Trapped

This story contains themes of substance abuse and child abuse. Please read with care.

“What are you doing here?”

Morgan’s curly, russet brown hair falls around her heart-shaped face and tumbles over her shoulders in waves and seems almost alive with the electricity of her anger, as she glares at me through the open door. Even mad, she’s so beautiful. The fire in her eyes adding a glint. Sometimes just looking at her, I can’t help but wonder how someone like her could have come from someone like me. I can’t take credit for any of her looks; that was all her mother. Her temper though — that one’s all me.

“I came as soon as I saw your text,” I say, still gasping a little from the dash from the car. My daughter hasn’t spoken to me directly or asked to see me in years. When I saw the text come through (“I need your help. Can you come over ASAP?”), I didn’t even stop to think. Just grabbed my keys and hit the road.

“What text,” she says, looking genuinely annoyed. “I didn’t text you. I texted Mom.”

With a sinking feeling in my chest, I reach for my phone. One glance at the smiling faces of my wife and my daughter on the lock screen makes me realize that I am, in fact, holding my wife’s phone. We have the same one, and honestly this is not the first time a mix up like this has happened. But this might be the worst.

“Oh honey,” I start. “I took your mom’s phone by mistake. I-I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry. Is there something I can help with?”

“No, and don’t call me that.”

She hurries back into her apartment, leaving the door wide open, as if it’s an afterthought. I can see her running around and quickly stuffing things in her purse. I stand awkwardly outside the open door, like a vampire that hasn’t been invited inside. The door may be open, but not for me.

“I’ve got to go,” she says brusquely and elbows past me pulling the door shut behind her.

“Don’t you need to lock the-”

“It’s automatic.”

She heads to the elevator without a second glance, and I trail after her. The elevator door opens with a ding, and she steps on. When she turns around to face the open door and sees me standing there about to step in beside her, I can see the dread evident in her face. It’s not something any parent ever wants to see on their child’s face, and it’s worse to know you caused it. Shame is not a strong enough word. I can feel my face reddening under her gaze.

“I can catch the next one,” I say quietly and step back.

She swallows noticeably. “It’s fine. Just get in if you’re coming. I’m late.”

I shuffle in and stand a few feet away from her, overly conscious of my every movement. My body feels large and cumbersome, like I take up too much space. My collar suddenly feels tight on my throat, and when I reach up to pull on it I can feel how clammy my hands are. The elevator door slides shut, and with a great, rumbling shake we begin our descent.

Right away I know something is wrong. The elevator is making a loud screeching noise like the track hasn’t been greased in this lifetime or the one before. We have to be halfway to the next floor when it shudders violently again, this time a much bigger shake than before. Next to me, Morgan grabs the handle bar running around the center of the chamber, and I risk a glance to see that her knuckles are white from holding on so tightly. With one last bone-rattling shudder we come to a literal screeching halt. If it wasn’t for being stuck in an elevator, the sudden silence after that constant high pitched whine would be a relief.

“Fuck,” says Morgan.

“Don’t panic,” I try to say as soothingly as possible.

“I’m not,” she says angrily, and I know I’ve already said the wrong thing.

She slams her finger on the emergency call button, and we hear a ringing on the other end. Her building doesn’t have a front desk or any sort of security, so the call goes straight to the fire department. Her voice is steady as she relays the situation and the address, but I can see her hands shaking and a small bead of sweat breaking out on her forehead. When they’re on their way, she slumps back into a corner, putting as much space between us as possible and starts typing furiously on her phone. I just stand there uselessly.

How many times have I asked God for a chance to spend time with my daughter again? And I promised myself that if my prayer was ever answered that I wouldn’t waste it; that I would make the most of every moment and do what I could to make up for our history. But prayers and promises are one thing; action and reality is completely different. And seeing my twenty-three-year-old daughter trying to disappear into a corner to get away from me makes it awfully hard to say what I’ve always wanted to say. Or anything at all.

The elevator has already started to feel stiflingly hot, and I tug futilely at my collar again. “You know, Morgan,” I start, and she looks up at me warily. “I just wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

“For what?” she says cautiously, her hands frozen in the air with her phone still out in front of her, as though she had paused mid text.

“Well, uh, that you’re running late,” I say, chickening out.

“Oh,” she says sounding almost relieved and looks back at her phone.

But I hate this. Am I really going to just sit in silence while my daughter pretends to be anywhere but here until the fire department gets here? “And I’m sorry that things are the way they are between us,” I say in one big rush before I can chicken out again. Morgan slowly locks her phone and slides it into her back pocket before crossing her arms in front of her chest like she’s putting on armor. “I know it’s my fault, and I can’t take back any of what happened-”

“What happened?” she repeats, arching an eyebrow. “You mean what you did.”

“Well, yeah,” I say, lifting my hand to wipe sweat from the back of my neck and staring down at her shoes because I can’t bring myself to meet her eye. She’s wearing what look like steel toe enforced motorcycle boots. A fighter through and through. “I mean, what I did.”

“You want to apologize, but you still refer to it as ‘what happened.’ You can’t even say what you did, can you?”

“I mean, I went through it all with you when I was in AA. It was one of my steps.”

“I don’t care about your fucking steps.”

I can feel my face reddening with frustration. I know I deserve her anger, but AA doesn’t. “AA is a good program, Morgan. It’s helped a lot of people.”

