“I wasn’t okay for a little bit, but now I am okay,” she says confidently.
“I—what were they doing? Were they being physical with you?” The prickling feeling in my skin increases.
“No. They bullied me with their words,” she says, quite eloquently. “They said I was weird for liking space and Titanic and pirates so much. They also stopped playing with me at recess.”
I nod. “I’m really sorry that happened to you. Maybe they’re jealous because you’re so smart.” Jealousy is a feeling I’m all too familiar with after the last time I saw Lina. Jealousy towards that fucking guy that I fucking knew would be a problem. Jealous that I didn’t have a cool job like him. Jealous that he probably doesn’t have to go to bed at nine thirty every night. Jealous that he doesn’t have all these neuroses. Jealous that he’s someone easy, someone Lina could easily be with. That he gets to see her in her new lingerie set.
“Are you okay, Daddy?”
“Yes,” I say, with gritted teeth.
“You look like you have to poop.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, very clearly not. Because I’m too late. It’s too late for us now.It’s okay, I’ve been repeating to myself.Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, like a mantra. I clear my throat. “Why do you say you’re okay now?”
“I have a new best friend who likes the MTA. He knows every single subway stop in the city.”
“That’s great.”
“Also, Lina said I have to be kind to myself and love myself. So I’m not embarrassed to like the things that I like. I am curious and smart and brave,” she says confidently.
“She’s right,” I say. I’m starting to think that Lina is right about everything.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why doesn’t Lina come over anymore?” she asks bravely, calmly.
My reaction is the opposite. My face gets hot. My stomach crawls up my throat. “It’s not because of you,” I manage to say quickly, but after that, I freeze. I don’t know how many times I’ve practiced this answer in my head, trying to be intentional about the depth of detail I should get into, but it all becomes static in my brain. And that’s because the more time I’ve had to myself to ruminate over these reasons, the less valid they’ve become. The answers have changed, morphed into something unrecognizable.
“Lina and I had… a disagreement,” I finally say. “We’re going to be spending some time apart.”
“Was the disagreement over me?” she asks in a quiet voice.
“No,” I tell her firmly, pulling her into my lap.This is the moment; don’t fuck it up, Dom. “It had nothing to do you with you. It was all me and Lina. We had a disagreement over working too hard and pushing ourselves and not being kind to ourselves. Which, as you know, is very important. We… both made some mistakes after that, and that led to me getting kind of angry, so we need to be… apart. But I still love you, and she still loves you more than anything in the universe.”
I take a deep breath, willing my heart rate to slow. I hope and wish and pray that this is enough, that she won’t internalize this and be traumatized for the rest of her life, doomed to unpack the shitty decisions her father had made with a rotating cast of therapists and stints with SSRIs and?—
“That’s dumb,” says Frankie.
I blink. “Huh?” I respond eloquently.
“Don’t you always say that mistakes are okay? Because they’re not on purpose and because we can learn from them and move on and be a better person after?”
I blink some more. “Well, yeah.”
“So then that’s dumb. It sounds like your fault. You’re the one who’s still angry.”
“Wow.”
“And don’t you say we should always forgive the people we love when they make a mistake?” she goes on, unfazed.
I run my hand down my face.
“You said you still love me and Lina still loves me… and I love you and I love Lina… but do you love Lina?”
“Jesus, Frankie?—”
