My Father’s Ghost on a Dusty Windowsill

Ghosts are real. You know this to be true if you’ve ever smelled your grandmother’s perfume in a crowd, caught sight of one of your late friends' doppelgängers from a distance, or opened a box of bittersweet keepsakes. Whether or not ethereal spirits roam the earth I do not know, but I can state with certainty that our memories are haunted houses.

I saw my father’s ghost in the living room yesterday. He’s been gone a while now, and I do not miss him, having done all I can to exorcise him from my mind, but there he was, so unignorably present that I am compelled to write about him for the first time.

I was on a ladder, pulling canvases off the walls, in preparation for a fresh coat of paint, something the room hasn’t seen this century, when I found one of his pens. The felt-tipped Pilot Razor Point was covered in dust, resting on the sill of a window set high up on the wall. There may be a million varieties of pen in the world, but these ones, charcoal gray, with a bit of yellow plastic at the end of the cap, were the only ones my father ever used.

A forensic examination of the scene leads me to believe that the pen had been utilized during the hanging of some shelves decades ago. Resultantly, I do not believe my father left it there himself, as my he was about as handy as a Victorian aristocrat, blaming his ignorance of woodworking and automobiles on the fact that he had grown up in an apartment in Harlem, where the super handled matters of home improvement and maintenance.

He used his asthma to avoid doing things like hanging shelves, though I can count on one hand the times I saw evidence of this affliction. He said it was his lungs that had kept him out of the Korean War, but would also recount with glee how, as a child, he’d creep under his bed and breathe in the dust to elicit an attack, freeing him from his obligations.

I think of my father rarely, if ever. He is relegated to that distant island of memory reserved for traitors, who also occupy the lowest level of Dante’s Inferno. These are the homes of the spirits we wish to forget, but despite our best efforts they sometimes reach past the boundaries of their containment-zones with spectral limbs and intrude, uninvited, into our lives. I rotate the pen in my hand. The sunlight glints off the silver clip that once held it to the pocket of his neatly-pressed dress shirt.

Before the advent of texting and email, my father would use these pens to leave us notes, or, if we were particularly unlucky, letters that we struggled to read. His handwriting was the blocky all-caps hand of an architect, though he didn’t know a retaining wall from a flying buttress. I suspect this was a bulwark against his dyslexia, and that the large, consistent letters distorted less for him this way.

For much of my life I used his dyslexia as an explanation for my feelings towards him. “I started reading at age two, and could read at a college level by the end of elementary school. My obsession with books formed a wedge between me and my father, for whom reading was a struggle,” is what I would tell people. I am inherently self-deprecating, and whether that is a defense mechanism, a social engineering tactic, or actual humility, even I don’t know, but it was easier to gild these facts with hubris rather than acknowledge the truth.

The truth is that one night when I was seven, my father got drunk and there was violence. I remember the scene with crystal clarity, not because trauma sticks in the mind, but because that’s just how I am. That night is filed away with ten thousand mundane memories of that year, none more vibrant nor hazier than any other. All that differentiates this moment from the others is that this one broke something inside of me.

I stayed home from school the next day, too exhausted to be expected to learn. I remember being sleepy and confused as I watched game shows all morning. There was a lot to unpack, but I needn’t have worried, for early that afternoon when my parents came home it coalesced into something sharp and heavy, a broadsword made of hatred.

I was the sort of child who cried every time my mother returned from the hairdresser with a curly permanent, but the sight of a bandage on her eye did not elicit a single tear. I didn’t even acknowledge her as I strode up to my father in the kitchen. “You better have paid for this,” I said, my child’s mind seeking some sort of recompense or justice for all the fear, tears, and pain.

Any love I had ever felt for the man had been washed away in this one moment of his anger. It was replaced with distrust, hatred, and a desire for vengeance. With one thoughtless act he had forever altered not only the nature of our relationship, but the entire trajectory of my life. After that night I regarded him as nothing more than a tool and object for my amusement. Even at that young age, I had started seeing the world in stark black and white as a result of abuse suffered at the mouth of an older relative, now regaled to her own distant island of memory in my inner archipelago of imprisoned traitors.

Moving forward I used him primarily as a vehicle to get to and from the movies. He would always fall asleep and I’d elbow him hard until his eyes opened. Looking back, I see this insistence that he pay attention to the alien invasions and killer robots on the screen was his punishment, meted out in what small doses a child could manage.

Years later he would develop Parkinson’s Disease. This was a chance for apologies and redemption, but true to form, he simply doubled down on his greed and entitlement, eventually shearing the already fragile fabric of the family asunder. I don’t miss anyone on the far shore of this divide.

Watching him fail gave me enough joy to offset his sharp words and sour moods. It was as if one of the curses I had leveled at him over the years had finally taken hold. I wanted to take credit for his suffering, but even now, knowing that it was likely the dry cleaning chemicals those neatly-pressed dress shirts were tumbled in weekly that begat his illness, I still believe it was a physical manifestation of his inner dissatisfaction, jealousy, and negativity that made him shake and eventually stole his mind.

By the end he was a frail, demented thing, but still I could muster not a shred of sympathy for him. One day I got a call at work and was told that he had only hours left and I ought to come now. Faced with that prospect or an easy day of all overtime, I stayed on the job, something I still don’t regret.

The lasting effects of that night include a deep-seated, pathological distrust of all men. My father may have sparked that flame inside me, but a lifetime of experiences have stoked the fire. I know there are good men out there, but finding them is like searching a blighted orchard for untainted fruit. It was easier for me to move on than risk starving among the trees.

These days my life is exclusively populated by women and I have never been happier, more fulfilled, or more productive. With my father’s death I let go of all the bitterness and anger, fully cognizant of how cancerous these emotions are. I cried when John Candy died, but to this day I have not shed a single tear for the loss of my father. His true punishment is that, as I look now at my meaningful life full of joy and potential, I credit him with nothing more than half a measure of DNA. I have come this far in spite of him.

Upon seeing this prompt I was inclined to ignore it. I initially believed that I had nothing to say on the topic of fatherhood, which, even as a concept, is completely removed from my life. I used to tell people that I simply never wanted children, but the truth is that at seven years old I decided that my father’s bloodline would end with me. Then I found that pen, and chose to revisit these memories in the hope of offering a warning to all the fathers and fathers to be out there.

Consider your choices very carefully. Be prudent with your words and actions. A single moment that you may regret or even forget can become a touchstone in the minds of your children. If you are not wise and humble, one day you may look into their eyes, searching for the love you have become accustomed to, but not finding it. Instead you will meet the gaze of your enemy. Take heed.