A Knot in the Wood Analysis - Essay Example

?A Knot in the Wood Uncharacteristically, my father was nervous around me. He stared into his espresso rather than my face. It was the first time he’d visited me in New York and we hadn’t been alone in a room since last year when he helped me pack for grad school. I shivered as I remembered how he had paused before folding each article of clothing, the grimace he wore whenever he tucked something into my suitcase. Since he arrived yesterday, he spent the majority of time alone in his hotel and, like a doomed blind date, preferred to meet in public. We sat in an old cafe in the West Village, an easy walk from NYU. Last week, an airline special caught his eye and I had to cancel my plans to accommodate his last minute trip. I was supposed to be in Vermont with my boyfriend Josh, who took his roommate instead. At first, I had felt ambushed, but then I remembered who my father was; or, rather, who he wasn’t: not spontaneous, impulsive, or effusive. Dad hadn’t been to New York since his honeymoon and he kept pointing to buildings to explain their architectural significance, starting sentences that trailed off like dust behind a car. He wouldn’t commit to anything, like seeing a play, walking through Central Park, or spending a day at the Met. All the tourist things my classmates did with their parents. People said grief aged you, but not my father, still handsome with a full head of salt and pepper hair. He looked too young to have a daughter in her mid-twenties; too young to be a widower. Hunched over his coffee, he asked how school was going. “I’m taking a series of art history because there’s this program in Barcelona. I thought maybe I could spend a semester there.” “It’s far away.” He had said the same thing about my summer trip to Amsterdam. When I finally got around to sending him the package of souvenirs along with a stack of snapshots, he offered a terse thank you and said I looked too thin in the photos. Now here he was. I glanced around the cafe. We were upstairs in a window seat, and I took turns watching the customers downstairs and the pedestrians on the street. The weather turned last night, and that afternoon everyone was bundled in hats and scarves. Wind blew garbage and leaves down the street. Halloween decorations still hung in a few shop windows. Below, two men stood on a corner, both smiling. I could see their breath when they spoke. I felt that nagging guilt that I shouldn’t have chosen a school so far away. I had stayed close for college, a two-hour drive away, so I could come home at least one weekend a month. It had been just the two of us from the start. I underestimated how hard it would be on him. “Is that why you came? You want me to transfer?” “No. Absolutely not. But you should come home for the holidays.” “I’ll be home for Christmas.” He closed his eyes for a moment as though he was in pain or trying to remember something. “Dad?” His eyes popped open and for the first time since he’d been in town, I felt like he was really looking at me. I watched as he took in my face. Even though he didn’t say it anymore, I knew he was thinking of how much I looked like my mother. It was difficult being a carbon copy of someone who was dead. His face relaxed and now it was I unable to meet his eyes. I rotated my cup, swishing my coffee to even out the sugar before taking a sip. Maybe I should have dyed my hair brown or red--anything but my mother’s blonde. “Do you want to take a walk?” he asked. I inventoried his clothes: a sweater but no jacket. I doubted he had packed gloves or a scarf. “It’s getting cold. You think you’ll be warm enough?” He nodded. “I can always buy something.” We rose from our chairs and shuffled our way down the stairs. My father held the door for me, ushering me into the cold. My hair whipped around my face and I wrestled on my hat, a pale green felt one my father had sent in a care package. He smiled. “I’ve always liked you in that color.” “Thanks. Let’s take Fourteenth Street,” I said and pointed to the crosswalk. We grew used to the chill and our legs marched in a matched rhythm. I almost pointed out the bar where I got so drunk I sang to “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” to Josh in front of the whole room. We kept walking, even though I didn’t have a clear destination in mind, until the sun slipped into the river. He stopped and pointed to the enormous moon filling the space between the buildings. It was gorgeous, but my eyes returned to him. Growing up, I was sustained by moments like this. Small instances when my father would take me aside and point to something as though he and I were the only ones able to see it. But tonight as I stood next to him, all I could see were the other people on the street--a guy selling small portraits of film noir vixens, a couple haggling prices with him, and an old man with his dog perched on a set of brownstone stairs. I pulled his arm around me, hoping the weight of his hand on my shoulder would make me feel less alone. He pulled me closer and wrapped both arms around me. In this position, I could be four, ten, or twelve years old. “Hungry?” he asked. I stood still for a minute, allowing my body to rest next to his without any space between us. When I nodded, he stepped away and I was on my own again. We turned around and walked toward Washington Square. I knew we were headed in the right direction, but I grew more disoriented the longer we strolled. Casually, I suggested we took a right and then a left to diversify our walk. My father smiled and followed me. I thought, is he pleased to not have to make a decision? Now that it was dark, the streets began to fill up with people and finally we hit a street I recognized, Barrow, but I concealed my relief. We turned and for a moment I was certain we were on the right path, but the street curved and suddenly we were on another street, Commerce, which was unfamiliar. My father squinted and