(CW: Self-Harm)
She lost her face somewhere in a dilapidated surgery room wedged in an alley beneath a throwback diner. It was the only part of the procedure she couldn’t perform herself. The cold, sharp knives took the dimples from her cheeks, the cleft from her chin, and the last sense of purpose that could be drawn from within herself.
What was left of that woman sank beneath the ocean. The official records told me she disappeared. I still blamed myself for not even remembering what year she ran away. I think that particular night I was lying in a ditch, aged moonshine coursing through my blood.
I never looked for her. Not like my wife did, anyway. I think losing her taught us what we were doing wrong. I started actually being a parent. Actually being a man. At least as far as I could understand what that meant.
But, the worst part was…I started to understand her sense of restlessness. I started to see the decay in our small town. The cigarette butts in the sidewalk, the fields strewn with broken automobiles, houses wedged in the armpit between the city and the country. I traced back the choices that led me here to this family and saw only voids where choices should have been.
So I waited until my last kid was old enough to survive alone.
And I got in my car, and I left.
—————
She had a nice car. Sleek but understated—at home on a drag strip or the parking lot of a fishing shop. And it hadn't had two of its doors sheared off by a collision with a guardrail like mine.
“Well?” The driver asked, “You gonna stare at me like a danglin’ trout or get in the car?”
“Oh, sorry, miss. If you could just drive me to the nearest town, that’d be lovely.”
She reached out and took my calloused, weathered hand in hers. She pulled me in and shut the door.
“Quite a nasty spin-out you had there. Lucky thing ya’ didn’t careen off the edge. Not even Rover here coulda pulled your sorry butt outta that gorge.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice. Lucky you came along so soon, too.”
“You plannin’ on getting a tow truck out here?”
“No point. That truck was nearly fallin’ off its hinges anyway. I just wanna get outta here."
“Can do. Hold on to ya’ dentures, old man.”
She slammed her foot on the accelerator, and the car shot like an arrow back onto the road. She whipped her wheel to the side, gliding smoothly around the next turn. She drove like she had somewhere to be, but I could see in her smile that this road was the only place she wanted to be—flying like the wind down its coal-black asphalt.
I shouldn’t have known it was her. Her eyes were green where they used to be brown. Her hair was blonde now, flinging wildly through the air as she drove. Her white shirt cuffed off the shoulder and gold necklace were more expensive than the tuition for her old high school.
But I saw the way she gripped the wheel like it was the only thing left in the world. The way her voice flowed like a brook over pebbles. They were the parts of my daughter a knife couldn’t erase. The parts no father could ever forget.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I eventually said.
“Esther,” she replied.
It was a surprise, but not one that made me doubt what I knew in my heart. She didn’t ask my name. I guess there was no point looking for answers you’d already found.
Whenever we could hear each other over the roar of the engine, we passed the time with small talk. The conversation hummed like a fiddle string over its soundboard, never quite reaching the most important subjects.
I sank into the passenger’s seat, waiting for that string to snap.
Soon, the wheels rolled to a stop. I rose in my chair and peeked over the dashboard. She’d parked the car by a viewing platform, revealing the quilt-like mountains on the horizon beyond the windshield.
Esther rested her hand on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Her hair had fallen over her face, shielding her eyes from me. A faint scowl played on the corner of her lips.
They slowly opened. A hoarse whisper emerged.
“Far from home, ain't ya', Dad?”
And the checkered flag came out.
“The whiskey didn’t taste so sweet no more,” I said. “Not since you left. What the hell've you been doing?”
“A lot. But I’ve been working as a makeup artist lately," she said, "For a film company, so I'm traveling all over the country."
"I never knew you were any good at makeup," I said, scratching the stubble on my chin.
"Never had time for gettin' dolled up," Esther said, "Not while lookin' after all o' your children."
My hand twitched, wanting to reach for the door. It was an embarrassing thing to feel like less of an adult than your own child.
"I paid for it," I said. "Sent them all to good colleges. It was hard. Both of us had to work for the money, but—"
"Y'think I give a hoot anymore?" Esther said. "I changed my name for a reason."
"You never think about going back?"
"Have you?"
My dry throat couldn't find any words. I thought of the faces of my wife, my children. The dilapidated swingset in the back yard where'd I'd spent my formative years. But none of it meant anything. The entire time, I was always waiting for something to change.
"I should have been a better father," I said, "But I couldn't handle it. To have everything I was supposed to want—that should have satisfied me. But I was still unhappy."
Esther finally locked eyes with me.
"Some of us aren't born to settle down. We're born to ramble."
"Same as you, huh? I suppose you ain't met a nice man yourself?"
"None worth parking this car for."
"Hmm. Rover, you said?"
"Named it for a man, actually. One who was always running from something. Reminds me of myself."
I finally gazed at the floorboards of the car. They were covered in business cards, receipts from various dives, and travel brochures, but rather than a trash heap, it looked like a scrapbook.
"...I don't suppose you'd ever forgive me," I mumbled.
"Sarah Marie Smith doesn't. But, crazy as it sounds, Esther here's willing to try."
Esther gave me a smile. It was the same one my wife had stopped giving me years ago.
“You wanna know what I found out a while ago?” Esther said. “It was never that mud pit of a town I was sick of. It was me.”
I could hear a stark gravity in her tone. I turned in my seat to face her.
"What are ya sayin'?"
"I thought leaving that town would make me happy, but it didn't. Cause it was still the same old me rattlin' around in here. That me that was just scared and confused, reaching for something I couldn't grasp, not realizing that the secret was right there inside me."
"And...that secret...?"
"Just a little somethin' called self-respect," Esther said, her cheeks seeming to glow. "The knowledge that I knew who I was and liked it. That's why I changed my name. Not to hide who I was but to show it to the world."
She reached out a hand. Without thinking, I reached up and grasped it. I'd forgotten how much I'd missed holding hands with my daughter.
"So, I'd like to know somethin', old man."
She fired a reckless grin.
"Who are you?" -----------
Tucked beneath an old throwback diner in an alleyway, I found a dilapidated surgery room. The doctor was covered in tattoos and looked like he could crush my skull with his pinkie finger, but I still faced him confidently.
"Hey, hate to bother ya', but do ya' keep records of your patients' faces here?"
He frowned at me from behind a desk that clearly used to be a blackjack table. His fists clenched on its surface.
"I could slit your throat for asking that," he said. "This stuff's strictly off the record. Why do you want to know?"
"Ah, sorry. I was just hoping to see my daughter's face again," I said. "In that case, how much to borrow one of your knives."
The burly man's hard stare softened. I wondered how many people like me had came by his establishment. He sighed and held a scalpel over the desk.
"Keep it if you want. It's on the house."
I nodded. I took the scalpel and stepped out into the city streets. Seas of people flooded down the sidewalk and the street, merging into one seamless mass. From afar, they lost any semblance of their identity.
I sat on a brick staircase and watched them pass, hat pulled over my eyes. The scalpel flipped and spun between my fingers.
Slowly, a hand slipped up and pressed the blade to my cheek. Beads of blood started to form and drip down the scalpel.
I could feel her smile in its kiss.