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To Please Him (edit)
Hey, I wrote this about a year ago, but for some reason it seems a little bit more poignant to me recently, so I decided to do some of the edits you guys suggested when I originally posted it. Anyway, hope it works!
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I dug my fingers into my pockets and pushed my feet closer to the heater. The trees zipped by in a blur. Dad always speeded faster than I liked.
"So what music have you been listening to lately?" Dad was asking.
I shrugged. It always came back to music with Dad and I. We didn't have anything else in common. He would usually start the conversation by asking about school, and I'd tell him I was still getting straight A's. He'd say he was proud of me, and get all sappy saying that even though he wasn't a big part of my life anymore, he still loved me and had every reason to be proud of me. I'd fake a smile and he'd move on asking, "Do you have a boyfriend yet?" At this point, things always got overly awkward, and we'd move on to music.
"Hey have you heard that new song? I thought of you when I heard it; the one about father daughter relationships," he said.
This was an unexpected twist on music. The safety of the subject began slipping away.
"Yeah, I love that song!" I said. And I did. I didn't know why I was going here with him though. I knew he didn't even understand the song. It warned fathers of hurting their daughters, of not being trustworthy men, because those daughters grew up to be needy women.
I knew exactly what the song was talking about.
"In fact," I continued, like the fool I was, "I watched an interview with the artist today." I was simply making conversation. All my life I'd done this. I had always gotten myself into conversations with my father that I dreaded; that I knew would haunt me later. All I'd ever wanted to do was please him.
Dad nodded and cocked his head like he does when he's listening.
"Yeah, they talked about that song," I said. "The interviewer didn't understand the song; he said it didn't ring true, and he rambled about old women and cats and things." I rolled my eyes.
Dad shook his head. "That's stupid." He slammed the steering wheel in a moment of fury. I held my breath. The point I always dreaded was coming. "Some people just don't get it!" He yelled and rolled his eyes as I had.
My stomach wrenched into those knots I always got. This was the feeling that always came when he told me he appreciated my straightforward manner. He only said that when he was angry with me for touching a sore spot with my words, and he wanted to fake his way out. The point had come, the point where it was so evident he didn't really know me.
My thoughts then jumped to Steven. It seemed he was all I thought about these days. Why did I need him to like me so badly? Before him it had been Jordan, and Andrew, and Todd.
I thought about when Dad had lived with us. I thought about those few days before he moved out. I didn't know what was really happening. I just knew that he didn't spend time with me anymore. That he didn't give me piggyback rides, or eat ice cream in the evening. And I thought that it was my fault. That there was something wrong with me, that I had done something to displease him.
I thought about when I ate the last Girl Scout cookie, and Dad gave me that look. That look I didn't deserve, that made me cry, that I got only because he was in a bad mood. That look that made my stomach wrench into knots. The look was the same one he gave the waiter when he decided he wasn’t going to leave a tip. It was the same look he gave the cat when he meowed too loudly. And then he had passed the look on to me, the favored youngest daughter, his baby, as no one more important as a stranger or a housecat.
I thought about Todd, and how one week he was calling me, and the next he was blowing me off, and how I came crawling back to him over and over. How I had let him control me. And after him it had been Andrew, and then Jordan.
I thought about Steven, and I knew this time I wouldn't let him be next.
I looked back at Dad, and I realized that for some crazy reason, I loved him. And I still just wanted to please him. So I didn't say what I was thinking about when he asked me. Instead I said, "I've also been listening to jazz recently."
I thought about pleasing Dad, and I realized I couldn't remember when I ever had pleased him. It was time to let it go.
I looked out the window again. We were passing by a field, and this time the view didn't seem so blurred.
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The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.*-Anaïs Nin
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