Page 39 of Slanting Towards the Sea
THIRTY-SIX
THE MORNING COMES, AS mornings are wont to do. Light cavorts on my windowsill, and dust swirls in the sunbeams, the whole display so lively it’s obnoxious. My eyes itch and throb. My heart rate is slow.
A glass of water and a full box of cookies that Dad brought me perch on my nightstand.
My stomach protests. I haven’t eaten a thing these two days that I’ve kept myself bedridden.
In the back of my mind, guilt echoes: I should be feeding my ailing father, not the other way around, but I can’t find it in me to care enough to get up.
But this is the thing about life—it has a way of continuing. Even past the moment when you wish it wouldn’t. Even past the moment when you feel so spent you could just die. You wake up—you, with your primitive physiological needs: your digestion, your breathing, your thirst—and you subsist.
It’s almost comical, that way.
I get up, because what else can I do?
I go to the living room and join my father for our morning coffee.
He turns off the TV, and just sits with me.
He doesn’t ask any questions, maybe because this kind of weakness makes him uncomfortable, or maybe because there isn’t anything to say.
We sip our coffee in silence, and when we’re done, we get up without a word and go about our day.
When Asier calls a few days after our clash, I let it ring. His is the face of harsh, ugly capitalism usurping my most cherished possession. His is the face of betrayal, even though I’m aware he owes me nothing, I am nothing to him.
The whole morning after the missed call, I brood in my room, more annoyed than anything else. I’m too drained to feel anything more intense at this point. Defeat presses down on me like thickened atmospheric pressure; invisible, heavy, making every movement difficult.
Despite it not making any sense, the thought that rolls on repeat in my mind: Vlaho would’ve never done anything like that to me. I’m comparing apples to eggplants, I know, but I’m comparing anyway.
At lunchtime, I serve chickpea stew. After that “episode” I had the other day, Dad has softened a bit, though this doesn’t mean he approves of my plan to sell Lovorun any more than he did before.
He slurps a bit of stew off his spoon, assesses the taste with an infuriating smacking sound, and says, “Needs more garlic.”
Chickpea stew used to be one of the dishes my mom excelled at.
Each bean cooked to perfection, bursting under the tooth into a blissful starchiness, the stock just the right thickness, infused with the perfect proportions of carrot, parsley, parsnip, and celery.
Each spoonful a warm, comforting embrace.
How she made it is one of the many things she took with her, one of many things I never asked, will never get a chance to ask.
“And it’s not thick enough,” Dad adds, letting the watery liquid drain from his spoon.
I pause mid-bite, all my muscles clenched in an attempt to let his criticism roll off me. My head heats up, my eyes prick, and I order myself not to engage.
I stare at him, my father with his haughty expression, and a thought pierces me, a small nail driven into the back of my head.
His incessant criticism must be why Mom perfected her chickpea stew in the first place.
Suddenly, a simple truth about my dad emerges, a graphite portrait made clear in a few strokes.
You can only meet Dad where he is, not because he won’t but because he can’t meet you halfway.
You can only meet him where he is, because he himself is caged, a prisoner of his own black-and-white world, the first and biggest victim of his own ways.
The thought focuses then. In many ways, am I not my father’s daughter?
Have I not been just as inflexible and unmalleable as Dad?
It occurs to me that this is the exact aspect of Asier that I couldn’t pin down. That he is not superficial or depthless, but he is adaptable. He takes life as it comes to him with such ease, and I keep getting pulled in the undertow with each new wave because I refuse to roll with the surf.
“What’s funny?” Dad asks, looking flustered.
I realize I’ve hummed a laugh.
“Nothing.” I put my spoon down. “I’m going to work,” I say, even though my shift doesn’t start for another hour and a half. I’ll walk, take my time getting there.
I get up to kiss my father’s bald head.
“Right now? What about your lunch?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean up when I come back,” I say, and leave him grumbling in the background.
As I’m walking out the door, I get a text from Asier, the first since our fallout a few days ago.
It’s a photo message. On it, a teenage boy with the same gray-green eyes as Asier’s leans over a table in his white hoodie, smiling as he bites into a burger, mayonnaise dripping down his chin.
The caption below says: “You were right.” And then, “Thank you.” I don’t respond, but I hit the like button.
My heart sits a little more comfortably, a little more open in my chest.