She appeared fragile as ever as she stepped through the restaurant, led by a hostess at least half her age and Hatchet couldn't resist making the obvious comparisons. The young woman had the tight bright eyes of a kitten while Allison's had grown drawn and spidered at the edges, more than he had expected. As the young woman gestured for her to sit, Hatchet made the easy distinction between her soft almost featureless hands and the veins he had never seen in Allison's as she braced herself on the table and eased into the chair. The hostess smiled and asked her what she might like to drink to which Allison replied, Ice water, through her aggravated lips.
Hatchet reveled in her disgust for his appearance. You look like shit, Marcus. Then a million dollars must look as bad; you're just jealous of the tan. She sighed and adjusted her collar and glanced at her phone. You can't possibly have anywhere to be, he told her. Some of us work for a living. Wow, when did this happen? She had found a position at an interior design firm, part time of course. She asked him how he had managed to make his child support payments when he couldn't be working with his bearded face and terrible hair. I'm in construction now, he lied to her. Where? Places things need built; you don't seem too grateful that I've been making those payments. Relieved. Uh-huh.
They ordered and sat for several minutes staring either through the window into the traffic or across the crowded room filled with indifference and the sound of utensils against plates and the motorized hum of dozens of power lunches. How does it feel to have completely abandoned your child, Marcus? The words reached his ears before she uttered them. He imagined them long before they formulated in the inferior frontal gyrus of her brain and sprang from her still thin still aggravated lips and polluted like any gurgling septic spill the silence he had been enjoying between them. He peered into the aging hazel of her lenses then she turned away, the cold radiance of the outside world discovering her through the window. That won't work on me anymore, Allison.
She wouldn't look at him.
Allison, if you don't know that I've missed her every day, then you aren't real, he told her. You're some plastic machine that doesn't understand how anything or anyone really works, Allison. If you don't think I love Olivia with every ounce of my soul, then you've lost yours. You ate it the day you decided to punish me for not loving you. You know damn well that you made it impossible for me to be her father. Go ahead and deny it. You are lying to yourself. But then that's what we were so good at, lying. Me to you and you to yourself.
You don't know me as well as you think you do, Marcus. And you don't have as good a memory as you think you do. I tried to give you a chance to be there for her. I did everything I could to make you a part of my family. She paused, Ate my soul. Really, Marcus?
No, you never gave me a chance. I tried to instill certain values in her but you wouldn't let me. You handed me chains and gave me the choice to either enslave myself or be cut off from Olivia. I tried it for a long time but I just couldn't live that way, Allison. And if you would just look deep inside, you'd realize that neither could Olivia and neither could you. I had to make a decision. You forced me to be the bad guy.
You didn't even try, Marcus, she said, her cheeks beginning to blush, still staring into what had begun as a winter day but was now a vast open vacuum devouring itself over and over and over...
I'm not going to fight a war with you. I've been there, Allison. Hatchet felt heat pumping from a vent somewhere in the interior of the room. My parents fought that war. I've been the spoils. I know what it means to be the prize in a fight that never ends. I couldn't do that to Olivia, he told her and he felt a sibylline warp roll through him as if someone had shaken his quantum bits and he watched the leaden features in Allison’s profile wane, a diminishing in the hard lines and the edges of her gasping youth. But you, he recovered, you had no qualms putting her through a process that would cause her more damage than anything else we could've done to her. I just couldn't do it. So I decided to let go. I'll deal with that when Olivia decides it's time for me to deal with it, on her time, not yours, not mine.
She doesn't talk about you, anymore, Marcus. She barely remembers you.
That will change.
You gave up. You flat out gave up to pursue your own life at the cost of being a father. Hatchet caught a hint of the stress in her voice developed over years of smoking and yelling. You’re selfish. You couldn't sacrifice for her.
Gave up? Sacrifice? I sacrificed fatherhood for her, Allison. This is exactly what you can't admit to yourself. This has all been a competition to you. And it would have been worse if I had fought you. Hatchet watched the heated air toy with the wash of hair resting against her neck. You would have forced me into court every time I said something or did something that you didn't approve. You would've made Olivia's world a living hell of being told that I was wrong and you were right and I would've been forced to counter everything you said by telling her that I was right and you were wrong. That's no way for a child to spend the first eighteen years of her life. So don't act as if this hurts you. You won, Allison. Or is it that you won by default that irks you so much?
You expect me to let you take her for a full month every summer? You expect me to let you take my child into an environment that I have no control over? You are sadly mistaken, Marcus. I did everything I could to keep you and make you happy. You didn't have to work three jobs, Marcus. We could've made it without it. But you used it to run away. Like you always do.
