The rooftop

‘Wait!’ I scream, between coughs. I remember when I used to run up those stairs that fast, with as much ease as she does now. Those were the days!

              What I fear has happened, she passed by the science labs and classrooms. She’s not going to stop until she reaches the top. I have to join her. 47 is no age for such barbary. I’m pretty sure I sprained my ancle a couple of floors ago.

‘Miranda, a little help…’ I ask, but my wife’s voice is far behind. I hear her panting. Sophie’s run had ended. I slow down. I count the steps. One… Two… Oh my back.

Finally, the torture ends. I find her, on the rooftop. I should be mad, or afraid. I’m not. I can’t help but feel somewhat proud. Back when my mates and I went to this school, it took us at least six months to find this hidden treasure of a view, above our futures and teachers. Once we had found it, that’s all we could think of. Every break, every evening, every second of freedom, we would leave the world behind and come here. The school itself never seemed to have found out about it. So we would climb up there and eat our sandwiches up, sometimes with a joint or two, on Fridays.

              Six months to find this piece of heaven on Earth and my little girl found it on her very first day. Maybe it’s in her blood, or perhaps she’s just that smart. I see her, tearful eyes, snotty nose. I look at the floor, as if my old joints from thirty years ago were still going to be there and she would recognize them and know, somehow.

              I sit next to her, in silence. She emits a tiny little yelp of pure fear when I approach, before noticing it’s just me, here for her, not against her. She’s trying to hold back her sobs, to no avail.

 ‘Why are you doing this?’ She cries, ‘why are you abandoning me?’

I try choosing my words with care and love, but the explanations fly away from me. I can’t lie, nor can I say the truth. My words end up being the ones we’ve told her a hundred times before.

‘Honey, those high school years, they’re the most important ones you’ll have to get into university.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You know it’s true. Come on, don’t be like that. This is the very best school. Living here, you’ll see, the ghosts of your mom and I, We’ll be by your side every step of the way.’

‘You just want the house for yourselves.’

I laugh, my heart tightening.

‘You know honey, it’s a sacrifice for us, too. We want to keep you with us, but we have to do this. Your future matters more than what we want.’ She would never have believed me, had it not been so clear from my voice that I was holding back tears, too.

I open my arms and she lets herself fall into them.

‘Look at this view. Can you imagine such a place in any other school?’

She shakes her head, still tight against my chest.

‘If ever you feel sad or alone, just come up here and you can think of us and remember that we think of you and that we love you, okay?’

She nods.

‘And you can call us every evening. We’ll talk, you’ll be alright.’

She finally smiles through the tears. I hand her a tissue. She takes it, breathes deeply. I know my sweet little girl. Every time she’s afraid, she trembles and cries and lashes out. Then, when she understands that it won’t solve any of her problems, she breathes quietly until no one can deduce a single emotion from her face. She becomes stoic, a wall. It drives me crazy at times, when she won’t react, no matter what I do. In this instant, though, it translates into a kind of bravery that even I could never master.

‘Do you think the director is going to be mad that I ran out of his office?’ She asks, sheepishly.

I laugh. ‘Don’t worry honey, that’s what your mom is here for.’

Right on cue, Miranda arrives upstairs, holding her knees and panting like royal dog after a hunt. Sophie looks at me with her devil eyes and I know exactly what I’m supposed to say.

‘All is well dear, the situation has been handled, let’s go back down.’

Her eyes look like they’re going to explode. She pushes out a sigh like it’s her last breath. I hide my smirk.

We walk to the school office. The discussion with director Kims goes exactly as we could have expected. The hour that followed was us filling out paperwork and soon, they asked us to leave.

The students have to get to know each other. I hang onto my baby one more moment. If there’s one thing I had not expected, it was for goodbyes to come. We had worked so hard towards it that I had not stopped to think about how real it would end up being. My little girl, right there, ready to let me go.

‘Why are you abandoning me like this?’ I asked her.

She laughed: ‘You know you can call me every evening, dad. We’ll talk, you’ll be alright.’

I hold back my tears once more and I don’t say another word. I leave, not even looking back. I knew in that moment, that it I gave her a single glance, I would grab her in my arms and probably homeschool her until the end of the year. So I didn’t look. Her mom was braver than me. She said her goodbyes, gave her a nice little speech about responsibility that I heard the first words of, before being out of earshot. I think that I heard Sophie’s footsteps coming in my direction, but I walked away faster. Not everyone can be strong.

All I could think about, was how we used to hold her arms with Miranda while walking in the street, then we would pull them up and Sophie would fly between us for a moment, screaming from the top of her lungs.

