If You Go Chasing Rabbits Assignment - A Personal Memoir

He would always put himself on the side towards the street when we walked together. The twilight would glum over the day, and we’d chitter about books, philosophy, religion, television and pop culture as we ambled about the neighborhood. Even when I was ten, we’d dissect Animal Farm, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Fahrenheit 451 as if I were seventeen. When I was seventeen, we’d laugh about National Lampoon as if he were ten.

Now I stood at his doorstep, my sister’s medication rattling in my nervous fingertips. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I didn’t want to be here. She’d left her medication at home. She couldn’t be without it an entire evening. I was about to have an unwanted and awkward reunion, but one that I’d been building in my head for some time.

I’d met the man I would call my father when I was three years old. He helped with the children at the pre-school for aftercare. He loved kids. He always knew what to say to them. My mom saw him lift me up and seemed to know this was right instantly.

After some dating, he proposed to her at a dock under the moonlight behind a Dunkin’ Donuts. She said yes. At four, I was the flower girl at their wedding. At five, I was running to his arms every time he came home from work with a wail of “Daddy!”

I didn’t have any plans of ever greeting him with that sort of wail again, while I stood on that doorstep on that day.

We were close all throughout my childhood. He’d take me and my siblings on adventures as big as across the East coast to as small as a park I’d never explored before. He taught me the fun was in the trip, not the destination. I realized at the age of eighteen that the destination certainly wasn’t always fun.

Divorce is ugly. People are ugly. Against lies and ugly truths, there are always sides. I think texting him “stop hurting my mom” was the beginning of the end. Soon, it was just me and her, my siblings living intermittently between his and my mom’s house, then soon only my sister. I haven’t heard from my brother in years.

For a while, I still got texts. “There’s a documentary on Ray Bradbury tonight, you should watch it” or “We should check out this abandoned Florida spot” but never a date or follow-up. We exchanged Christmas gifts with my sister as the go-between.

The texts eventually stopped. My sister was in the car with me when she shrugged and said that he didn’t think I cared anymore, that I didn’t put the time in.

When his father died, I was invited to his deathbed, but never heard about the funeral.

When I had the chance to contact him for a school assignment, I overturned it. There were other, less traumatic interviews I could entertain. I turned it over in my mind, how the event would go. I’d text him, he’d ignore it. He’d leave some rude comment. He’d tell me to lose his number.

I’d call him, it would go to a machine. Worse, he’d answer, and every word would be monosyllabic. Sures and fines and huhs, as if what I had to say was so interesting, but not warranting anything non-onomatopoetic.

I hadn’t planned on having to go by his house. I’d given my mom a look so dubious she started to lose her temper. “I can’t see him,” I said. “And you think I can?” she returned sharply.

I’d been wearing my clothes to box in, but no real plans to go to the gym. Instead, it was a good, strategic way to excuse myself from the weirdness. My hands were covered in wraps for extra persuasion.

I prayed for my sister to answer the door, and I was very disappointed.

My dad stared down at me, and his expression was so unreadable I felt like I might shrink beneath it. Part of me wanted to, enough to disappear. “Hope left her pills,” I stammered, holding it out in a covered palm.

“Oh, hey kid. Come on in.” The door was opened up for me.

I blinked.

My legs had their own mind as I stepped inside.

I was positive the awkwardness would slip through, anyway. He’d continue to look at me with the blank face until I retreated on my own, but he didn’t.

He asked if I wanted to go on a walk. I undid my wraps and left them in a pile on his kitchen table as I walked out with him. There was no sign of my sister, my brother, his girlfriend. He and I stepped out alone onto the pavement of unfamiliar territory.

We didn’t talk about the divorce, or his dad’s death, or the things he’d told my sister. We talked about the last movie we both saw, the latest show on HBO he’d seen that reminded him of me, the book he’d just finished listening to on audio during his runs. We rounded the sidewalk until the sun had long gone down.

Once we’d made our way back, I felt that my heart was thudding like a bad motor. I had my keys in hand and my eyes downcast as I beelined towards my car.

“You know,” he said as he watched me open up the door and mutter my goodbye. “You can always come over and watch that show here. Your sister would like it.”

I wasn’t--and am still not--quite certain how mendable our relationship was. When I spoke to him I still called him Dad, but the validity of it had come into question more than once over the years. Still, I looked over my car roof at him, regarding him carefully.

“Yeah,” I managed, finally. “Thursday sound good?”