[twwm] illuse prompt 1 - former father

The house crested the short hill leading up to it, driveway covered in gravel that crunched under the tires of cars and hooves. The home I lived in was tall, imposing, something out of a Steven Spielberg movie. The balcony from the third story window always glimmered with dew in the morning, reflected from the window panes that were placed in the doors. A huge field stretched behind the porch that wrapped around the house, tall grasses, unharmed by a lawnmower. They waved gently in the cold breeze that whispered through the forest, tall trees swaying like dancers.

I was placing a stack of new canvases into the corner of the room when I heard the door open in the foyer. Besides the empty silence of the house, I had been alone all day in my studio, the stained-glass doors looking in on my creations. I arranged the canvases so they would not fall over, brushed my hands over an ages-old smock, and made my way downstairs. The wood creaked under my light tread, and I heard a voice call from the front door. “Dad?” I practically leapt down those stairs with joy when I realized it was her. My daughter, messy red hair, looking up as I bounded down the spiral staircase.

Her suitcases thumped to the ground as we embraced each other, laughing as I held her in my arms. I squeezed her tightly to me, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Sandra, honey...I’m so glad you’re home.”

“So, you finally fixed up the old place, huh?” She looked appreciatively at the ceiling, painted over with a fresh coat, cracks patched and all. Wiggling her way out of my arms, she walked around, observing. “I can’t believe how much work you’ve done,” her fingertips brushed over the walls, and she tucked a curl behind her ear, turning back to me with a big grin. “What’s for dinner?”

It was a few hours later when I started washing up the dishes, spaghetti sauce still coating the plates, singing along (badly) to the radio that I kept tuned to an oldies station. Sandra – Sandy, for short – sat on the counter, idly swinging her legs. “Why did you ask me to come visit, Dad?” She had picked up an apple and was tossing it from hand to hand. “Did you need help with the house?” I shook my head and sighed, toweling off my hands.

“I asked you to come stay because I need to discuss something with you.” Her gaze turned inward at the creaky, weary tone of my voice. A jazz ballad started to play on the radio, but I turned it down and cleared my throat. Unconsciously, my hands were fiddling with the dishtowel. “You know I’ve been getting older, that I’m not who I once was. You know that fixing up this old house has taken a toll on me. I raised you all by myself, Sandy." I look down and away from her, stricken eyes gazing at the ceiling like the answers exist there.

"Dad...what are you trying to say?" The apple had fallen from her hands, which now hung limply.

"I'm trying to tell you that I need to travel. I have the studio, and the canvases, but lately it seems like I've been getting too lost in my art. The creations have sucked me in, and I can't seem to stop painting. In front of my mind's eye there is a desert, full of rising red rock pillars, and cacti. Weeds tumble along the ground, dried and barren. Old rivers have long since evaporated, leaving behind nothing but the cracked beds they used to sleep in." My hands tremble slightly, and I press them together in a desperate urge to hide how much this unnerves me, makes me feel afraid and lost. "I need you to take care of the house, take up the mantle until I return."

I watch as her eyes widen, framed by the sprigs of strawberry hair. I start to speak, to open my mouth and defend my claims, but she simply exhales, long and quiet. "I know what you mean," is what she starts with. "I can't seem to stop writing."

I know Sandy is a journalist, that's her career. I remember spending long nights with my hands curled into my auburn hair, trying to make sense of everything she had written that day all over her school notes. I was both in one for her - the father and the mother - supportive, caring, kind, learning how to care for my young adoptive daughter. But I've never heard the weight of her voice like I hear it now.

"I know it's going to sound weird, Dad. I know I sound almost crazy every time I have to explain it to myself. But I swear I'm not pretending, not making any of this up. I can't stop writing about the artic, about the cold. The blizzard almost seems to live in my bones, these days."

The wind rattles the window frames at that moment, like a howling gale of a snowstorm trying to make its way inside. I look outside the window warily, afraid of seeing my world drowned in white snow, everything gone except for what was inside the house. The grass still stumbles gently over itself as the wind blows, but the sky is a bit darker.

Sandy continues, with a deep, trembling breath. I take her hand in support, and she squeezes it gratefully. "All I do these days when I sit down at my computer is write about someone - something - in a blizzard. They're hopeless and lost, searching for a way out of the storm that will lead them to salvation." There's a faraway look in her eyes as she speaks, and I can see she's going over every word she's written. I listen, and for a moment when her mouth open again to continue, I see a white cloud of warm breath.

"The storm continues through night and day, and the something is left alone. No one comes to save them, no one comes to help them. I can't write anything else. I make my hands type other words, but when I look back on the screen, it's always: "And there the whoops and whistles of the winds blew in front of me, revealing an imposing figure that I knew would be my end."" My daughter finishes her story, shaky and unsure. I hold her, gently, hugging her to me.

