I could never get used to it, walking into a room with only my father in. The pressure in the air would rapidly build up almost to the point of breaking with words left unsaid, left hanging through the years. If we were both any younger, we would have simply let all hell break loose. But after too many times of shame and regret boiling over in endless shouting matches, our father-son relationship had nowhere else to go but deep-dive into silent neutral corners on both sides of the battlefield. It was better off for everyone in the family, really. And that's the way things have been for the past couple of years or so.
When are you going back to work? I could almost hear him think. January, my head hummed a ready answer. I would be lying through my teeth if I said it, but it wouldn't matter as long as I had a response. I had just gone down for breakfast and he was by himself in the kitchen, smoking his morning cigarette and reading the day's paper. It could have been picture perfect, with the sun streaming through the windows and all that shit. Who could have known there was a thick silence real and alive as a monster breathing in that room.
"May sinangag pa dyan. Saka yung tira kagabi," ("There's rice. And some leftovers from last night,") he said, breaking the silence without looking up from his papers. I grunted an affirmative, regarded the table and confirmed that yes, there was indeed sinangag plus a bowl of reheated leftovers from last night, and left the kitchen without getting anything to eat.
