The Harder We Fall

by Mina V. Esguerra

  “No, but you can.”

  That night I tried that, calling him Captain. I sort of surprised him with it. It was fun.

  ***

  Parking in San Francisco. Let’s not even.

  I had a rant about that but it was a standard one, nothing new. Something of an ice breaker, before the thing that I really wanted to ask.

  “So is this weird?”

  “I don’t mind walking several blocks. I don’t think we’ll ever find a spot that’s closer.”

  “No, not that...meeting my dad and Esme for dinner. In this.” I pointed to our fancy clothes, not fancy like from the night at Ellerbie Hall, but a lot dressier than our nearly nothing at all from the past week.

  “You met my mom.”

  You made sure I met your mom.“True. But Esmeralda’s not really my mom.”

  “As you’ve said several times.”

  “Does it show? She’s very into me. She wants me to accept her as my new mom.”

  Nicholas stiffened at this. “She can’t make you feel that if you don’t.”

  “She’s very eager though.”

  “Do you need a new mom, Daria?”

  I smiled. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then that’s it.”

  We were early for our reservation but Dad and Esmeralda were already there, at the Italian restaurant I once mentioned I wanted to try. Esme probably insisted on it. She liked to say that we absolutely must do things. When we got there she hugged me into a cloud of perfume and said I must join her at the bar for a drink, and we must let “the boys” get further acquainted.

  “I’m so excited about your graduation,” she was gushing. “I was thinking of wearing black to the event, is that all right? Not too somber?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I think we’ll all be in black anyway. The robe things.”

  “Well I don’t want to fade into that, maybe if I wore green…”

  I did this thing where I’d nod and adequately respond to her and she’d think we were in an actual conversation, and I could be thinking of other things. Like what Dad and Nicholas could be doing. I knew that Nicholas wasn’t supposed to be drinking, and wondered briefly if he’d say that, or take whatever my dad offered.

  “Our table is ready,” my dad announced, some minutes later, Nicholas trailing behind him holding a glass of something clear.

  “Water,” he said, and I almost didn’t hear it because his tone was clipped.

  Not that chatty to begin with, he barely participated in the dinner conversation after. There was no lack for words at the table though, with Esme launching into a spirited recap of how she and Dad met, for Nicholas’s benefit.

  He nursed his water throughout, nodding politely, but his back was rigid. (I was beginning to consider myself an expert on it.) He was uncomfortable? I would be too, if I were in the center of such an Esme speech assault, but I at least had about two years of experience dealing with it.

  I slipped a hand over his forearm, toying with the way his sleeve was folded right there. The stiffness was there too, and he might have actually pulled back, a bit. I would have asked him, if Esme weren’t talking about the most romantic kiss (gag) in history, and Nicholas had conveniently lifted the glass up to his mouth.

  It’s too soon, I realized, my stomach sinking, my anticipation of the best new Italian food in the city disappearing. All of this. So what if my dad wanted us to have dinner? Nicholas didn’t have to go. Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed it. This reeked of a closeness, a familiarity, that was silly and impossible to think that we had earned by now. And then the Esme torture, which probably was pushing it over the edge.

  “And oh when I first met Daria…” she went, which was the sequel to her epic.

  “Maybe not tonight, Esme?” I said.

  “Oh why not.” It was not a question, the way she said it. “You never want people to talk about you. Nicholas might as well hear the good stuff from me.”

  “I don’t need to be talked up to the guy I’m already seeing,” I hissed.

  “Did she tell you about the work she does in public schools? Because I think it’s—”

  “Esme, please?” I turned to my dad for support but he wasn’t the type who ever stopped Esme from talking, tonight included. I had long suspected that he had the same coping mechanism for her chatter as me, and that was why they’d been together longer than anyone else he’d dated.

  “Esme’s proud of you, as am I,” Dad said, with a dismissive shrug. “We’re having a nice dinner and Esme wants to tell him nice things about you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I think we have other things we can talk about, honestly—”

  “No, he’s right,” Nicholas said, finally. “Please, Esme, don’t stop on my account.”

  That was weird. And anyone more astute, or less absorbed with the sound of her own voice, would have seen that as a sign that there was something else going on, but Esme took it as permission to resume.

  ***

  Nicholas remained silent as we walked back to the car. I knew that something was up by then, and I didn’t want to bring it up. It was out of place, less than a month of me even meeting him, to have any kind of conversation with this guy about how my family may have freaked him out. I refused to do it.

  So we walked to the car in silence, and drove the thirty minutes back to Addison Hill the same way. I pulled the car into my house at Lemon Grove, and he stared at it before unbuckling his seat belt.

  “I’m heading to Grayson’s tonight,” he said.

  I assumed. “All right,” I answered.

  “You’re already editing, right? You got all your footage?”

  I nodded.

  “I need a sec to get my stuff.”

