21st Century
"Are you going to your prom?"
Dr. Whittington was asking out of politeness, because the topic had come up. I could not imagine he was asking because he actually thought there was some chance I was going to my prom.
I shook my head no and we moved seamlessly on to another topic.
Prom night came, though, in the spring of my final year of high school, and I spent it at home, alone, the way I spent every evening. I ended up being more disturbed than I had anticipated, too. Why was missing out on prom such a big deal to me when I'd already missed out on so many other adolescent rites of passage? No boyfriends for Paige Renner. No parties, no driver's education classes, no first kisses or photographs of me next to a gangly boy in a tux.
I brought my dad's dinner upstairs to him at five o'clock – he ate early and went to sleep early – and then I tiptoed back downstairs and stood at the entrance to the kitchen, seized suddenly by a memory of my mother shooing me out after she'd washed the floor, telling me to wait for it to dry. I looked down at the tiles, clean enough because I kept them clean, but broken in multiple places, and uneven. I could clean floors, but I didn't know how to fix them.
It was the next thought that really got to me, that sent me scurrying down to the woods and the tree at a later time than usual. And that thought was what my mother would say, what she would feel, if she could see me at that moment, on my prom night. I have photographs of my mother from her childhood and adolescence. I was starting to look very much like her by then, the only thing difference between me and the grinning woman in the photographs was our clothing and hairstyles. My unruly, chestnut-brown hair was like hers, as were my round hazel eyes and my heart-shaped face. My mom was thinner than me – I seemed to have inherited a certain thickness of limb from my father's side of the family. I wasn't fat, but I wasn't skinny either, and my body was generous and womanly way before I was ready for it.
Unlike me, though, my mother was popular. In so many of the photos she's wearing cut-off denim shorts and halter tops and standing with a crowd of other girls dressed the same way, all of them with their bangs teased way up into the sky and huge, wholesome smiles on their faces. The young, happy girl in those photos wouldn't have wanted her only child to spend prom night alone, in a dingy old house that was falling apart at the seams.
But I was alone and that night, it was too much. I checked that my father was asleep and then ran down through the yard to the woods to lay my hands on the tree and close my eyes with relief as the darkness pulled me away from my own loneliness.
The woods on the other side were empty. Willa and Eadgar avoided leaving the village after dark, suspicious as they were of whatever it was they seemed to believe lurked there after night fell. I wandered the trails for a little while and came out on the rocky point at one end of the beach. There was a wind blowing but it was a warm wind, carrying the promise of summer on its gentle gusts. I turned my face into it.
What are you doing?
The question just popped into my head unbidden, as if spoken aloud by someone standing a few feet away from me.
I'm sitting on the rocks, enjoying the wind on my face.
But the question wasn't really about what I was doing at that very moment, and I knew it. It was larger than that and it was the right time for it to be asked. High school was almost over. What was I going to do? Dr. Whittington and the librarian at school, who had taken pity on me after seeing me spend every lunch hour alone in the library, were both encouraging me – gently – to go to college. Kayla Foster and her crowd spoke of little else but college in those waning school days. College boys, college parties, prestigious colleges, state colleges, colleges in California, colleges hundreds of miles away from all parental supervision.
I felt what I felt often at that time – envy, exclusion. And sitting on the rocks outside Caistley I realized that there wasn't actually anything stopping me from going to college. If anything, it might be one of the last opportunities of my youth to start over in a different place, somewhere where nobody knew I was the weird girl or the 'witch' or that I had never kissed a boy.
It wasn't yet summer when I walked back through the dark, dew-sparkled woods to get home. It didn't cross my mind that it might be my last trip to Caistley – for a very long time, anyway. I reassured myself with the thought that it was months before September, that there would be ample time to come back, to say a proper goodbye to Eadgar and Willa.
But in the end, I didn't go back. I applied to a few different colleges, all within a day's drive of River Forks, so I could check in on my dad on weekends and holidays, and got into every single one. The final decision on what college I would actually attend was made for me one day at the grocery store where I overheard Kayla Foster's mother talking about the college – one of my own picks – that Kayla herself had chosen. It was one of the last two I was hemming and hawing over and discovering that Kayla would be at one of them made my decision for me.
"Grand Northeastern," I muttered the name of the institution that would not be favored with Kayla's presence as I exited the store, "here I come."
My father didn't want me to go away. Not at first, anyway. He didn't want it so much he actually got himself up and dressed one night and came downstairs to eat a dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese and steamed broccoli with me. Just before the meal was finished, he put down his fork and stated that it would be a bad idea for me to go to college.
