“Baby, baby.” He wipes my tears with the end of a balled-up tissue, like he did when I was little. “Precious bane. Don’t cry. Your waffle will get salty.”
We meet at the Highway Diner, my father and I.
The Highway Diner has not been the Highway Diner as we knew and loved it for over a decade now, but when I drive up, there it is. And there he is, standing on the minuscule front porch, right by the Hartford Courant box.
It’s not quite been two weeks. My throat is closing. My heart is breaking. I’m running before I realize it. He opens his arms.
I can’t speak, just embrace. He’s all there, right there, smelling like the cedar blocks my stepmother tucked into his closet. Smelling like him.
“It’s you!” he says, as though he’s surprised.
“Shut up and hug me.” I’m crying into his shoulder. There’s no possible way I can let go.
“I’m going to hug you for the next century,” I tell him.
“I guess I’ll have to wear you into the restaurant, then.”
This gets me to laugh. I let him go, slowly. “After you.”
He walks over the threshold with an ease I haven’t seen in I don’t know how long. His legs move as fluidly as they did when I was a small child and we went walking, me high on his shoulders. He’s buoyant, almost.
Inside, the Highway Diner is intact, as we left it years ago, before it closed. The old counter is back with its line of wobbly red stools; the Formica tables are back, too, also red, their spider-vein cracks patched over with packing tape.
“Same old place,” my father says.
I cannot say anything.
We sit at our favorite booth, the one directly under the window facing Route 7. I’m in shock at all of it—the stack of jam packets, the sticky menus, things I haven’t seen in years. Even the old cigarette vending machine is there, right between the doors to the bathrooms.
Dad notices it, too.
“Your first felony,” he says.
“Wait, what?”
“Your first felony.” He points to the machine. “I was settling up the tab and I turn back around and you’ve got a pack of Parliaments in your little hands.”
“I did not!”
“You did! At three years old, too. I never found out how you did it. You wouldn’t tell me!”
I cross my arms. “You’re lying.”
“Okay, okay.” He looks chagrined, but not really. “It was such a good story. I couldn’t resist.”
A server slides by, her long braid flicking over her shoulder. Before I can speak, my father catches her attention, says, “Two Belgian waffles, please, deluxe—one for me and one for my legal guardian over here.”
“Still getting mileage out of that one, huh?” I tell him.
“Yup,” he says, then sighs. “I haven’t had a waffle in about . . . oh, twenty years or so.” His expression is dreamy.
The server is back astoundingly fast. “Two deluxe,” she says, lifting the plates from her tray. She places one plate in front of Dad, one in front of me. Belgian waffles, the Highway Diner staple. Deluxe. Slathered in whipped cream, topped with strawberries. One little metal creamer of maple syrup on each plate.
It’s like a magic trick, all of it—his magic trick. I’m staring and staring at him. He can’t be gone; he’s right here. He’s always been right here.
“Dad.” My voice breaks and I’m crying; maybe I never stopped, I don’t know. My brain is a few steps behind me, hovering there. “Dad.” I want to put my head on the table and wail.
“Baby, baby.” He wipes my tears with the end of a balled-up tissue, like he did when I was little. “Precious bane. Don’t cry. Your waffle will get salty.” Leaning back, he makes a show of cutting into his. Melted whipped cream sinks into its little squares, mixing with the syrup.
“A diabetic’s dream,” I say to him, sniffling.
He stuffs a napkin into the front of his shirt. It’s a favorite, a black tee with INNOCENT BYSTANDER in bold, capital letters—just his humor. I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe he’s not here. It’s a strange, if not entirely unfamiliar, conundrum.
My father takes a bite of waffle big enough for a moose. “I don’t have to worry about that health stuff anymore,” he says, his mouth full. “So there.”
I watch him enjoying his waffle, without a hint of guilt or worry on his face.
“Do I have maple syrup in my beard?” he asks.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
My father makes a show of brushing his entire face with his napkin-bib, then lets it fall back into position to reveal a Cheshire Cat smile. Sight gags have always been his best gags, his method for easing me into relaxation—this time and all the thousands and thousands of times before it. He has always been so much better at being calm than I am, miraculously able to guide me through it.
As if he can read my thoughts—and hell, perhaps he can now—my father reaches across the table to uncurl my fingers from around my thumb; I’ve gripped them up tight without meaning to, my nervous tell.
“Dad?”
“Child?” He gives me a goofy smile, showing off his perfect top teeth, ones he bought himself years ago. Those teeth and my college tuition, on a book contract. A gift I can never repay.
“Did . . . Did it hurt?”
He’s chewing another bite of waffle now. “Did what hurt?”
“When it happened.”
“Oh—God, no.” He makes a face, waving away the thought. “Not at all.”
“You’re not lying, right?”
“I’m not. It really didn’t.”
“Good.”
Out the window, a semi flies by, tires ringing on the wet road.
“I always wondered what it was like to drive one of those,” Dad says.
“Really? Me, too.”
He looks at me, beaming that grin, the one that’s half knowing, half baffled. “I guess it’s in your genes,” he says.
