“Great,” I said. “So you know how.”
He looked at his phone. He needed to get to his gate. His next flight would be boarding soon.
“What if they’re terrible?” he said. “What if they’re so terrible, I can’t send them?”
I closed my eyes.
“Then you can’t,” I said.
We looked at each other one more time. This was the part in the movie where we were supposed to fall into each other’s arms. But I guess we didn’t get the script because he just turned and walked off toward his gate.
I watched him join in with the other travelers. Some were walking like the undead. Others were seated at gates nearby, tapping screens, watching real movies, reading books. They were staring wide-eyed at the stories they’d chosen, looking for a way to pass the time, until they arrived at their final destination.
40
The morning after I returned from Sicily, I woke before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about my own funeral. The death of the universe was too big. It would have to wait. Instead, I’d made a new promise to myself to keep my worries in the realm of things I could control. Thus: my funeral. There were so many options, though. That’s what had me thinking in the predawn hours. And my current ideas were too varied to be of any real help.
I could be incinerated into dust, for example.
Or made into nutrients in the soil.
I could be fireworks in the night sky.
Or particles in a memorial reef on the ocean floor.
There was even a company pressing people’s ashes into vinyl records, so someone could play a Beatles record made out of me, and sing along to my tiny bits. I could be embalmed and placed on a motorcycle like a man in Michigan. Or be posed in a boxing ring like a guy in Mexico. I could be frozen. I could be shattered and planted beneath a tree. And this was all just the first step in the process. There was so much to consider.
I walked downstairs and found my father gone, I didn’t know where. He had barely spoken to me since I got home. I’d been waiting for a reaction from him since I first dropped out of school, and now I finally got one. Stony silence. He didn’t say much at the airport. Or at the baggage claim. It was only on the car ride on the way home, where he temporarily opened the floodgates.
“I don’t want you to think I’m not angry about this, Tess,” he said. “Because I am. I really am.”
“Really?” I said. “I could hardly tell by your brooding.”
He gave me a look that told me sarcasm wasn’t going to be a good strategy here.
“But mostly I’m just hurt,” he said.
I looked at his tired face. He hadn’t shaved in a couple days and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. He’d told Grace he hadn’t slept while I was gone.
“I thought we were fixing things,” he said.
He blinked into the early morning sunlight.
“I thought you were actually going to tell me what was going on in your life. I wanted to be that person. I was ready. But I guess that’s just not going to happen with us, is it?”
I was starting to prefer his silence.
“I know I’ve made mistakes,” he said, “I get that. And I know you think I sabotaged our family. But it’s not thatsimple, Tess. You don’t know everything. You’re old enough to understand some complexities.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“It’s not worth talking about.”
“Then how do I know you’re not lying?”
He sighed.
“Look,” he said. “There were certain indiscretions.”