I had to get out, Allison.
You didn't have to do anything except love me.
Don't try and rewrite history.
All of this falls on your shoulders, Marcus.
Exactly, Allison. I will take the blame for everything. Starting with accepting your offer to let me see her every day, even if it had to be under your roof, by your rules. If I had accepted what the courts had given us, accepted that my situation was no more special than any other father in my position then this would all be different. But I didn't. I convinced myself that I loved Olivia more than any other father could love a daughter. And that I couldn't allow any court to tell me that I didn't deserve to see my child. So I fell into your trap. And after that, any attempt on my part to return to what little independence the courts had allowed me would have become a blood bath.
Trap? Allison squared on him and he fought the mild shock of seeing Olivia there the way he used to dream of her as a fully-grown woman, an unattainable muse transplanted in a world full of cacophonous stress. You are crazy, Allison said then turned again to face the icy waves emanating from the window.
Again, Allison, you aren't even listening to me and in the process, you are lying to yourself. I'm not going to sit here and repeat myself over and over. If you can't hear me, or understand me, that's not my fault.
She strained herself from the window and stared at him again, Olivia had disappeared and gone back to being a face he could barely remember, the face of young child sitting somewhere in a class room learning the discipline of religious indoctrination. Allison saw the calmness in his face and how undisturbed his posture. She wanted him to lose control.
You are a coward, Marcus. A selfish coward.
Cowards are people who don’t understand their fear. You’re the one who doesn’t understand what you’re afraid of.
Oh god. Spare me the philosophy, Marcus.
Allison, one day, you will have no control over when and where or under what circumstances I see my child. One day,
Olivia is going to find me and confront me over what she has been told about me. She's going to ask me why I left.
You're damn right she will.
And I will take that opportunity to tell her everything that I've told you now. And she'll believe me. She may not agree with it but she will take me at my word.
Oh right.
You can doubt it all you want but one thing is for certain. Olivia will not be a young impressionable girl forever. One day she will be her own person. And I won't have to go through you to explain the things I've done. You won't matter anymore. You will be irrelevant.
The relaxation in his voice frightened her. She wanted him to be angry but it wasn't going to happen and this fueled her instinct to lash out but before she could attack, their server arrived with two steaming plates of food, food neither of them remembered ordering. Allison vibrated from nose to chin and chin to shoulders then she shifted out of her chair and vanished into the indifference of the restaurant, succumbing to the vacuum.
Hatchet reveled in her disgust for his appearance. You look like shit, Marcus. Then a million dollars must look as bad; you're just jealous of the tan. She sighed and adjusted her collar and glanced at her phone. You can't possibly have anywhere to be, he told her. Some of us work for a living. Wow, when did this happen? She had found a position at an interior design firm, part time of course. She asked him how he had managed to make his child support payments when he couldn't be working with his bearded face and terrible hair. I'm in construction now, he lied to her. Where? Places things need built; you don't seem too grateful that I've been making those payments. Relieved. Uh-huh.
They ordered and sat for several minutes staring either through the window into the traffic or across the crowded room filled with indifference and the sound of utensils against plates and the motorized hum of dozens of power lunches. How does it feel to have completely abandoned your child, Marcus? The words reached his ears before she uttered them. He imagined them long before they formulated in the inferior frontal gyrus of her brain and sprang from her still thin still aggravated lips and polluted like any gurgling septic spill the silence he had been enjoying between them. He peered into the aging hazel of her lenses then she turned away, the cold radiance of the outside world discovering her through the window. That won't work on me anymore, Allison.
She wouldn't look at him.
Allison, if you don't know that I've missed her every day, then you aren't real, he told her. You're some plastic machine that doesn't understand how anything or anyone really works, Allison. If you don't think I love Olivia with every ounce of my soul, then you've lost yours. You ate it the day you decided to punish me for not loving you. You know damn well that you made it impossible for me to be her father. Go ahead and deny it. You are lying to yourself. But then that's what we were so good at, lying. Me to you and you to yourself.
You don't know me as well as you think you do, Marcus. And you don't have as good a memory as you think you do. I tried to give you a chance to be there for her. I did everything I could to make you a part of my family. She paused, Ate my soul. Really, Marcus?
No, you never gave me a chance. I tried to instill certain values in her but you wouldn't let me. You handed me chains and gave me the choice to either enslave myself or be cut off from Olivia. I tried it for a long time but I just couldn't live that way, Allison. And if you would just look deep inside, you'd realize that neither could Olivia and neither could you. I had to make a decision. You forced me to be the bad guy.