paused, and I was sure he’d figured out that I was bullshitting my way through Greenwich Village, a complete fraud of a tour guide. Instead, he smiled. “This is what you had in mind?” He asked, pointing to a door across the street. The windows were fogged up from breath and heat, and I could make out the figure of a man hovering over a seated couple. It was a restaurant and my eyes searched for a sign on the awning or door. I spotted it, small letters spelling out Grange Hall. I nodded. We crossed the street and scanned the framed menu. “This looks perfect. I love pork chops,” he said. I smiled as he opened the door, happy he was pleased. We walked past the burdened coat hooks, and I struggled to add my jacket to the heap as my father requested a table. When I joined him, I was shocked to see the host, an attractive woman with short brown curly hair, flirting with him. She looked like she could be in her early to late forties, the age where all women looked the same to me. As usual, he didn’t seem to notice. I claimed my place next to him and the host ignored me and kept chatting with my father, asking if we’d like to wait in the bar. They’d have a table free in a few minutes. We walked the two yards to the bar and I ordered a gin and tonic and my father took the stool next to me, ordering a dirty martini. The bartender placed our drinks in front of us. Dad paid and raised his glass to me. I clinked mine against his. He glanced around the room and said, “This was a good choice, sweetie.” We sipped our drinks until the host fetched us and I watched her smile at my father as she escorted us to a corner booth. I looked out the window in time to see the rain start. Our waiter brought us menus, water, and warm bread. “Would you like wine?” Dad asked. He’d kept his smile since he walked through the restaurant door. “Sure.” “Good.” He flipped through the wine list and settled on a red from Oregon. I’m not sure what kind. I evaluated the menu, reading the list of homey foods like chicken and steak. The waiter came and my father ordered a salad, his promised pork chops and mashed potatoes. I ordered the same thing because my dad made it sound so good. I rested my back against the booth and wondered if this is what my parents’ life was like before she became pregnant with me. If they went out much. If he smiled like this. The rain gained momentum and splattered the window. The waiter delivered the wine and filled our glasses. I’d had wine before, but not light and smooth like that. After a few sips, I felt the heat in my cheeks and neck. I was warm as if we were sitting in front of a fire. “Lauren,” my father said. When I met his eyes, his smile was gone. “I need to ask you something and explain something to you.” I felt the heat leave my body. I didn’t want to know whatever he was going to tell me, but when I met his eyes, I knew I didn’t have a choice. “Okay, I guess.” “No, Lauren. Not a guess. This is very serious and I need you to be honest with me.” “Okay,” I said in a low voice. He reached out and squeezed my hand. “How much weight have you lost?” “Weight? You want to talk about my weight?” “Yes. You’re much thinner now. Too thin.” “I spent the summer in the Netherlands. All I did was ride a bike and flirt with vegetarianism. I’m fine. I went down a size but that’s not a big deal. I guess I’m losing my baby fat.” “You look like you went down two or three sizes.” “Dad, do you want to come here and look at the label in my shirt? It’s just a size. It’s no big deal.” “You need to be careful. Be aware of your weight.” He’d never spoken about my body before. Like most parents, he struggled to explain puberty, development and hormones, sex. “I don’t understand why we’re talking about this.” “It’s why I came. When I saw you in the photos--” “I mean it. I’m fine. It’s not as if I’m that small. There are plenty of girls much smaller than me.” “You’re eating? You have an appetite?” “I’m about to stuff myself silly with pork. I was a very unsuccessful vegetarian.” A trace of a smile appeared and then vanished. “I need to talk to you about your mother.” When he said that this was about my mother, I felt my hands relax, spreading open on the table like jellyfish. My teeth lost their clench. This wasn’t really about me; he was just freaking out about some memory. He’d done this before about my mother. I sipped my wine again, hoping to return some warmth to my skin. “Okay, what is it?” “Your mother.” “What about her?” “She didn’t die in childbirth.” I looked at him and couldn’t read his expression. “What do you mean?” “Your mother didn’t die delivering you. It was later. When you were one.” I didn’t know how long we stared at each other, but the waiter brought our salads. I stared at the lettuce; the baby leaves of fancy greens mixed with figs and goat cheese. My mother had a grueling labor that lasted for days. They couldn’t manage her pain; she had a failed epidural and grew so weak that she could no longer push. They ended up pulling me out in surgery. She lost a tremendous amount of blood. So much, my father had always told me, that she died. “What are you talking about?” I asked. He was quiet and I glanced around the restaurant wondering if I just screamed at him. I didn’t think I did because everyone was chatting and eating his or her food like nothing happened. He didn’t say anything, so I leaned closer and asked again, “What are you saying? If she didn’t die in childbirth, what did she die of?” I feel like a bird trapped indoors, flying around, crashing into windows. “I don’t know how to explain this, so just stay with me, okay?” He asked. His eyes were red and wet. “I’m doing the best I can.” My father has never said this to me before. I could see drops of sweat along his hairline and eyebrows. They clouded his upper lip and collected in that soft spot between his neck and collarbone. