in high school, my dad was participating in this Doctors Without Borders thing going on in Costa Rica, and my mom and I ended up going with him. I was fourteen at the time, and I remember thinking, ‘This is fucking awesome. I’m getting pulled out of school to go sit on a beach in Central America.’”
He smiled, his eyes still closed. “Obviously, we didn’t spend our time there on the beaches. The first day we got there, we were driving on these unpaved roads through these pathetic little towns. I mean, these houses, Andie, half of them didn’t even have doors. They looked like they’d fall over if you breathed near them. It was just like those commercials you see on television: little kids playing with sticks in mud puddles, dressed in rags. And I felt so bad for them, for the shitty way they lived, for their horrible lives.”
He turned his head toward her, opening his eyes. “But you know what? Those people, the ones in the town we stayed in, they were the happiest people I’d ever met in my life. Always smiling, or singing, just getting through their day with whatever they had. And they had nothing, but they’d give you the sorry excuse for a shirt off their backs if you needed it.” He shook his head. “I know people worth seven figures who aren’t as generous as these people were.”
He turned his eyes back to the sky. “I say they had nothing, but they had nothing by my standards, things my fourteen-year-old brain couldn’t fathom existing without. They didn’t have televisions or DVD players, or books, or nice clothes, or phones. But they didn’t give a shit. They were fine without those things. They had food, and shelter, and with the help of the program, medical care. And that was all they needed.”
He closed his eyes again. “I still have some pictures I took when I was down there. At the time I was just using some cheap disposable camera, but there’s this picture of one of the women from the town, and she’s sitting in front of a small pond with her son on her lap. This woman’s smile,” he shook his head slightly, “it’s one of the most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen. It’s not tinged with vanity, or manipulation, or desire. It’s just…happiness. Pure happiness.” He sighed softly. “It’s probably the most beautiful picture I’ve ever taken.”
Andie sat staring at him, the emotions washing over her quicker than she could name them. She felt the muscles in her arm twitch with the desire to reach over and touch him, run her hand through his hair, along the angular line of his jaw, down the length of his arm; but instead, she laid down next to him, their bodies mere inches apart as she stared up at the sky.
There were a million things she wanted to say, things she could have or should have said, but she suddenly found herself telling him something she had never told anyone, a random memory from her childhood she had never quite been able to forget.
“Once, when I was ten, I was playing in the park near my house,” Andie said, her voice soft. “I was sitting on the swings and I saw this couple, this man and woman sitting on the bench nearby. I was fascinated with the way they were wrapped around each other, almost like I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I’d never seen anything like it. He kept kissing her. Kissing her everywhere. Her lips, her cheeks, the back of her hand, and she couldn’t stop smiling. I watched them the whole time they sat there. And even when they got up to leave, even when they were walking away, they were still wrapped around each other, like they were one person, or like it would cause them physical pain to be separated.”
She was aware of his eyes on her, that he had turned his head to look at her.
“And that night, I went home, and I sat at the dinner table, and I watched my mom and my dad, how they circulated around each other in the kitchen, like magnets turned over, you know? Unable to cross that invisible boundary that prevents them from clicking together. I mean, they were civil. They were kind. They talked about their days. They talked to me. But they didn’t touch, and they didn’t kiss, and they didn’t hug, and I