He answered:
“She had traits that later became harmful.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing what she would do.”
His son nodded.
“Do you regret marrying her?”
The father looked toward the window.
“If I say yes, it sounds like I regret years that included people I loved.”
“If I say no, it sounds like I’d accept what happened again.”
He smiled sadly.
“So the answer is complicated.”
His son laughed.
“Classic Dad.”
The father continued:
“I regret not seeing sooner.”
“I regret what she did.”
“I don’t regret loving her when I believed the relationship was good.”
His son nodded.
“Do you hate her?”
“No.”
“Did you ever?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“A while.”
The son stirred his coffee.
“I don’t hate her either.”
The father looked toward him.
“I used to think that meant something was wrong with me.”
“No.”
“I know now.”
They sat.
The son said:
“I remember that dinner.”
The father became still.
“Yeah?”
“Not everything.”
“What do you remember?”
“The chicken.”
The father almost laughed.
“Seriously?”
“It smelled really good.”
Then:
“I remember being scared you would believe her.”
The father’s throat tightened.
His son continued:
“When you put food on the plate, I still thought maybe you were only doing it because you were home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought after you left again she’d tell me you changed your mind.”
The father looked down.
He had never known that.
His son smiled faintly.
“But then you came upstairs.”
“That’s what I remember most.”
Not confrontation.
Not the marriage ending.
The father coming upstairs.
Listening.
The son continued:
“I think that was when I started believing you might actually believe me.”
The father looked toward him.
“You never needed to earn that.”
“I know now.”
Both men became quiet.
Then the son smiled.
“You cried a lot.”
The father frowned.
“I was composed.”
“You were a disaster.”
“Revisionist history.”
They laughed.
That was how the old wound existed now.
Not gone.
Integrated.
Sometimes funny.
Sometimes sharp.
No longer controlling the room.
Years later, when the father was seventy-six, a small stroke forced him into rehabilitation.
Nothing devastating.