              She was quiet now. Everything was so quiet, in my parked car. I waited for not more than 5 minutes before Miranda joined me in there. 5 minutes. That’s all it took for her to say her final goodbyes to our baby for the next month.

Back home, we didn’t say much either, but she prepared pork chops for me and we watched Jurassic Park while eating.

‘I’m not your kid.’ I spouted.

‘Yes you are. Finish your plate or you won’t get any ice cream.’

She and I both glanced at each other. I pushed my nose against her shoulder. She smiled. I tried to kiss her. she stopped me, sat further away. we continued watching. Miranda left a bit before the end. She had things to do.

‘But it’s the best part!’ I protested. She shrugged and left.

Not everyone has impeccable taste, I would have told Sophie, had she been there. But right where she was supposed to be, a blank space.

A few hours later, I went to sleep. To my surprise, Miranda was there. In our bed. I got in as discreetly as possible, doing my best not to give her any reason to leave. Those moments were precious. Her in my bed, by my side, like a wild animal accepting to be pet. I had a thousand of those nights before, pearls of light carelessly thrown out the windows, breaking each of them with the wrong words. Now, how many of those pearls were left? At least one more than I had hoped.

I fell asleep trying to grasp every detail in my memory. The little sounds she made, not quite snores. How still she was, so still that she looked dead. How small she made her entire body, like a bubble that I might pop with my big stupid hands. I saw a bubble floating to the sky. Then I saw my baby. There she was, on the rooftop of her school, right where I held her last. She’s there with all her friends. She has friends now. She’s laughing. Then the bubble burst. I wake up. My phone rings.

‘Dad?’ Sophie said.

‘Good morning, honey. didn’t we say we would call in the evening?’

‘Yeah, but I figured that you’d need me.’ She joked. She was right, of course.

‘No, sweetheart I’m fine. Don’t you have classes?’

‘In a minute, but I wanted to ask you… Was mom the one who decided to… To send me away?’

‘What? No, of course not my jelly bean! We both love you. Now go learn, I’ll talk to you very soon, okay?’

‘Is it because of…’ She mumbles.

‘Of…?’

‘…You know.’ She can’t even say it.

‘No, I don’t know.’ I answer. I do know. I make sure my voice is firm, perhaps a little too much so. If she’s going to talk about big subjects, question my authority, she’ll use the real words, or she won’t talk at all.

              She makes up some banalities about school and teachers, before saying goodbye.

She simply hung up. That was her way of telling me that she wasn’t happy. I forced myself to think that she would get over it. Kids, they think that they won’t be alright, until they are. They’re birds who just have to be pushed to the edge and flap their wings in order to fly.

I go around the house and soon, I find myself putting on some music. It’s not enough. I turn on the TV to act like someone is talking to me in the background.

Right as I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna do with my hours left of time before work starts, Miranda places papers in front of my cereal.

‘Don’t do this,’ I say, without looking at them. She simply sighs.

 I look at her like a dear in the headlights. She takes her softest voice to remind me: ‘You have to sign.’

I look at the divorce papers. ‘At least we’re not doing this with Sophie in the house…’

The days passed by. The papers stayed unsigned. What did she want me to do? Nothing that I had the guts to actually go along with. Sophie called once every two days. There was some relief in her voice. Deep laughs, louder words. It was annoying, of course it was, but there was also something relieving about it. She was… Living. Then the calls started coming weekly. I tried to convince myself that it was because she was making friends, but that wasn’t it. At least, it wasn’t the only reason. Kids really break your heart, don’t they? My little girl was gone. Just like that, she was far away and my only way of reaching her was remembering.

‘You’ll have to sign those before she comes back home for her break. You know that, right?’ Asks Miranda one morning, dragging me out of some other world I had hoped to stay in. One in which we could have just pretended.

‘Why? Why would I? Why can’t we just… try?’

‘We’ve tried, John. Over and over again. It’s not working.’

‘Not working? We’ve made the most beautiful thing in the world together, you and I!’

I see her eyes get lost in the memories. If I looked deeper in there, I’m sure I could see the beautiful moments we shared together in her eyes.

I continue, ‘you and I, we found each other right when we were starting to find who we wanted to be, we took every decision together, we became who we are together, as one. And you want to what? To rip that up? Because it’s easier than trying? What are you?’

              I shouldn’t have said that what at the end. I see that now. She shakes her head like a snow globe and escapes the trans I had put her in with my words. She makes the good times go away.

Cold, away from any warmth we’ve every shared, she says: ‘Just sign them. Hurry up, Sarah comes back in a few days. Read the documents. Sign.’ She leaves the kitchen.

