Father Figure: Zoey's Favorite Memory
We had The Best of the Beatles playing on the stereo as the car drove up the freeway. She smiled, the window down, her arm fluttering through the air outside, her red hair caught in it, moving around her head in a spiral. Her eyes danced. Those brown eyes that she didn't get from her mother. I stared out at the road ahead, at the flashing white lines that stretched on and on and on toward Kentucky, toward our destination. As each mile passed, I knew more and more that I had to break the illusion, had to shatter that smile.
I just didn't know how.
How do you tell your little girl that she isn't your little girl?
It didn't matter that Zoey was almost thirty-three, it didn't matter that she was as old now as her mother was when everything started. It didn't matter that she was a college graduate with a Masters degree, or that she had a job where she dressed up, and an apartment with a view of the Nashville skyline that only good money could buy. Money that she'd earned herself, not asked for from me. It didn't matter Zoey was a woman. She would always be my little girl.
Sometimes, I still checked the floor of the car for Pink Giraffee, on reflex.
Sometimes, I still went in her old bedroom at night, expecting to read a story before remembering that she didn't live there anymore.
And even if she did, she didn't need a story read to her at bedtime anymore.
But today I had to break an illusion that Ashley and I had let build since she was born. The illusion that I was her father.
Because biologically, I'm not.
Zoey looked over, smiling at me through her swirling hair, and caught a few strands, pulling it away from her eyes. She paused, and reached for the window, rolling it up almost all the way. She drew her hair back as it fell in messy tangles around her face. She stared at me, turned down the radio. The Beatles were but a quiet hum of background noise.
"You look sad."
"I'm okay," I replied.
Zoey tilted her head. "You know, you still haven't told me why we're going to Kentucky anyway."
I took a deep breath as the car sped over the Tennessee-Kentucky statelines. "Zoey, we're going to... to visit someone," I said.
"Who?"
My mouth felt full of paste. I stared straight ahead. "An old friend," I said thickly. Which wasn't entirely a lie. He had once been a friend, whatever he was now.
"Who?" she asked again.
"His name is Chris," I said.
Zoey was quiet a moment. "Chris... like mom's ex, Chris?" she looked surprised.
I nodded slowly.
"Why are we going to visit mom's ex?" she laughed. I didn't know how to answer, and in the time it took me to try to process even a vague idea for a response, Zoey breathed in sharply. "Oh my God," she whispered. She looked at me, her eyes were wild. "Daddy." I could hear the question in her voice.
"When you were born --"
"No," she whispered.
"--- your mother thought it would be best if we tell you that I --"
"No stop, stop." Zoey begged, interrupting me. She stared at me. "No. I refuse to believe this. No. You are my father. You."
"Zoey..."
"Stop the car."
"Honey..."
"Stop the car!"
I pulled over on the shoulder of the highway and Zoey stumbled out, her hands gripped the steel guard rail and she leaned over it and threw up. I climbed out of the car, careful not to get run down by passing traffic, and ran around to her side. I pulled her hair back, out of the line of vomit, and held it at the nape of her neck as she emptied herself onto the grass. The car's emergency flashers clicked and blinked and traffic drove past in blurs of color.
"Oh God," Zoey choked, coughed, spit, and slowly stood up. I released her hair and she swiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
I reached into the car and grabbed my bottle of vitamin water from the cupholder. "Here," I said, "Drink this." She unscrewed the cap and poured the contents into her mouth. She sat against the guard rail and slid down to the concrete. I sat beside her, rubbed her back.
Zoey looked up at me. "Why are you telling me this now? Why now, why not when I was little, or when mummy told me about Chris and everything that happened with you guys?"
I took a deep breath. "Your mother was in a very similar situation once, where she knew her real father, and it didn't work out so well. Your grampa Patrick was -- well, he was basically me in that situation. Your mother just didn't want you to have to go through what she went through."
"But why tell me now? Why tell me at all?"
"We got a call yesterday from the prison. Chris is -- he's dying, Zoey. And I didn't think it was fair for you to never meet him if you wanted to."
She stared at me. "So we're going to visit him."
I nodded.
"When were you going to tell me?" she asked. "When I was sitting in front of him and realized that's where my eyes came from?"
I shook my head. "I didn't know how to tell you, I've been trying to think of someway to say it since we left." I sighed. "But I didn't know how to tell my baby girl that you aren't... mine."
Zoey stared up at me, tears in her eyes. She struggled to her feet and climbed into the car. She slammed the door. I saw her cup her eyes with her hands and bend forward.
