My father set out three teacups and three ice-cream bowls.
“Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you.”
“It’ll go well with the ice cream,” said my mother. “Hot and cold.”
I noticed a tub of frozen yogurt on the table.
“Is there ice cream?”
“This is the ice cream,” said my father about the yogurt. “You put whipped cream and sauce on this, and all buried in a sundae, you don’t know the difference.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Except there’s no whipped cream,” said my mother.
“Then why did you say it?” I asked.
“Hypothetically,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Can you pass the chocolate sauce?”
He handed me a fragile-looking glass bottle.
“We don’t have chocolate sauce. This is agave syrup.”
“I met my real father today,” I said.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my parents after that. I did, and I still do. We’re still in touch.
But while I loved my family, I also knew that it wasn’t who I was anymore. If it ever even had been.
I was a name-brand kid, and I was meant to have a name-brand life.
Sometimes I wish I had learned everything earlier and that my real life could have started sooner. Other times, I’m glad that the first part of my life lasted as long as it did. It doesn’t really matter, though. None of it could have been any different.
As for fate—or not-fate—I’m still not sure about it, but it’s not something that keeps me up at night. I’ve lived it, and the people who still wonder about that kind of thing can call it whatever they want.
The Man Who Posted Pictures of Everything He Ate
Once there was a man who posted pictures online of most of the things he ate. He put up pictures of most of his meals and some of his snacks with little captions.
Yum!!
I made this myself!
Hits the spot.
Saaaaalty!
I’m gonna regret this tomorrow!!!
Yum!!
And plenty of times—most of the time—he simply let the pictures speak for themselves.
The sixteen, then fifteen, then sixteen, then fourteen people who followed him made fun of him for it mercilessly.
Why do you post pictures of your food?!
We don’t give a **** what u ate!!
The more they teased him, the more he did it, and the more he did it, the more they teased him.
why do u always post pics of ur food!?
He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people.
It was the same reason he liked the teasing.
Closure
“I want closure.”
“There’s no such thing as closure.”
“Please. I have to see you. Please. Please.”
“No.”
“One last time.”
“No.”
“Real quick. Ten minutes. Five minutes. One minute.”
“Annette, we have nothing to talk about. You know I love you. But I’m at this point—”
“I know, I know! I can’t hear all this again! Please! I just need closure.”
“There’s no such thing as closure.”
“I just need closure. I know I can get closure. Ten minutes. Please!”
“Okay. When?”
“Let’s meet at the bench by the river. Right now. Where we had our first kiss.”
“Now? The bench by … At eleven at night? Come on, Annette. Can you … can you just come over?”
“Come over?”
“I mean, just, it’s late, and if it’s so important for this to be right now—”
“That’s not what this is about!”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“I need closure, David. I just need closure.”
David met Annette by the river.
“Wow. You look really amazing.”
“Thank you,” said Annette with a two-blinks-and-you’d-miss-it half curtsey at once feminine and mean.
For the first time in her life, Annette looked exactly the way she wanted to look. Her hair was mostly neat, mostly down; she wore a simple dress that was the exact medium shade of red of all the shades of red in the world. It wasn’t even that hard to look this way, she noted as she caught a last look at herself in the mirror on her way out; it just took some effort and thought and luck—a reasonable but attainable amount more of each than usual. A good lesson to learn for the future, she thought; a future that could begin tonight, right after she got closure.
“I want to say something.”
“Okay.”
“Everything is okay.”
She smiled. He smiled back.
“Everything in the past,” continued Annette, “is in the past. The cheating—the cheating you admit to, and the cheating you still can’t bring yourself to admit to—”
“Wait, Annette—”
“And the lies about the cheating—the stories you made up that you eventually felt more loyal to than you did to the relationship—”