In there, the truth, written in a way that machines could understand, as if the other people who might read it would be machines themselves. Is that who our future is determined by?

‘One last chance.’ I beg her. I see her, looking away from me.

‘Don’t act like none of it happened. Don’t act like I have a choice in this.’

‘You’ve loved me, you’ve been mine. Why can’t you love me again? Be mine like you’re meant to be?’

‘You know exactly why!’ She screams. ‘Do you have any idea how terrible it is, how charming you are, when you’re trying to be forgiven? Then I do forgive you, every time, and you turn back into…’ She can’t finish her sentence, the tears fog everything up.

So what if I did those things? What then? You’ll see me differently too? Judge me with definitions you’ve found online of what kind of person I am. Go ahead and put labels on me. Do it, really. What else are you good at?

I call Sophie. She’s jolly at first, hearing my voice. She starts telling me about how her week is going, unprompted.

‘Am I a good father?’ I ask, interrupting her monologue about this and that.

She stops. I thought the answer would come fast. But no, she hesitates. She mumbles some vague explanation about rules.

‘Talk louder, Sophie,’ I order.

‘The school, they might not let me come back for the break. I don’t know. They said they were discussing options.’

‘What? They can’t do that.’

‘They… They saw bruises on my arms. They said that it wasn’t normal. They were supposed to call you.’

I stay silent a moment. Bruises. I didn’t leave any bruises. Nothing that they would see by just looking at her fully dressed.

‘You talked, didn’t you.’ I affirm.

‘Dad…’

‘You told them lies, about how I’m the worst father. What for? To be the center of attention?’

‘No, you know it’s not…’

‘You’re doing this to hurt us, aren’t you? Lying to them as revenge for sending you away, is that it?’

‘I didn’t lie about anything!’ She snapped.

‘So what are you saying?’ I ask. I know my voice has changed. She doesn’t answer. Good. Maybe she’ll respect me now. ‘That I’m a bad father? That I don’t deserve to see you? I’ll have a talk with them.’

‘Please don’t. Please don’t.’ I hear her beg through the tears.

‘You're gonna pass the phone to one of those school reps, and we’re gonna have a serious talk.’

‘Dad, no,’ she pleads.

Is that what they teach at school these days? To spit in the face of authority?

‘I’ll just call them myself, then.’

‘What about all those moments when you hugged me and said you loved me?’ I can hear her tears coming.

‘What about them? Am I supposed to wear those like a badge of honor? You hate me for caring?’

‘No, I hate you for making me guess which version of you I'm dealing with! And I…I…’

‘PASS THEM THE PHONE RIGHT—'

She hung up on me. My own daughter.

I hear the door open and shut in a hurry downstairs. I look through the window and see Miranda running away. I look at the phone for a moment and decide not to call. Not yet. If I want to do this, I have to do it right. With the words that will make them understand.

That night, I dreamt of my darling girl up there on our tower, on top of the school. We dance together, her tiptoes of my feet. A teenager, but she’s still so small. Her laugh so heartwarming. Her tears could end wars. Then out of nowhere, I push her. She looks at me as she’s falling down. Not broken of angry, she’s accepted it. She gives me that unreadable face as she falls. Her bubble pops.

I wake up in a sweat, heart racing as the shadows of the night dissolve into a gray dawn. I reach for Miranda, but the bed is cold and empty. I’ve run out of pearls—those precious moments I once took for granted. The thought sinks in, heavy and suffocating.

My phone buzzes. I fumble for it, squinting at the screen. The caller ID reveals the school. My stomach drops.

“Mr. Brigham?” The voice on the other end trembles. “It’s about your daughter…”

I barely hear the rest, words blurring together. All I can think of is Sophie, her laughter echoing in the rooftop air, her tear-streaked face as she asked, “Why are you abandoning me?” I’d promised her the world, and now I can’t even hold onto my little girl.

“Sir, I’m deeply sorry,” the voice continues.

I can see Sophie’s bright eyes, her small frame silhouetted against the sky, trusting me to catch her, to save her from falling.

“Everything has an end,” I manage to whisper, the words taste bitter. I hang up.

I stumble to the window, looking out at the empty street. The morning light filters through the trees, illuminating the path that Miranda walked yesterday evening, without attempting to give me a dangerous goodbye.

 I think of Sarah up there, Of every time I caught her hand instead of pushing her down with it. I try to remember her laugh, to focus on the sound of her voice, but I can’t. All I can hear now is the sound of her cries, that I ignored and pushed away. Now all I’m left with is silence and memories.