Wearing My Smile | ✔

Sunday, November 12th, 2000

“Roo, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I saw my father closing the car's door right after you hurried back into your house. I noticed how you were always in hurry those days. Sometimes you looked so stricken and I would get this inexplicable nausea in me. I didn't want you to go back there, but every day I let you go anyway.

“What's up, Dad?” I asked him after we went inside our house, putting away the camping gears. It was as quiet as it had always been. I remember feeling a pang of loss back then in thinking my father would be leaving again in just a couple of days, but then I remembered I had you, Sam, and you didn't know just how much relief it gave me.

I was baffled when I didn't hear a reply, so I looked back at him, frowning. “Dad?”

I couldn't tell you what it was like, the expression on his face. It was one of determination and concern—and maybe sadness, but that expression was so foreign on him because I hadn't seen it since my mother's passing. I could hear the rush of blood in my ears and the pounding in my chest. “Dad, what's wrong? You're scaring me.”

His hands were gentle when they landed on my shoulders. I heard him clearing his throat, but he croaked anyway, “Roo, would you be honest with me?”

“Of course.” I couldn't recall the time I was ever being dishonest to him and anyway, we had seen each other too rarely for me to start complicate things so I'd rather I didn't.

“You and Sam have been friends for years.”

“Yeah.”

“From your stories and your emails you seem to be playing with each other a lot even in school.”

I still couldn't see where it was heading, but I sat down onto the couch as he did the same. “Well yeah, Dad. I mean, we're neighbors!”

“Do you have other friends?”

I blinked at him then laughed. “Of course, we do, Dad. What kind of question is that? Can't play sports with just the two of us.”

My breath was released as I saw his small smile. I didn't even think I was that tense. You probably got it that he rarely asked me for a talk and maybe he was absent too much to be much of a stern parent. I thought there must be something wrong.

“Okay,” he finally said, but he was still watching me, his mouth opened and closed as if he wasn't sure what to say.

“What, Dad?”

“Do you like Sam?”

I smiled because wasn't that an easy question with an obvious answer? “'Course, I do. He's my best friend.”

He cleared his throat again. “What if both of you become brothers? Would you like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he became your brother, you wouldn't be alone so much anymore. Don't you like that?”

“What? Of course, I do! That's amazing! That's just—"

I didn't understand at the time why it was that I choked on my words. My fists clenched on top of the couch. Why I couldn't exactly look at him in the eyes. There was a storm in me, Sam. A storm I didn't understand, but my father, being an intelligent and open-minded person as he was, recognized it for what it was. He looked so sad it made everything inside me ache.

He put his arm gently around my shoulders and rested his head on top of mine. We just sat there, staring at the old clock on top of the television. Time suspended and stopped. He was busy with his thoughts while I waited. Long minutes passed until I said, “Dad?”

“I like him, too, Son.”

His words made me grin because, Sam, it filled my whole being with joy when somebody noticed how great you were beneath the silence and shyness. I looked up to him. “You do?”

He smiled back at me like he was proud of me and how I wanted him to stay that way forever. “He's a good kid.”

“He's smart, too!”

“Yeah.”

“And he plays violins well!”

My father chuckled as he ruffled my hair, making me laugh. “We were all there on your ninth birthday, Roo.” We held each other for a moment before he said to me, “Just remember that whatever happens, you and Luce are the best children I could ever ask for and I'm always, always very proud of you.”

I held him tighter because what would you say to that?

Have you ever felt like this, Sam? To hold the whole world inside your arms?