I Don't Want to Be Apart from You
Just because someone was close didn't mean you could always help them. I had learned that, in those days, with a cruelty I still hadn't shaken.
"I know it's kind of out of nowhere. But every time I see your face, Dad, I've wanted to say it at least once. I just never could catch the moment."
"Well... it isn't easy, bringing something like that up in front of your dad."
Plenty of thoughts rose up, but I couldn't put a clear answer in front of her either. To Jia, the girl was a precious friend. To me, whatever else she was, she was a stranger I knew only as my daughter's friend. I felt for her, and if there had been a way to help I would have wanted to—but that was as far as the tie went. Just as Jia herself had called it sudden, it didn't really seem like a story meant for me.
"Just seeing that made so many thoughts come up. Like... was I the one inside a belly like that, once?"
She said it with a tender, aching look.
"I mean, you and Mom were in a situation that was worse than that, if anything. Certainly not better. Once I thought about it that way—you two had to carry that kind of weight when you were even younger than I am now. And if things had gone wrong, I was a baby with a very real chance of being aborted."
I wanted to tell her, plainly, that it wasn't true. My mouth wouldn't open. Even now, thinking back on the state Yuna and I had been in, the only thing that came was the same old sigh. The adults around us hadn't told us to get rid of the baby just once or twice. By now I had forgotten most of it, and what remained had been smoothed over until it felt like a memory—and still, knowing there was another child living through the same thing left a bitter taste.
"So I just decided I should be better to you and Mom. I can't make some big show of being a dutiful daughter, but I thought I'd give my best to whatever I can."
"What's gotten into you, Jia? Saying something that sweet to your dad."
"I've always been sweet, haven't I? Do you have any idea what an excellent daughter I am?"
"I don't want to deny it, but as a rule, the people who say that kind of thing about themselves aren't."
"That's mean. This is when you're supposed to say something like I love you, my girl, even if you don't mean it."
"I don't have to say it. Dad has always loved you, Jia."
No answer came from Jia. She looked faintly embarrassed, as if she hadn't expected me to say it so straight. Had I really never told her I loved her? Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever said it to her face more than a handful of times; it was too mortifying. Right now, though, I felt I could say it a hundred times. A thousand. The alcohol must have been rising in me. Then again, I was already past my limit. It would have been stranger if I weren't drunk.
"From the day you were born, there hasn't been a single moment I didn't love you. There still isn't."
Why? All at once something was welling up in my chest—because I knew, even as I said the words, that I was sunk in an enormous contradiction. I had no right to say them. If I had truly loved her, I never should have torn our home apart so carelessly. If I really couldn't hold my feelings down, then at the very least I should have kept the family together until Jia came of age. Or at least until she was out in the world on her own.
No. Enough. What was I doing, thinking like this in front of Jia?
"Then what about Mom?"
I had been steadying myself through that private lashing when I felt her voice go suddenly cold. I flinched and looked at her face. The mischief from a moment ago was nowhere to be found. She was speaking to me with the gravest eyes in the world.
"Why Mom?"
"It's just... you loved Mom every bit as much as you love me. So I thought maybe that's why you married her. Why you were going to spend your whole lives together."
Only now did I see why Jia had suddenly brought up her friend's abortion. And in the same instant I thought I understood the rest of it too—why she had come to the house so many times, and why, today of all days, she had asked out of nowhere that we drink together.
"Of course I loved your mom. Enormously."
There wasn't a lie in a single word I'd let out. After them, plenty of embarrassing phrases came to mind—ways of saying just how much I had loved her—but they didn't matter.
"And now?"
"Dad doesn't know either."
Was it because the betrayal had been that vast? No matter how many times I turned it over, it remained a thing I could not stand—that Jia was not my daughter, and that I was not the one who had gotten my wife pregnant.
"Can't you tell me, Dad? What kind of heart you're carrying."
Her face was serious in a way it had never been. Utterly so. The moment she asked, countless words I wanted to spit out circled inside my mouth. I couldn't let them out in front of Jia. I sighed, and spoke.
"I'm sorry, Jia. Let's talk about this later. I think I'm too drunk to be in my right mind. I don't think I can give you a proper answer."
I didn't have it in me to tell a convincing lie. Jia seemed to catch what lay under the words. She sighed and glared at me.
"If it isn't now, you're never going to tell me."
