My father’s back was turned to me as he stared out of his office window. He turned to face me when the door clicked shut. “Gabrielle, thank you for coming.”
Of course he would treat me like just another client. Same shit, different day. At least he gave me a quick hug before he motioned to the same client chair that I’d been seated in for our blowout the week before.
“You didn’t leave me with much of a choice, Dad. You said it yourself. You told me to be here. You weren’t asking.” I crossed my arms and put one leg over the other as I leaned back and settled in for the inevitable lecture.
“That may be true, but can’t I express gratitude to my daughter for taking the time out of her busy schedule to come and see me?” The emphasis he’d put on the word busy had me bristling, and I hadn’t even been in there for longer than a minute.
I sighed and took my turn staring out the window to the practice field below. “I don’t need gratitude, Dad.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. What you need is your line of credit reopened.” There was a hint of something in his voice, though I couldn’t place it. It sounded too much like sadness. Or regret. But that couldn’t be right. He was probably just tired from all of his meetings.
“That’s not why I came. Thank you for reopening it, though.”
Big girl panties, Gabrielle. I was proud of my answer.
“You know, I was thinking about your mother earlier. Before you came in.” As always, the mere mention of her had caused a lump the size of Texas to form in my throat and tears to sting the back of my eyes.
I swallowed. The lump didn’t go anywhere. “You were?”
“Yes. I know that you think that law school was all my idea. It wasn’t. I know that I’m the one who’s been pushing you into it all these years, but she wanted it too. Before she left, before she...” His voice trailed off, but it didn’t break. There was no emotion in it, not really.
His words took me by force. “Really? She wanted me to go to law school?”
“Yes. Well, maybe not law school in particular, but she did mention once that you’d be an excellent lawyer. She wanted you to have a profession that would allow you to be an independent woman. Law is the profession that you chose, Gabrielle. Albeit with a little nudge from me—” My disbelieving laugh cut him off.
“A little nudge? Is that what it was, Dad?” It had been a shove. Right off the edge of a cliff. There had been no alternative route for me off of that cliff. My dad had blocked them all. So I took the only route available and tried my best to brace for the fall. I was still doing just that.
“Yes, Gabrielle. You wanted law school. You wanted the bar. You wanted to be a lawyer. If you would look past your anger and resentment towards me, you would see that. You need to see that for yourself.”
“Yes, Dad, I do. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” It took everything that I had to keep my voice steady.
“No, what you’re doing is throwing a tantrum and putting your future at risk. You need to finish what you started, Gabrielle. Your mother would have wanted the same thing.”
That was it. I wasn’t going to sit there calmly as he told me what my mother would have wanted. “How would you know what she would have wanted? You were never around! You were always too wrapped up in this dumb team!” Tiny explosions of rage roiled in my stomach and shot up my spine.
My father’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he had the nerve to look like he was somehow the one in pain. “I work hard, Gabrielle. I always have. And that’s exactly what you need to be doing.”
“You keep saying need. What makes you think for one second that you know what I need?”
The accusatory tone of my voice made the muscles in his jaw clench, but then he took a deep breath and threw his hands out in a simple gesture.
“Because I’m your father, Gabrielle.” He said it in a way that made it seem like that simple fact was the answer to everything. Like he simply expected me to say, ‘Oh, well, in that case...’
“You are,” I said. “Yet you make me make appointments with you and then force me sit outside and wait for the exact time of the appointments, but your players are, and I quote, welcome to pop in anytime. Don’t start acting like the fact that you’re my father means anything now.” My throat burned. My eyes stung. I took a few calming breaths.
My father had the good sense to look somewhat contrite. His tone was borderline patronizing when he spoke again, however, so I guessed that the contrition had been short lived. “The players are a part of my work, Gabrielle. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know. And your work always comes first. It always has.” I crossed my arms over my chest again, trying to protect my heart from whatever he was about to say.
“No, that’s not true. You come first, Gabrielle. Why do you think I’m trying so hard to make you see that not taking the bar exam is a mistake? But I can’t exactly stop working until you come to that realization. So yes, the players, who are part of my work, have access to me while I’m here. At work.”
“Stop saying work.” It dawned on a small part of me that he was right. About the work thing and the fact that the players were a part of it. It didn’t mean that I had to like being kept waiting and having to schedule appointments with him. But he wasn’t entirely in the wrong.
“I’ve been thinking about taking the bar, Dad,” I blurted out.
His eyes widened in surprise and a slow grin spread on his face. “You have?”
“Yeah, I have. I was talking to, uh, a friend about it the other day, and it got me thinking.” Thank God that he missed the slight hesitation before the word friend.