My father asked me for several pages from my journal but made it absolutely clear he wanted none of the ones written about him. He didn’t tell me what he would do with these pages once he got them or if there would be repercussions if I didn’t follow his one rule. It was a matter of faith I supposed. Fitting for the holidays. However, I could not help but notice the fireplace was lit behind him and a shadow of his was leaning conspicuously against the living room bar he’d built.
Careful to not upset him and to keep the holidays light, I skimmed the book. I tore off pages about old girlfriends, a brief section about an enlightenment of my sexuality, and two front and back pages of a script I never finished. I lifted doodles of these weird characters I made that used ampersands as eyeballs. There was a page about my potential eating disorder and body dysmorphia that I never looked back into because I’d, for a time, had lost fifty pounds. I didn’t eat bread for four months.
I handed him the pages. The last time I handed him pages they were to a story I’d wrote and gave him for Christmas, a different Christmas. It was riddled with spelling errors and was written in a very Tarantino-esqe, ultra-violent-like fashion. I’d thought It was the best thing I’d ever written. I don’t know if he actually read it but I remember he cried.
He looked at the pages and then at the worry in my face. I was well-known for wearing my emotions with the subtlety of a face tattoo . He noticed the slight shift in my eyes when I looked back and forth from him to the fireplace. He asked if I was worried he’d throw it into the flame; If I thought him so evil that he could do something like that. I smelled the Glenlivet 18 surfing the warm ashed air in my direction. His attempt of guilting me wrapped in notes of oak and spice. I shook my head.
He sat in his large leather chair that had come with the unspoken statute that no one else was allowed to partake in its reclined comfort and cupholders. As he read through the pages he mumbled some in-cohesive words seasoned with ‘hmms’ and ‘ohs’. I’d found myself just standing there not knowing what to do with my hands and so I headed to the bar to join in his ritual. I poured the single malt into a beautifully crafted tumblr until it was full about halfway. My father looked above the papers briefly to give a glance of approval and then a smile when hearing my exasperated sigh from the first sip.
I heard him turn to a new page and after a few minutes he said something like, oh I really loved your mother, she was one of the best women I’ve ever known. He wasn’t the kind to care that the woman whom he’d been with for the last 10 years was only 20 feet away in the kitchen cooking him dinner. To me this felt like a provocation, a dare. A chance at ruining everything if I so much as questioned the notion that what they had was, at any point, love. So I drank. And this seemed to have the same effect of approval.
He’d finished the crumpled pages and laid them to rest on the side of his chair.
“You know,” he said, “This is usually the time of year where we appreciate the things in life we have. As well as the things we’ve lost. And in doing that just accept all those truths as the past. We let go in order to gain more.”
“Oh yeah?” I replied, “How much do people really need to let go of though? Surely you can hold onto to some things. Especially the unresolved.”
“No not me, I choose to be happy. I’ve lived more than fifty years and I will live the rest of them here, in the present. I’ve burned all my pages.”
He took another sip of his drink, stood, and handed me back the papers. He told me I wrote well even for a journal and then asked if I wanted to feel lighter. He expressed that although he hadn’t seen me most of the year that he could tell my heart was heavy. He told me I only had so much room left and the future required much more than what I could muster at this moment. It felt like being alone with a pastor in his office because a snowstorm locked the two of you in a church. You didn’t think the pastor to be a bad man - but you watch the news so that what-if feeling becomes palpable. That’s what I felt in this moment and so I didn’t need any more words. I walked to the fire and I tossed the pages. It was easy because I knew what they said, I knew who they were, and my hand would not forget having turned those pages into memories.
When I turned around my father stood there with a large book in his hand. At a second glance it was a gift. A large leather bound journal that had my name engraved on the front of its beige cover. It was heavy with at least a thousand pages in it. The woven place holder attached to the bind looked as if it could have been made from silk. The gift was, in a word, impersonal.
He then handed me my original journal as if to say don’t forget to take this with you. I’d almost asked him what had happened to the pages as if my mind was still playing catch up. Realizing I’d misinterpreted the gesture I took the old disfigured relic and added it to the pit. I watched as the fire ate our secrets and turned them to ash. My father stood behind me, hand on my shoulder, and kissed the back of my head. All as if to say the holidays could continue.
There was a truth I would not come to discover for some time until I began writing in this new ostentatious novel. Even though its cover lived with my name engraved in it, although its insides were etched with my words, and even though the leather had worn itself from the oils of my fingers - the journal did not belong to me. It was his much like many other things I owned and that also owned me. It was a place for him to hide, to shirk accountability. It was the fattening of a pig for slaughter. It was the tinder for his flame.