Page 40 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
In one psychology class, the teacher had explained to us how memories are formed. What kind of memories stick with us over the years. It’s not always the ones you think matter the most, the typical milestones. Like, I can’t really remember what we did for my thirteenth birthday, or the Spring Festival that year we flew to China, or the day I received the prestigious All Rounder Award.
But I do remember coming home from school one afternoon and smelling lemon cake in the kitchen and sharing it with my mother on these new pretty porcelain plates she’d bought on discount. I remember a random Saturday from nine years ago, when Max and I tried to lure the ducks home with little bites of bread. I remember the face of an old woman I’d passed on the street, the precise floral patterns of her shirt, the dandelion sewn into her handbag, even though we never spoke and I never saw her again.
And I know, even as the present is unfolding, that I’ll always remember this. The gleam of confetti on the hardwood floor. The night falling around us. The dark strand of hair falling over Julius’s eyes. The quiet that feels like a truce, a reprieve from the war, something more.
“So,” Julius says as he carefully removes a party hat from one of Mom’s wood statues. “I think it’s safe to say you won’t be throwing another party anytime soon?”
I manage a snort, as if the idea itself doesn’t make me nauseous. “No. No, I probably shouldn’t have thrown this one. I just wanted . . . I just thought . . .”
“You thought it’d make up for the emails.”
It’s so embarrassing to hear it spoken aloud, by Julius no less. It sounds so pathetic.
“But why?” he presses.
I sweep the remaining confetti up into a small pile. “What do you mean,why? I didn’t have many other choices. It’s not like I could have afforded to send each person a personalized apology letter and expensive gift box for emotional damage.”
“I mean, why do you think you have to make everyone forgive you? What is there to forgive? Not saying that you were right to write those emails,” he adds hastily, catching the look on my face. “But I read the one you sent Rosie. She stole your science fair idea. If we’re really talking about forgiveness, shouldn’t she also be asking you to forgive her?”
I don’t know what to make of this. I haven’t given any thought to what others might owe me, only what I owe them. “That’s . . . different,” I say eventually. “She’s more upset.”
“You’re upset too.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t seem to care, and I do. I really—” My breath catches in my throat. I bow my head, dump the confetti into a plastic bag, watching the artificial colors catch the light as they swirl through the air. “I really can’t stand it when people are angry at me. Like, I know it might be simple for others, but I can’t focus on anything else. I can’t just forget about it and go on with my own life. It’s like there’s something hard wedged inside my chest. I’ll always feel guilty. I’ll always want to make amends.”
He doesn’t reply, and I realize I’ve said way too much.
“Forget it,” I mumble. “You won’t understand.”
“I’m trying to.”
My head jerks up, and when I meet his eyes, I experience a roaring rush of heat. “Why?” I fling the question back at him.
He holds my gaze for a second. Two. Three. I count each one as it passes, the way I count my own staggered breaths. The silence stretches out like a string—then he sets down the half-filled plastic bag in his hand, the crushed cans and containers rattling inside, and the silence snaps. “I don’t know.” He clears his throat. Motions toward the sitting room. “I’ll . . . I should go clean up in there. I believe someone was trying to re-create the Eiffel Tower with your textbooks.”
I nod, once. Like I couldn’t care less where he goes. “Okay. Thanks.”
I make a conscious effort not to stare after him as he leaves. An even more concentrated effort to stay in the living room, to keep the distance between us, to not dwell too hard on our conversation. But thanks to him, there’s not much left for me to clean. Once I’ve mopped and vacuumed up the last of the dirt and pushed the couches back to their original positions, I pause at the doorway.
Everything has already been tidied. He’s standing at my desk, his gaze drawn down to the photo in his hand. He’s so focused that he doesn’t hear me walk over until I’m right behind him.
“I didn’t mean to—” He spins around. Flushes. “I swear I wasn’t snooping. Someone pulled out this album from the cabinet and a few of the photos fell out and . . .”
My eyes find the photo too, and my heart twists.
It’s an old family photo, taken ten years ago. We’re at a hot pot restaurant, the four of us squeezed around the round table, the plates spread out in front of us. Max is little more than a kid, his hair spiky and his cheeks round. He’s wearing that basketball jersey he loved so much he’d refuse to take it off even to wash the toothpaste stains on the front. My mom’s dressed up in her favorite cardigan and turtleneck, her raven hair curled and styled in a way it hasn’t been since that night. And my dad’s gazing over at me with such pride that it hurts to inhale. We look . . . happy. It must be the world’s greatest magic show; it’s so convincing, even if it’s false. Made up. Make-believe. Because less than a month after the photo was taken, he had left.
“I’ve never seen your father before.” He says it carefully, because I’m sure he knows by now. They all know, to some extent, no matter how hard we’ve tried to hide it, to smooth out the visible lump in the carpet. When your dad doesn’t show up to a single Father’s Day breakfast ten years in a row, people are bound to suspect something’s off.
“He probably doesn’t look like that anymore,” I say, taking the photo from him. I resist the urge to rip it into shreds. To hug it to my chest. “I mean, I wouldn’t really know. Maybe he’s grown a beard.” It was one of those things we always laughed about.I prefer clean-shaven men, my mom had insisted whenever he raised the idea.The day you get a beard will be the day we get a divorce.It used to be a running joke in the family.
Julius peers over at me, still in that careful, attentive way, like the floor is made of glass.You won’t understand. I’m trying to.“Is it hard? Not having him around?”
“No,” I say instinctively. Force of habit. I’ve repeated it so many times to myself that most days I believe it. I slide the photo back into the faded album, snap it closed, but for some reason, I keep talking. “I mean, I don’t . . . Maybe it’s not that I miss him. But there are times when—when I wonder what it’d be like if he were still here. Like when my mom and I got into a fight last summer over who had lost the phone charger and, as she was yelling at me, I just found myself wishing . . . he was there to step in. To tell me it was okay. To comfort me and take my mom outside until we’d both calmed down.
“Or, as ridiculous as it sounds, when we go to my favorite restaurant. My mom and my brother both have the same tastes, you know—they hate spicy and sour foods. But my dad and I would always get this sour stir-fried chicken dish. They only make it in servings of two, so now . . . now I never order it. Because I don’t have anyone to share it with.”
Because having one parent is enough.
