Act I: Scene I
I can't believe he's gone. We hadn't talked in two years, but now... now I'll never get the chance to apologize. Now it didn't matter whose fault it was. I just wanted to hug my daddy, but I can't, because he's gone.
And now I was standing in front of the house I grew up in, and I was afraid to go in. What would l I find? Would the pictures of us still be on the walls? Did he take them down when I left, after I threw one of them at him? Before I left and never came back?
I needed to go in. The lawyer was waiting, with my father's will. He said it was important I hear it. I doubted that he left anything to me. I knew he probably gave it all to the university he worked for, or maybe a museum. My father studied Shakespeare religiously. He taught at Boston University, and worked part time for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in the Shakespeare section, obviously. He even had a doctorate in Shakespeare. His work drove my mother away, and, years later, me as well.
My mother was a florist. She knew all kinds of stuff about plants, and she taught me their meanings and when each one would bloom. Which ones preferred direct sunlight and which ones liked the shade. When I was young, I adored my mother. The flowers in her greenhouse at work were like magic to me, and it was where I spent most of my time. My father was too busy to have a child underfoot.
As time went on, my mother swore up and down that my father was cheating. Before she left, she told me all about how he would disappear for hours at a time. He wasn't at work like he said, she would say. She had called both the university and the museum. He was just... gone. And when she asked my father, he told her he couldn't tell her. What a stupid excuse. He could have at least made up a story, at least to make her stay.
I wasn't sure if I believed that my father would cheat, but I blamed him for letting her leave. Because she wasn't just leaving him. If that had been all, I would've gotten over it. But she left me too. At fourteen years old, my mother left me, just as I was beginning to need her the most. I didn't even get a chance to get into the 'hating my mother' phase. And she wasn't around to blame, so I turned to the next closest person.
Now, seven years later, it felt so silly that I let affect me so much. It seemed horrible now that he was gone. What was the point in letting something that my father loved get in the way of our relationship? Why couldn't I just have liked it too? Now that he was gone, there were so many things I knew I could have done to fix things, and now it was too late.
Maybe I didn't even blame my mother that much, even if, in my heart, I knew she was wrong. But now it didn't matter. Now... now everything is different.
I took a deep breath and walked up the stone steps. The door was shut tight. It would have been so much easier if the lawyer had left it open a crack. Then I could just push. Instead, I had to make the decision to turn the knob. It was much harder than I had thought it would be. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I pictured the inside of the house. His office, where I knew the lawyer was waiting, full of old books, with books about old William Shakespeare. And of course, all of his plays, in good condition, bad condition, in didn't matter to him. I remembered the smell though. Dusty, but in a good way. It smelled the way a book smells, the first time you crack it open. His office was a good place to curl up in. A good place to relax. Just that smell could comfort anyone.
The door screeched as I push it open. It always squeaked. I told him to get it fixed. Just some WD-40 and it wouldn't make noise anymore. Something so easy, I could have done it myself, but I just didn't want to. But he was always distracted with his books, and now it was too late. I shut it behind me and walked into the house. Nothing had changed, though I didn't know why I had expected it to. There I was, on the wall. That... that surprised me. After my mom left, he took down all of the pictures of her that we had anywhere in the house. I had thought he would've done the same when I left him. The second surprise came when I went to wet my lips and tasted salt.
