Father - Tape 3

(Beep. Music fades in)

You’ve been gone for a while. And thinking about that makes me sad in an inevitable sort of way. It also forces me to take pause and make an inventory of what is left. It gets easier to do every year, considering there is less every year. What’s left now is technically nothingness or uncertainty, I guess you could call it. I don’t know what you would be like today or what you would think. I am left with your memory to reckon with and little more. But even that cloth is thin now. And you could have changed as a person, so maybe it’s inaccurate too.

My hero reminded me of that. That you could have always changed. So even if I think you wouldn’t have been proud of the person I became, I might be wrong. The you of years gone by is somewhat irrelevant. Very irrelevant. After all, time changes us. Time teaches us. If you had time, what would have happened?

And maybe you do have time. Maybe you do see what this is doing to me, and so you regret it. You regret causing this. Then again, maybe I am not supposed to believe that you did. Maybe that conclusion is wrong. Or at least a secret. I don’t know. 

Mom hates when I say that I don’t know. But I don’t think she has a valid reason for hating it. I think she hates it because she wants to rely on me for everything. And for that to be even half-way possible, she needs to me to not be human, to be an endless fountain of, well, everything just so that she doesn’t have to have anything or do anything. 

I know that’s true. Even if I don’t know everything else.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

There’s a story that I keep close to my chest that you might know. Or you might not. I don’t know if you were there with me. I can’t know that. I also don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t think I’m speaking this tale aloud for you or for anyone but me. I am telling this story just to  make me feel better, and for that, I can play fast and loose with the details. I don’t need to include everything. Just the greatest hits and if I leave room for errors, then those errors can just be. Be out in the world, doing whatever they please.

Or you could correct me. I want you to correct me, somehow. Even if it makes everything worse. I don’t know how everything could get worse. I shouldn’t test it. But I kind of want to know.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Mom sent me to visit her side of the family when I was sixteen. It was to be a representative of our little satellite of the family at a wedding that apparently was somewhat controversial. I don’t know the details about that. Either the matter was resolved before I got there, or it’s not the sort of thing I should not be dealing with. According to them, anyway. Regardless, I was there for the wedding. And it was peaceful. We smiled. Even as I was fitted for my bridesmaid’s dress, which was initially ordered at the completely wrong size and very uncomfortable. 

The best part of the trip, I would say, was that Mom didn’t come along. She couldn’t. She had to stay at home with Step Dad and that part of the family. Because yet another health crisis, not specified. These sorts of things happened a lot to his family. Their family. I was never included in that bunch.

Chalk that up as one of the many reason she and I were butting heads a lot, as we always were, but that wasn’t even my point. I was also maybe more so excited to have that taste of independence, especially during that time in transit when I could be a foreign airport without supervision during my layovers. I mean, Mom didn’t even let me go to the library alone at that point in my life. She would tell me that I could, send me off on my way, but then I would see her hiding, watching me from a poorly camouflaged spot. And I had to pretend that I didn’t see her, that she didn’t lie to me, that I wasn’t upset. It sucked.

Now, the airline was supposed to have a flight attendant walk me to the next gate and then watch me or hand me off to the next gate agent. But I just walked off that first flight and no one stopped me. I did it because I could. Literally no one stopped me, and I really don’t know what I would have done if someone tried to. I mean, I was technically a minor and the airline assumed responsibility for me. Legally speaking, I kind of had to go with them. 

I wasn’t inclined to be that way. Disobedient and wild, or whatever the word would be that would use. It was something I had never been before. And even though you would have hated it, it was beautiful.

There was this moment in LA when I realized that, technically, I could not get on the next flight. I mean, it would create a never ending sea of other problems for me, but it was--in theory--something I could have done. I had the option. And even recognizing that was liberating. Just knowing I could run was amazing.

I’m glad I didn’t do it. Don’t get me wrong.  But I liked knowing that I could.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a lot of fun. Especially after my dress was corrected and could drape across my body in such a way that made me feel like a princess during the fitting. The day of the wedding was just a different day, and it wasn’t what it should have been. It wasn’t a celebration; it was the morning after a very different sort of night.

Your memory and your legacy with them. All of it is as strong has ever been. To the point that sometimes I think the main reason my family loves me is because I serve as a tie to you. Because you can through for them, when they desperately needed some sort of hero. It happened many times, but it was like when my little cousin died. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The boy whose name we were never to speak aloud. That happened before I was born. And no one ever mentioned it. So how did I know it?

Occam’s razor doesn’t like the supernatural. According to it, there is always a better \, more simple explanation. And even if Grandpa was the main advocate of his theory. By then he was gone, and his tales were chalked up as the ravings of a mad man close to death. 

But the night before the wedding, I saw a young man in a dream. A young man whose face looked familiar. Almost like mine but not quite. So I tried to follow him. Until I heard Grandpa scold the boy. He called out his name. And now I wonder if… Do you think Grandpa knew that I could hear him? That I heard the name because I woke up wondering who that was. And it was knowing that name that caused so many problems. 

I wanted to know who the boy was who was probably the keeper of that name, so I asked my aunt. I apparently asked my aunt about the son who had passed on whom she had deliberately never spoken of on the day of her other son’s wedding. 

That was the worst moment of the trip. Undoubtedly. I probably didn’t need to say that. And I can’t believe you would have wished that for me. You , Grandpa, anyone. That had to be an accident, right? It affected her too. So it was an accident, right? Right?

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Grandpa knew I could see things. Was he trying to keep my cousin away? Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to tell me to say nothing of what I saw? 

Auntie thought it was deliberate. That it was a message from you. They didn’t believe the dreams were real until that night. They thought this was a different kind of madness. And as insulting as that could have been, I found a perverse comfort in it. Because I didn’t want it to be real. 

But knowing my cousins name made it real. Because someone had to tell me what it was. They thought it was you. No matter how many times I told them what happened in the dream, they believe that you told me what his name was. And that this secret was your way of reaching out to Auntie. To tell her to help me. 

I don’t want to believe any of that. It couldn’t do anything for me.  

But to this day, I don’t know how I knew his name. I think I heard Grandpa say it in the dream. That’s my belief. 

For what it’s worth to someone who doesn’t believe me, I could swear up and down that I never heard this name, that no one wanted to speak it and reawaken old pains. But if I’m right, then how could I know that name? Was it Grandpa? Or was it someone else? Was it you?

Please answer me. Dad. How do I know his name?

(Music fades out. Beep.)

The Oracle of Dusk is a Miscellany Media Studios Production. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful Music Supply. If you like the show, please consider leaving a review or telling your friends about it. And check out Aishi Online, the story of the voice you know all too well.