Page 18 of Free Heart
Peggy Jo replies with another picture of her granddaughter, who is really so cute, but alsosobald. With her pointy, elfin ears, I can see the resemblance to the paintings of demons hanging in the art museums of my childhood school field trips. Dan isn’t wrong.
Peggy Jo texts—Let me know, baby, when you have new information after the surgery.
I will.
I look a little further down the list of unread texts. There are some messages from those aforementioned local news outlets wanting a statement—fuck whoever gave them my number—and, of course, multiple calls and messages from Leenie and Martin from yesterday on through to this morning.
There’s a voicemail, though, from my dad.
I take a slow breath and press play:
Sejin, Leenie called me. She says the boy you’ve been seeing is hurt real bad? Are you okay, baby? Do you need any help? I can come there if you need me. No questions asked. I can get on a plane right away. Call me when you get this message. I—well, you know I love you.
I can barely breathe. It’s a short message, and yet it’s also the most he’s said to me about anything since our call when he told me to follow my feet. There’s all kinds of emotion in his tone. There’s urgency, and love, and a need to take care of me. A kind of parental care that I’ve been missing since my mom died.
I feel like I’m going to cry again, so I stand up, force one foot in front of the other, and take myself to the shower. There, I do let some tears leak. I also wash my hair, which takes forever because of the thickness and length. I scrub myself offcarefully, taking my time, trying to imagine that I’m washing away everything horrible about yesterday.
A flash of memory comes to me. The view through the scope of Dan on the ledge. The blood. The rising helplessness. It’s like the moment I looked through the scope, reality broke into pieces, and somehow I got the best bit. Somewhere, in a split-off universe, there’s another me, stuck in another outcome where Dan died, and another where he broke his neck, and another where he suffered a terrible brain injury.
Suddenly, all I want is to be small again—for my mom to be alive, and for me to be riding up on my dad’s shoulders, and all of us laughing together.ThatSejin hasn’t known pain yet.ThatSejin isn’t in love with an overconfident daredevil.ThatSejin’s heart isn’t hanging by razor-thin holds on two-thousand-foot walls.
Thinking of how close of a call Dan’s fall was, a flare of rage ignites. I whisper, “You arrogant dumbass. You fucking lucky asshole.”
I’m angry, relieved, broken, and scared, and I want my mom. I want her so much. Just to feel her arms around me, reassuring me, telling me it’s going to be all right.
But I’m gonna have to settle for my dad.
I get out of the shower, dress, and pick up my phone. Leenie answers on the first ring.
“Baby,” she says, breathlessly. “I was hoping you’d call. We’ve been so worried.”
Funny how I’m suddenly everyone’s “baby.” I remember how Rye called me that last night, and Peggy Jo, and Dad, and now Leenie. I wonder if Martin’s gonna call me baby too, when I next see him.
“I got Dad’s message,” I say, scrubbing a hand through my wet hair and realizing I haven’t combed it out. It’s going to bea knotted mess. Such a fucking nuisance. “I don’t know what to say to him. How do I explain what’s happened?”
“You just tell him the truth?”
“What truth? That Dan’s a crazy person who does stupid things? And because of that, he might have died, but instead he’s just fucked up real bad?”
Leenie doesn’t take the opportunity to agree with all that, which kind of surprises me. Instead, she says, “Listen, you’re upset and scared, and you have every right to be, but all you need to know is that your dad loves you. He wants to be there for you. Just give him a call.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid I’ll cry.”
“Sejin, for fuck’s sake, he loves you. He just wants to be there for you and have a relationship with you. Losing your mom has been rough on you both, but he’s missed you too. Not just her. All this fear of sharing your grief with him—and vice versa—has put such a wedge between you both. Please call him and don’t fight it. Just let him be your dad.”
“I don’t know if I can. What if I start to cry about Dan, and then I start to cry about Mom, and…”
“And what?”
“What if I never stop crying?”
“Then he’ll know just how sad you’ve been and how scared you are now. So what? It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“I sometimes really hate you, Leenie.”
