A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

It’s important to have targets. One summer, I would like to drive up to the coast of Massachusetts with Alisha, spend the whole of August in a quiet house with views of the Atlantic, and be with her entirely—no backsliding into other Augusts of my life, no measuring our interactions against my parents’ interactions, no recognition of the calendar dates as things to be endured, surmounted. Just the two of us unwinding in the sunshine, being at rest. As she’s skim-reading the local paper on the beach, I’ll say to her, ‘Hey, Lish, anything worth seeing at the cinema tonight? I’m in the mood for something brainless. Can you check?’ She’ll turn to the listings, find the tackiest film on offer: ‘There’s a six thirty we can go to on the seventeenth,’ she’ll say, ‘is that today?’ And I won’t know.

If the small man lives his life outside disaster, then I’m hoping to become the smallest man on Earth.

The rest of our likenesses were so insubstantial they don’t bear repeating. I’m not sure we ever saw the world with the same eyes. And yet, when I was twelve, I’d broadcast his achievements to anyone who’d listen. If babysitters asked me, ‘What about your dad? Does he come over much?’ my chest would swell with pride. I wouldn’t think about the shortage of our time together, the places he no longer took me, the films we didn’t watch, the meals we never ate at the same table. Because I knew that he was doing something more important with his life than taking care of me.

Things like these are how you separate a home from its location.