Don't Ever Forget That I Love You
01
“Are you surprised?” He asks.
“Are you kidding? Of course I am.” She lies, biting her tongue as if holding back from the truth. She twirls a little paper umbrella in the glass her dad’s just given her. She doesn’t meet his eyes.
Norm smiles, brown eyes crinkling around the edges. He looks straight into her, as if trying to fill her with the joy he has all buried inside of him.
“It’s not everyday a kid turns sixteen. Sweetheart.”
Meryl recoils from the word, from her father, tries to gaze anywhere but at his heavy brown eyes, all full of love and whimpering, animal devotion.
All full of broken promise and dead geraniums.
Looking around the living room, she counts the balloons. Forty-seven. That forty-seven to blow, to attach curled ribbons unto, to tape on the ceiling. She looks at the double-layer cake, the polka-dot streamers. The food- pomegranate tangerine salad, homemade chicken wings, barbecued pork with the fat charred black. All of it glistening, pungent, the product of hours of work.
He spent all day on this.
She bites down hard on her bottom lip, and blood fills her mouth.She promised herself walking home today; she promised she wouldn't cry.
“Dad... it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Norm scrunches his eyebrows together, frowning at the room. The one thing wrong with this party, with this living room, is that it’s devoid of people. Nobody’s here.
“I thought the guests would all be here by the time you came home, I….” And then he has that look in his eyes, that broken, misty look
“I thought I called them all.” He wets his lips, all happiness gone. “Oh god, Mer. I swore I did but now I do—I don’t…”
“Daddy, you did. Trust me.”
This day at school had been the worst. Her friends walked up to her, slow funeral marches and look at her with sharp eyes, all pity. “You’re dad’s throwing you a birthday party.” They say. “You’re sixteen today. We couldn’t make it.” And she clenched and unclenched her hands, thinking how idiotic kids were these days, thinking she had no real friends. But no, that wasn’t true. Her dad was her real, her only friend.
Sometimes, when his eyes are bright and alive, like pieces of autumn and he tells Meryl stories about her mother, “Clara the beautiful, Clara the extraordinary. She stopped my heart with one glance, put it in a gold-gilded cage and gave it back to me on my wedding night. I told her it was hers to keep,” she thinks of him as a dad.
No-- as the dad, the hardworking, honest dad with big warm hands and a big smiling heart.
But when he sits on the edge of her bed and cries because he forgot where his checkbook was, forgot what the word melancholy meant forgot, what Clara’s perfume smelled like “It’s ok, daddy. It was daisies—you remember? Daisies and warm vanilla on a summer’s night,” then he’s just Norm, the live-in tenant. The guy with the weepy eyes who forgets a lot, and she rubs Norm’s back while he hiccups and sobs, and waits for her dad to return.
Meryl has cold sores running all along the inside of her mouth. Her eyes have little shadows dancing underneath them. She gets a lot of headaches. She blames it on Norm, but never on her father.
Meryl is eighteen years old.
“Are you kidding? Of course I am.” She lies, biting her tongue as if holding back from the truth. She twirls a little paper umbrella in the glass her dad’s just given her. She doesn’t meet his eyes.
Norm smiles, brown eyes crinkling around the edges. He looks straight into her, as if trying to fill her with the joy he has all buried inside of him.
“It’s not everyday a kid turns sixteen. Sweetheart.”
Meryl recoils from the word, from her father, tries to gaze anywhere but at his heavy brown eyes, all full of love and whimpering, animal devotion.
All full of broken promise and dead geraniums.
Looking around the living room, she counts the balloons. Forty-seven. That forty-seven to blow, to attach curled ribbons unto, to tape on the ceiling. She looks at the double-layer cake, the polka-dot streamers. The food- pomegranate tangerine salad, homemade chicken wings, barbecued pork with the fat charred black. All of it glistening, pungent, the product of hours of work.
He spent all day on this.
She bites down hard on her bottom lip, and blood fills her mouth.She promised herself walking home today; she promised she wouldn't cry.
“Dad... it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Norm scrunches his eyebrows together, frowning at the room. The one thing wrong with this party, with this living room, is that it’s devoid of people. Nobody’s here.
“I thought the guests would all be here by the time you came home, I….” And then he has that look in his eyes, that broken, misty look
“I thought I called them all.” He wets his lips, all happiness gone. “Oh god, Mer. I swore I did but now I do—I don’t…”
“Daddy, you did. Trust me.”
This day at school had been the worst. Her friends walked up to her, slow funeral marches and look at her with sharp eyes, all pity. “You’re dad’s throwing you a birthday party.” They say. “You’re sixteen today. We couldn’t make it.” And she clenched and unclenched her hands, thinking how idiotic kids were these days, thinking she had no real friends. But no, that wasn’t true. Her dad was her real, her only friend.
Sometimes, when his eyes are bright and alive, like pieces of autumn and he tells Meryl stories about her mother, “Clara the beautiful, Clara the extraordinary. She stopped my heart with one glance, put it in a gold-gilded cage and gave it back to me on my wedding night. I told her it was hers to keep,” she thinks of him as a dad.
No-- as the dad, the hardworking, honest dad with big warm hands and a big smiling heart.
But when he sits on the edge of her bed and cries because he forgot where his checkbook was, forgot what the word melancholy meant forgot, what Clara’s perfume smelled like “It’s ok, daddy. It was daisies—you remember? Daisies and warm vanilla on a summer’s night,” then he’s just Norm, the live-in tenant. The guy with the weepy eyes who forgets a lot, and she rubs Norm’s back while he hiccups and sobs, and waits for her dad to return.
Meryl has cold sores running all along the inside of her mouth. Her eyes have little shadows dancing underneath them. She gets a lot of headaches. She blames it on Norm, but never on her father.
Meryl is eighteen years old.