The words came like a lash. Her face was unmistakably angry. I searched every memory I had and couldn't find a single time Jia had raised her voice at me. Was this that precious to her? Of course it was. How hard must it have been for her to bring it up at all? If every visit had been for the sake of saying this, then her patience—just in having held it until now—had been extraordinary.
"Mom spends every single day talking about you and drinking."
"Grandma and Grandpa keep asking, like they want to know whether anyone can even reach you."
"If you were going to leave like that, you could at least be living well. You don't even look happy."
"What is any of this..."
Every word that reached me sank into my chest like a blade. I couldn't meet her eyes, so I hung my head. Was this her true heart? No—it was. Honest feeling. Feeling she had been able to endure this long only because she was Jia. It stood to reason. Caught between two people who were already adults, me and Yuna, Jia would have been under more strain than either of us. I couldn't bear to look at her face, and so I stayed bowed.
"I'm sorry, Jia. Dad's just too pathetic..."
What was I supposed to do? Where had it all gone wrong?
I went into the bathroom to wash. The moment I stepped into a space that was mine alone, every feeling I had been stacking up came crashing in. I had thought I had no right to call myself a father. I hadn't known I had this little.
There must have been so many thoughts in Jia's head. Of course there were. Being mature didn't mean she had no feelings. How suffocating it must have been, wanting to say it to me. She had come again and again, and I—not knowing—had only ever thought I ought to buy her a decent meal and send her home. Had I really failed, all this time, to see through the excuse that she had nothing to do and had just dropped by?
She must have endured it, and endured it, and endured it again. Then she had borrowed the courage of the drink, even brought up her friend's abortion, and somehow, at last, forced the subject into the open.
But if that was so, what was I supposed to do? Get back together with my wife, at this point? Tell her I'd been wrong—that I was sorry for raising my voice? Even that didn't seem easy. If I hid behind Jia and tried to reconcile, I felt sure I would only open some other wound. I had loved Yuna. I still did. But that and this were separate things. Or was that, too, only an excuse made by cheap pride?
I don't know. I truly don't know. What in the world am I supposed to do?
Staying in there any longer felt like a wrong against Jia, so I came out without having sorted a single thought.
"All done washing, Dad?"
What I'd worried about most was how to speak to her first. Jia got there before I could, her face so bright it was hard to believe she had said any of it. That familiar daughter's expression only tangled my heart further, and I tried to answer the way I always did.
"Yeah. Washing up does clear your head..."
"You took a change of clothes in with you, I see."
"Well... I did?"
"You didn't have to go that far. You could've just changed into something comfortable. Back then you used to wander around naked whether I was home or not."
"How am I supposed to walk around naked with a grown young woman in the house?"
"Oh my. Are you finally admitting I'm all grown up?"
"Well, legally you're an adult. You drank with your dad, too. So now, well..."
Jia grinned at that.
"So a grown man and a grown woman shared a drink, and now they're sleeping in the same bed? Doesn't that feel a little strange?"
For a second I didn't understand what she had said. The moment I caught what lay under it, a flush of embarrassment went through me.
"...What are you saying, Jia?"
"It's a light joke. A joke. Why the serious face?"
"Because it's a hard thing not to take seriously. Making a joke like that to your dad."
"Come on, that's mean. The air got so stiff, I was just trying to loosen it."
"Let me say this now. Don't talk like that in front of other men."
"Why? You worried you'll end up looking at a grandchild?"
"What kind of thing is that to say? Why have you suddenly gotten so forward, Jia..."
"Ehehe. I just want to be easy around you too, Dad. That's all."
She certainly knew one sure way to break the tension. It worked. Did it have to be like this, though? Between earlier and now, I couldn't believe words like that were coming out of Jia's mouth.
"I thought you didn't know a thing about any of that, Jia."
"What do you mean, I don't know? Like you said, I'm an adult. I know what there is to know."
She had a point.
"Come on, anyway, get in already, Dad. I turned the heated mat on ahead of time. It's warm under the covers."
I did as she said and slipped in beside her. Under the blanket, a comfort nothing like before settled against my skin—the warmth of it, and the simple fact that someone was there.
"I'm sorry about earlier. Once I started talking, my feelings got away from me."
The moment she lay down, the apology came. So the strange talk really had been nothing but an attempt to turn the mood.