LISA
Many times in my life I felt unwanted, out of place in the worst way. I had a mum who tried, she really, honestly tried, but it just wasn't enough. She worked too much; she slept during the days because she was on her feet all night. Chit tried, but a girl, especially a lost girl, needs her father.
I knew Marco Manoban was a troubled man, an unpolished wanna-be man who was never pleased or impressed by anything I did. The little Lisa who was pathetic in the way she tried to impress the tall man whose shouts and stumbles filled the cramped space of our shitty house would be pleased at the possibility that the cold man isn't her father. She would sigh, grab her book from the table, and ask her mum when Christian, the nice man who made her laugh by reciting passages from old books, was coming over.
But Lisa Manoban, the adult woman struggling with addiction and anger passed down by the shitty excuse for a father she was given, is fucking livid.
I feel betrayed, confused as fucking hell, and fucking angry. It makes no sense, the cheesy plot of the switched fathers that every shitty sitcom uses couldn't possibly be my life. Buried memories resurface.
My mum, on the phone the morning after one of my essays was chosen for the local paper: "I just thought you would want to know, Lisa is brilliant. Like her father," she softly praised into the line.
I looked around the small living room. The man with the dark hair, passed out on the chair with a bottle of brown liquor at his feet, wasn't brilliant. He's a fucking mess, I thought as he stirred in the chair, and my mum quickly hung up the phone. There were numerous times like this,
too many to count, that I was too stupid, too young, to understand why Marco Manoban was so distant with me, why he never hugged me the way my friends' dads would their daughters. He never played baseball with me or taught me anything except how to be a fucking drunk.
Was all of that a waste? Is Christian Vance actually my father?
The room is spinning, and I stare at him, the man who supposedly fathered me, and I see something familiar in his eyes, the line of his jaw. His hands are shaking as he pushes his hair back from his forehead, and I freeze, realizing that I'm doing the exact same thing.