Missed Calls
Some stories don’t have happy endings; some don’t have endings at all.
My daughter is on the phone with my father. The fading October sun casts a shadow across her round pink cheeks; her eyes are wide and serious. Nodding, she starts to speak, then stops. I hover over her, half wanting to run away, half wanting to snatch the phone out of her dimpled hand. I haven’t heard my father’s voice in over a year.
I can’t remember the last time I saw my dad before I dragged my family across the country to start a new life. I fled my hometown the way you might cast aside a half-finished book and open another one, hoping for a better story. Did I hug him, that last time?
When I moved away, our once-close relationship was in ruins. His latest marriage—to a woman I bitterly referred to as “Fourth Wife” behind his back—had driven a wedge between us that we were both too stubborn to bridge.
Fourth Wife felt I was too dependent on my father. Knowing he supported me during college, she pointedly told me she funded her own education and never took a cent from her parents. She thought it was strange that we still went to the movies and had dinner together on Friday nights, long after I was out of the nest. “Unnatural,” she called it.
When I visited, she’d develop a migraine and shut herself in her bedroom. Now and then she’d shuffle out in slippers and sunglasses, whispering for us to please keep our voices down. She threw a birthday party for my dad and didn’t invite me, then told their guests I’d broken his heart by refusing to attend. She forbade him to see my kids, then told people I didn’t want him to have a relationship with his grandchildren.
Furious and hurt, I retaliated by telling anyone who would listen that she was crazy—a Black Widow trying to kill my father. I blamed her for dragging my father to multiple doctors, encouraging him to have needless surgeries, and getting him hooked on prescription painkillers. The fact of his addiction, at least, was indisputable. He was taking methadone to ease his withdrawal, becoming frail and forgetful, scratching his arms to bloody ribbons and shaking.
When a concerned family member told me Fourth Wife was talking about trying to take custody of my children, questioning whether I was a fit mother, that was the end.
I left town without saying goodbye.
After I moved, my father and I exchanged a few brief, tentative emails – I sent him pictures of his granddaughters, he updated me on his health. But when his birthday rolled around in October, I dialed his number and thrust the phone at my daughter. “Say happy birthday!” I whispered. I told myself that I didn’t want to risk hearing Fourth Wife’s voice—but really, I was scared to speak to my father. What would I say after all this time? It seemed easier to let his granddaughter wish him a happy birthday and leave whatever we had to say to each other for another day, never imagining that day might not come.
I watched my daughter, heart thudding, a knot in my stomach. I could hear my father’s voice echoing faintly through the phone, but I couldn’t make out his words. What was I waiting for? Was I really afraid of my own father? For most of my life, he’d been my best friend. Taking a deep breath, I nudged her and whispered, “Hey, can I talk when you’re done?”
“Bye, Grandpa,” she said, frowning and handing me the phone. Call ended, it blinked up at me. My heart, firmly lodged in my throat a moment ago, sank down to my toes.
“He hung up, I think.”
“What did he say to you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“I don’t know. It was hard to understand him. He sounded tired.” She shrugged an apology.
“Oh. Okay.”
I stood there, deflated. I could call back, but if he was too tired to talk to his granddaughter for more than three minutes, he probably didn’t want to be disturbed again. Besides, he hadn’t asked for me—or had he?
“Do you think he wanted to talk to me?”
Her small face fills with sympathy, but she is too guileless to lie. “No. He didn’t say anything about you.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, my face hot. Well, then! If he didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him either. I’d show him. I could hold out as long as he could. If he really loved me, he’d have asked to talk to me. If he really loved me, he’d get on a plane tomorrow and show up on my doorstep, begging forgiveness. He’d cry, and I’d cry too. We’d wrap our arms around each other so tight we could hardly breathe and let our tears wash away all the anger between us.
Less than two months later I’m making dinner and feel my dad’s presence so strongly that for a moment, I think he must be standing behind me. When I hear the phone, I know exactly why it’s ringing.
After my father’s death, I read his emails over and over again, searching for anything that might provide absolution for my guilt, a reprieve from my aching regret. A clue to what had gone wrong between us. In one of them he said an essay he wrote had been accepted for publication in an anthology. “Am I an author now, instead of just a writer?” he asked.
I never heard anything more about it, never saw his work published, but I knew he’d always dreamed of being a “real author.” He’d taught English for thirty years and planned to devote his retirement to writing a novel. He never showed it to me, but occasionally updated me on his progress, childlike excitement lighting his face.
A few years before he died, I entered a writing contest on a whim. I was elated when I got a letter congratulating me for making it to the final round and proudly showed it to my father. It was a form letter sent to all the finalists, but mine had a personal postscript. “Our judges just loved your writing,” it said—words I read over and over, holding them close to my heart. I’d never thought of myself as a writer, never had any ambition to be one. My dad’s mouth tightened as he scanned the page. “That’s great, babe, really. Well done.” His voice broke a little and he turned away.
It occurred to me for the first time that my father might be jealous of me. After all, writing was his territory. I had been so eager to share my triumph with him, but his face made my mistake plain. I took the letter back and folded it carefully, sliding it into its envelope for safekeeping.
Four years after my father’s death, I sit at my kitchen table trying to write. I’m angry because all my words come out wrong. I’m a liar and a fraud. Where did I ever get the idea that I could be a writer? What an idiot.
Is this how my father felt as he worked on his never-to-be-finished novel? Did he stare at the blank screen, longing to realize his dream, but scared to begin? Afraid to fail at something that mattered so much?
Some stories don’t have happy endings. Some don’t have endings at all. My father died with his unfinished novel tucked away in a drawer, estranged from his once-beloved daughter. No goodbye, no resolution. Cut off in the middle, like a dropped call.
Sometimes I imagine what might have happened if I’d taken the phone from my daughter just two minutes earlier that October evening, before my father slipped away into the drug-fueled haze that was waiting to claim him.
“Hi, Dad,” I would have said.
“Hey, babe,” he would have answered.
***
Elizabeth Nelson lives in Brooklyn with her daughters. You can read more about her father at Remembering Walter.