I am reminded of when she was small, and nightmares of her past homes plagued her. She is my little one, no matter how old she gets, and I will not allow her to be hurt. We've been standing here and holding each other for a long time now, and she squeezes me a final time. "I think I needed to get away for a bit, Dad. I'd be happy to watch the house for you while you travel."

I step back a little, now worried. "Are you sure you're going to be okay? From what you've told me, this thing sounds..." the word haunted almost slips past my lips, but I stop myself. "This sounds like something I could try to help you with." Sandy shakes her head. She looks halfway undecided, but something inside her is holding back.

"I came here to help you, to get away from my job for a bit. I need you to let me do that - let me take care of the house, be here in the summer months, be warm and in the room I grew up in." She takes my hands in hers, and hops down from the counter. "This is my house too, and you are my family. Go where you need to, Dad. You'll come back when you're ready." My eyes well with tears, and I can only stare for a moment before choking out my words.

"Sandy, you don't have to do this. You don't have to sit in this old house and be alone." I'm fully crying now, the tears dripping down my cheeks and to the end of my chin, warm tracks of ocean water. I don't even really know why I'm crying - my daughter has watched the house plenty of times before, while I was traveling for art galleries and showings. Somehow, this feels like a permanent goodbye. Suddenly, we're embracing, sobbing into each other shoulders. I stop crying before she does, instead hushing her gently, softly.

Again, I flashback into our shared past, the first few weeks of her living with me. She would come into my room every single night - although it took a while before she let me hug her. I knew when I adopted Sandy that it wasn't going to be easy to raise her. I knew she had suffered. But I was determined to help her, to be the father she never had, to be the father I never had.

The first few weeks were rough, for both me and her. She had nightmares every night, and would come into my room, crying as she is now, until she trembled with exhaustion. She had so much grief behind her eyes back then, a weight to the slant of the corners that conveyed everything she had been through, in words her child self could not express. While I had been lost in my reverie, Sandy had stopped crying as well. She leans on me for support, holding desperately onto my shoulders, like her hands can keep me rooted to the earth, stealing me away from the gravity that calls me to the desert.

We press our foreheads together, lightly, something she would do when she was younger, and unable to formulate words. I tell her I love her, that I have since I first brought her home, and that I will come back.

She blinks, silently, her eyes downcast, and then nods. "I love you too. I'm gonna take good care of the house for you, 'kay?" She steps away from me, her eyes reddened and puffy, and gives me a small smile. "Just come back home before winter, got it Dad?" I hug her to me one more time, and promise to come back before winter sets in.

In the morning sunlight, I say goodbye to my daughter and my house. She waves to me down the long driveway until I can't see her anymore. I don't know where I'm going once I hit the highway, instead just following some primal signal deep in my chest. Eventually, it leads me to a quiet desert town.

All the evenings spent in the sun painting mesas and meadows have freckled my pale skin, lightened my curly brown hair. I don't look the same as I did when I left a week ago. I step out of my car, into the dry air of a desert sunset, and walk into the run-down grocery store. It's the only one in town, and the hum of its buzzing neon calls me to it.

I wave to the attendant when I walk in. "Hey!" I smile, showing all my teeth, and the attendant looks up from a magazine, giving me the first genuine smile I've seen on my entire trip. After grabbing everything I need and paying, I head back out to my car.

I know I'm close to my destination when, on my way out of the town, I impulsively pull onto a dusty little side road - hardly even a road, if I'm being honest - and stop the car, getting out as the engine idles. Like a man possessed, I get my oils, my canvas, my easel. They're set up a few minutes later, awaiting me.

The sky is dusty with the blush of the sun melting and oozing underneath the horizon, and I begin to paint furiously. With a rush of adrenaline through my blood, brushstrokes begin to populate the canvas, and the scene takes shape. Large rocks rising to the left and right, covered in cracks and desert sand spilling over them, dry waterfalls of choking clay. The sun is watery on the horizon line, flattening like a pressed mango. Night falls over me in real time, but still I paint on.

I close my eyes, fearing the result, and my hand moves on its own, a figure coming to life in the middle of my work. A large, camel shaped creature, smoke writhing from incense sticks coming out of its hump. I correct myself without thinking about it. Her hump. Undoubtedly, this creature on my canvas in front of me - large, doleful eyes with warm and spicy smelling incense smoke collecting around legs covered in shaggy fur. The proud head, coated in a mane of messy crystals and collected flecks of light that reflect and refract the sunset in mind-bending colors and catastrophes.

Lowering my brush, exhausted, I refuse to look at the canvas any longer. I place it on the trunk of my car, and when I turn back around, the creature is there. She is framed by the night sky, and stands close to me. This is when I know I won't be home to my daughter by winter. The smoke begins to fill my nostrils, enveloping me in a sickly sweet cloud of slippery smoke, and I'm gone.