I lift a hand to knock on my dad’s door, but stop when I hear his voice. It’s muffled, but when I lean in, it becomes clearer.
“…but why wouldn’t you—”
He goes quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let us come,” he says. “I don’t understand any of it. We need to talk this through, we—”
He’s quiet again.
“I love you,” he says. “Iloveyou, and you won’t even say…No, I’m not trying to rush you. But…I’m not him, Maggie. You know that I’m not him.” He pauses. “I don’t know. It might be fixed tomorrow, but it could be days, a week. Do you really want to wait that long to just have a basic conversation about—Okay. Okay.” He releases a long sigh. “I’ll let you know in the morning. Yes. Sleep well.”
I stare at the door, not moving, the swirling wood-grain pattern beneath the white paint burning into my mind.
I love you.
I don’t know why those are the words that stand out to me the most. Maybe it was the broken, desperate way he said it. Maybe it was the fact that he said it all.
Part of my brain must have known that he loves Maggie. That he would say those kinds of words to her in private. But hearing them myself is something else altogether.
Because I’m not sure if I’ve heard my father say those words before. To me, or to my mother. I’ve seen them, scribbled on the birthday cards he sent every year, at the ends of short, terse emails we exchanged, but they were often shortened to the more casuallove you. Hearing them said out loud, with the “I” in front of them, is a shock.
I step backward just as the door swings open. My father, backlit by the light in his room, his face hidden in shadow, stands less than a foot in front of me.
“Neelu?” he asks, his voice thick with surprise.
“Dad, hi. I just came to…Jacob and I just got back.”
“Oh. Good. And how was the, uh—”
“The funeral? It was fine.”
“Right.” He nods. “Good.”
I look past him, taking in the room. Comforter pulled back, sheets crumpled as if he was just in bed. Used tissues on the nightstand. And reruns of a show I’m all too familiar with on the television.
“You’re watchingLove in the Sun?” I ask.
He looks back over his shoulder, surprised, as if he forgot he had it on. “Oh,” he says. “Yes.”
I have a strange urge then. A desire to comfort him.
Because this scene? I recognize it. Add a bowl of melted ice cream and some crinkly plastic packaging for some high-sodium snack, and this could be a scene of my dorm room when I was nineteen and going through my first breakup. Or my room at twenty-two. Or twenty-six. Or eight months ago, when yet another man decided to leave me.
I wasn’t mourning that relationship, exactly, or that man in particular, but the loss of a life imagined. A life everyone around me seems to have effortlessly attained. A stage they’ve all moved on to, leaving me behind.
What is my father mourning? The life he imagined with Maggie, or the loss of Maggie herself?
A bitter thought floats through my mind.Maybe now he understands what it feels like to be left behind.
I look at the takeout containers piled on his desk. “Do you want some help with clearing that away?”
“Oh. No. No, that’s okay.” He pauses. “Thank you.” He turns over his shoulder. “Actually, I have something for you.” He walks back into his room, looking around for a moment, then grabbing something off the nightstand.
“Here,” he says, dropping a small square into my open palm.
It’s chocolate. A dark-brown wrapper, with a hint of mint-green foil.
“They dropped it off with turndown service,” my father says.
