I couldn’t stand his insistence and his condescending attitude. Him looking at me with pity and his stupid belief that one day I’d recognize my errors and rush into his arms.
Well, he could keep waiting.
I poured us both a bit more wine. “So he suits me and he’ll know how to take care of me the right way,” I repeated.
My sister nodded and took a sip. “His words, not mine.”
“He thinks that because Dustin’s turned into his lapdog. Dustin wags his tail and sits every time Dad tells him to. Jesus, he’s probably in love with Dad instead of me. I’ll bet he looks at a photo of him when he masturbates.”
Hayley laughed so hard the spaghetti shot out of her mouth, and little pieces of it hit me in the face.
“Hayley!”
She laughed even harder as I tried to wipe myself off with my napkin.
“I…I’m sorry. You, uh…you’ve got a piece in your hair, too.” Shehiccupped. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head. Dustin thinking of Dad while he… Ugh!”
I ended up laughing, too. We were both making a scene. But with that eternal smile, that eternal good cheer, what else could I do? I felt a tingle in my chest. She was my hero. When I was with her, everything seemed to fall into place. I stopped pretending to be someone else and could live as Harper.
After dinner, we went dancing at a fancy club. We wound up in the park looking up at the starry sky, listening to the music that wafted over from a nearby balcony, all alone for that instant. Until the sprinklers turned on and we got soaked as we ran barefoot through the grass, still laughing.
Hayley slipped. I tried to catch her, and we both fell and rolled over. We stayed there, immobile, holding hands under the fine mist.
“I wish so bad she’d be with me tomorrow, helping me dress, telling me everything would turn out okay.”
“You mean Grandma?”
“No…Mom.”
I bit my lip to keep from crying. Hayley was ten when our mother died, and her memories were clearer than my own. If her absence hurt me, I didn’t want to imagine what my sister must be feeling just then.
“She’ll be here,” I said, resting my hand on her chest.
Hayley turned on her side. “You look so much like her…”
Everyone who had known my mother said the same thing, that we were so much alike. But in my memories, her face was always blurred.
I licked the drops of sprinkler water from my lips and tried to push those distant memories away. They were so vague that they almost seemed to belong to someone else.
“I don’t want to be sad,” I said. “You shouldn’t, either.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand tight before lying on her backagain and looking up. I did the same. The stars were twinkling in the dark sky.
It was late when my sister and I said goodbye. I watched her ride off in the taxi, and as I did so, I felt lonelier than ever. I recalled that life goes on, people come and go, they take detours, they grow distant… And there I was, still waiting. But for what? The saddest thing of all was that I had no idea.
I walked back to my grandmother’s house on Laval Avenue at a leisurely pace. It wasn’t far away. I had moved in there after the funeral because the idea of being in the same place as my father, if only for a few days, was unbearable.
Frances was asleep. I tried not to make noise as I brushed my teeth and undressed. I got into bed, too nervous to sleep, hugged my pillow, and closed my eyes.
A few seconds passed, and then he reappeared. He always did. Days, weeks, months… Sometimes he took a while, sometimes it was like he never left, but I could always count on the memory of him showing up to catch me off guard.
Trey.
People say time heals all wounds. It’s not true. Time is like the tide. Sometimes it’s low, soft, calm. Other times it rushes up and floods everything around it. That night, remembering our encounter, I felt it wash over me and drown me. In that dark room, the notion that I’d had him in front of me was so unreal that I hoped it had just been a bad dream.
4
Dad Is…Just Dad
