Despite her efforts, she had no luck finding him anywhere. I kept my vigil beside Juliana’s bed the entire night, holding a wet washcloth to her head to help bring her fever down. I wiped her mouth when the little fluid she had in her came back up and held her hand to reassure her she wouldn’t die on my watch.
Sometime very early the next morning, I fell asleep in the sentinel position beside her bed in case she needed me again. Mom didn’t get one wink of sleep, though. She paced the floor until small streams of sunlight broke through the blinds, shedding light on the dining room table. That’s when she saw it, the note Dad had left in a place where he knew we wouldn’t find it right away.
What lower-middle-class family ate their meals in a formal dining room?
Some people call it a “Dear John” letter. I call it the coward’s way out.
Dear Debbie,
I’m sorry, but the life you want is not the life I want.
Please don’t look for me.
I just can’t do this anymore.
Chris
This was his family.
This was his wife, his son, and his daughter.
He deserted us, knowing Juliana desperately needed that medicine to get well. He did this, knowing Mom needed her husband and his kids needed their father. But this meant nothing to him in the end. The life he wanted was out there somewhere, in a place where we weren’t. Whatever he was searching for was obviously better than we were. Something waited for him that was more exciting. He had something new that made him want to get up in the morning and come home at night.
We never knew what we did wrong to make him walk out and leave. None of us had a clue. The coward left that bullshit note and didn’t bother to even send us a fucking postcard in all the years that followed. I was only fourteen when I was left to help pick up the pieces of our tattered lives. He destroyed everything when he chose the absolute worst time to have a midlife crisis.
As for his whereabouts, I don’t know if Mom ever looked for him after she found that note. I sure as hell didn’t look for him either. Our grandparents on his side of the family were devastated by his actions. He was still their son, and they loved him just the same, though. Truthfully, that only made me more bitter about the entire situation because that was a direct insult to my worth. That resentment emerged every time they tried to bring up the subject.
Juliana and I went to visit them one weekend when I was sixteen and she was six. Even at her tender age, she understood what Chris had done to us as a family, although she wasn’t as aggressive about his betrayal as I was. When Grandma brought him up around me, it always resulted in a showdown.
“Chris is your father, Rod. You should call and talk to him.” She felt it was her place to push us back together, always hoping for a family reconciliation. “A growing boy needs to spend time with his dad.”
“Are you talking about the loser who left to go buy medicine for a sick little girl then never came back home? Didn’t call. Didn’t send money. Didn’t care if we had food on the table, clothes to wear, or if we were even still alive. Is that who you’re calling my father?” I loosely crossed my arms and gave her a disinterested glare.
Her eyes teared up, and she put her hand over her heart, maybe trying to keep it from breaking in two, but my response ended the conversation. At least she never tried to justify his actions. That would’ve sent me over the edge and she wouldn’t have seen me again. When he left, my heart turned to stone. Fitting, since that’s also my last name.
Still, Grandma and Grandpa tried to give us hints or some other small clue as to his whereabouts, hoping Juliana and I would contact him on our own. But neither of us took the bait. By that time, he was dead to me anyway, and I didn’t want him to come back or try to make amends for anything. Watching Mom wear herself out to feed, clothe, and keep a roof over our heads during those years had sealed Chris’s fate with me.
During the four years after he left us, I did everything I could to help Mom keep us alive. When she worked extra shifts at the carpet mill, I played with Juliana, read her books, cooked her meals with what little food we had, and made sure she took her bath every night. When Mom came home after spending eighteen to twenty hours on her feet, working in a hot warehouse-style building, she somehow still made time to ask about our days, our grades, and our friends. We never felt as though we were a burden or that we came last to her.
Grandma and Grandpa tried to pick up some of his slack. They knew Christmas and birthday presents were luxury items our pitiful little family couldn’t afford to waste wishes on, much less spend money to buy. They made sure the major holidays and milestones were covered. On my sixteenth birthday, an old beater car appeared in our driveway and mysteriously never had an unpaid car insurance bill. Then, there was the Dell laptop and printer they insisted I needed so I could do my homework and get