  “Do you need a ride?”

  “No.”

  What the hell? “What happened back there?” I demanded.

  Nicholas was looking at the house. “You can afford to just go to Europe and Asia on your own, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes. So? It’s not about being able to afford it.”

  “That’s easy to say when you can. Some people’s lives are difficult, and they don’t have a choice.”

  “What did my dad say to you?”

  His jaw was hard, as was his brow, in a way I never really saw before. “He didn’t say anything. But I hope you’re able to take my simple little life and find something useful in it.”

  My palm began to ache, and it was apparently because I had gripped the steering wheel and the pattern of the protective cover was eating into my skin. “Why are you mad? You wanted to talk about your life. I wanted to help you.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You’re something.”

  “You won’t understand anyway.”

  Normally I could argue my case well. I had a comeback for people like Kyle, and his cohorts, anyone else who lobbed something at me. But I was ready for those things. I had no idea what I was defending myself against here.

  So I went on the offensive.

  “Great,” I said. “Grayson warned me you’d be like this, right about this time. Glad you became an ass on schedule.”

  “He said what?”

  Oh I don’t do things half-assed too. Throw the friend under the bus while at it. “He said you never had another relationship because you bring out all your baggage early and demand acceptance. My mom is sick. My life is so hard. And no one ever wants to do that, right? Congratulations, you got the sex with feelings, and none of the actual relationship work. Happy to have helped you too.”

  His voice was louder, angrier, and maybe mine was too. “He said that?”

  No Grayson did not, but it could be misconstrued that way.

  “You said you were going,” I retorted.

  His stuff, as he kept saying, was not a lot. He was ready to go in less than five minutes. He just walked out of the house, out of the village, in the general direction of away.

  Chapter 15

  Ten minutes. More than
enough time to tell a compelling story. If you’ve got one.

  When that story was a mess of wanting to win an internship, beat a douchebag rival, help out a neglected team, and get over someone who was in practically every shot of video...

  When I worked on a video I put together a detailed script, including transcripts, and though I improvised a little at the laptop, I was good at estimating my beats, and when my story would end.

  This edit, with my entire script already there, clocked in at 6:51.

  That was horrible. Sure the rule was not to go over ten minutes, but I wasn’t feeling the result either. This wasn’t going to win anything.

  I looked back at my printout, to see where I had gone wrong. I couldn’t just add three minutes of guys chasing a ball. I had a lot of video of those. Maybe I could spread it out, the video of guys chasing a ball…

  “Fuck this.” It was 2 a.m., early Tuesday, and the videos were due for uploading on the YouTube channel on Thursday. I was almost done. Practically done. But it wasn’t the best thing ever.

  And I couldn’t believe I said those things to him.

  Maybe everyone else was going to suck. Then I could win on the basis of my application and past work, which was stellar, and also what they should have been using to decide the internship anyway.

  “Hey.” Steph was halfway down the stairs, in pajamas, her hair coiled up around her head. “Just checking why there’s swearing in the middle of night.”

  “I suck, that’s why.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Thank you, but I do. I’m probably not going to win this, and whatever. I quit.”

  She sat down on a step. “What are you quitting? You’re graduating.” Steph was my age, but needed another semester.

  “This. Everything. Every fucking door I’ve been knocking on that keeps slamming in my face.”

  She looked confused, and I wanted to apologize. Steph and I didn’t have heart-to-heart talks at night, didn’t dish about our boyfriends and dreams. She had no context for all of this drama. “I don’t think of you as lacking any opportunity in anything, Daria.”

  “Because I’m a stubborn, stubborn person and I like to make things difficult for myself.”

  “Oh well. That’s the problem, then.” Steph laughed. “At least you know.”

  “But...my principles.”

  “Principle of what? Of remaining miserable to prove a point? What’s your point again?”

  “It’s late and it’s going to take forever to explain.”

  “I haven’t seen Nicholas around too.”

  My forehead fell into my palm. “That’s not as long an explanation, but I don’t have one.”

  Steph nodded and pushed herself up. “I have this thing I do, when I sketch, and I don’t like what I come up with.”

  “Tear up the paper and throw it in the trash can?”

  “That, if it sucks. But before that, I go the part that I absolutely hate, and then I make it even more visible. Bring it out. Instead of hide it. So I can see that thing for what it is, and it’s usually a little thing that I can cut off without caring about it. But I didn’t have to throw out everything else and start from scratch.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” I said. “We work with different media.”

  “Pay attention, it was life wisdom,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Go back to what the video is really about, yeah? And do that.”

  I remembered what Nicholas said about the “last run around the campus” that people did. Maybe I was doing that last desperate round too, but for friendships. This was the most I had been emotionally open to any group of people in my years here.

  As she walked up the stairs again and I heard her door close, I pulled out an early draft of my script.

  I went into media because I liked to tell stories that mattered.