I gave her a moment. I stayed sitting in the dust on the side of the highway, the smell of sick and pine mixing. After a few moments, I stood up and walked around the nose of the car and waited until I could climb in safely. Once I was inside, I looked over at Zoey, who sat up and started buckling her seatbelt. I buckled mine. I took a deep breath. "It's up to you," I said, "Home or onward?"
Zoey's breath was shaky. She wiped away tears. "Onward," she whispered.
I pulled into traffic and the car continued on through Kentucky. She sipped the vitamin water and stared out the window. The Beatles still just a dull hum below it all. I could almost pick out the strains of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da. She sniffled and stared out.
An hour went by like that before we got to the prison where Chris was being detained. The big brick building loomed ahead of us as I parked and I was reminded of a time years before when I'd sat in Witchita with Ashley beside me. I looked over at Zoey as she stared out at the building, pale and nervous.
I turned the car off.
Zoey turned to me. "You'll come in with me?"
"Of course."
We got out of the car and walked across the lot. After signing in and being given visitor badges, we were led up to the visitation room. It looked like a giant cafeteria. And Chris was there, sitting at a table in an orange jumpsuit, his face unshaved for a couple days, his hair dirty. I stood behind Zoey as she hesitated at the door. Chris hadn't looked up yet. Zoey shook, staring across the room. She looked up at me.
"I'm here," I said thickly.
Zoey nodded, then started walking across the room. I followed her closely.
Chris looked up as our footfalls echoed. His eyes widened as he looked at Zoey, then at me.
It doesn't really matter what was said between Chris and I, between Chris and Zoey. It was kinda personal, you know. But by the time we left the prison, almost an hour later, everything felt... I don't know... complete, I guess. Like we'd come a full circle. It felt like I'd finally let go of something that had been eating at me from the inside for years. I finally had closure.
A month later, we received a package in the mail for Zoey at our address with Chris's personal belongings in it. All it contained was a photograph of Ashley from their wedding day, his old wedding band, seventeen dollars, and a letter to Zoey.
In Zoey's, he apologized, for not being the father that she deserved, and telling her he was glad that she'd had me. "In the end," he wrote, "Your mother chose the right man. She chose the man that made you who you are. And I'm thankful you and your mother are happy."
Chris died alone in his cell at the prison in Kentucky.
And despite everything, Ashley and I both cried when we heard the news.
The day Zoey and I went to see Chris, on the way home, in the silence of digesting the day's events, we stopped to eat. We were sitting at a little diner somewhere in Kentucky. Zoey was staring at the plate of food that had just been put in front of her. Her eyes were red. Her fork pushed the food around her plate. Her lower lip trembled.
I reached over and took her hand in mine. She looked up.
I wanted to speak wisdom to her, I wanted to say something meaningful and important. Something that she'd look back on one day and know how much I loved her, how thankful I was for her. But it was like one of those moments where words kind of escape you and you can't quite say the things you're thinking and feeling. She stared up at me, desperate for me to say the words I was feeling, the things she needed me to say and feel.
But only one thing came to mind whenever Zoey cried.
"Hey where did we go...days when the rain came... down in the hollow... playing a new game... laughin' and a runnin' ...hey-hey... skipping and jumping... in the misty morning fog with our hearts a thumpin' and you -- my brown eyed girl.... you... my brown eyed girl..."
Zoey's eyes filled with tears and she laughed.
"Whatever happened to Tuesday and so slow... goin' down to the old mine... with a transistor radio... standin' the sunlight laghin'... hidin' behind a rainbow's wall... slipping and a slidin'... along the water fall with you... my brown eyed girl... you... my brown eyed girl..."
"Daddy," she whispered.
"Do you remember when we used to sing sha la la la la la la la te da..."
Zoey laughed, her cheeks red as a couple people looked over to see who was singing. I nodded at them, and held Zoey's hands in mine. Despite the tears in her eyes, she had a smile on her face.
"That song always, always made you smile," I whispered. I kissed her hand. "I used to pick you up out of your crib, and you'd be waaaaaiiling and your momma would be trying so hard to make you stop crying, and I'd just spin around and sing tht song with you in the nursery and you'd stop..." I laughed, smiling, remembering how her weight had felt pressed against my chest, how her chubby little cheeks would bunch up.
Zoey smiled.
I rubbed her hand and sat back, letting her fingers slip out of my own. I watched as she, too, sat back, against the booth.
"You know, whatever biology says, there's nothin' that can take the fact away that I know how to make you smile when you think you'll never smile again," I said.
Zoey nodded.
"I may not be your father, Zoey," I said quietly, "But I'll always be your daddy."
Zoey was quiet for a long moment. Then she slid out of her side of the booth, came over, and slid into mine. She laid her head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around her. She closed her eyes. "I love you, daddy."
"I love you, too, my brown eyed girl," I said.
