Dust Motes

I still remember what I did on my father’s last day. Even then, I could feel it; something intangible but very real was closing around me. A door swinging shut, lock ready to click. I grasped at the idea, whisking just past my fingertips like dust motes in a sunbeam. I was getting restless, anxious.

I asked Kim if he felt it too, when the air was thick and my head heavy with it, and he looked at me as if through a haze. “Are you talking about Mom and Dad?”

“No, not that.” I was impatient. “Do you feel… off? Like something’s going to happen.”

“I’m no psychic,” he scoffed. “Anyway, I bet Mom wants you at the desk…”

I gave up and tugged down my mask to get a few breaths of relatively fresh air, albeit steeped in the smell of nail polish and acetone. Acrylic dust thinly coated every neglected surface. I had mixed feelings about the nail salon–infused with nostalgia of childhood as well as my new part-time job.

Mom’s call filtered into the back room. I sighed and straightened from where I squatted beside a box of supplies. “One sec. You’re probably right about the front desk.”

A different call would wake me that night, a frightened cry muffled through walls and a haze of sleep, like a broken fragment on the tail end of a nightmare. I could pretend Mom’s tear-streaked face and shaky hands were the machinations of a sleep-addled mind, but something struck much realer about the blue-and-red lights that refracted through blinds to play across the floor like shards of colored glass. The night my father died.

Regrets cling like cobwebs to these memories, fragile as my grandmother’s translucent china teacups. I still handle them with care, but they’ve been invaluable on my journey.

A year after my father’s death yet six years before it, I woke up in my childhood bedroom. Eleven again, in a world or time where my father still lived. With six years ahead of me to prevent the tragedy.

Second time now. February 29, 2020. I track my father’s movements, slow and careless. He eats his dinner of fried rice, all of it, and places his chopsticks across the top of the bowl, ready for Mom to collect. Just as I remember. The sound of my footsteps follows him to the living room, where he puts on a movie. The same movie.

The familiarity of the night quickens my pulse. Over these years, with the knowledge of what would be, I’ve attempted to connect with him, talk to him, all through the necessary screen of secrets. Maybe that’s why it couldn’t work, why his smile always came back grim and distant. Dad considers himself a modern parent–he raised Kim and I more kindly than he was, but with every gesture performed as if for an invisible audience. I’m always left wondering how much is real.

He is perfectly ordinary now, the same distant gaze and absent tick of fingers against the armrest. I check the time; 9:38 PM. “Where did I put the remote?” he asks presently, searching for it. My breath catches. He finds it and turns the TV off, rises from his seat. “Good night,” he says, in the same terse farewell.

“Wait…” My words trip over themselves. “Could–could we, um… I need help with my homework.” I know that won't go anywhere even before I fall silent.

Dad smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. I wonder how much swims behind them that I can't see. “You know I can’t remember anything I learned in high school.”

“Sure, but…” I’m at a loss. “Could you sit up with me a little longer?”

His eyes dart to the clock. “I have to be up early tomorrow.”

I stand fixed to my spot, wondering how much he knows already, whether he's aware of what he'll do. I swallow. “I think I’m sick,” I whisper.

“Then call your school and let them know.” His head bobs and he’s starting towards the hall door again. I hear the water gurgle in the pipes; Mom is taking a shower. Again.

My head spins, and I claw at excuses. “I think I’m going to faint.”

“Huh?” He’s already disappearing down the hall.

My eyes sting. I’ve thought of excuses to use tonight for years now, yet here we are, the pinnacle of it all, and I can barely speak. “I need to go to the hospital!” My voice catches halfway through.

There’s a pause, and Dad’s footsteps start back. He studies me cautiously, and I wonder. Maybe he wonders, too. We linger in a moment frozen in time, seconds spreading like spilled blood. “You need to go to the hospital,” he echoes flatly.

I’ll always remember this image of him in the doorway, on the edge of goodbye. I see in his eyes then there's nothing left for him to give. My heart crumbles. “I love you,” I whisper.

He says it back swiftly, easily, like always. I never knew if it was real when he did. I suppose it doesn’t matter, or at least it didn’t matter enough. His shadow plays over the carpet like a fading song and the door clicks shut. I hear the lock turn.

I feel cold. I stand immobile for a few minutes, listening to the tick of the clock. Seconds slip away like water through my fingers. Just more water.

Mom did not say “good night” to me. She never did, not until after dad’s death. Then she squeezed my hand very tightly and said, ritualistically, “Good night. I love you. See you in the morning”, like a prayer she hoped came true. I missed that, eleven again and somehow more alone than before, empty of the mother love she didn’t know how to show yet and the father love I never had enough of.

Kim used to tell me everything, stopped after age ten, and started again when Dad was gone, like a broken faucet spilling secrets and tears and always looking for me to put him back together. I know they both love me now, but not the same. They were the ones who stayed.

I have a choice of what to save–a choice I never should have had, and one I’ll probably get wrong. Will I always remember this night, and what I could have done? Bright-eyed and hopeful, I used to think this moment would not come again–that I’d fix my father and there would be nothing to prevent.

But whatever I did, my father’s decision had nothing to do with me. He never had anything to offer.

Silent as a shadow, I go to Kim’s room. He’s asleep, out like a light. Mom often joked that Kim could sleep through the apocalypse, and had yet to be proven wrong. I sit gently on the edge of his bed. He has Dad’s straight hair and the same curving jawline. For a moment, close-ribbed panic climbs my throat, remembering the last glimpse of Dad’s shadow down the hallway.

Dad’s still alive. It’s not too late.

The next few months play out in my mind. Begging and convincing only might be believed by a family that is only halfway mine, divided by the gulch of an alternate lifetime. Maybe Mom will believe me long enough to schedule appointments with therapists I know Dad won’t see. Maybe he will come to hate me, speak to me the way he snaps at Mom in the Vietnamese he thinks I don’t understand, words full of sharp edges and sarcastic bite. And maybe all of that will be worth it--because this isn't about me, or whether Dad meant his last words. I love him.

Heaviness settles over me, weighing me to the bed. Maybe it would work. But it’s not the life I was destined for.

I find Kim’s hand and twine my fingers with his, close my eyes against the darkness. At least this time, I got to say goodbye.

10:15 PM, and I hear the squeaking twist of a knob, water dribbling to a stop in the pipes. Silence, a silence I know will be broken with a scream.

I have been a little dazed all evening, but now my head floats with stars. The ceiling swims dreamlike over my head. I wake Kim gently, with soft shakes. He opens his eyes and blinks at me through a blur of sleep. “Get dressed,” I whisper. “Mom will need us in a minute.”