She waves her hand. “My problem isn’t with AA; it’s with you. It’s about how you can’t face what you did, who you were, unless you’re getting something out of it. AA helped you. That’s great. Bully for you. Your apologies are fucking worthless.”

I feel deflated — hopeless — and I slump back against the wall behind me. Silence reigns between us again, and I don’t know if there is anything I can say to fix this. “I don’t know if it would help to relive every moment either,” I eventually attempt to add quietly. “I don’t even remember most of it. I blacked out.”

“Must be nice,” says Morgan, her voice quiet and shaking. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Sometimes I remember it like it’s still happening.” She pauses to take a breath, but I don’t interrupt. “I have nightmares about it. Last night you broke my arm in a door all over again. The other night I watched you hurl a chair at my mother and punch her in the mouth. The worst is I can still smell it too — the alcohol on your breath. I can’t even step into a bar without having flashbacks. And you get to forget. That’s not fair.”

It’s not fair. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what a curse it is to not remember. To not know what I did, not really. In some sense, no matter what, I carry this with me everywhere I go. I carry the guilt, my lost years, my broken relationships with the people I love. Even what I don’t remember, I know enough to be ashamed. And it is a curse to break the people you love and not even know how you did it. But on the other hand, maybe it’s better that I don’t remember all of it. Maybe the remembering would break me too.

I can feel myself starting to spiral. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it’s a disease, and it’s one I have under control now. But I can never get back the years I’ve lost to it.

I force myself to look up at Morgan, to face the anger I know I deserve. She’s looking everywhere but at me, glancing around at the corners of the elevator, down at her shoes, back up at the door. Her arms are still crossed in front of her, her hands grasping herself hard, and I can see them trembling. She’s angry, yes, but there’s something else that I hadn’t noticed before. Something I should have noticed. Fear. She’s afraid of me. And all at once, I can see it in every interaction we’ve ever had — a shifting eye movement, a cautious stance, always facing the door, a flinch here and there when I’ve moved suddenly. My daughter is afraid of me. And she’s trapped in a small, enclosed space with me. And I am making it worse. I am selfish. A sob tries to force its way up my throat, but I swallow it and hide any tears behind my hand. It’s a struggle to get myself under control. I take a careful breath, counting to four as I breathe in, and five as I breathe out. After a couple of breaths, I get it to five and six, respectively. It’s a grounding exercise I learned from my therapist, and it’s helped me hold it together more times than I can count.

I think about reassuring Morgan that I’m not going to hurt her, but on some level she must already know that. There’s nothing I can say that will undo the trauma. So we sit in silence instead, her last words hanging on the air between us. Finally, the fire department arrives with a great deal of noise. We can hear them wrench open the outer doors first, and someone shouts through the door at us to check on our status. “All good,” we both yell back. When they finally haul our doors open, we can see that the elevator never quite made it down to the next floor. We’re a good three feet or so off the ground still, and the firemen help us crawl out of the elevator and safely onto the floor. As far as crises go, this one was pretty tame. Though probably not for Morgan, I remember with a sinking feeling.

Neither of us says anything until we make it outside together. Morgan glances at me and moves to leave without breaking our silence, but I wrestle up enough courage to speak one last time.

“Morgan,” I say, waiting for her to pause before I continue. “This disease, it ruined my life, and I can live with that. I have to live with that. But I’m really sorry that I let it ruin yours too. I’m sorry for everything I did — what I can remember, and especially the stuff I can’t. And not just because I love you and wish I could have you in my life again, but because you deserved a childhood full of love and laughter, and I gave you nightmares instead.” I pause to swallow, ignoring the tears filling my eyes. “I can’t undo it. I wish I could, but I can’t. I thought I understood before. But I didn’t, not really. And I get that I can never really understand all the ways that my alcoholism affected you. I’m not apologizing so that you’ll forgive me. I know that may never happen, and you have every right to make that choice. I’m apologizing because you deserve an apology — a real one. So much more than that really, but this is the best I can do. And I won’t keep pushing you. If you want to see me, I’ll be here. And if you don’t,” I swallow around a lump in my throat. We both have tears sliding silently down our cheeks. “If you don’t, then I accept that too.”

Neither of us says anything for a moment. She looks at me as though she’s trying to see through my skin and read what’s underneath, so I try to look as open as possible.

“Thank you,” she says after a while, and I can tell the words cost her something. Then she nods her head once in a way that feels final and turns to walk away. I turn to do the same, holding my breath to try to keep my tears at bay. If I really let myself cry now where she can still hear me, I worry that it will seem like I’m asking for something from her, and I can’t do that. I need to get to my car before I break.

“Dad,” her voice stops me before I get too far, and I risk a glance back at her. The breeze has picked up some of her curls, but the fire seems to have gone out of her. She looks softer now. “You didn’t ruin my life. You made it a lot harder, but it’s not ruined. I still have time.”

I wonder if that means that maybe we still have time too, but I don’t dare ask. I smile as much as I can through my tears and nod at her, unable to speak. I hope my eyes tell her everything I want to say. ‘You do, Morgan. You have so much time, and I hope you squeeze every last drop of joy you can out of every second of it, because you deserve happiness. I hope you live. I love you. I have always loved you. I hope you know that. God, I hope you know.’