Love from a to Z

ODDITY:
A RELATIONSHIP THAT ENDED BEFORE IT EVEN BEGAN.
MARVEL:
THIS TOO WILL PASS. LIFE GOES ON, EVEN IF LOVE DOESN’T.

---

ADAM
SUNDAY, MARCH 17
ODDITY:
ZAYNEB . . . AND THE TRUTH
Z
AYNEB WAS NOT WHO SHE
was in my mind.
Before, I’d thought that the more impressions you got of someone you
liked, the less projecting would be happening. That you wouldn’t see them
according to how you wanted to.
I hadn’t realized that, in this case, I’d been hoodwinking myself all along,
though.
Because I’d just fallen for her so quickly.
On the ride home, with Hanna super quiet beside me, even though she
had a velvet bag full of new rocks for her collection from the museum shop,
I realized I’d escaped someone who wasn’t who I thought they were.
Zayneb was the only marvel I’d observed and recorded that turned out
not to be a real one.
Bullet dodged, Adam.
• • •
You don’t get my deal, and I don’t get yours. Like you being chicken to tell
your dad about your MS.
I couldn’t get Zayneb’s words out of my head as I helped Dad with
dinner that evening, him chopping up vegetables for a salad, me taking the
packaging off a frozen lasagna, getting it ready for the oven.
Zayneb didn’t know anything about it, anything about me. At all.
Just like I hadn’t known anything about her true self.
I slid the foil tray into the preheated oven. Then closed the door and
turned to Dad. “Do you have time to talk?”

---

I wasn’t scared of any of it.
“For sure.” Running the edge of his knife along the cutting board, he slid
the red peppers he’d just cut into a wooden bowl already full of lettuce and
cucumber. He put the board back down, lay the knife on top of it, and
looked at me. “Do you want to talk here or go into the living room?”
I didn’t want it to be monumental, this talk. The kitchen was okay,
because it was just us two here in a no-fuss space.
But then Hanna was in her room, arranging her rocks, and could enter at
any moment soundlessly.
Telling her about my MS had to be done in a special way.
“The patio? I can put a timer for the lasagna on my phone, and we’ll
know when to call Hanna for dinner.”
Dad nodded and picked up wooden salad tongs and put them into the
bowl. He carried it with him to the kitchen table and placed it in the middle
of its glass surface.
Was it my imagination, or was there some weariness to his actions after
I’d asked him for a talk?
Just follow him to the patio and speak, I coached myself.
• • •
After clearing an ottoman of Hanna’s skipping rope and scooting it over,
Dad pulled his lawn chair closer to mine, facing the water and sky, already
dark.
“Should we turn on more lights?” he asked. When I shook my head, he
adjusted his seat so that it leaned back before sitting down and putting his
feet up on the ottoman.
Then he crossed his fingers on top of his stomach and sighed. “Adam, tell
me.”
The sigh threw me off. I glanced at him. He was looking at his fingers.
“I’m ready to hear it. Our committee interview for a new deputy head is at
the end of the week. I didn’t need to prep for it today, the third day of spring
break. I mean, I pulled the files to try to bury myself in work. But I was in
fact prepping for you to talk to me.”
He looked at me then, and the patio light was strong enough for a
revelation: His face looked more tired than ever before. And aged. Like

---

suddenly, overnight, he’d become the middle-aged dad he was, not the fit,
young-looking one my friends joked was really my older brother.
It was his mouth. The edges looked slacker, weaker.
I almost bolted inside. “What do you know?”
I didn’t ask how do you know. Because I knew how.
I guess Ms. Raymond had done what an adult would do.
Maybe what someone who loved Mom would do.
“I know you have something to tell me, and that I have to be strong to
hear it. That’s it.” Dad looked away, toward the water, but his eyes were
closed. “I’m here for you in whatever way you want me to be.”
“Even if it’s hard?” I concentrated on the tiny white triangle sails of the
boats docked in the curve of a far-off shore. “Because it’s hard.”
“I’m ready.”
“In November, I was diagnosed.” I paused. “With MS. Like Mom.”
Dad was silent, and so I turned to him. His eyes were open, looking
straight ahead. Maybe he, too, was looking at those sails.
“And then I stopped going to classes early this year. Because I couldn’t
concentrate. My mind was going miles a minute trying to figure out next
steps, what it meant, just processing it. So I just took all of it out of my
mind—my diagnosis, school, everything—and made stuff.” I paused to
smile, trying to make it light. “You should see the Boba Fett helmet I made
for you, Dad. Ryan, that friend I told you about? He’s gonna send all my
stuff back here, back home, including the helmet. Because I quit
university.”
At some point during my verbal vomit, he’d closed his eyes again.
I stood up. “Listen, it’s going to be okay. I had an attack, my second one,
the first being just the nonstop tingling that got me to the hospital in the first
place to get diagnosed, and, yes, my second one was a lot worse, but it was
treated. And it can be treated, Dad.”
He spoke. “Was that the day you were sleeping all day?”
“Yeah, then I got my treatments at the hospital and Ms. Raymond’s.”
“Adam. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was the anniversary of Mom’s passing. You’re always down
that week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me in November?” He was staring at me, wanting
an answer, demanding one with the unflinching steadiness of his eyes on

---

my face. “It hurts me that you had to bear this on your own. That I couldn’t
help you.”
I sat back down.
“You and Hanna are the world to me. Every day I think about whether
I’m doing right by you. That’s all I want.”
“I know, Dad.”
“The thing you don’t know, or maybe don’t seem to believe, Adam, is
that I can help you. That I want to.”
“But it was hard for you with Mom. I thought you’d get triggered. Just
not be able to take it.”
“Yes, okay, you’re right. Mom’s death was hard. It devastated me. But
that was only because it progressed so fast at the end. It wasn’t the MS that
got to me. She’d had it since she was in her twenties, when I met her, and it
went into remission for so long, especially after she had you. We’d read that
pregnancy does that, almost makes the disease disappear.” He shifted and
sighed. “I was on a high that everything was getting better for her. And
then, after Hanna, it was swift. I didn’t have time to prepare.”
“I get it.” Dare I say it? I spoke gently so he wouldn’t think I was trying
to be rude. “But, Dad, that was a while ago. A long time ago.”
He didn’t speak. I didn’t either. The silence stretched until I wondered if
he’d fallen asleep, but I couldn’t bring myself to check.
I switched from sail watching to observing the sky. It was sprinkled with
hundreds of stars, and suddenly I remembered the night Zayneb was here,
blowing bubbles with that secret smile.
I couldn’t believe my mind jumped to her so fast.