Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 2

The Space between Us

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Dad reaches down to hug me before I’m close enough to touch, but once I’m there, we have to readjust. We’re almost the same height now. I knew my dad wasn’t very tall, but I didn’t know he was so close to the 5’6” I reached last year. His hug doesn’t feel the way I thought it would. Maybe because I was so much littler when I left. He squeezes me too tightly, like he can’t believe we’re finally together again.

“Hi, Dad.”

“How was your flight, Munchkin?”

I step back. The last time I saw him in person was here at this airport the day Mom and I moved. His tone of voice, that nickname, everything, makes me feel frozen in his memory at ten years old. I need to thaw it out, show him who I am now.

“No one’s called me Munchkin in years.”

Hurt overlays his features. “Oh, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I lie. “Flight was good. Sat by a mother and son and read with the little kid a bit.”

He reaches for my suitcase then and we make our way toward the skybridge. “How old?”

My jaw tightens. “I’m fifteen.”

“No, I mean the kid you sat with.” His free hand scratches at his cheek as he mumbles, “I know how old…”

“Oh. Right. He’s five and a half.” Chilly air blasts me as we cross the skybridge that leads to the parking garage. And this is Portland — Bend will be worse, I know. I pull my jacket tighter around me anyway.

“Your cousin’s got a kid about that age. Hopefully you’ll get along with him, too.”

I wonder which cousin, which kid. If there was a baby I’d held before leaving and since forgotten, or if Dad’s “about” is a lot more approximate than mine would be. We pay for parking, then reach his old white pickup truck. The same one I remember.

“You still have this thing?”

“It still works,” he says. He throws my suitcase into the back seat of the cab. While I climb in on the passenger side with my backpack, he plugs his phone into the aux and pulls up a playlist. “Still into Shawn Mendes?” Dad asks without looking up.

“I haven’t listened to him since I left Bend.” Too many good memories were sad in retrospect. Listening to Shawn Mendes too loudly was the one thing I shared with Dad. It annoyed Mom, but in those moments, back when I thought we could annoy each other and stay a family, I liked being on Dad’s team sometimes.

We’re together again. Maybe we should start where we left off.

“But sure. I’d like that.”

I drum my fingers on my thigh, playing a musicless scale: thumb, index, middle, then cross my thumb under before tapping all five fingers in order. Music fills the space between us. It usually does, I guess, but right now it’s like a time machine, and Dad’s the only one inside.

The road slopes upward as we make our way southeast. Mt. Hood is in the distance at first, a sharp white peak against the blue of the sky, but the closer we get, the less majestic it is. Soon it’s like there isn’t a mountain at all, not because it’s disappeared but because it’s consumed us.

As trees get so thick it’s hard to distinguish which branches belong to which trees, the last few notes of “Mercy” resound through the car and nothing replaces them. Dad hasn’t turned on repeat. It’s almost a relief, an exhale.

I haven’t spoken the whole drive, but I look away from the blurring evergreens toward Dad. “I’ve been practicing a lot this past week. I think I have it down.”

“Practicing? What?” he says.

My fingers pinch into my legs. “Heaven Can Wait?”

“Right. Of course. Grandma would’ve liked you to play that one.” He takes a hand off the steering wheel to reach for his phone, like thirty seconds without music is thirty seconds too long.

“Dad, please. Let me.” I take the phone without waiting for permission so he can focus on driving the winding road. Patches of snow cluster on the dirt, but they’re stagnant and dirty, probably a week old. I scroll through Spotify until I find a playlist called “Nostalgia.” It’s full of Meat Loaf songs, and The Eagles, a hint of Boston. “So Meat Loaf is more your favorite than Grandma’s,” I say, as “Desperado” starts its haunting piano introduction.

Dad’s fingers stiffen around the steering wheel. “It’s fitting for a funeral.”

It is, but I wonder why this gets to be his. If his siblings had a say. If Grandma ever talked to them about it before it happened. It doesn’t seem right, but I can’t spend the next two weeks arguing with him. We argued the whole way to the airport when Mom and I moved to California, and then I didn’t hear from him again. I can’t let another five years pass without my dad.

“We have the funeral tomorrow. And Christmas, of course. But what else will we be doing while I’m here?” I ask.

Three measures of music play before he answers me. “I hadn’t really made plans. We’ll have Christmas Eve with everyone. But beyond that I figured we’d play it by ear.”

I hate not knowing things. Having a plan keeps me grounded. If Dad doesn’t have any plans for us, all I can focus on is nailing my audition. I lean forward and grab my bullet journal from my backpack, its new spread still as empty and ruined as it had been hours ago on the plane.

The pages of my journal scrape satisfyingly against one another as I lift the bookmark and turn to the next blank page. With a black marker, I scribble three eighth notes in the top right corner. I create the header next, in block letters: AUDITION PLAN AND PRACTICE SCHEDULE.

As he pulls to a stop at a sign in the pass, Dad glances over at my page. His lips tighten as he skims my plan. He shakes his head, but whatever it is he’s thinking, he keeps to himself. I wish he’d tell me. The road gets windier, which makes it harder to write, but I do it anyway, taking notes on my audition like I’m not terrified to ruin things with Dad before we even make it to Bend.

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