Since, A Novel

xvi. THE GRANT

"What do you mean?" his brows lowered. "Is this the wrong Luna? What have you done to my daughter?" he asked a standing joke, attempting a smile, but it rather turned into a sad one.

I at least shared his sad smile. "Why are you here?"
"I came to see you, of course," he said. "You wanna go to Dave's—our favourite burger shack?"
"I don't know," really, I didn't know if I wanted to—and talking to him; I didn't know if any of this could last.
"Well, I'm here to give you money," at last he said, reaching out to his pocket in a way that was somehow dismissive and concluding, as if out of haste. "I'm glad you seem to have eaten—we'd have to use this money if we're going to eat. Don't tell your mom anything, alright?"

He handed an envelope. I could feel coins in there. I couldn't nod or shake my head or refocus my eyes. At the time, I thought I would be grateful if the grounds collapsed under our heels just to slip and fall and feel something, anything to remind me that I was human, anyone but his daughter, anything but his.

"You're only here for this, dad?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, 'why'? I asked if you wanted to eat. But you seem full, so . . ."
"I haven't eaten since yesterday,"

A silence.

"In that case, you should eat,"
"Okay,"

A silence.

"Just so you know, Lune, phone works two ways."

My mother once had told me the reason behind my name, and it wasn't because of the moon at all: she had believed I'd grow up dogmatic and harsh and gentle at the same time; not like her, not as her, not something close to anything—as though I'd be forging my own form of salvation in doing so. So she didn't call me Lara, nor Lune, nor Luna, nor An. I had to be Ara, her ma cherie, at least I had so believed, to be saved.

Before I could cry, I heard the bike's engine starting. He was gone then, his image deserting. On the ground, I pressed my knees against my chest, but I could see and smell the bruise on my left knee closely. My eyes began heating up, my lungs compressing, the tears stinging more the black and blue.

Before I had turned four, my father and I would go to this restaurant with, I'd thought, the best burgers and fries that I had wolfed the meat and fry at the same time in my mouth while sipping Pepsi—I think I was imitating that scene from the cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants where a character, I think it was a fish, ate his burger all satisfied and burped so much after drinking cola. "Slow down, young lady, slow down!" he would say with a big proud grin on his face, wiping off a side of my mouth with a tissue.

It is typical, this story: my mother and father were never close, at least that was what I'd always espied; they'd never kiss, not in the cheek nor on the lips, never showing any inkling of fondness towards each other in my grandmother's house, where I had lived until I was ten, though not once had I deemed any kind of good friction between them, only the quiet—one that wasn't peaceful but unresting. I grew up thinking parents were like that: jobs and jobs and jobs in their minds. Nonetheless I was always close with my father; he was the first man I had ever loved. Somewhere back home, back in Sydney, I think I still have the first doll he'd ever given me (even though it wasn't a birthday present) in one of the boxes hidden in my closet—I had named her Sunny, after the name of my favourite day of the week: Saturday. Because every Saturday, my father and I would spend time with each other going on dates and parks and restaurants: he'd buy me these big balloons with big faces of different characters from my favourite shows, and I'd always pick any characters from SpongeBob, because I had loved that cartoon so much.