Page 33 of Glass Half Full
She was a kid scared about leaving home for the first time, and I was standing there with my arms around her, staring at her mouth.
I thought I’d fucked up before, but I never came as close to totally destroying something as I did that night. My mistakes had always been my own, and that kiss hanging between us was an invitation for her to make one with me.
I dropped my arms to my sides, stepping back as soon as I was sure she’d found her balance, but the expression she turned on me was as off-kilter as could be.
“Remember what I said about the writing.” I couldn’t leave without telling her again. “I meant it.”
And then I left her there. I left her because I didn’t have the strength to save her if I’d stayed. I left her standing outside the metro stop and walked all the way to the next one. I left every possibility of what that moment could have been behind. I wrote it off as a mistake I was lucky enough to avoid making, and for over three years, I let myself believe that’s all it was.
Then she walked into Taverne Toulouse looking for a job.
Nine
Renee
OXYMORON: When two contradictory words or terms are placed together and still form a comprehensible idea, ex.act naturally,alone together,small crowd
My dad picksme up from therapy during his lunch break. At first I thought his insistence on driving me home from Sarah’s office every week was because he was worried, like I’d be this emotional wreck wholly incapable of navigating the public transit system. Maybe that is what he used to think—and maybe he wouldn’t have been totally wrong to think it—but now the drive is our time to check in with each other, a quick twenty minutes that are just for us.
“How did it go today?” he greets me, holding out a pear, walnut, and arugula salad from the museum’s cafe. I used to live off those things when I’d go to work with him. I swear the cafe sprinkles their salads with crack; it’s the only explanation for how addictive they are.
“It was really good. We talked about the reopening at the bar, how it’s kind of a big deal for me...”
As close as we’ve gotten, we still dance around the subject of the ‘episodes.’ Dad tried a few times in the early days, right when I got back from England, and I’d always freak out or shut down. I know I owe him an apology—I owe my whole family an apology for some of the things I said—but that would mean bringing up what happened, really explaining what I went through to them, and I’m still not ready to do that.
So when Dad asks about therapy, I tell him it’s good, and we usually leave it at that.
“Are you still sure your mother and I can’t tag along to the reopening tomorrow night?”
“I’m not bringing my parents,” I complain.
“What? You don’t think we can be cool? You think I don’t know how to chill with the hipsters?”
“One: hipsters are getting a little dated. Two: do you even know what a hipster is?”
“Does anyone know what a hipster is?”
I start to answer with another biting reply before I stop myself. “Actually, you’re kind of right. It’s a contested topic.”
“I’m always right. I’m your dad.”
I roll my eyes at that one. “Do you really want to get me started on the patriarchy?”
He takes his hands off the steering wheel for a second to hold them up in surrender. “The lord help us all if I get you started on the patriarchy—you or your sister.”
“It’s about the only thing we agree on.”
He lets out a sigh heavy with regret. “I wish you and Michelle didn’t fight so much.”
“It’s not that we fight,” I explain. “We just...don’t really want to have much to do with each other.”
His jaw sets into a hard line, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, that sounded bad,” I amend. “I love her. Of course I love her. She’s my sister, and I’m really proud of her. We’re just...I don’t know. I think we work better keeping our distance.”
Dad shakes his head. “A sibling is a precious thing to have,ma petite lionne. I don’t like to see you two wasting that gift.”
A heaviness settles in the car, pinning us both underneath it. Dad doesn’t talk about his brother much—I think it might be the equivalent of his ‘episode,’ something he just can’t bring himself to share or call by its name—but the lines in his face always gets deeper when we come close to touching the subject, like it’s physically painful for him to think about the uncle I’ve never met.
