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Blessedly, Dad didn’t just hoard photos but old email drafts as well. For reasons I could not understand, he had a habit of typing out his emails in a word processor, saving the document, and then copying the text over into the actual email, which meant that his emails survived even after the email account itself fell into the digital void. These scraps then weren’t deleted but tucked away into a folder named Old Emails.
Despite the name and the curiosity it stoked in me, I hadn’t that folder on my prior dives into that device. And in my defense, I hadn’t been looking for it back then. I didn’t need to. It wasn’t relevant before, though it had become painfully relevant with this quest I now found myself on. That was an entire folder of glimpses into Dad’s life that I had never seen before, pieces of the puzzle I was so desperate to put together.
The hope I felt surging through me was dampened by a lack of clear organization in the folder, however. There were numbers that I could assume were dates of some kind, but there were also letters attached to the dates, acronyms I couldn’t easily discern. In the end, all I could do was click into a file and hope for the best. I had to just hope that I could piece together what I was looking at whenever I pulled up this segment of some larger conversation. That sort of thing wasn’t impossible to do, but given my notorious bad luck, I had to brace myself for impossibility.
With bated breath, I opened a file and quickly scanned it. It looked like it was an answer to some sort of casting call. To get more specific, it was an answer to a casting call for a reality home makeover show that Dad and I used to watch on the living room couch every Tuesday. The name didn’t come up, but I knew the premise well enough that I could see the scraps of it hidden within the text.
Though nostalgia’s gut punch sent me reeling, I poured over the email text all the same.
I am writing to nominate someone very dear to me, it read.
It had to be one of my dad’s friends, I thought to myself, or someone he respected. That was part of the show: viewers nominated the heroes in their community or the angels amongst their friends and family. So this had to be a friend, just one I didn’t know.
But I wanted to know the person. I wanted to fill that gap in my father’s story, to seat this guest amongst the empty pews within my memory of my father’s funeral. Though the event was long behind us, the open wounds left by vacant seating remained unhealed in me, and a potential guest could be the thread that would stitch it back together. I just needed a name for that. Then I could turn that name into a face with a quick Google search just like Ellie did for my sister. And maybe–if I could work up the nerve–that face could then gain a voice when I reached out.
And there were assumptions there, I knew. I was assuming that person was still alive and willing to entertain me. But at that stage, I was happily living in a fantasy that I have every right to.
It was just for the moment, however. The fantasy would crumble as I took the next step forward. As I read on, the only name I saw was my father’s.
My husband Will Vogel would make a great candidate for the show.
It was the second sentence in the email, a quick line of introductory text meant to set the stage without overwhelming the mind. But I was thoroughly overwhelmed. It simply didn’t make sense. Mom never watched that show with Dad and I. Tuesday night was when she went to her Bible study. Even if she had somehow heard about it, she wouldn’t have used Dad’s laptop or his odd email habits. But more damningly, we were renting our house, which made us ineligible for the show.
For a moment, my eyes glazed over, and the individual pixels of the screen came in and out of focus. Regardless, I couldn’t read any of the words. I couldn’t see the text or understand it, but with a few hurried blinks, my normal vision returned. And yet, it still took several attempts for a single word to take hold in my mind.
There were the expected words of how good of a husband and father to his three daughters Dad was (without mentioning how many mothers were involved). He was also a good son, moving his mother in with us when her health started to decline.
Then the email detailed his charitable giving, like the children he sponsored through one of those ‘39 cents a day’ programs. I knew of them. My mom had mentioned them, but I never paid much attention when she talked about wanting to go to Ecuador to meet those kids. In fact, I would just roll my eyes when the subject came up. To me, it was pointless. Wasn’t the whole point of those programs to give upper middle-class people a tax write off they could feel good about? That was what I assumed, but I didn’t say as much to her. Or anyone. I knew it was an unpopular opinion.
Dad volunteered at church, it said next. I also knew about that. I remember going to visit him when it was his turn to trim the shrubs around the parish. Mom and I would bring him lunch and two extra water bottles. It had seemed like nothing to me, though. Most of the dads did it; our church couldn’t afford landscaping after a pipe burst when I was three. The repair cost put them into serious debt, and relying on parishioner labor was a way to free up the funds that could go to pay off those bills.
Then it said he mentored young people, but the details were vague. I had none of my own to bring to the table. It wasn’t anything I knew about, but I wished I had seen it for myself, of course. That would have been yet another memory to cherish.
Then came the email’s end. My mother’s name sat at the bottom, implying that she had been the one to write it, but I knew it wasn't true. Beyond her disinterest in the show, her English wasn’t anywhere near good enough to write something like that. The cadence was wrong.
Or rather, the cadence was Dad’s. He had done it. And for what purpose, I didn’t know. We weren’t eligible for the show by virtue of us not owning the property we lived in. He would have known that, but he still felt compelled to try to get the sort of acknowledgement that would come from the production team pointing out that fatal flaw.
Exasperated, I put my face in my hands and screamed. My flesh muffled the worst of it, which should have meant that the neighbors–whose homes were quite a distance away–couldn’t have heard my shrieking.
But then I heard a knock on the door, which I immediately assumed had something to do with the noise. In the absence of any other explanation, that one fit perfectly.
“I’m alright,” I called out.
I immediately recognized the voice that answered mine. “Mia?” Chris yelled back. “Can I come in? Or just see that you’re okay?”
