Extra Terrestrial – Ethan Richmond

October 3, 2025

The one time I watched a movie with my father was Mom’s doing. She wanted us to watch E.T. as a family. She had not given up on him yet. I was seven, probably too young to watch E.T. anyway—a movie full of cursing and dying flowers. Mom let me stay up on a school night for this viewing, which was very exciting. I had a feeling something would go wrong, but I always felt that way as a child. We waited in front of the TV for my father to get home, the DVD in the player, the menu screen playing a loop of moments from the movie—moments I tried to memorize each time the loop repeated, as my father ran late. When he arrived, Mom met him at the door. She told him the movie was all set up. He told her to get away. Mom said he promised he would watch this, that it would be a good memory for me, that he should spend time with his child. “Fine, I’ll watch the fucking movie,” he said. He sat down in the chair farthest from us. During the scene in which the little boy leads E.T. into his house with Reese’s Pieces, Mom said, “Look, Robert, Reese’s Pieces.” I have no idea why she said this. Maybe I liked that candy. “They’re M&Ms, Joanne,” my father said. “I’m pretty sure they’re Reese’s Pieces,” Mom said and Dad took the remote out of her hands threw it at the wall and screamed, “So I don’t fucking know anything, right, I’m a complete idiot and you know so much more than me, you know how to raise this fucking boy better than I do,” and so forth. I could still hear the movie playing when he began chasing us around our house. He kept screaming—we didn’t appreciate him, we ate away at his time, he should find a new family that loved him more. Rather than think about what he might do upon catching us, I focused on furniture. On each lap around the living room I tried to identify a new detail on the couch, the tables. I didn’t find many. Eventually, he stopped and made us sit back down. The credits were rolling. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “Let’s all go around and say one thing we really don’t like about ourselves.” I was trying not to cry, failing. He made Mom go first. “This is going to be difficult for you, since there’s so much to choose from,” he told her. I don’t remember her answer, nor mine, but when his turn arrived, he said, “Sometimes I get too passionate about being right.” He sent me to my room and I didn’t sleep. The next day, after school, I restarted the movie because I wanted to know what happened.
        I visited home once during college. My school was far out of state, 1,520 miles away—a distance that determined my enrollment. On holidays and summers I latched onto friends who lived near campus, sleeping on their floors and sometimes beds, sampling other people’s families. Mom asked me to come home in phone calls I rarely picked up. The summer after my junior year, the terror of my incoming future overwhelmed me and I finally agreed. I was seeing a girl I had convinced myself I loved. I had told her stories about my father, which I now said I found funny. She wanted to visit me while we were apart. She bought a flight and stayed a week. Mom interrogated her thoroughly, ultimately determining she was a nice girl. My father made one appearance. His prior absence was unexplained and convenient. I didn’t want him to meet her, or anyone I cared about—a point I had brought up trying to convince her not to visit. He interrupted a pleasant, uneventful conversation. The sky was bright through our kitchen window and he swayed walking in. I introduced him to the girl I’d break up with in two months. He gave her a hug that lasted too long. I watched him close his eyes with his hands on her back. “Do you remember when we watched E.T. together?” I asked. “Sure,” he said, looking somewhere else. “Dad, you remember the scene with the M&Ms?” I guess I hoped this would start something, a fight or an apology or a silence that lasted longer than a few seconds. “I’m pretty sure they’re Reese’s Pieces,” my father said. Then he went to the fridge to get mayonnaise. My girlfriend took my hand and led me away, saying we had to go somewhere. I looked at Mom. Her eyes issued me an apology. I wanted to tell her nothing was her fault, that even if it was, I wouldn’t blame her. But we had already left the room. For the rest of the day, I drove my girlfriend places I went as a child. We didn’t talk much and she kept her hand on my thigh.