  I kept making decisions to tell socially relevant stories because I wanted them to lead to action.

  From the beginning, the story of a rugby team that needed more attention, of dedicated players who relied on this sport, all of this was leading somewhere I didn’t want to go. This wasn’t the kind of story I was used to telling, and I didn’t know where to draw the line between the sport and the needing to care.

  But what the hell. What was the point of all of this, anyway?

  I slept on it. I was just going to have to accept that Kyle was right.

  ***

  “I really appreciate this, Dad.”

  “I’m saying yes because you used the daughter card, Daria, and you never do. I think we’ll be able to do something with them at KramerEnt though to make up for it.”

  “I’m sure you can. They’ll be okay with it.”

  “How do you want to do this?”

  “Can you have Sally film the announcement and send it to me? Do it how I told you.”

  “And you need it right now?”

  “Within the hour, if you can, Dad.”

  “I can’t say that I expected this, Daria. Are you sure this is how you want to do it?”

  I was on the phone with him, at home, and he was at his office in LA. I felt, again, that there was something I wasn’t aware of. “Do what, Dad?”

  “Deal with him. With Nicholas. Are you doing this for him?”

  “Dad, I haven’t seen him in days. Since dinner in the city. And I’m going back to LA after the weekend, and he’s going to be in Japan soon, so it doesn't matter. I’m not doing anything for him.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re no longer seeing him?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “If that’s the case then he might not appreciate what you’re offering to do for the team. If that’s how he reacts after I offer to cover his mother’s medical—”

  “You what?”

  “Relax, it’s not like that...I meant through the foundation. We have a grant mechanism there for supplementing health care costs of cancer patients. I told him that if he were to apply on behalf of his mother I'd make sure they got it.”

  “That’s what you talked about? When you were having drinks?”

  “I didn't think he'd be aware of all the options available to him. When your mom was sick we missed out on things because we didn't know they existed.”

  “Do you realize how messed up this must seem to him? Within days of meeting me he meets my dad, my dad's girlfriend, and he's being given a goddamn endowment?”

  An endowment that would invalidate the difficult decision he made to take a job so far from where he felt he was needed.

  Because people with money never had these problems.

  God I was an ass.

  “Who cares where the help comes from?” my dad said. “He is going to have to accept it.”

  “I'm not going to talk to you about it anymore if you don't get why this has got to be overwhelming for him. Throwing your money around—”

  “Young lady, you just asked me for a substantial amount and I gave it to you.”

  “I asked. It's not for me. I don't need anything from your effing company but these guys do. Leave me out of it if you can.”

  “Daria.”

  “You wonder why I leave you out of some parts of my life? There it is.”

  “You leave me out of your life because you're stubborn.”

  “I work my ass off and unnecessarily because I don't want you to be all over my life. Not after...”

  “Not after what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. Daria, no...is this about your mom?”

  “Dad, I didn't say—”

  “Daria, she chose to give up full time work. Happily. And she did so much through the foundation, more so than when she was managing her child poverty projects. You know this. I told you.”

  “Yes you've told me. You've done nothing but. You're doing this for the rugby players, yes?”

  “I said I would.”

  “Then that's all I need for now. Just film the announcement and send to me please?”


  ***

  Dad, in his own way, did continue Mom’s work. He had every right to say that, could say it all he wanted, but it was his coping mechanism. We all had one.

  Esme could tell the story of how they met all she wanted, but the prequel, the one love story she wasn’t part of, was better.

  The story of upstart news producer Gregory, meeting relief project manager Claudia, while covering a tragic flooding along the Mekong River. She was manning vaccinations and rehydration of children in the temporary tent city. He was supposed to chase some local politician but ended up doing a series on post-disaster health and nutrition needs and it got them lots of air time, and donations.

  When they fell in love, he insisted that she move to California with him. He was only in news as a stepping stone and didn’t intend to walk among the tent cities of disaster areas forever. He was establishing his own studio, buying into his own cable channel, and there’d be no time to shuttle back and forth every part of the world that needed saving. They set up a foundation that focused on the needs of children, to give her something to do. When she passed away, the foundation took on cancer as another cause, and arguably helped more people over the years than one person could, even if that person handed out vaccines every day.

  Yes, Dad could tell himself that. But that didn’t change the fact that my strongest memories of my mom were her bedtime stories, always about children who had nothing, and how one hug or piece of bread or a toothbrush might mean nothing to me but it could be the world to someone else.

  It was the kind of thing that made a young girl want to tell that kind of story, always.

  He couldn’t have known this. He was always thinking big, large scale, efficiencies and demographics.

  My mom was about the small thing that changed one person, the sacrifice that may be insignificant to everyone else, except its beneficiary.

  I knew he could live with taking her away from the work she loved, and surviving her, if he told himself that he was doing her work. I felt the exact same thing, but I needed to do it another way.