Mr. Martin walks in slow circles behind me, deep in thought. The continuous squish of his shoes sinking into the carpet is loud in my ears.
I look out over the crowded room. My eyes are blurry from the tears that I haven’t bothered to wipe away, and the blur of pink and blue before me reminds me of the ocean at sunset. It’s even moving like the ocean, the whole picture bobbing up and down faintly with each breath I take.
The seconds tick by, turning into minutes, but Mr. Martin still doesn’t provide an answer to his question: how do we heal it?
But he doesn’t really mean heal. He means negate. Because, according to Mr. Martin, my Father Wound isn’t something bad, like a physically abusive father or an emotionally abusive babysitter. My Father Wound is my entire existence, my entire childhood, my entire relationship with my mother and father. But I refuse to believe my relationship with my parents was somehow bad.
It’s all I can do to hope Mr. Martin doesn’t make me beat up my “mother” or “father.” I really don’t think I could do that.
Suddenly Mr. Martin claps his hands together once, loudly, making me jump in my seat. “Of course!” he says to himself. He selects a few items from the prop collection and pulls them over to where I’m seated, a renewed spring in his step now that he’s figured out his course of action. They’re a fold-up cot, blanket, and pillow. I’m so relieved at the lack of punching bags and baseball bats that I don’t really question what the props are for.
“Daniel, will you assist us, please?” Mr. Martin says. Once Daniel’s joined us on the stage, Mr. Martin directs him to lie down on the cot with his head on the pillow and the blanket over him. He tells him not to speak and not to get up, no matter what happens or what I say. “Now, Lexi. Daniel is going to be playing the role of your father. In this scenario, your father is in the hospital and on the verge of passing away. This is your last moment with him. What would you like to say?”
“Wh-what?” I squeak out. “I…I don’t understand.”
“Your last memory of your father is as a friend,” Mr. Martin says. “That’s where the problem lies. Your perceptions of parental roles are distorted, and because your father has passed, those memories have been frozen. But if you continue remembering him that way, you’ll never be able to get on the right track. You need to change that memory of your father. You need to let him know that you know what he and your mother did to you, and you need to let him know how that makes you feel.”
I stare up at Mr. Martin, horror-struck. Why is he doing this to me?
But he just smiles back.
I look at Daniel, completely hidden beneath the blue blanket save for his face. How am I supposed to pretend that skinny boy is my father? How am I supposed to tell him what Mr. Martin wants me to tell him? How am I supposed to form the words that will supposedly change my last memory of my father? Why would I even want to?
But once again, I’m trapped. I have to do what Mr. Martin says. There’s no other choice here—there’s no way out, literally nowhere to run.
My head is spinning. The only reason I’m even at New Horizons in the first place is because I have to fix my family. And now Mr. Martin is saying that for the de-gayifying to work, I have to reject everything that my family was and is. So what, then, is the point of all of this?
I squeeze my eyes shut and make myself think.
I could just give up now. Tell Mr. Martin I want to go home and forget I even came here at all. Go back to living with a shell of a mother who fears for my soul, hanging out with friends who don’t really know me, working overtime to pay my mom back the $9,500. It’s just as well. If Mr. Martin has his way, my relationship with my mom will never be the same again anyway. And if I left now, at least I wouldn’t have to participate in this whole Dad-deathbed charade or wear these awful clothes for an entire summer.
But Kaylee’s words repeat in my head. I promise it will get easier. Maybe she’s right—it is only the second day. And it’s a two-month program. And Mr. Martin said we’d only be working on this Father Wound thing for a few days. Maybe the rest of the summer won’t be nearly as bad. Kaylee would know—after all, she’s sat where I’m sitting now. And she said it was the best decision she ever made. Maybe I could still get something out of New Horizons even if I’m not fully behind this particular exercise. Maybe, if I stick it out, I can find the gray area Kaylee talked about, my own way to make the de-gayifying work and get the life I want but without sacrificing the things that are important to me.
The thought of my mom’s inevitable breakdown when she hears I gave up on New Horizons after only two days is what seals it for me.
“Dad…” I say to Daniel. This is by far the strangest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s flat-out wrong in so many ways. But I do my best to detach myself from the memory of my real dad and his real illness and the real last time I spoke to him, and instead focus on playing the part that Mr. Martin wants me to play. “You’ve been a good father. But you and Mom…you kind of messed me up.”
“Kind of?” Mr. Martin repeats. “Don’t be weak, Lexi!”
I shake my head. “No, not kind of. You really messed me up. You didn’t act the way normal mothers and fathers are supposed to act. You didn’t…lead by example. And now I’m confused.” I look to Mr. Martin, and he nods for me to continue. “I feel like I don’t know how men and women are actually supposed to act around each other. It’s affected me in some very big ways.”
“So what are you going to do, Lexi?” Mr. Martin says.
“I…um…” I falter. I don’t know if I can do this.
“Say it!” One look at Mr. Martin’s face confirms what his tone already gave away. This is not a suggestion—it’s an order.
“So, Dad, I want you to know…” I swallow. “Before you, um, go…that I am going to remember you as a father. I am going to forget all the things you did and said to make me think that we were friends, instead of what we actually are—father and daughter. And I am going to get my life back on track.”
“Tell him about the times he was a real father to you,” Mr. Martin says. “Concentrate on those memories now.”
I think long and hard, carefully choosing which memories to share. “I will always remember the time you came home from work with the swing set in your trunk and how you spent the whole weekend putting it together for me.”
I glance at Mr. Martin again—he’s moving his hand around and around, waving for me to keep going.
“I will always remember the time I got a D plus on my life science lab and how you took my allowance away until I got at least a B minus. And I will always remember you as the man who never once forgot Mom’s birthday or a Valentine’s Day or your wedding anniversary. You were a good husband to her.”
For good measure, I lean over and kiss Daniel on the cheek. His eyes flutter open in surprise and his face turns a dark shade of red, but he follows Mr. Martin’s instructions and doesn’t say anything.
“Good-bye, Daddy,” I say, and my voice cracks.
“Well done, Lexi!” Mr. Martin says, rejoining us at the center of the stage. He stands me up and takes my hands. “How do you feel?”
I put on my most grateful smile and say, “Much better. Really. You were right. That was exactly what I needed.”
“I’m so glad to hear it! And thank you so much for your courageous work here today.”
The campers and counselors break into applause, and I’m finally free from this hell. But as I make my way back to my seat, the relief is replaced by heartache as the detachment wears off and I am forced to face what just happened. I just told my dad that I would forget him—not him entirely, but our friendship. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean it or that I said it to someone who was only pretending to be him or that I only said it because Mr. Martin forced me to. I said, out loud, that I would never again think about all those times he was so much more than just a father figure. The fun times we had together are the best memories I have, and now they’re tainted.
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or angels or the idea that the dead watch over us, but just in case, I whisper, so low that no one can hear over the sound of the clapping, “I’m sorry.”