Wearing My Smile | ✔

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

Nine days after your funeral.

Sunday came like an inevitability. It was raining in the middle of the afternoon and weather was a bit chilly, but I sat on the chair of my front porch watching the leaves and branches of the mango tree in front of your house as they swayed, finishing up my pack of cigarette.

I heard the creak of the other chair as my father sat beside me. I almost forgot he was still there sometimes. He was always so quiet in his grief—it was his way, and perhaps only then I realized how much we were alike.

“Don't you think you smoke too much, son?” He didn't say it like he was judging me. Travis White never judged other people for how they lived their life. I suppose you already knew this, Sam, after all wasn't it exactly why you were close to him? He asked me that like he truly wanted to know my reason.

“It helps me think,” I replied, stubbing out the rest of my cigarette into the ashtray. I don't smoke if there is other people around.

“Maybe you've been thinking too much as of late.”

I didn't say anything because he was right.

A few minutes passed and still I waited. The wind was harsh that day, but it wasn't as violent as it usually was. I found myself recalling the day you came home that first time. Your head was haloed by the lightning in the middle of the night.

“I know it hurts.” I tensed. He probably noticed because his voice turned softer. “It's overwhelming, like it's crippling you, like it's killing you. You sit where you always do and imagine them walking around like they used to, except now there's only an empty space and a name you might never call again.”

I gulped down my grief, cherishing the numbness that came close behind. “It's like that for you, wasn't it? When Mom died.”

My father sighed. When I looked at him, I noticed how old he was. Greying hair around his ears. There were wrinkles now around his eyes. He was watching the rain, just like I was. He said, “Yes. But it was wrong of me to leave you both. I should have stayed.”

I nodded, looking away. “You should have. I mean, what if the children protective services had come when you'd been away? That'd have been bad.” After a while, I added, “But we understood why you needed to leave, Dad.”

“That's exactly the problem. At your age, you shouldn't have had to understand why I'd left.”

I didn't say anything because it'd passed. Nothing good ever came out of regretting the poor choices we'd made. I learned it the hard way.

“I'm considering a retirement.”

I whipped my head back at him. “What?”

“I could stay with the both of you this time.” He sounded fierce when he told me that, as though he had made up his mind.

Maybe I should have been happy, Sam. I should have had my heart filled with joy because finally, we were important enough for him to stay around, but there was only a pang of melancholy left inside me. I was eighteen and I was getting out of that town. Luce was almost twenty-six with her brilliant career. You were no longer around. He wanted to stay this time, but at what cost?

My father must have heard my answer in my silence because his sighs was rueful. “I'm too late, aren't I?”

I didn't say he was. Instead, I said, “I know what it's like, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know what it's like to dream.” It wasn't that I knew because I lived it. I didn't know if I had had my own dream to live with. I took photography because he loved photography and I wanted to understand why he'd left. I watched how much you'd adored music in this intense and all-encompassing love that I felt as if I was living with it, too. I didn't have my own personal dream but I understood. “I know how much you love your job, Dad. It's basically your whole life.”

His eyes were so, so sad. “But you and Lucy are my life, too, Rumon.”

I tried to unfurl the knot in my chest. “We get it. But we're doing alright. It's okay to do what you dream of. Not everyone can do it.” I didn't say you couldn't do it anymore, but the implication was there.

“I wish—” But he didn't continue his words. It could be many things. He wished he was around more when my mother had been sick. He wished he was around when Luce and I had turned into adults. He wished he was around to show you how it felt like to have a father who loved you for who you were. He wished he could be around to explain to us that what we were feeling was okay instead of having heard of it from Luce.

It could be many things, really, but there was no point in wishing for something which wasn't there anymore. In my hollowness, I would cut off all my regrets and watch them fall, scattering away with the rain.

A week later, he would pack his bags, taking one of our pictures together, perhaps one we had taken on our camping forever ago, and hid it beside my mother's smiling picture. He was as good at hiding his feelings as I was. I imagined him standing on a valley somewhere north one day, watching the sunset because it would remind him of you.

He touched my hand briefly before pulling back. “I loved him, too, Roo.”

I didn't reply because I knew. I'd always known. So I sat there in silence with him who had loved you as much as he had me, but you would never know.