My genes. He is my genes. He’s in my eyes, my hair, the set of my stance, the broadness of my shoulders. I have his wonky eyesight and his detached earlobes, his knack for rhythm, his crummy math skills. He taught me to use a camera. He taught me to flip the bird. He taught me to put on my socks, for god’s sake.
“What am I going to do?” I ask him, in a small voice. “What am I going to do without you?”
He waves the thought away again. “What are you going to do?” he repeats. “You’re going to go to work. You’re going to pet your cats. You’re going to love your pal—your partner. You’re going to write your book. You’re going to do your art.” He says this last word with a pronounced imitation of a Long Island accent—“ahht.”
He wants a laugh, but I can’t oblige him—not now. “I mean, what am I going to do without you? I need you, Dad.”
There’s a huge slice of strawberry on his fork, loaded down with whipped cream. “No, you don’t,” he says, popping it into his mouth.
“Of course I do!”
He shakes his head. “You don’t. Look at you! You are a grown person with a grown person’s life. You’re not the size of a bag of flour anymore.”
“That doesn’t matter.” I’m near tears again. “I could be a bazillionaire with three penthouse apartments and a Rolex for every day of the week—I would still need you.”
“Honey.” He puts his hand on mine, gives it a small shake. “You are okay.”
“Okay? Are you crazy? I’m the opposite of okay!” I push my plate of soggy waffle to one side.
Dad holds up his palms. “Agree to disagree?”
I don’t answer him right away. “This is just . . . such a raw deal.”
“I know.”
“First Mom and now you. Like . . . I just . . .”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“You remember what I said to you a long time ago?” Dad says finally.
“You’ve said a lot of things to me all kinds of times ago.”
“Fair, fair. But do you remember when I told you that you have a really amazing capacity to be happy? To be really, actually happy?”
I do remember; I tell him so.
“Well, it’s true,” he says. “It’s something I always admired about your mother, too.”
“But then why am I so fucking miserable, Dad?”
Instead of answering, my father nudges my plate until it is in front of me again. “No one can be miserable while eating a Belgian waffle,” he says. “So, eat.”
I stare at the waffle. “I’ll never get to buy you a car.”
“So what?”
“A red Pontiac. I wanted to get you a red Pontiac. Or at least a computer, and not some crap from eBay or a hand-me-down from the neighbor across the street.”
“I don’t need a red Pontiac. Or a computer.”
I glare at him. “Well, not now you don’t.”
My father has one bite of waffle left. He spears it with his fork, then holds it out to me. “It’s goo-ood,” he says in a singsong.
I shake my head. “I wanted to, I don’t know, get you something. I wanted to make you happy.”
“You do make me happy,” he says. “You always made me happy.”
We’ve had conversations like this many times before; we both know the patter, for this last time, too.
“Even when I was a total jerk I made you happy?” I ask.
“Especially when you were a total jerk!”
“Even when I peed on the lawn?”
“Especially when you peed on the lawn!” He’s laughing now. “I may have taught you to put on your socks, but you taught me a ton. Like ‘I’m sorry, are you sorry?’ And the Napoleon joke. Where does Napoleon keep his armies?”
“Where?” I ask dutifully.
My father throws up his arms. “In his sleevies!” he shouts. His favorite. Mine, too.
“You taught me that joke,” I point out. “I most certainly did not.”
“I guess that one’s lost to history.
“Really. Don’t worry about the Pontiac,” he says. He covers my hands with his bigger ones. “Really, really. Just finish the revision for the agent. Type faster!”
I groan. “You’ll never even get to see me publish a book, if I ever get there.”
“You will.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“But how?”
“I’m a fire chief.”
I roll my eyes. That old line, from a book we read when I was little. I can’t remember the title, and neither can he. Another thing lost to history.
“I miss you, Dad,” I tell him.
He slides a jam packet under our hands. “It’s strawberry,” he whispers.
“I know. I saw.”
“I love you, milais,” he says. He has always called me this—milais, a standby term of endearment in his first language—Latvian, the language he’s told me he still dreams in. Lovable one; dearest.
“I love you, too.”
“I love you more.”
“Do not.”
“Do so!”
His eyes are bright now. Mine are full and spilling over. I let them. I’m crying and crying again, and this time I’m all caught up, I’m right there on time with myself, and I’m afraid the tears will never stop.
“Dad,” I croak.
“Baby.”
“Forever,” I say. “I love you forever. Always and always.”
“I love you forever more!”
I’m laughing through the tears. He holds both my hands. The sky outside the Highway Diner has gone dark. Above the trees, stars are out, just a few little dots. It’s time. I know it, and my father knows it.
“Say goodnight, Gracie,” my father instructs me.
“But I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“Can I think it instead?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “You can think it instead. Close your eyes.”
I close them.
Goodnight, Gracie. Goodnight, Gracie.
I can feel his hands in mine. They’re big and warm, as familiar as my own.
Goodnight, Gracie.
Goodnight, Dad.
Goodnight.
RF Jurjevics works in tech by day and does just about everything else possible by night. The decidedly master-of-none Jurjevics is a hobbyist woodworker, incorrigible doodler, and sometime journalist.