“Hi, Sisuei. I’m Harper. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Trey told me about you. He said you’re a very good dog.”
Sisuei barked happily and tried to lick my face. It tickled.
“Come on, dude, leave her alone. You’re covering her in slobber,” Trey said.
Sisuei seemed to understand what he was saying and sat back. He was so pretty I could hardly stop looking at him.
I followed Trey into the kitchen. We washed our hands and he offered me an apron. While he cut vegetables and a chicken breast into strips to stuff the puff pastry, I got to work making the salad. I wasn’t much of a cook, but a simple vinaigrette I could handle, and I fancied it up with some honey and mustard. It was a variation on a French recipe my grandmother used to make.
Trey stuck a finger in the bowl, and I slapped him away, but beforeI could, he’d already lathered it in dressing. He then stuck it in his mouth and sucked it.
“Disgusting,” I said.
“It’s tasty,” he murmured, not ashamed in the least.
We had a glass of white wine while we waited for his tart to cook. Trey showed me the rest of the house. We lingered a while in the room that had become his studio. It was full of blueprints: hanging from the walls, in folders, in dozens of cardboard tubes, laid out on a draftsman’s table, on a desk next to his computer.
As he showed me his projects, he started to shine, and I felt I could understand his passion, which was similar to mine when I talked about writing. Being passionate about something—I think we can all understand that. It’s something we all want, and when you feel it, there’s no denying it. It keeps us alive and it brings us close to the people who are the same as us in a kind of perfect communion. Jack Kerouac said it best: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” That’s what we were. Mad to be saved. Mad about each other.
We had a relaxed dinner at the island in the kitchen, and Trey spoke to me for the first time about his father. They barely talked anymore. Even though they lived in the same city, they’d only seen each other a few times that year, and the experience hadn’t been pleasant. He kept saying it didn’t matter, but the way he repeated it told me it did. So did his eyes, which revealed his pain, his need to run from something he hadn’t yet told me about.
And my heart, which I’d felt growing stronger those days, turned to an object made of glass that could fear, suffer, and break.
I talked to him about my father as well. I told him things I’d never told anyone, and he listened to me in silence. Before I knew it, I was revealing all the things I had hidden without realizing it: the tears spilled in hiding, the mornings when I hadn’t wanted to wake up,everything I’d been willing to do to get him to look at me the way he did at others. The things I would still do…
“Will you tell him?” he asked me.
“That I’m going to stay?” He nodded. “Why? He’ll find out either way, and if someone else tells him, I won’t have to deal with his reproaches.”
“Harper, you need to get past your fear of confronting him.”
I rubbed my cheeks, trying to distract myself. I knew it was ridiculous to keep being afraid of my father when I was twenty-two years old, but the feeling ran so deep that I didn’t even know how to face it. I only knew how to run away.
“I know, but…”
“But what?”
“Confronting him isn’t really what I’m scared of,” I confessed, at last starting to understand myself.
“What is it, then?”
“I’m afraid if I do it, I’ll find out why he doesn’t love me. And a truth like that can really hurt.”
“Trust me: lying hurts way worse, and silence can hurt even more than that.”
By now we were sitting on the couch. Trey brushed a strand of hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. He liked to do that, and I liked him doing it. It was a tender gesture. I leaned my head to the side and pressed his hand into it.
“Look at us,” he said.
Just then, Sisuei hopped up onto the couch and rested his head in my lap. I petted him. I was more comfortable with him there, and I closed my eyes, listening to his soft groans. When he nuzzled me closer, I bent over and buried my nose in his fur, hugging him, and feeling a little stupid. I looked at Trey out of the corner of my eye.
“What?” I said defensively.
“Nothing.”
“I know you’re thinking something. What is it?”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve always felt like something was missing in this house. And I never knew exactly what. Now I do. It’s you.”
