Death is not the most important part of Dad's story. It's his life where I start: the joy he brought me with his jokes, his easy-going attitude, and the unwavering support of my endeavors, big or small.
With a massive grin on my face, I recount my childhood: I was the center of Dad's universe, and I was pleased he wanted to keep it that way. He glowed every time he saw me after we spent time apart, no matter whether he picked me up after a day at school or as I returned from spending three months across the ocean with Mom. My exhilaration of running into embrace, craving his almost too tight hugs and my happiness of having him to myself is what shows Dad's true impact on me, not his last breath in my useless arms.
Our tea abandoned, Ben and I huddle together on the couch, him sitting in the corner by the window, while I curl myself into a ball, my head in his lap. The warmth and heaviness of his hand on my shoulder comforts me, while the fingers of his other hand smooth my hair, trace my features, and stumble on an occasional runaway tear.
"Why don't you have any photos of your mom?" Ben points at the side table with a heavy metal frame of Dad, Nonna, and me smiling into the camera.
"I put them away." More like hid them out of sight in hopes that'd keep her out of mind.
"Why?"
"Because they hurt too much."
"Did she die as well? I thought you said she lives in France."
"She does. I finally talked to her today."
"Finally?" Ben asks.
"The last time we talked on the phone was two years ago."
"What happened?"
"Life happened is what she said. But"—I sigh—"I thought she didn't want me anymore, and she thought I didn't need her anymore." I wait for the kick of anger in my gut, but it doesn't come. I've been angry thinking about Mom for so many years, its absence screams at me. "She found out Dad died from a post I put online, and when she called to offer her condolences, she didn't offer to come for the funeral. I didn't ask." I voice the part I resented her for the most and wait for the anger to reappear. No anger. I push my ribs out and inhale. The air fills me and doesn't have to go around the angry ball that used to be in my chest.
"Why did she finally reach out?"
"I don't know." I should ask her that. "She was the one who started texting me on my birthday and after seeing your Mom today, I could no longer pretend I didn't want mine in my life."
"Have you forgiven her? You've forgiven me. You have forgiven me, right?"
I shift so that I can see his face, and he can see mine. "I've forgiven Mom and you and ... myself." Myself was not a planned word. It's the right one though. "Mom, she apologized in a million different ways, she even sent me a photo book— another apology of sorts. But I couldn't even look through it."
"Do you want to look through it now, together?"
Do I? I shoved it away and chose to forget the damn thing and Mom, but the photos of her, Manu and the boys she texted me, those I loved, even when I was mad at her. The photobook can't be worse. I'm telling Ben my sad family history. I might as well do the show with the tell.
"Let me grab it. I'm sort of curious about it myself."
I unfurl and go to my room. When I return to the comfy warmth of Ben's body, I have it in my hand. We sit—hip-to-hip, arm-to-arm, pressed into each other—and I open the book Mom made for my twenty-fifth birthday.
A tiny smiling wisp of a girl looks up with adoration at a male replica of me. The year handwritten underneath predates my birth. "This is Mom, Marie-Hélène Benoît, and Dad, Paolo D'Amico, on the campus of the University of Nante." I trace Dad's figure with my finger. "Dad's twenty-six and Mom's eighteen. He came to do research for his doctorate work on music history, and she was a freshman."
The next page has Mom's pregnancy photos, my newborn picture. "It wasn't a planned pregnancy, but they got married, and I was born less than a year after they'd met." My favorite one. I have a copy of it in my bedroom of Dad with a book in his lap and me asleep in my stroller next to him. "By the time I turned one, Dad needed to go back to the US, and Mom stayed to finish her school in France."
"Nonna Rosa." I point at the photos of my grandma holding me in her arms in front of her restaurant, and one of me eating the longest piece of pasta, face and hands covered in marinara sauce.
"Why wouldn't your Mom transfer to the US?"
"Mom moving to the States meant she'd have to drop out." That's what Dad said. Mom never talked about it. Another piece of the puzzle she chose not to share. "Dad said they couldn't afford to pay for her college in the US." I believed him.
"I didn't know it is that much cheaper in France," says Ben.
"A lot cheaper. It's not free, but I'd pay for a year of college there about the same as books alone would run me in Chicago. That's one of the reasons I applied to the Universities in France—I can afford them."
"Why didn't you stay with her in France?"
This is one of the questions I've wondered about a million times. "The only answer I got from Dad was that Mom was young, she was alone and she wasn't ready to take care of a baby and keep up with school. Dad thought I was the best thing that ever happened to him. He had Nonna to help. And it was supposed to be for a bit, not forever."
"I understand. It sounds like a logical choice for her to stay in France then."
"Yeah, logical, but—" the unfairness of our separation stung just as much as when I had been a child "—she made that choice. She could've chosen me." Tears swell, and I blink them away. "Neither of my parents thought this was permanent."
In the corner of my mind, there was always a what-if. I had tortured myself with questions when I was younger. What if Dad stayed in France? What if Mom moved to the States? What if we stayed a family and lived together? What if they didn't have a divorce? Even today at twenty-five, I still think about my life in those alternate universes.
The next page is a collage of stamps, cards, and a photo of a beaming Mom displaying a thick envelope to the camera.
"Mom's always been obsessed with photos. Dad said every phone call started and ended with Mom asking for more pictures of us. He mailed them to her. The whole Internet thing wasn't quite there yet. I don't think they even had access to email. I can't imagine how they communicated without smartphones."
"I haven't thought about that. Long-distance calls must've been expensive too. I don't see how it could've worked," says Ben.
"Long distance is hard now, but it was a challenge twenty-four years ago. And it turned out impossible for them in the end. A year after Dad and I moved, they got a divorce. I have no memories of my parents' separation. I was two then."
"Why did you decide to stay in Chicago with your dad and grandparents?" asks Ben.
"I didn't decide. No one asked me what I wanted," I voice something I thought about but not dared to say. "When I asked Dad about it as a teenager, he said they thought the arrangement worked, and there was no reason to disrupt the way things were. My opinion didn't matter."
My chest aches with a ball of emotions, as if every single one from today decided to reappear all at once and paralyze me. A kiss lands on my face. Then another. My mind shifts from the storm in my chest to the feeling of Ben's lips on my skin. The churn inside recedes when the awareness of Ben's body wrapped around mine seeps in as he plants more kisses on my head, neck, cheek—whatever is near him—offering the relief I didn't ask for but needed.
We get to the back of the photos, and it's the last one of me and Dad all dressed up at Mom's wedding to Manu. Last time both of my parents and I were in the same place together. Something I wouldn't be able to have anymore. Seeing Mom again next year and having a semblance of a family wouldn't make up for Dad's loss but it's better than no family at all.
Ben and I are no longer sitting side by side. I settle on his lap, his arms around cradling me, and contentment pushes the sadness aside. Our words cease and we are back to the silent communication of intertwined fingers and gentle rises and falls of our breaths.