Just busy. All good,he wrote back.
It almost hurt worse that he was fine. It meant he waschoosingnot to pick up the phone to talk to me. I was left with little recourse. I didn’t know where he was headed or with whom. I debated reaching out to other relatives but my dad didn’t have any siblings so the list was limited to people on my mom’s side, and they had no more of a clue what his deal was than I did. I didn’t ask my mom, because his leaving was so raw, so fresh. Anytime it came up in our house, she said he was out “finding himself” and uncorked a fresh bottle of wine. My anger wanted to push, to uncover everything, but the empathy I had for my mother told me to just leave it be.
Not even two years later, I learned he had died. Mom and I were in the middle of dinner when she broke the news to me, firmly establishing the fact that I would never eat turkey meatloaf again.
My initial reaction was to become furious, mostly because I felt like him dying was the most selfish act of all. I hadquestions, you know? Like, how could he leave me? Didn’t I mean anything to him? Were all those weekends—all that time we spent together—was all of it just bullshit? How could he care so much about himself and so little about me to just drive off into the sunset and midlife-crisis his way into an early grave?
He made me question everything I ever believed was true about people.
It took a really long time, not to mention a lot of therapy, to get over it and move on. By the time I made it to Aruba for my first-ever writing trip, I felt like I was finally removed enough from my own hurt feelings to write my little middle-grade sci-fi novel. It was a chance to rewrite my own ending, this time making it happy. I had my main character, Matthew, and his father, Tom. They’d been living rent-free in my brain for years by this point, just rolling around in my imagination. Matthew and Tom were a father-son team who successfully figured out how to break the space-time continuum via the construction of a time warp machine that was configured in the same way as the internet. The internet creates a virtual reality; Matthew and Tom’s time warp machine did the same thing with historical periods and utilized advanced AI models to predict what future time periods would be like.
It was really cool; I felt like kids who were into science would find it fascinating. They used an old Ford Taurus as the body of the machine and put all of the mechanical pieces under the hood: various laptops networked together by a single desktop computer—all living in the wide cavity where a car engine and transmission would go in the old Ford. It ran off a series of hot spots jerry-rigged to create enough onlinepower that the virtual world could be accessed, kind of similar to a portal into another dimension. The entire contraption was wired up so that it ran on juice from an electric car port in the parking lot of the local grocery store, using a key fob as the remote control.
Anyway, Matthew and Tom go to test it out, and in Matthew’s trial run everything works fine; he’s able to jump around from one time period to the next, just the way the model predicted he would. But Tom, who is supposed to be with him, somehow disappears in the warp.
It doesn’t even occur to Matthew that Tom got lost on purpose, because that doesn’t make sense.
Parents don’t get lost on purpose.
It was my way of rewriting my relationship with my father. Looking at my “inner child” (words borrowed from my therapist) and reassuring him that his father’s disappearance—and in my case, his subsequent death—was not his fault.
It was not my fault. Itisnot my fault.
Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to Harmony. I mean, aside from everything else—the fact that she’s a writer and we connect on such a visceral level, never mind how beautiful she is—she has an enviable relationship with her mother. It’s so obvious how much they love each other. I can picture Harmony’s mom cradling her as a baby, staying up at night with her, doing all the things that good parents do so well—and how, in return, Harmony looks out for her now as an adult, even in the littlest gestures, like making sure she’s staying hydrated in the hot Aruba sun. They’re family the way family is supposed to be.
When I asked her about her dad, she explained that hedidn’t want a baby and so he left them to go about his life. She didn’t sound contentious about it, not angry or sore. Like it was just a thing that happened, a thing that some men do. She didn’t need him, she explained, because she had her mom, and that was enough.
