~* Ness *~
Dad comes down the stairs with a laundry basket full of stuff.
There’s a small fridge in one corner of the room, so he puts about a dozen bottles of water in it, some cold cuts, and a small bottle of mayo. He leaves a loaf of bread, a bunch of snacks, a plate, utensils, and napkins on the table sitting next to the fridge. He takes out a washcloth, soap, shampoo, a toothbrush, and toothpaste from the basket and puts them down on the counter next to the utility sink. Yeah right, all the comforts of home.
“You’ll have hot and cold water from that sink, so you can wash up there every night. I have extra clean clothes for you in the basket. I’ll bring you breakfast and dinner, but you can make your own lunches with the cold cuts.”
“How long are you going to keep me down here?” I ask.
“Once that boy stops coming around, I’ll let you out.”
My ears perk.
“Was Scott here?” I sit up anxious to hear his reply.
“He came looking for you, yes.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him you went to visit your grandmother for the rest of the summer.”
This gives me a glimmer of hope that Scott may continue to look for me. He might not have believed Dad because he’s aware I don’t have any relatives that I know of.
But what if Scott did believe him and he leaves, never to come back? Oh God, please don’t let him do that. What am I thinking? Scott wouldn’t give up on me so easily; he’d know I wouldn’t leave without contacting him. He’s brighter than that.
As Dad’s putting the basket down under the table, I decide to make a run for it. I don’t think of the consequences, I just want out of here, so I make a dash for the stairs, but before I can make it halfway up, my fumbling nervousness causes me to slip and fall to my hands and knees. My dad is right on me, grabbing me by the waist, he pulls me up. He carries me back down the stairs.
I don’t fight, because if I kick him, it’ll hurt him, and I don’t want to do that. Even if he’s keeping me prisoner for now, in his heart he feels he’s looking out for my best interest, thinking he’s protecting me—he’s not doing this for sadistic reasons. He can’t be—my dad’s not a bad man; he’s just misguided and delusional, believing he’s saving me from some ill fate.
I’m torn because I don’t want to hurt him, but I also don’t want to be treated as though I’m his possession—he has no right to lock me up this way.
He sets me down on the mattress and crouches down in front of me.
“Ness, if you want to be let out, you best behave yourself.” Again, he scolds me like a child.
I don’t cry this time. I’m just frustrated as hell. My only hope is that Scott doesn’t give up and eventually finds me and lets me out. There’s no way I’m escaping here on my own because there’s no way out once Dad closes the hatch on me. There are only air vents in here with no windows to climb out of.
“Dad, what if something happens to you? Nobody will find me. I’ll die down here. Do you want that?” If he can play the guilt card, so can I.
He thinks for a moment. He knows I have a good point.
“I’ll leave a note in my glove compartment and if anything happens to me, someone will find it.”
Damn. He’s got an answer for everything.
“What if your car catches on fire? The note will burn up.”
“Sweetheart, it’s a one in a million chance that’ll happen. For all the years I’ve been driving, I’ve gotten into on two accidents. And neither times did my car blow up. I’m no James Bond.” He tries to make a joke of it, but I’m not laughing.
Shit!
Okay, here’s another guilt card. “You don’t love me, Dad. You say you do, but you don’t, or else you wouldn’t do this.”
“It’s because I love you that I’m doing this. I’ve already told you that.” His face is sad. I’m just waiting for him to say, ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you.’
“Tell me how Mom hurt you. If you’re going to keep me locked up here, I want to know.” My voice is stern and demanding. “Give me a reason to believe you’re doing the right thing.”
Of course, I’d never think this was the right thing, but if it’ll get him to spill his guts about Mom, then I want him to have at it.
“You don’t want to know about her.” He stands up and walks towards the stairs. I stand up and go after him—I grab hold of his hand.
“Please, I want to know about what she did to you that you hate her so much. Maybe then I can understand why you’re doing this to me.”
His expression is full of sorrow now. “I don’t hate your mother, Ness,” he says in a soft voice.
He sits down on the stairs, and I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of him. I feel like a child ready with excitement to hear a fairytale—although, not excitement in a good way—excitement in a nervous way.
Dad gazes down at me and rubs his hand over his mouth and jaw. He looks as though he’s still contemplating whether to tell me his story.
“Go on, Dad,” I urge him.
He takes a deep breath and stares into space above my head. “Your mother was the first and only woman I ever loved. She was smart, witty, and she was so beautiful.” His eyes lower to gaze at me. “You look just like her.”
“How’d you meet?” I ask.
“I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her, my junior year of high school. She was new at school and was having trouble with her locker, so I helped her with it. After that day, we hung around together and not long after we fell in love.”
He pauses as tears well up in his eyes. Seeing him this way causes tears to well up in mine—this is the first time I’ve seen him so vulnerable.
“Tell me more, Dad,” I say, impatient with his long pause.
“A few years later, she got pregnant and we got married. We were both too young; she was your age, and I was nineteen. I had inherited this property, so at least we didn’t have a mortgage or have to pay rent, and I was able to go to college. She stayed home and wanted to become a writer.”
“Mom wrote books?” I ask with surprise.
“She wanted to, she didn’t actually get published.”
“Did you keep any of her works?” I would love to read what she wrote.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“She burned them.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. After the miscarriage, she wasn’t the same. It tore her up and one day she just burned all her writings.”
Oh. I originally assumed I was the baby she was pregnant with. I could’ve had a brother or sister then. To think our lives might’ve been very different if my sibling had lived.
“What happened? Why did she lose the baby?”
“I don’t know that either.” His eyes look so dim, so tortured with pain. But I can tell there are still a lot of secrets behind them.
“Your mother got pregnant again, with you, but things were never the same; she had changed. It was as though something possessed her, haunted her. One moment she’d be hostile with me, the next, she’d cry, apologize, and be as sweet as ever. I thought it might be her pregnancy causing her to have hormonal mood swings. The doctor said that happens to some women.
“After you were born, she seemed to get better. She was loving and caring again, and happy. She adored you and you brought back her glow and spirit. But after a year, her mood swings returned, and she became hostile and depressed again.”
I’m feeling very edgy right now. He’s going to tell me what happened to her. I can sense it.
“The doctor put her on all kinds of medication, and in the end, she died from it.”
Oh my God, my mom died from prescription drugs? Even though I didn’t know her, my eyes tear up and I feel sad.
I study my dad’s face—he’s still not telling me everything. How did she hurt him? Just being moody and hostile can’t be all there was to it. That wouldn’t cause him to keep me from being with Scott.
“Dad, you’re keeping something from me.”
I can tell by the look in his eyes that I’m right.
“How did she hurt you, Dad?”
He stands up and says, “That’s enough for today. I’ll be back with your dinner in a few hours.”
As he leaves me looking after him from below, at the top of the stairs he turns and says, “I love you, Ness.”
I don’t reply. Even if I do love my dad, right now I can’t say the words back to him—they just won’t leave my lips.
He closes the shelter door—and once again, I’m alone—cooped up in this dismal hole.
I lie on my back, stare up at the ceiling, and try to process what Dad just told me about my mom. There’s so much more to this story than he’s telling me, and I want to know it all.
Did she cheat on him and have an affair? That would explain why he doesn’t trust anybody, and is protecting me from being hurt the same way.
If that’s what happened, no wonder he’s never dated again or had a relationship since Mom. But even so, just because it happened to him, it doesn’t mean it’ll happen to me.
He’s got to learn to trust again. How can I help him with this?
Damn it. I wish I had my iPad so I can search the Internet.