Speaking Terms
— Beina Xu
I thought I saw my father.
He was standing in the lobby of the museum and I was on the second floor overlooking the entrance, waiting for my friend to arrive, and I swore that man was my father. He was too far for me to be certain, but the way he stood was just like him: leaned into his phone, as if gravity slanted to his taste. I’m not sure I’ve seen him stand in any other way. He had rimless glasses, and a “business casual” look my father wore in his old age. Described like this, he could be anyone’s father. That’s the thing about fathers. Claim is a dicey thing.
I took a photograph and zoomed in. I still couldn’t tell, though details appeared. His skin was pretty sallow. The man had cheekbones that could cut steak. Maybe my father was ill. I stared at him over the balcony and became convinced, observing the way he scrolled the phone—which was to palm it and nudge the screen with a pointer, like a king on checkmate—that it was him. That’s exactly how my father scrolls his phone. The man next to him scrolled his phone the same way, but he wasn’t my father.
Though it couldn’t be him. I wasn’t on speaking terms with my father. His last text message to me was “Got it.” That was two years ago, he’d asked me out of the blue whether I would be in town, he had a conference in my city and would stop by and take me out for dinner if I was there, but I wasn’t, and I told him as much. I said I would be in another country, the one where we had lived the first few years of our lives. I had a residency there, I was going to write my book. That’s when he said “Got it,” and nothing else.
For a moment on the balcony I thought he’d come for me, I really did, that he’d realized his errors and wanted to make things up, so he’d booked a flight to San Francisco instead of Maastricht and took a gamble on the MoMA because he knew I liked museums, and that was one of the few things we enjoyed doing together, touring the walls of an empty, white house.
But that would be absurd. I wouldn’t know how to interpret that. Touched, for sure, but also pretty freaked out, I think. Anyway it would be unlikely, because even if he did manage all of that, he would pick the fine arts museum, since he doesn’t like modern art. Then he would see that I wasn’t there, he would realize that in his extreme gesture, he had bungled it all, because he didn’t understand a thing.
Anyway I wasn’t one to sit around and wonder. I leaned over the railing, committed, and shouted “Dad!” in a rough blast, as loud as I could. About six men glanced up, plus extras, who wondered who this freak was, speaking out of turn, and in such a grandiose way. But my so-called father didn’t. He was the one closest to me, in fact, and it’d be impossible he hadn’t heard. That’s the thing about sound, too: noise is just a matter of importance.
Those who’d looked up looked back down. My choice hadn’t caused a stir at all. Sometimes, forward momentum can’t be stopped. It wasn’t until this imposter began walking that I understood, to my great relief and disappointment, that I had been entirely mistaken.
That wasn’t my father at all. My father was elsewhere, busy with other things.
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