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. If she was alive for a whole year of my life, I would have remembered something about her.” “You were too young.” he says. “How could I forget her? She must have held me. That would have stayed with me somehow.” I blinked a few times so I wouldn’t cry. “Your mother had postpartum depression. She became obsessed with the weight she had gained in her pregnancy and she stopped eating. She went in and out of the hospital but nothing worked. Her anorexia was severe. Very severe. She starved to death.” I tried to keep listening but I felt like everything was pulled away from me, as I was caught in a riptide in the ocean. “So she never bonded with me?” “No, sweetie,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure that’s why you don’t remember anything about her.” I looked at my untouched salad. I wanted the food to go away. I wanted to be anywhere but here. “I took her to every doctor I could find. I was so confused by everything. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to eat. No one could. We’d get her weight up with a feeding tube but as soon as she came home, she stopped again.” “I wasn’t enough for her to live for? Her baby?” “Neither was I.” He stopped talking and took a sip of wine. “How could you lie to me all my life?” His eyes remained on his glass. Without a word, I grabbed my purse, inched out of the booth, and walked to the bar. “Can I bum a cigarette?” I asked the bartender. I had noticed the smell of smoke in his clothes. He handed one over and on the way out of the restaurant, I snatched my coat. It took four tries for me to light the thing and as the warmth filled my chest, I leaned against the wall. The awning was small and wasn’t much protection from the rain. If Josh were home, I would hail a cab and go there now. My father never told me much about her death, just enough for me to assemble a picture. I didn’t know much about my parents as people. I had asked repeatedly for stories, for the details that, when combined, might create a life. All I really know about my mother was her death after she brought me into the world. Now he was telling me that much wasn’t true. I inhaled the last of the cigarette. After tossing it onto the pavement, I stomped out the smoke with my shoe and went back inside. When I took my seat, my father said, “I didn’t know if you’d come back.” “I didn’t either.” The server swung by and asked if there was something wrong with our salads. My father shook his head and asked for more time to eat. He picked at a fig, disarticulating the seeds, peeling the fruit from the skin. Then he placed his fork down on his plate and looked at me. I wanted to believe this was harder for him than it was for me, but that couldn’t have been possible. He had the full story. He was the adult. He should have explained this to me once I was old enough to understand all of this. He looked up and met my eyes. “When I saw your picture, I was terrified that this was happening to you too. A doctor told me to keep an eye on you. Apparently, it can be hereditary. I panicked. I’m sorry.” “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” “I thought that it would have been difficult--and more damaging--for me to tell you the truth. I didn’t want you to grow up feeling unloved or unwanted. No one wanted you more than me.” I couldn’t control the tears now. My chin rested against my chest and I covered my face. I wished he had told me at home or in his hotel room or in my apartment. I couldn’t believe we were in this restaurant. I tried to be quiet. My dad squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. I worried my finger bones would snap like twigs. “I don’t understand any of this,” I whispered. I tried to free my hand, but I pulled it too hard from my father’s grasp and knocked over my glass of wine. It broke, sending shards into our salads. Wine seeped into the white tablecloth. The waiter hurried over. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s okay, the server said. “Don’t worry about it.” He stacked our plates, carried them to the kitchen, and came back for the glasses and tablecloth. The wood was exposed, the deep red of the wine darkening the center of the table. Dad wiped up the liquid with his napkin and ran his hand across the smooth surface. His fingers stopped at the knot in the wood. “Your mother was like this,” he said as he touched the dark circles of wood. “Most trees have knots, but not deep enough to break a branch. Sometimes the knot is so severe it destroys the tree. That was the case with your Mom. I didn’t want it to destroy you.” Our waiter returned and wiped the table clean. “Are you still hungry?” Dad asked. I couldn’t imagine eating. I shook my head. “Could you bring us our entrees to go and the check?” “No problem,” the waiter said. I felt the tears coming back and I didn’t know how I was going to face my classes on Monday. “Dad, when’s your flight again?” “Tomorrow night. At six or seven.” “I think you should change it and leave in the morning.” Startled, he looked at me. “If that’s what you want.” I nodded several times, first in agreement and then to soothe myself. I thought, that’s exactly what I want! The waiter brought the check and our wrapped pork chops. We walked outside and I slipped into the warm sleeves of my coat. We huddled under the awning until we saw a cab. The left side of my father’s shirt was wet from the rain. We crawled into the car. The floor was wet, covered in other passengers’ muddy footprints. My father instructed the cabbie to take us first to my apartment and then to the Washington Square Hotel. Once we were driving, I rested my head against the window, knowing the closeness I felt with him earlier today was gone. Now the feeling that we were the only ones in the world with one vision or image is too much. But this secret wasn’t like the moon. It was too big for me to see, too blinding. I wanted to grab his hand and hold on, hoping he would anchor me, would guide me through this. But we both knew it was too late for that. Read More