Do You Like Kids?
by Ellis Burgoon Miskell ‘15
His eyes don’t look up from the driveway asphalt he has been studying; don’t focus as I approach him. He slouches on the faded porch stoop, wearing that worn, stained, patched plaid flannel blouse he always seems to be wearing. His empty gaze scares me. He seems to spend every waking moment unaware of what is happening right in front of him.
As I shuffle forward, I catch sight of my ghoulish shadow, distorted by the dying sun. Is this what he sees every time he looks at me? A deformed creature? “Dad,” I want to say, “I know I’m Mom’s child, not yours. But I was just a baby at the time. All I want is some sign you even know my name, who I am. Please?” But every time I open my mouth to ask, I can only repeatedly stammer, “Do you like me? Do you like kids?”
He doesn’t reply. I stand there for a while, wondering. Am I just a burden to him? A painful link to unhealed memories? I sometimes think he has forgotten he has a son. I have never heard him talk about me, even to Mom. I think he’s ashamed of what happened; ashamed that he’s not my father.
My friends talk about their memories with their fathers: playing baseball or doing homework together. Moments together. Father and son. I would give anything for one single moment with Dad, with his eyes focused on me, addressing me by name. I remember nights sitting on the porch beside him, reading, the two feet between us a barrier. My memories of Dad bring up a longing from deep inside me, a longing for the father I never had, never will have.
Waiting for a reply, I find each second feels like an eternity. After a couple of minutes, I know I’m not going to get an answer, and walk past him onto the porch. Even when I step over his muddy hiking boots, he doesn’t react. Our cracked driveway seems to give him refuge, solace from the world he needs so badly to escape. As I open the screen door I hear him mumble a word, “Like . . . ” Maybe my mind transformed the creak of the rusty hinges into a single syllable; I want an answer so badly. Before the door swings shut, accentuating the abyss between us, I catch one last glimpse.
A figure sits slouched on the porch stoop, silhouetted by the dying sun. All details are lost in the half-light, just as all details of my father are lost to me in the fog between us. As the sun sinks beneath the horizon, the man I need so badly sits slouched in the dark, still studying the pavement, unaware he can no longer see it.