I cursed under my breath, fearful that he would hear it. If he heard it, he could misinterpret it as a sign of some strain between us or some sign that I didn’t love him. Overall, my feelings remained unchanged despite the past few days we had spent apart and in near radio silence. And at that moment, I did want to see him. But after ignoring more than a few of his text messages, I didn’t know how to tell him that. I could have explained why I had been such a poor correspondent, but I didn’t have a good explanation. I had seen his messages as they had come in but could not bring myself to answer them. I only stared blankly at each one for reasons I didn’t understand.
Chris’s erratic schedule had given me an advantage. It had given me extra grace, but I burned through it. Despite so much going for me, I still dropped the ball, one that was largely stationary and planted firmly on the ground. It wasn’t easy, but I had done it. That’s the power of a “mundane sort of destruction.”
And yet, despite my inability to hold the conversation, I did want to text Chris or to call Chris or have him call me. Anything would have sufficed. I just wanted to hear from him, hear about his day, hear that he was okay, and hear about whatever misadventure happened at the restaurants. The sound of his voice wasn’t objectively beautiful, but it felt like home. Or what I always imagined home to feel like.
But instead of that warmth, for a moment, as I sat at the dining room table with bated breath, I felt fear. I felt the chill of uncertainty and terror shoot up my back. But Chris wasn’t frightening or scary. I wasn’t afraid of him, per say, but of the space he would have left behind if he walked out of my life. And it seemed like he would because I wasn't a great girlfriend, and while he was willing to tolerate some of that dysfunction, I had still become intolerable.
So was he coming over to break up with me? I asked myself that, but it wasn’t really a question. I had earned the breakup, so I could only wonder about the medium of the separation declaration. After all, there was no point in him coming over when a phone call or text message would suffice. It wasn’t something I needed to answer or address. Nothing I said would make any difference at all.
Chris knocked again. “Mia?”
“Coming,” I finally called out.
But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stall and savor the moment just before whatever he was about to say to me, this moment before the likely disaster, the breaking of my world. I did enjoy being his girlfriend. So I wanted to sit in that state just a bit longer.
But time never waits for anyone to be ready. The next moment would come regardless. I knew that all too well.
So despite all of my hesitations, I got up and went to the door, swallowing my own misgiving as I walked. My anxiety quickened my steps, forcing them to mimic the racing of my mind. But through all its hurried questing, it found nothing of comfort. It only reminded me of things I already knew. I loved Chris. I had loved him for a while, and in a different way than I had loved George. My love for George had been more practical; he was the best of all the options presented to me. On the other hand, my love for Chris came out of the irrational part of my soul, the part of me that refused to explain itself. My love for Chris was genuinely my love and not the love I was told to have. It was a love that came entirely from me, from the best parts of me, in fact.
My heart sank as I reached for the door, but there was no putting it off. He would knock again. He would insist on coming in. There was no way around it.
So I swung open the door, and when I did, the smell of pizza hit me before I realized that Chris had swept me up in his arms. He was holding me, hugging me, and yet, I did not return the embrace. My arms were free and unrestrained, but they would not reach for him. They remained limp at my sides.
He didn’t notice. His mind was elsewhere.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said, adjusting his grip to pull me even closer. “I was worried.”
Our bodies were pressed tightly against each other. His head rested on mine, which pressed my ear against his chest. In that position, I could feel each beating of his heart. The once strong, rapid beats were starting to slow as he took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered instinctually. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I was just caught up in something.”
I felt him nod. With one last squeezed, he pulled back and nodded again. I didn’t understand what he meant by either nod, but it was the wrong time to ask.
“Just...” he started.
He didn’t seem to know how to finish his sentence. His hands drifted towards my elbows. But rather than grab onto me, his fingers only grazed the dry skin. I knew to be ashamed of that texture, and out of said shame, a slight blush filled my cheeks. But Chris did not notice, and he did not pull his hands away.
I looked up into his brown eyes and saw his concern. Had I been more mentally present, I would have likely felt it in his hug or heard it in his words. But at the same time, I wasn’t expecting something like that. There hadn’t been a reason for that concern. Chris didn’t know about my problems. He didn’t know that there were reasons to be concerned about me. So as I watched his face and studied the lines of his brow and the hues of his eyes, I knew this reaction wasn’t to something I had said haunting him. This reaction wasn’t out of some obligation but entirely out of love. And maybe even the sort of need I had felt for him. But I was likely being too bold in hoping for that.
“I shouldn’t have been so MIA,” he said, which felt like a pun considering my name, but it was not a pun, just an unfortunate coincidence.
“I understand why.”
“But like...” he started.
I watched Chris trip over a thought he couldn’t seem to finish. He was too focused on my eyes to pull it together. And so, we were left in a silence that caused my skin to crawl.
After all, what if this wasn’t love but a loving goodbye? The line between the two seemed distressingly thin. And in the face of it, I panicked.
In that panic, I snapped, “Did you think I was cheating on you?”
His eyes went wide. The thought–as abrupt and biting as it was–sent him back a step towards the door. He caught himself before he could get too far.
“No!”
That was genuine. That wasn’t a performance. The emphasis and force behind the word were real.
But the panic I felt still lingered. It wouldn’t be dismissed so easily. And from that, I pushed onto the next question. “Did you think I was mad?”
I didn’t know what I was getting at. It only felt good to have something in the air between us, to have some sort of dialogue chasing the silence away. And Chris didn’t understand that. He didn’t have any clue what was happening or why all those loaded questions were being hurled at him.
As he tried to regain his footing, he did not answer. He let the wheels of his mind spin at their own pace.
Until finally, he said the only truth that he thought mattered. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
Cue the guilt.