Until I was met at the door by my father’s pale, trembling face, panic simmering at his temples. “Where the hell have you been, Susanna? Why weren’t you answering your phone? What the hell have you become?” He grabbed my shoulders and tried to steer me to a chair in the living room.

I’d resisted his touch. I pushed him away, hard. Watched him stumble, trip over the carpet. I grabbed the cordless phone he was holding and threw it across the room, flinching as I heard the batteries spin out. Kicked the front door until my toes hurt, until I left scuff marks. Seething, hormonal adolescent anger that I did not have the mastery to control. Years of resentment spinning out of my grasp, damaging anything I could get my hands or feet on.

Then, I’d stared at him pettishly, his mouth agape after my rampage, part of me eager to open my purse, take out the cigarettes I’d bought but never smoked, light up in front of him, tap ash onto the carpet I know my dead mother had found eons ago in a Macedonian thrift store. “Relax. I’m only ten minutes late. Why are you so obsessed with me?” The stillness then was tangible. I swear I could hear time move forward, could hear the shallow exhale of someone crossing the street, fights down on the sidewalk.

My father’s eyes bugged. His face paled even further. He dropped to his knees, hands kneading that carpet, and, to my horror, he began to cry. “Do you think I love you too much, Susanna? Is that it? Do you want me to love you less? Do you know what would happen then? Do you know what could happen?” He stared up at me, an uncanny sensation, as I always looked up at him. I didn’t answer. I was afraid to. He dropped his eyes to the ground. “No, no you don’t. I guess you don’t,” he said softly, more to himself than to me.

He regained composure, hugged me. Told me I was grounded for two weeks and then changed it to one when I stopped hugging him back.

A year later, I went to college and our dynamic shifted. I saw him less, of course, so when I did he always seemed older, more unsteady, lonelier. His glasses were crooked. He didn’t drink enough water. He slept too much or too little. So I made him do these things. As I grew older, less egotistical, it finally dawned on me that my father’s attachment all those years was a way to fill the hole my mother had left. His smothering, obsessive, all-encompassing love was his method of compensating for an absent parent. We’d both be different people if your mother were alive, he’d said on more than one occasion. He would never elaborate on how.