They say he died peacefully in his sleep— a heart attack. I had hoped his demise would be long and agonizing— that intolerable old man.

His lawyer gave me the key to his home and three days to remove “sentimental items” before the estate sellers arrived Monday morning.

The large oak door of my old room offered the sound of neglect. A resounding creak shuddered through the hall. Within its walls, I found the remnants of a bitter childhood— the unswept air resting on the back of the tongue. I reserved a moment for my eyes to wander. In the corner of the room, on a short pine shelf with golden trim, lie my collection of feminist novels hidden between copies of Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. In high school, my teacher asked us to write a persuasive letter to anyone we wished. I wrote a letter to my father, quoting Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, requesting he allow me to attend the senior prom on account of my autonomy as a young woman. I never gave him the letter, only imagining the outrage it would provoke. My teacher gave me an A.

Kneeling beside the short wooden shelf, I reached for the thin copy of A Room of One’s Own I stole from the library when I was 12. My fingers, now worn by nearly thirty years of motherhood and ambition, shook with the lingering spirit of resentment. I tightened my grip around the paper spine and set the book down in the cardboard box labeled “keep,” sitting on the rose-printed duvet beside me.

Downstairs I unlocked the door to my father’s study— the first time I’d held the key without him towering behind my shoulder. I was overcome by the smell of whiskey breath and fresh cigars. I closed my eyes, and suddenly I was six, sitting on my father’s knee, trying to read the documents he was signing on his desk. My back was warm from my father’s chest and the fireplace glowing behind us. I looked up at his face, admiring the wrinkles of concentration burrowing into his forehead. “Daddy, I want to be a writer when I grow up.”

“Now why on earth would you do that Elsie,” his voice was rigid; his eyes remained fixed on the documents. I remembered him muttering, “what an obnoxious idea,” as he returned to his work.

When I opened my eyes, I was staring at the red leather chair shoved beneath his desk. I began searching through the wide drawers on each side. From the bottom left drawer, I removed a pile of tax documents, the deed to the house, and my mother’s death certificate. Two sheets of paper fell from behind the stack. I crouched down and picked them up from the cold wooden floor. The first was a letter I had not seen in 27 years. It began, “Dear Father,” with a large red “A” inscribed on the top-right corner of the page. The paper was worn by the oil of fingertips and palms, grasping to read and reread. On the second paper— a letter— addressed to me in my father’s script. I caught only the last line before warm tears flooded the edges of my vision, “And all you wanted to do was dance.”

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.