I’m a person, yes. But I’m also a haphazard collision, or rather the result of one, of genes. Which all got me to thinking, as I was making my Manwich, that my dad only ever had one face.

It’s possible he has a different face now. I wouldn’t know. He has a new life I’m not part of.

It’s also possible my memory has corrupted it. It’s funny. I don’t have any pictures of my dad that I can find. But I shouldn’t need a picture, I suppose. Or at the most, I should only ever need one. Because my dad only has one face.

Dark dark eyes. Like an animal’s. They never seemed to see you quite. They always seemed far off. No. Not far off. Dad is no dreamer. Elsewhere then. A worn face. I would say careworn, but there is no care to discover in his countenance; no empathy, anyway. If a face can be worn by carelessness – that is to say, not recklessness but the lack of care or concern – it should have been his. A grin. The word sardonic, too harsh, but close. What was that grin? I might say machaevellian, but without the machinations, without the intentional malice, I might hope. Not that my Dad was simple. No, there was nothing simple about my father.

My father’s face was altogether opaque, inscrutable, and undiscoverable. And as constant and enigmatic as a carved mask.

This is what I mean. Nothing but that grin that meant nothing or some secret nobody else knew. A horse had kicked him and knocked him down. His face betrayed no pain. Mom screams at him and throws things at him and calls him names, and he is unflinching. Just the face and that grin, which, of course, incensed my mother more. Christmas morning. His face betrayed no joy. His father’s funeral. His face betrayed no sadness. And when I won the largest scholarship my university offered and I told him and I waited and I waited for him to say that I did good or that he was proud; just the face, just the grin.

I’ll let you in on a very big secret. I’ve imagined it many times. What joke, what riddle has he kept his whole life to maintain that grin? I couldn’t begin to say. But what a cruel thing it would be if the Sphinx lost her voice, if the Sphinx never imparted the answer to her riddle. And before my father takes that answer to his grave, before death removes that grin, I want him to tell me what it is, what it means. No. No, I don’t suppose it will happen like that. It only ever happens like that on made-for-TV movies. And I don’t have TV hair.

SS