Page 38 of Pity Party

“Did she want to abort me?” Sammy’s voice quivers.

“The topic of abortion was never brought up,” I tell her honestly. “I think your mom wanted to want you.”

“Like I want to have straight A’s, but I’m not willing to do the work to have them?” Bingo.

“The difference is that you’re smart enough to get straight A’s. I’m not sure Beth’s organic makeup would have ever allowed her to be the kind of mother you needed.”

“So, you got stuck raising me on your own.” Sammy sounds so defeated.

“I know you feel rejected, honey,” I tell her, “but I always wanted you, and I’ve always felt like the luckiest man in the world that I get to be your dad.”

She sniffles quietly while trying to get a grip on her emotions. My wanting Sammy is a conversation we’ve had dozens of times, and no matter how often we talk about it, she can never seem to fully accept the magnitude of my truth. I need her like I need air to breathe.

“I never even got to know my other grandparents,” she says. Beth’s parents died in an airplane crash during our junior year of college. I’ve often wondered if that horrific event didn’t damage her in some irrevocable way. Sammy continues, “Maybe if I knew them, I wouldn’t be so sad about her.”

“Maybe,” I tell her. But the truth is that had Beth’s parents lived, she probably would have felt too guilty to leave us when she did. And I’m convinced that would have meant a harder ending for both Sammy and me when the time came.

Neither one of us says anything for several moments, when I point to a tree. And just like that, we fall into the rhyme game.

“Tree,” Sammy says.

“Me,” I reply.

“Bee.”

“Free.”

“Shopping spree!” she squeals excitedly before asking, “Are you going to drop me and Melissa off at the mall and pick us up later?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. “Is that what you want?”

She shrugs. “I’m happy to have you along, but you can’t act bored or ask if we’re almost done every two minutes.”

“Does that even sound like me?”The answer is yes.

“You are the world’s worst clothes shopper,” she tells me. “Grandma has had to take me for every important purchase because you tell me that everything looks fine and if I like something in one color, I should buy it in six so that we can be done shopping.”

“Ido that?”

“Dad.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Sam. I promise that tomorrow I’ll act like I have all the time in the world, and I won’t hurry you in any way.” It may kill me, but I’m committed.

“We’ll see.”

When we get back to our house, Sammy declares, “Let’s put our swimming suits on and go down to the dock.”

“What about supper?” I ask.

“We can have a bowl of cereal when we come back up to the house.” Cereal for supper is one of our guilty pleasures.

Sammy and I spend nearly three hours down by the lake. While we jump in and out of the water, she tells me everything about her day. And a lot of what she talks about is Melissa.

“Did you know that Melissa was engaged, and her fiancé died in a car crash?” she asks.

“That’s very sad,” I say before asking, “Was that recently?”

“Three years ago. He hadn’t asked her yet, but he was going to. His mother gave Melissa the ring at his funeral.”

---