"Why is that?" I asked, prepared to defend myself even as I was mortified at having to – what kind of parent tries to stop their child from going to college? I had a scholarship and everything!
"Why do you think?" My father replied immediately, without looking up from his plate. "Look at this place, Paige. Look at me. What am I going to do without you here to take care of everything the way you do?"
I was prepared for that conversation. I had known it was coming. I knew what I was going to say. But the sorrow in my dad's voice got to me and instead of calmly reciting all of the solid, rational reasons why I should go to college, I found myself tongue-tied and awkward.
"Dad," I whispered. "Dad!"
"What?" He mumbled, still studying the last few remnants of dinner.
"LOOK AT ME!" I shouted, shocking myself almost as much as I think I shocked him. It worked, though. He looked up.
"Jesus, Paige! Are you trying to give me a heart –"
"Dad why are you doing this?" I asked, the words all tumbling out in a rush because I didn't want to lose my nerve before I could finish saying what I suddenly needed to say. "Why are you trying to stop me going to college? You spend all day reading the news, reading how bad it is for my generation, how there are no jobs here and you want me to stay? I'm 17 years old, Dad! What would mom say? I don't even have to ask, do I, because we both know what she would say. Why do you want me to waste my life the way you –"
"Don't talk about your mother."
That was it, the entirety of his response. He stood up and stormed out, heading back upstairs to his room.
Five days later he emerged into the sunlight of a Sunday afternoon as I weeded the small patch of earth in the backyard where my mother used to grow tomatoes and told me I had to go to college. That's what he said, exactly those words: "Paige, you have to go to college."
I looked up, shading my eyes from the sunshine. "I know."
"I never would have let you stay," he told me, his voice shaking with emotion. "I never would have let you stay, Paige. I know it's time for you to make your own way in the world. I'm just an old man, and I'm afraid of losing the only person –"
I had never actually seen my dad cry before that day. He went dark and silent and mournful when my mother died, but I never saw him cry. He must have, of course, but he didn't let me see it happening. So when I saw it that afternoon it was like a dam had just burst in my chest and all the daughterly love and pain at what had become of my dad poured out at once and didn't stop.
"Dad," I gasped, choking back a sob as I stood up and wrapped my arms around him. "I know. I know you wouldn't have let me stay. I know it. I know."
"I'm just going to miss you, Paige. I'm going to miss you so much. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, my beautiful girl. I've let you down. I haven't been a father to –"
"Stop!" I instructed, pulling away and holding my father by his once-solid but now frail shoulders. "Stop it. I may only be 17 but I'm not stupid. I know that life isn't a series of tests we all pass with flying colors and no lasting damage. Mom died. She died, Dad. In a weird way I've always thought what happened afterwards was kind of a testament to how much you loved her. To how much we loved her."
"You're a good girl, Paige," my father replied, stroking my hair and looking into my eyes for more than a second for the first time in years. "But you don't have to make excuses for –"
"I'm not, though," I told him firmly. "I'm not making excuses for anyone. She died and we fell apart. What point is there to lying about it now? To pretending it didn't happen? If I could go back would I change everything so she lived? Of course I would, but that's not how it was for us, was it?"
"OK," my dad breathed, nodding. "OK. I won't argue with you. I don't think I even know how to argue anymore. But what I'm trying to say, what I want you to know more than I want anyone else to know anything in this world, is that I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't been here for you. I'm sorry you've had to go through your childhood without your mother – and without me."
He meant it. I could see it in his expression, hear it in his voice, feel it in the space between us – my father was sorry. And even though at 17 I was still too young to truly understand what I'd missed out on – what we'd both missed out on – due to his self-imposed seclusion, part of me knew on some instinctive level that what my father had just done was to salvage something out of the wreckage of his – of our – current lives. Nothing was built yet, no blueprints had been drawn up, but my father had just taken a brick and held it up to me before placing it down into the soft clay between us. A gesture, a promise – hope for a future that might look different to our past.
"Thank-you, Dad," I whispered, suddenly absolutely seized with the need to let him know that I loved him, that I forgave him. "I won't be far, you know. I can come home every weekend. And holidays, too! I can do the shopping on Saturdays, I can –"
"You can come home when you need to come home," he responded. "And not before then. Your old dad is going to have to learn some new tricks. Or relearn old ones, I suppose. Either way, Paige, I don't want you going off to college with a millstone around your neck. You go and take care of yourself. You go and live your life, my beautiful girl. I'll be here when you need me, but you aren't responsible for me anymore. OK?"
"OK, Dad."