Picture Us In The Light(65)
Their determination to pretend everything is fine is starting to mess with me. Have I just developed some inflated sense of entitlement—I think I’m too good for anything but the best schools, the best cities? There are always people who have it worse. That, I think, is the implication lurking behind every look my parents give me: it could be worse, and I should be grateful for what I have. And maybe both those things are true. And so we don’t comment on any of it like it’s anything strange or surprising or wrong. Your eyes adjust to the dark.
My dad comes home from a shift one night when we’ve been there a little over two weeks, and I’m awake still because every time I heard a sound outside I had to get up, my heart galloping, to check the hallway outside.
He opens the fridge. It’s still mostly empty, and he takes the last of a pack of frozen dumplings from the freezer and microwaves them and then slumps heavily into one of the kitchen chairs. The gray of his uniform pulls out the grayish tones in his skin. And maybe it’s that soft, desperate mood you fall into waiting at night, that stage it builds for all your fears to come alive, but in spite of everything I feel a surge of tenderness toward him, a twin surge of guilt for all the ways I’ve been lying to them. This is what being in a family is—how your home holds all those things, the whole spectrum of everything you feel toward them. You can’t always hold on to everything at once, but the rest of it is always right there so close to you, ready for you to pick it up again. It’s the opposite of a blank page, how you can feel pissed off and guilty and nervous all at once, how you can remain angrier at your dad than you’ve ever been at anyone and at the exact same time still feel seared by the sight of his pain. Maybe he never deserved all the ways his life has unraveled, whatever those were. I say, impulsively, “Can I tell you something?”
My dad shoves a dumpling into his mouth, then wipes his lips with one of the paper napkins my mom took from the Ranch 99 deli. His voice is flat and tired. “What is it?”
Maybe it’s not the right time after all. “I forgot.”
“You didn’t forget.”
“Um—do you like the job?”
It’s not what I wanted to say—I wanted to say something affectionate, but I lost my nerve—and my tone comes out strange, almost flippant. And the look on his face right then—he swallows hard and fights to get control of his jaw, which is quavering, and it’s then that I realize: he thinks I meant that to make fun of him.
My heart tears in half. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean—”
He tries to smile, tries to act like he’s in on the joke, but his voice comes out harsh. “It’s great. Just what I always dreamed. Why your mother and I came here.”
I never meant it that way. Couldn’t he hear that—didn’t he feel that same softness I was feeling?
“Then why did you let all this happen?” I say, my voice low with anger. How could he think that about me, that I’d say that to him?
“Excuse me?”
“Why did you tell Ma it wasn’t your experiment that ruined you? Are you in debt?”
This time I recognize the look that flickers over his face before he chases it off—that same fear again. This time, though, I see how deeply rooted it is, how easily it’s pushed to the surface.
I shouldn’t have brought it up. Maybe you only ever say aloud the things you want easy answers for, the fears you want to be laid to rest.
My dad stands up abruptly. “It turns out I’m not hungry after all.” He shoves the bowl of dumplings across the table at me, mostly untouched. “Have the rest.”
Latenights for our March issue start that Tuesday, and the paper will come out on the seventh, next Thursday. Watching the anniversary come nearer, like a plane on its final approach, makes me claustrophobic. I can feel the walls inching closer each time someone brings it up.
Regina’s gone into her Latenight Mode early this cycle, holed up in the Journalism Lab lunchtimes and after school. On Tuesday she comes into the lab with cookies she baked everyone—I saw her online at four-thirty in the morning when I got up and figured she just hadn’t slept yet, and the cookies make me think I’m right—and two bottles of coffee. Minuet Lam, who’s always in charge of getting snacks, has scattered bags of chips and jerky and Pocky around all the computers, and there’s a fruit platter at the tables.
Things always pick up like this toward the end of a production cycle—everyone blows off deadlines in favor of studying for AP tests or finishing lab reports (everyone gets an A in Journalism anyway), and then in the last days before we have to go to press that loose panic of failure descends and we all bring sweats to school and set up camp in the Journalism Lab every night until after dark. A few times we’ve stayed right up until 11:59, the last possible minute before the alarms switch on for the night and we have to be out of all the buildings, holding our breath as we shut the doors behind us.
I like watching people be good at things, and so from within that noise and chaos of the latenights I’ve always liked watching Regina roam all competently around the room, how effortless she makes it seem to give advice and tweak layouts and cut stories down to fit into their allotted column inches. I know she’s always kind of stressed in the way you are about things you care about, but still she makes latenights a place you actually want to be, that same particular amalgam of frenetic and cozy you get with group projects that go really late into the night and that I wonder whether you ever get again after high school. That I’m glad I didn’t give up.