The Late Matthew Brown. Paul Ketzle

even existed.

      Part I.

      one

      Commuters filed out of the terminal, many with the frantic look of those who have let time escape them. They spoke into their cell phones with a running staccato—yep, no, uh-huh, no way, sure, sure—as they wound through the impatient boarders, the well-wishers, the anxiously waiting friends and family. A red-headed woman in her pink blazer and retro cat-eye glasses stood slightly behind an elderly minister, stiff and collared and sucking on a piece of hard candy, or maybe a breath mint, while about his waist a troop of Brownies swarmed.

      A young girl walked out of the gate. Ratty overstuffed duffel slung across her back, thick hair pulled into tight, though unruly, braids. She matched her mother’s description over the phone to a tee—Faded denim jeans with a patch over the knee. Lips pursed and forehead wrinkled. Her expression, a mixture of interest and serious concern. She had refused to have a picture sent, insisting that our first glimpses had to be face-to-face. And in that moment, I remember thinking that she looked so completely like herself, like a celebrity whose face you’ll never mistake.

      Her airline chaperone asked me for some kind of identification, a license, a passport, any legal document at all, and then asked me to sign for her. As I did, I could not take my eyes off her.

      “Wow,” I said, once we were left alone. “Wow.” Nothing else came to mind. I opened my mouth, expecting, hoping something more natural or appropriate for a first meeting of father and daughter to emerge. All I managed was, “Look at you. You’re here.”

      “Yep,” she said, matter-of-fact, shrugging her shoulders and holding me in a steady, not unfriendly stare. “I’m here.”

      “Well, then,” I stammered. She was expecting something more, I could tell. I would have expected more in her place. Perhaps she was disappointed with me. Our first ever meeting, face-to-face. She let her expectations hang there, loose but close, like her carry-on. “So…,” I said, still searching. “Shall we….”

      “Close your eyes,” she said, abruptly.

      “What?” I laughed.

      “Just close your eyes. Please.”

      She seemed serious. Her voice held the unmistakable weight of command.

      “All right,” I said.

      All around me, I could sense the bustle of movement, a human energy. Somewhere close, the beep-beep of a tram carting perhaps some disabled person from one gate to the next. Someone laughed across the terminal, forceful and loud, but with little mirth. And I at once sensed that I did not know if she was still in front of me, or where she was at all. I imagined her using this moment to run off, hurrying off to a different gate with a ticket secretly stowed in her bag for the emergency return flight. Just in case.

      Finally, she asked, “What color are my eyes?”

      “Your eyes?”

      Her voice was still directly in front of me. Behind my eyelids, I could picture her clearly, a small form staring up in curiosity, her long brown hair, her green patched shorts, her fingernails bitten to the nub. Her eyes, though, were a complete blank. “Your eyes,” I said again.

      “Sure,” she said. “You were just looking right at me.”

      “Yeah, but…”

      “What color are they?”

      I’ve always hated tests, the bulging pressure of knowing something for certain—the shame of being wrong. In that moment, I saw eyes, of every sort and shade—peering, probing, various.

      “Brown,” I guessed.

      “You’re guessing.”

      “Green, then.”

      “They are not green.”

      “Blue?”

      I heard the disappointment in her sigh.

      “No. You were right the first time. They’re brown.”

      “Didn’t you say I was wrong?”

      “I said you were guessing. It doesn’t matter.”

      “Can I open my eyes, then?” I asked.

      “I’m sure you can….”

      I opened one eye in a squint to see her still standing in the same spot while the flow of the crowd streamed around us. “You sure you’re only twelve?”

      g

      In anticipation of my daughter’s first ever visit, I had purged my home, then restocked it with what seemed to me the more proper vestiges of fatherhood. At the used bookstore, I loaded up a hand cart with as many hard-bound and dusty classics as I could carry, a complete works of William Shakespeare in thirty-seven volumes, a Holy Bible the size of a phone book—items suggesting a moral fortitude and cultural grace that I thought best to pretend I possessed. From the bottom of the closet, I discarded all the automotive and semi-pornographic magazines; I placed all sharp objects high out of reach. I piled my low-grade alcohol into large crates and stored them in the basement, behind the exercise bike. Then I removed the exercise bike to a makeshift at-home gym, really just a converted shed, which I soon filled with free weights, a bench press, an 80-pound punching bag, and a used Nautilus, circa 1984.

      It was only a month-long visit. I figured I could assume the mantle of perfect fatherhood for that long at least. Lacking any experience with pre-teen girls, I called upon my closest friend, Janice, to counsel me.

      “You were a young girl once,” I said. “A while back.”

      “Thirty years ago. Thanks for reminding me.”

      “What do I do? I want to make a good impression.”

      “You should aim lower. Settle for a decent working relationship.”

      “I’m going to decorate a room just for her.”

      She sighed and said, “This can only end badly,” then hung up.

      I wanted to create a sense of belonging, the feel of home, despite the fact that we were total strangers to each other. I pillaged Toys R Us, absconding with a cart full of stuffed creatures. Hippos. Bears. Androgynous sprites. A case of dolls, some talking, some mute. Then, I acquired a bed to place them on, as much as a place for her to sleep, a pink and white floral canopy with matching comforter, dresser, chifforobe, hope chest and vanity. And flowers, flowers everywhere. Hand-painted, glow-in-the-dark stars and smiling planets decorated her ceiling.

      But with her first look at her room, my daughter just laughed.

      “You’re joking.”

      “No joke,” I said

      “What’d you do? Call in a cheerleading squad?”

      “I thought it was nice,” I said.

      “It is,” she said. “So very nice.”

      “I thought you’d like it.”

      She paused, fixing me with her stare, as if still trying to sum me up. She put a hand on my forearm.

      “I can see this is going to take some work,” she said with a heavy sigh, pushing me back out of the room and closing the door between us.

      g

      My daughter’s name is Hero.

      There is no part of that sentence I feel any responsibility for, but some things simply cannot be helped. The subtle events of life, those small, unnoticed moments that at the time seem so remote, come back to you in the most unexpected and frightening ways. Past overtakes present. It returns in the form of twelve-year-old girls who look upon you with pursed lips and oh-so-skeptical frowns; who avoid your eyes when you walk into a room; who stand noticeably apart from you reading grocery store tabloid banners, laughing quietly to themselves without sharing the joke, while you hunt frozen dinners and avoid the prying disapproval