In Bloom

by Paul Tremblay

Perhaps like most stubborn men, he didn’t know how to admit to being wrong without foolishly feeling like he was negating himself and everything in which he believed.

We didn’t go to church, which was a minor miracle, pun intended.

Dad and I shared a look. I like to imagine we shared recognition, if not reconciliation. I fear the truth is, without me adding the weight of years and regret, what we shared was a blank look, a vast, terrible blankness that I long to forget someday.

Honestly, though, I don’t feel a burning need to prove to myself that what I saw was what I saw. I know it to be true, even if it was all a hallucination.

I want to be made into an antenna again. I want to be connected, or reconnected, to that evolutionary wavelength that’s millions of years old. Somewhere in that signal, in that near-infinite chain, I’ll find my father.

Heidi has learned never to underestimate the mysteries of the whys, truths, and lies we tell each other.