I wanted to write this down, or record it, but I could only pay fierce attention, hoping I’d remember it all.
“I was determined to get you the best help I could. We went to a lot of doctors and even flew to other cities. I wanted to keep you in school, give you as normal a life as possible. Your mother didn’t. She wanted you home with her. She was terribly afraid something would happen to you.”
The woman set our drinks on the table, but we waved her away before she could interrupt us again.
“Was I on any medications then?”
“Several. And some of them were, frankly, horrifying. We looked into brain surgery. Your mother was opposed. There came a time when it made sense to let one parent’s vision take precedence over the other. I had to work. I couldn’t go to every single one of the appointments and hear exactly what was being said. Your mother wasn’t always truthful. She only listened to what she wanted to hear. Mainly that her little girl needed her mother and should stay home.”
“None of that sounds like a reason to abandon us.”
“You’re right.” He set his elbows on the table, bracing his head with his hands. I almost felt sorry that I was making him so frustrated and upset.
But Survival Ava said,No, forget it. You have over a decade of upset to make up for.
His voice dropped a notch. “I’m listening to myself tell the story, and it sounds horrible. But it was different to be there. To feel as though you had no voice, and your wife was going to do things her way, even when I felt strongly that she was wrong. We fought all the time. We yelled and carried on. It upset you a lot.”
I clutched my napkin, shredding the edges. “You left me with her.”
“Nobody loves you more than her.”
“Least of all you.”
“That’s fair. Absolutely fair. I moved out. I came to see you every weekend. But you were getting worse. I’d be talking to you and you’d freeze up, look away, and quit responding. Your mother talked in circles about your care. And then one day, when you were six years old, I came over for the weekend and you didn’t know who I was. You clung to your mother, asking who the scary man was.”
“And so you decided to quit tormenting me, right?” My anger rose like a pot boiling. I couldn’t bring it down. My napkin tore in two.
“No, I didn’t give up then. I had private consultations with your doctors away from your mother. The best course of action was to find a medication that would stop the seizures, and that was what they were working on. For all my faulting her, it seemed your mother was doing the right thing.”
“When did you stop coming completely?”
“When I got this.” He removed a small note from his pocket. He unfolded it and flattened it on the table.
It was a stick-figure drawing that showed a woman and a girl smiling.
Underneath it, in childlike handwriting, were the words:I am happy with mommy. Please don’t scare me anymore. Ava.
I dragged the paper closer. I’d read my old notes. I knew my handwriting, the quirks of my language, and how hard I pushed down on a pen.
But for this, I would have been very young. I couldn’t compare the handwriting to my wrist, but I did anyway. I pulled up my shirt sleeve, exposing the tattoo.
“What is that?” my father asked, but I ignored him for the moment.
The comparison was useless. Crayon versus pen. There was no way to tell if I’d written this myself, or if my mother had sent it on her own. I pulled my sleeve back down.
“The woman that you left me with would make up stories after I lost my memory. She would put them in my diary. She would make me think they were my ideas and thoughts.”
I pushed the paper back at him.
“I have no idea if I wrote that or not. But given my mother’s history, I think there’s a good chance she did this. But like you said, I was getting upset around you. You saw that with your own eyes. Who’s to say who’s right?”
“Did you ever confront your mother about what she was doing?”
“Are you kidding? I was helpless and scared. When I realized I was old enough to leave, not sixteen like she’d told me, I ran away. I have an amazing boyfriend. He’s known me since before I left her. He helped me piece together my life through pictures and stories and accounts by other people.”
He rotated the glass of water between his hands. “Ava, if you want me to be here for you now, I can do that.”
“Why would I want that? I already figured everything out!”