I had my mom as well. She was good. Nice. She did all the things a mom is supposed to do. She never embarrassed me. She showed up for the sporting events, the plays, the graduations. She kept me clothed, fed, properly outfitted with the trending video game consoles and newest technology. She let me get a dog—Rocky—after Dad left, even though it meant she would mostly be taking care of him when I inevitably went off to college. We didn’t fight or even argue. We coexisted. There was nothing particularly interesting about her in my mind: she liked quilting and reading books, and I likedCall of DutyandMinecraft, but I loved her, obviously. She never remarried, and if she dated anyone, it couldn’t have been too serious, because she didn’t tell me about it.
My mom was known to make the best homemade Chex mix. And she had a bread-making machine, so all of my sandwiches were always prepared on homemade bread.
Those were the highlights of our relationship in a nutshell.
I guess because of how I was raised, I believed (assumed? guessed?) that boys and their dads had the potential for a much closer, deeper relationship than perhaps most boys and their moms experienced.
Because of this, in my story, I made Tom a single dad. This raised the stakes significantly. He became that much more important on account of the fact that he’s the only parent Matthew has—so when he loses him in the time warp, it’s thatmuch more of a big deal. Matthew’s just a kid in the sixth grade. Without his dad, he’s an orphan.
All I had to do was figure out how they’d find each other, how to make the ending happy.
I came to Aruba intending to get in the zone, and I was doing well with that until Harmony and I nearly lit the ocean on fire with our sparks on day three. We skipped our after-dinner solo hang that night so that she could spend quality time with her mom. I think she may have been a little freaked out by how quickly things progressed at the beach. Or maybe she felt guilty for not spending more of her evenings with her mother. So, on the third night, I went to the movie theater alone, the whole time steeped in thought about how Harmony might like her popcorn, what her favorite movie candy was, and if she’d prefer to sit up close to the screen or way in the back, like me. Even though it was a silly holiday comedy, the act of being in a dark theater without this woman just left me craving her even more. In fact, by the fourth morning… Well, suffice to say, I was becoming abundantly distracted.
The day after the incident between me and Harmony in the water, instead of writing by the infinity pool like I was supposed to, I spent my time online, trying to find the most beautiful spot in Aruba where I could take her to dinner alone. The three of us had been spending time together every day and had dinner together more often than not. It was adorable how Harmony’s mother would encourage us to hang out. I’d never felt more approval from a potential girlfriend’s parent in my life—so there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I could steal her away for just one, perfect evening.
Because that was my hope: to make her my girlfriend.
The winnings from the casino ensured that I could afford the most opulent, luxurious, take-her-breath-away evening, which could potentially set the stage for me asking her. Normally, I wouldn’t make such a show of this sort of thing, but nothing about Harmony or my feelings for her felt “normal” or “typical.” Everything—every smile, every laugh, even her neuroses about her mom—was special. I knew I would have to ask her mother for permission for the kind of evening I was hoping to plan. We’d have to work in tandem, keep it a secret, because there was no way Harmony would agree to leave her mom for a night. Especially not at dinnertime.
Was it selfish? Maybe a little. But also necessary. Because when you find someone who you think might become your everything, you want to mark the beginning of that time with fireworks. With enchantment. Harmony was my enchantment, and this could be the beginning of my everything.
I slid down a rabbit hole looking for the perfect place to take her. There were several contenders: Faro Blanco at the California Lighthouse, Fred Royal (where the chef prepares the meal in front of you), or the Flying Fishbone, where you can watch the sunset as you eat on the beach. They all seemed wonderful in their own right.
But then I found The Old Man and the Sea, and its name—borrowed from Hemingway’s classic—begged me to check it out.
Two words: Private. Dining.
It meant we would be seated in a cabana. Over the water. Not overlooking the water. Actually over it. According to the pictures on the website, a wooden platform was built out inthe Caribbean Sea, and patrons would walk to it via a wooden boardwalk. There were drapes, topiaries, plants, and flowers, not to mention the most beautiful lighting, all surrounding an elegant table for two.
It was called “the best table in paradise” on Tripadvisor.