You didn't even try, Marcus, she said, her cheeks beginning to blush, still staring into what had begun as a winter day but was now a vast open vacuum devouring itself over and over and over...
I'm not going to fight a war with you. I've been there, Allison. Hatchet felt heat pumping from a vent somewhere in the interior of the room. My parents fought that war. I've been the spoils. I know what it means to be the prize in a fight that never ends. I couldn't do that to Olivia, he told her and he felt a sibylline warp roll through him as if someone had shaken his quantum bits and he watched the leaden features in Allison’s profile wane, a diminishing in the hard lines and the edges of her gasping youth. But you, he recovered, you had no qualms putting her through a process that would cause her more damage than anything else we could've done to her. I just couldn't do it. So I decided to let go. I'll deal with that when Olivia decides it's time for me to deal with it, on her time, not yours, not mine.
She doesn't talk about you, anymore, Marcus. She barely remembers you.
That will change.
You gave up. You flat out gave up to pursue your own life at the cost of being a father. Hatchet caught a hint of the stress in her voice developed over years of smoking and yelling. You’re selfish. You couldn't sacrifice for her.
Gave up? Sacrifice? I sacrificed fatherhood for her, Allison. This is exactly what you can't admit to yourself. This has all been a competition to you. And it would have been worse if I had fought you. Hatchet watched the heated air toy with the wash of hair resting against her neck. You would have forced me into court every time I said something or did something that you didn't approve. You would've made Olivia's world a living hell of being told that I was wrong and you were right and I would've been forced to counter everything you said by telling her that I was right and you were wrong. That's no way for a child to spend the first eighteen years of her life. So don't act as if this hurts you. You won, Allison. Or is it that you won by default that irks you so much?
You expect me to let you take her for a full month every summer? You expect me to let you take my child into an environment that I have no control over? You are sadly mistaken, Marcus. I did everything I could to keep you and make you happy. You didn't have to work three jobs, Marcus. We could've made it without it. But you used it to run away. Like you always do.
I had to get out, Allison.
You didn't have to do anything except love me.
Don't try and rewrite history.
All of this falls on your shoulders, Marcus.
Exactly, Allison. I will take the blame for everything. Starting with accepting your offer to let me see her every day, even if it had to be under your roof, by your rules. If I had accepted what the courts had given us, accepted that my situation was no more special than any other father in my position then this would all be different. But I didn't. I convinced myself that I loved Olivia more than any other father could love a daughter. And that I couldn't allow any court to tell me that I didn't deserve to see my child. So I fell into your trap. And after that, any attempt on my part to return to what little independence the courts had allowed me would have become a blood bath.
Trap? Allison squared on him and he fought the mild shock of seeing Olivia there the way he used to dream of her as a fully-grown woman, an unattainable muse transplanted in a world full of cacophonous stress. You are crazy, Allison said then turned again to face the icy waves emanating from the window.
Again, Allison, you aren't even listening to me and in the process, you are lying to yourself. I'm not going to sit here and repeat myself over and over. If you can't hear me, or understand me, that's not my fault.
She strained herself from the window and stared at him again, Olivia had disappeared and gone back to being a face he could barely remember, the face of young child sitting somewhere in a class room learning the discipline of religious indoctrination. Allison saw the calmness in his face and how undisturbed his posture. She wanted him to lose control.
You are a coward, Marcus. A selfish coward.
Cowards are people who don’t understand their fear. You’re the one who doesn’t understand what you’re afraid of.
Oh god. Spare me the philosophy, Marcus.
Allison, one day, you will have no control over when and where or under what circumstances I see my child. One day,
Olivia is going to find me and confront me over what she has been told about me. She's going to ask me why I left.
You're damn right she will.
And I will take that opportunity to tell her everything that I've told you now. And she'll believe me. She may not agree with it but she will take me at my word.
Oh right.
You can doubt it all you want but one thing is for certain. Olivia will not be a young impressionable girl forever. One day she will be her own person. And I won't have to go through you to explain the things I've done. You won't matter anymore. You will be irrelevant.
The relaxation in his voice frightened her. She wanted him to be angry but it wasn't going to happen and this fueled her instinct to lash out but before she could attack, their server arrived with two steaming plates of food, food neither of them remembered ordering. Allison vibrated from nose to chin and chin to shoulders then she shifted out of her chair and vanished into the indifference of the restaurant, succumbing to the vacuum.
Edit 12.22.2018