A Still Past

“Are you still there?” I speak in my sleep, mumbling thoughts lost to me. Waking up I hear them, those thoughts, and am brought back to a place that is gone. I shake my head deliberately and deny myself the pain of reliving the past. I won’t go back, I won’t. I won’t hurt anymore. I won’t. “No one’s there,” I say with force, “No one ever was.”

 

            My father would check in on me as I slept. It was his way of loving me I suppose. He wasn’t a man given to conversation, my father. He preferred his space; he had about him a very intimate nature. He was mysterious like that. He didn’t play with me, like the other fathers, and he never took me out for ice cream or anything. But he did check in on me, in the night, as I slept.

            My father was a busy man, a scientist of sorts. He experimented on things, for the government. From what I can gather, my father was a very important man. I was never allowed to know very much. He always had some man in black with him, always had some big, shiny car escorting him from place to place. He was protected. I never knew from what.

            I always liked to pretend that my father was a spy. That at any moment he would break out of character and reveal his true self. That his quiet and reserved personality was just a mask. That he was suave, and exciting. That he would sweep me away from this life and take me with him to some uncharted island to commence his early retirement. That we’d live there, just me and him, dining on exotic delicacies and drinking coconut juice.

            But my father wasn’t a spy. He was just a scientist. So I didn’t much care for him.

            But he did check in on me. After dark, after I had lay down for the night. After a few hours. He would peak his head in and look. He would make sure that I was okay. And he would mumble. Mumble the words he didn’t like to say too loud.

            “I love you, darling,” he’d say.

 

            My mother didn’t make it past my third birthday. She was very beautiful, or so they say. My father only had one picture of her, which I always thought strange. “I only need one,” he’d say, but I always felt the explanation was one of those things he couldn’t tell me. There were lots of those.

            She was very sick. That’s what they say. Very, very sick. She needed an operation. But it was risky, very risky. My father researched the procedure himself. He knew the risks. But he also knew what would happen if she didn’t have the operation. So she went under the knife. She didn’t emerge.

            Her one picture shows her in white. I like to think it’s her wedding day. She has long brown hair, flowing down the sides of her slender face. Her eyes are blue. She smiles pearly white. Her head tilts to the left. She’s beautiful.

            My father always smiled with that picture. A different kind of smile. He was happy then I think. He used to sit staring at her for hours. “She was wonderful,” he’d say. That I believed.

 

I’d always leave my door open just a crack. I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted him to know, I suppose, that I wanted him to come. It was how I communicated with my father. I left the door open. He just waited until the shroud of night had fallen to walk through. That’s how he moved, my father. Shrouded. Even through love, I suppose.

 

It was a Sunday, the summer after my fourteenth birthday. I left my room and saw many men. All in black. I was used to one, maybe two on occasion, but I couldn’t count them all that morning. I kept asking them questions. I kept asking for my father. No one answered. They just whispered to one another. Whispered, back and forth. Finally I was approached. A man in black, identical to the rest. “Come with me,” he said. I did.

In the living room was a different man, a man in a gray suit. He was older, with a mustache and no hair on the top of his head. He looked sad. He took my hand and spoke soft:

“I have bad news Camilla. It’s your father. He was out, out working for the United States, Camilla. He was doing something very brave Camilla, and sometimes, when people, like your father, are that brave, they are willing to do things that other men are not willing to do. The kind of men that are brave like your father, Camilla, are willing to sacrifice much more than anyone else. Do you understand what I’m saying to you Camilla?”

I didn’t. I had no idea why this man was talking to me. I had no idea why he wouldn’t just take me to my father. Why wouldn’t he? I wanted to know.

“My daddy,” I squeaked, “I want my daddy.”

The man paused and looked away. Then he turned his head back towards me and closed his eyes.

“Your father, Camilla, gave his life today for our country. Your father, Camilla, sacrificed himself for the good of our nation’s people. He presented us with the ultimate sacrifice. And for that, Camilla, your father is a true American hero, always will be. You can be proud of that.”

And I understood then.

 

I wake up speaking that which is behind me. I ask for his touch, look for his watchful eye. But only in sleep. Only when I can’t control it. I choose not to relive the past. To recall the hero that wasn’t a father. To pay respect to the dead man who shares my name. And I go back to sleep.

 

 

But I leave it open, the door. Subconsciously, I th

ink. Maybe there I let him in. Maybe there I try. That’s all I could ever do. I could try. And sometimes, on those nights where I stayed awake long enough to tell, I’d hear him. Hear him mumble his words. Hear who he was. Hear his love for me. “I love you, darling,” he’d say.

 

And, in my whispers, I’d respond. “Me too daddy.”

 

A guy