What Christine Harris Regrets The Most

It was the middle of the night. It was the time for tranquillity. It was a perfect opportunity for her to lie down and not think for a bit. The perfect opportunity for her to be selfish. She didn’t have to think about him, not right now. Her skin itched and her hands figetted as she checked the clock every few minutes, desperately hoping for time to pass faster.

When morning comes, she thought to herself, I’ll be able to think. It’s too late for thinking and too dark for any bright ideas. 

She was right. No bright ideas sparked inside her. Grief worked like that, I guess. It simply dimmed.

Christine flipped the switch to her nightlight against better judgement, scrambled for her glasses, and grabbed the ring she had earlier placed on the edge of her nightstand. It was clear that she did not want it near her. Possibly because she thought it would infest her dreams, turning them into nightmares. That ring haunted her unlike any ghost ever could.

She never thought about it because she wanted to, no. The image of it weaselled into her mind every time she took a look at the empty apartment around her. God, why did I decide to sleep here? She asked herself after she woke and before she slept.

The whole arrangement felt forced. For Christine, at least. Her mother got the better end of the unwanted deal. She was away, in Hawaii, posting about it constantly. Most of the time, it felt as though she was rubbing it in Christine’s nose.

Ha, Chris imagined her mother saying. I’ve moved on. What are you still doing wallowing in that apartment? Don’t tell me you haven’t left it this past week. Their relationship had always been like that. If Christine had in fact left the flat and went out for coffee, the imitation of her mother that lived in her head would have shamed her for moving on too fast. There never was a right move to make when you’re in a stalemate.

Pushing all thoughts out of her foggy mind, Christine slipped the ring over her finger and moved her hand around, watching the fluorescent light capture certain angles of it. If there wasn’t so much history, maybe she would have worn it more often. It was a pretty ring after all. But it was not as pretty of a story as it seemed. 

Her sister always wanted that ring. Even if Christine was the oldest, Clare was always to inherit that piece of her parents’ history. Christine had never even put up a fight. Why would we argue over the materialisation of a broken promise, Clare? Riddle me that.

Unfortunately, the ring was mentioned strictly under Christine’s part of the will. The rest of her father’s assets were to be divided equally. At the will reading, Clare stormed out when she heard of her father’s change of heart. That left Christine and her mother to argue over the apartment. Neither wanted them, only one of them took it. After that, Christine didn’t bother fighting over the rest of the ‘assets.’

At first, she felt cruel. Her father had died and the only bit of remorsement anyone could pinpoint was at the funeral. She went cold after that. No calls answered, no texts received. Even now, as she was toying with the ring on her finger, she did not feel as if she was grieving. The denial was felt before he died and the acceptance soon thereafter. 

“He proposed to my mother with this ring,” she said to the darkness. “She said no. But he kept it. He even told Clare and I that it was always in the pocket, as if he knew she’d say yes if the moment was right. A year after his proposal was rejected, my mother proposed to him. Of course, he said yes. It only occurred to him later that he hadn’t given her the ring. Personally, this is when I think he began to keep it in his pocket.

“My father had problems with telling the truth. As though it physically hurt him. Six-year-old me and four-year-old Clare would ask where he was and why he came back so late, so ruffled, and he’d say he was seeing a friend. My mother would ask why he had so many business trips all of a sudden, he said it was because he was due for a promotion. 

“He told us the same excuses for years. The more confident he got that we wouldn’t catch him, the more extravagant the lies would become. When I was twelve, I found thirty inconsistencies in his stories that year. I think I set a record. 

“On my parents’ 20th anniversary, my mom was lying with her head in my dad’s lap and all of a sudden she asked him where that ring was, the one he proposed with. She said she wouldn’t mind if he gave it to her, specifically stating that it would be nice to replace the memory of it with a better one. My dad didn’t have it. My mom wasn’t too torn up about it.

“A week later, I was at the park with a few friends and I saw him sitting there with a woman. I excused myself from my friends and I went to see what he was doing. He introduced her as Maria, his co-worker. She shook my hand, smilingly telling me that my father talks about me so often. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe him. But then my eyes caught on the ring on her finger. The one my father had bragged about to Clare and I.

“It ruined me.”

She pulled the ring off of her finger and threw it across the room, feeling the same dysphoria she felt a few years ago. That day, that night. She got home and walked her feet off, pacing in her room. What was the right thing to do? Was it the honest thing? Was the honest thing the wrong thing to do? How many people did she need to hurt?

Her father’s car pulled up late that night. Luckily for him, Clare was at some school-mandated art exhibition, as was Shayla, his wife.

“What the fuck was that, Dad?” Christine spat. “What the literal fuck did I go through? I shook hands with that woman. She knew my name and I learned hers. How fucking crazy is that for a second, I thought I could like her? I thought I could like the woman that turned out to be your fucking mistress.”

“Chrissy, please calm down,” he said. His voice did not come out as Christine expected it to. It was cold, it was commanding, and it was not her father. He wasn’t pleading for her to calm down, he was telling her to do it.

“What am I supposed to tell Mom? What if she asks how my day was, huh?” She felt crazy. “Do I just skip over the part where I met Maria, your ‘co-worker.’ Do I, Dad?”

“Christine.”

“John.”

“I need you not to tell your mother.” 

“Why?” Christine had crossed her arms so firmly over her chest. “Why do I owe that to you, after–what–years of lies and money spent on fancy hotel rooms for Maria and now family trips? What makes you entitled to mercy?”

He hit her. Over the cheek with the back of his hand. The hit was so forceful that it knocked Christine down to the floor. And that was when she met her father for the first time. Fuck the romantic mask he had been wearing. Fuck the father figure. This was a monster. The worst part was believing he had always been that. People don’t turn into monsters overnight.

Everything crumbled. It was as though nothing could be put back together. The puzzle pieces were muddled, and the picture she was basing everything off of broke into small shards of glass. Everything hurt, every word pierced. She couldn’t help but recall all the moments in the past where her father had been as serious as he was that day. As threatening.

Was he always able to hit her? His daughter? Throw her across the room like she threw his ring? Every day since that one, she felt like it was her fault. She prompted him, didn’t she? What else could he have done? On the Sundays that they went to church, she stayed late, confessing and crying and trying to repent.

Nothing worked. What Christine Harris regrets the most was not her fault.