteen who died suddenly in a car accident that should never have happened. How? Why? All the answers no good. No intention, which makes it worse. A pure accident. She loved him and he was dead.

She doesn’t talk about it anymore, but she’s still hurting from that awful day. Seven and fifteen is a long long time. We’re not talking at the moment. You see, I’m not even a stepfather. I’m just the ex-boyfriend of her mother who had the duty of raising her when there was no one else around.

I did all the stuff I don’t do. I cooked, I listened, I did the laundry, we had dinner together every night, I taught her how to drive after everyone else had given up. And I dealt with the hardest situation a quasi-stepfather might ever have to deal with. Still don’t know if I did wrong or right. 

The bathroom was next door to my office. I heard a gasp and a body thudding. Immediately called mom, who said “Break the door down.” I called for Michelle. Last thing I want is busting in on a naked teenager in my care. “Michelle! Are you all right?” 

Yes. She was all right. Let me into the bathroom moments later, clad in a towel but truly shaken, passed out in the shower. Maybe I should have busted in. We’ll never know. I was just glad she was my daughter and okay.

There came the day when I put my hand through a window. Not in anger. Just trying to open the sash in a 200-year old house. Very bad, bloody slice on top of my hand. I was in denial. Michelle was not. She took care of me until Mom came home and ferried me to the Emergency Room. Took care of me. Anxious, almost in tears but nevertheless calm and commanding. “Don’t move,” she said. Towels, cold compresses, the works. Everything you’d want your daughter to be. I still have a scar. A good memory.

We went through her puberty. Not sharing any details except to say I was doing the laundry and her mother was in denial. I had all the angry scared Daddy feelings and no one to share them with. I had no power to say a damn thing, but I suffered nonetheless.

Later, after Mom threw me out for fear I would imperil her alimony, Michelle and I lost touch.

She showed up one day when I was wearing a chef’s coat in my blessèd new marriage. She was trying for college but no one would pay. I did.

Now she’s married, happily she says, and when I challenged her about that she got mad. Okay. 

Here’s a thing. The women always complain about drinking. None of them seem to realize they would never have known me if I didn’t. Michelle’s Mommy fastened onto me when I was communing with her bunny rabbit. Pat refastened to me when I called her in the middle of the night 20 years later. Michelle should know better.

Truth? I love Michelle in the pure way a father is supposed to. But I lost her long ago, always at two removes from what a father can do. That makes you a little harder, separations being both loss and a protective skin. When I get the chance I tend to tell her the truth, which never goes down well with women.

What you learn about women through experience. Never expect gratitude, fairness in argument, any apology ever, but also never total separation. If they have ever loved you, that is still there. They are all harps, all chords ever played still resonating, the ripples in the pond of which you are one still gleaming outward in the moonlight.

You can fail in many ways. You can live with the fails where you tried your best and fate was against you. Michelle never wanted what I wanted for her. My bad. Deep down, she always wanted the family I tried to free her from. My bad again. But she’s still my daughter. Nothing, not even she herself, can change that. And I am grateful for having had the opportunity. Grateful even for my fail. Now I know what she wants for herself. And I am happy for her. And I gave her the gift of Fox terriers. I am content. My story and I’m sticking to it.