Purpleprose Fiction
A Father's Daughter
Something about his new veneers made him seem like a joke. Not that they weren’t necessary--they were. My dad had grown up outside of Lubbock where there was too much fluoride in the water and as a result had had brown stains on his four front teeth for as long as I had known him. His new teeth covered the last trace of anything reminiscent of where he came from.
He smiled wide for the company website photo above the title “Chief Executive Officer.” He finally looked the part. No one in his company would guess that he used to drive a tractor for extra money during the summers on his parents’ cotton farm. Or that he used to play the banjo for the Sunday school kids at his Southern Baptist Church thirty minutes into town. Or that his grandmother sold all her cattle to pay for him to go to college. No one would have guessed that. She was the most generous person in our family. I remember playing Chinese checkers and eating candy corn when I used to stay with her as a kid. I can’t remember her funeral, but I remember he wasn’t there.
That was in his pre-veneer days. Back when he sold ads to a shitty newspaper in Canyon, Texas. I’ve watched him transform into a complete stranger since then. He remarried a Japanese lady who hardly spoke English a month after the divorce with my mom was final. He bought a new car, a new house, and later, some new kids. He slowly severed ties with everyone in our family, including me.
People say we have the same smile. I just don’t see it. But sometimes I catch myself doing things he would do. I clean out my phone every couple of months, deleting people I don’t need anymore. That’s something he would do. But I don’t need them cluttering up my life. Maybe that’s how he feels about me.
One time my sister left us to go live with him in Austin. She ran away a month later. He called my mom to tell her that if the police ever found her, not to call him. They found her a week later somewhere downtown, and my mom drove from Oklahoma that night to pick her up.
I don’t remember what happened after that. I think she went to live with our grandmother. Sometimes I block things like that out of my memory. It’s strange, though. I have no choice in what I remember and what I don’t. Like, I would give anything to forget finding my sister lying unconscious on the couch the time that she overdosed. Or the way that she looked after they pumped her stomach--white as the hospital sheets with charcoal-stained lips. But if you ask me what happened after that, I couldn’t tell you a thing.
I can’t say I don’t blame her for trying it. She’s always had the guts to do what I can’t. While I was sitting around reading books on it and planning the perfect time and place, she took two full bottles of my grandmother’s Vicodin and downed them with a bottle of Crown--no second thoughts.
I learned in one of my psychology classes that women aren’t as successful at suicide as men. I took it to be sexist at the time, but it turns out that men just use more aggressive means than women on average. For example, a gun might’ve been more effective. Either way, she lived.
When my dad disowned her after that, I knew he’d do the same to me one day. We wrote letters to the adoption agency he was trying to get approved with and kept him from adopting more kids to screw up.
I thought about the last time that I spoke to him--my first year of college. We had spent the afternoon touring the campus and decorating my dorm room when, at the end of the day, he pulled out the adoption papers.
“Cami, your stepmother and I really want all of us to be a family again,” he said to me, “but we need to know that you want to be a part of it. You really broke our trust when you sent that letter. But if you retract your statement, we can finally adopt and be a family again.”
I remember I wanted it so badly. So I signed his papers and he got new kids. Perfect and new. And I haven’t heard from him since. That was about seven years ago.
Sometimes I drive by his house for the hell of it. I’ve even called and hung up a couple of times. I deleted him from my phone a long time ago, but I still know his number. I wish I could just select and delete him from a menu in my mind.
I’ve been thinking about an economy-sized bottle of Tylenol in my closet for about two weeks now. I probably have every over-the-counter brand of pain killer represented in there. It’s my own little mixture. My roommate is out of town for the next few days, so this is when I’ve been planning to do it. If I take a couple every hour, coupled with some anti-nausea tablets I’ve thrown in, they should build up in my system after a while. I think it will work. I just don’t want to take them all at once and have them be able to pump my stomach when they find me. If I do it slowly, and no one finds me for a couple of days, there won’t be anything they can do about it. I’m pretty sure that’s how Marilyn Monroe did it. It should work.
I wonder if it will help to eat something first. I haven’t eaten in four days. Not food, anyway. The last thing I ate was a couple of cotton balls. It’s a trick my roommate taught me to lose weight. They fill you up like food, but they have no calories, and they aren’t hard on your body to digest. They go right through your system, and you don’t gain any weight.
But no one cares if you’re fat once your dead. I decided to make my last meal a good one--a big, juicy bacon double cheeseburger from Wendy’s, and a frosty to dip my greasy fries in. I got in my car and headed for the drive-thru.
As I drove I wondered if he would even care if he never saw me again. At this point, I had nothing to lose. So I drove all the way to Austin. Right to his door.
I looked at my watch. It was 1:30 p.m. He should be back from church.
I marched up to the door and looked at the doorbell. I had a million things to say. Maybe he’d answer and I wouldn’t say anything. Maybe I’d punch him and leave. Maybe we’d hug, and he would say that he missed me. And that he loved me. And he was sorry. All I had to do was push the button.
Right then I felt a piercing pain in my chest. Right over my heart. It was crushing, like my lungs were collapsing. I rang the doorbell. My chest was caving in. I crossed my arms and felt my left arm was cold. I looked down and saw that it was purple. I rang the doorbell again. Was I having a heart attack?
My dad opened the door and looked at me.
“Dad!” I yelled, wide-eyed with a frantic, quivering voice. “Something’s wrong--I think I’m having a heart attack!” My voice cracked and my eyes filled with tears.
He blinked at me. “Maybe you should go to the hospital,” he said after a pause.
“Don’t you want to take me?” I asked, panicking.
He just stood there, staring at me blankly. He blinked again.
“No,” he said.
I stared back at him. I didn’t know what to say. So I turned around and walked back to my car.
Once I was driving, I felt fine again. My arm returned to normal, and my chest stopped hurting. I drove to the emergency room, anyway. They told me it was an anxiety attack of some sort, and referred me to a psychiatrist.
So I guess I got my answer. I would leave him alone for good. In his perfect house, with his perfect family, and his perfect teeth. In fact, I think I’ll leave it all. I can’t go back and end this now. There is no point. I need to just start over--to start a new life. Perfect and new. I’ll move somewhere--maybe out of state. Where no one knows me. I could even change my name if I wanted to. Dye my hair. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even do something about these coffee stains on my teeth.
Katie Hodges
Katie is a recovering army brat currently residing in Brooklyn with chiropractic guru Mikey "That's Dr. To Yo" Wolfson. He saved her from the quicksands of Dallas, Texas, where she was drowning in boredom, misery, and vodka-filled cesspools. As it turns out, she's quickly rediscovering them in New York. The two met wearing "Texas to the Bone" and "Certified Angus Beef" pins while serving slabs of cow meat and Shiner Bock beer bread to country music at a steakhouse. She had never seen anyone pull off a bolo tie quite like him. So she packed her bags and voyaged over. She likes to write anything, especially nonsense, and if she could write nonsense for money, well, let's just say her bill collectors wouldn't have their own ringtones.
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