Face-Off in the Big City

It was an icy cold January morn in New York. Janet Mullaway felt chilled to the bone as she walked down from her hostel room to the main gate of the New York University campus. A brilliant mind, she was presently working on her research thesis on environmental sciences at the University. The cold winds seemed to cut through her. Shivering, she pulled her windcheater closer and covered her ears more snugly with her hoodie.

Morosely, she thought that the weather today was much like her own mood – dreary, dull and grey, with no hint of sunshine. Picking up pace, she trotted up to the cafeteria opposite the campus. This was the resident students’ favorite haunt for coffee, tea, breakfast, brunch and what have you.

Ditching her regular cappuccino, she chose to down a glass of iced tea instead. Bitterly, she hoped that this chill beverage would douse the fire which was raging in her heart. Absently munching on a warm, freshly-made bagel, she wondered what the day would have in store for her.

A lissome young woman; tall and stately, with auburn hair, Janet never failed to make heads turn. Multi-talented, she was also actively into dramatics and played the viola as well. Needless to say, she was one of the most popular girls in the campus. The perfect combination of looks and brains, she often intimidated guys her own age!

Today was different, though. The normally effervescent, outgoing, affable Janet was lost in her own world. The ice that was outside, she fancied, was inside her as well. She felt cold, lifeless and disinterested in everything; like someone had snuffed the very life out of her.

She walked down memory lane; revisiting a past that had so impacted her whole life. It was a similar winter morning in Millerton, a quaint little town just off New York city. She had spent eight years of her life there; a childhood filled with some great memories and some…. well…. not-so-pleasant ones.

Life in Millerton had been happy much of the time. That is, until one fine day, her father had announced that he was leaving her and her mother. He was an alcoholic and, after heavy bouts of drinking, would often beat up her mother. Her mother, a tolerant, soft-spoken woman, had begged of him and implored him to stay. But he had merely stood there, staring at her in that icy, spine-chilling way. Finally, not saying a word, he packed up his things and left their little home, abandoning them, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Janet’s mother took up a few odd jobs in order to make both ends meet. However, she was soon afflicted with cancer and eventually, the wretched malaise took her too. By the time Janet was ten years old, she was all alone in the world.

Janet spent the rest of her childhood moving from foster home to foster home. Fiercely independent and highly ambitious, she studied hard, always topping her class and eventually joined University on merit and full sponsorship from the prestigious educational institution.

Today, after a decade and a half, she was to meet that very man who had ruined her entire childhood; who had forced her to grow up all too soon; who had abandoned her when she needed him the most. She was to come face-to-face with the subject of her worst nightmares – her father!

Janet Prepares for the Face-Off

George Mullaway had enquired with friends and found out about his daughter. Regretting his past, he now wanted to make amends with her. On receiving his message, her first instinct was to say no to meeting him. But her friends advised her to go visit him; at least to hear him out and see what he had to say.

Snapping back to the present, Janet looked out of the café and thought of all those people enjoying the snowfall and having fun at the ice rink at the Rockfeller Center nearby. She herself felt none of that joy or enthusiasm – it seemed like a bid void within her was threatening to consume her at any moment.

She wondered at this love-hate relationship that she shared with her father – it was much like what she felt for this big bad city. She knew that, somewhere deep down, she loved her father, in spite of all that he had put them through. Yet, she could never bring herself to forgive him and accept him back into her life.

Similarly, she loved this city for the freedom, independence and anonymity that it offered her. Here, people were too busy to interfere in someone else’s life. No one bothered to ask her about her personal life.

Things would have been so different in Millerton – all the neighbors and their neighbors and their friends and their relatives would have kept poking their nose into her family’s affairs – they would have made life hell for Janet and her mother.

However, though she loved New York for granting her this quality of inconspicuousness and a certain degree of “invisibility”, she disliked the high level of materialism and fakeness here. Nothing seemed quite genuine and there was a level of artificiality in everything; most importantly, with the way people interacted with you out here.

Returning to the campus, she got into her car and drove to Bellevue Hospital. She was steeling herself to visit this man, who had brought her into this world, yet, was a perfect stranger to her. Walking on thin ice, fearing her own feelings and reactions, she entered the room George Mullaway was admitted in.

The Ice Melts

Their eyes met and the very next second, Janet felt a lump rising in her throat. Ambushed by a horde of mixed emotions, she proceeded toward his frail form lying on that bed. The sight that met her eyes now, was so different from that towering, heavily-built frame of steel! That haughty, icy glint in his eyes was now replaced by a tired, weary look.

Age had robbed him of his arrogance; ill-health had robbed him of everything else. He was now just a shadow of the man that she had feared so long. Looking at him, she only felt pity and also a deep sense of sadness at what could have been, had things worked out differently in their lives.

Weakly, he stretched his hands, beckoning her to come closer. Seating herself in a stool beside him, she took his wrinkled palms in hers. The floodgates opened up for both father and daughter and melted the thick walls of ice that they had built around themselves.

The duo stayed that way for several minutes, forgiving the past; celebrating the present; not worrying about the future. She gently stroked his head, smiling down at him lovingly. Looking up at her, he was amazed to see just how much she resembled her beautiful mother.

After what seemed like ages, Janet looked up and out of the window and smiled to herself. The dreary weather had brightened; the Sun had come out and the ice was now starting to melt….