Page 28 of The Difference Between

He ended the call without getting an answer, but the smile on his face was permanent. “You’re a damn sonofabitch.” He said it like it was a term of endearment. From him, it was. “Amanda’s probably napping. Baby’s taking it out of her.” He downed his wine and set the empty glass on the corner of a shelf. “You mind getting the little glass bubble so I can make sure my wife doesn’t kill me for planning a party without her permission?”

“Of course.” I raised my glass toward him. “Tell Amanda I’ll help bury the body if she needs me to.”

He chuckled, then he was gone.

Turns out, Amanda had already started cooking dinner before she laid down for that nap. She also forgot to turn the burner off. Forty-seven minutes after leaving the shop, Greg tried to save his pregnant wife from their house as it burned to the ground. Neither of them made it out alive.

All our plans went up in the black smoke of that fire.

The shop sat empty for months. A looming aluminum building at the edge of a picturesque vineyard that reminded us of everything we used to want.

My parents never started making their own wine, and the words of that letter never turned into anything more than the ink on the page.

With my niece to look after and my parents’ property to help my dad maintain, there were more important things to do. Dreams are easy to set free when the people you love need you more.

The blow of Dad’s cancer returning came only months later. Unlike my brother’s death, which blindsided me, I got a warning this time, and the grotesque gift of time to say goodbye.

I refused to waste it.

Dad declined quick. It wasn’t long after the call that he became too weak to do much else other than sit in bed and watch TV. So that’s where I met him: watching TV. And, sometimes when Mom wasn’t looking, I’d sneak him a glass or two of wine.

While I tried to convince him that it would be more fun if we watched the best movies of all time, he insisted on documentaries. “Gonna rot our brains, might as well learn something while we do,” he said. Dad was a retired teacher and loved a good documentary. He waved the remote at me before pounding the buttons. “Everyone works remote these days.”

He also loved bad jokes.

Unfortunately for him, my bones were made of different stuff. I never was a great student, but despite poor grades and skipping classes, I managed to graduate high school.

The bad jokes, however, were a genetic anomaly: I inherited his affliction.

Either way, we watched the damn documentaries—hours and hours of them—with our punny commentary the only real conversation.

Documentaries about the Roman Empire: I heard Caesar had back-to-back meetings on March 15.

Geography of Africa: They peaked with Kilimanjaro, didn’t they?

Ancient Egypt: What a pyramid scheme.

They were stupid, every single one of them, but the laughter they brought was a balm for the pain of the pending goodbye. I was twenty-nine and losing my dad, if it meant telling Laffy Taffy-level jokes to make it more bearable, I’d do it.

On what I’d later realize would be our last day of watching documentaries together, he turned on one about making glass. It covered the whole history and highlighted every process. Reenactments in old Italy to modern windows being made in factories. We watched Waterford Crystal being hand-cut and polished in Ireland and blowers in hot shops making larger-than-life sculptures.

We both already knew all this, of course, but neither of us said that. We talked around the elephant in the room.

“It’s a pane-ful trade to watch, isn’t it?” my dad asked.

I scratched my chin. “A pane in the ass, really.”

“You know what kind of glass gets the most famous?”

I shook my head.

“Kind with crystal-clear talent.”

I made a badum ching! motion with my fingers. “You’re cracking me up.”

He shrugged, proud, sinking deeper into his pillow, the case covered in a pattern of baby-poop-green flowers. They were the same sheets my parents used since I was a kid. “What can I say?” He coughed a little. “I’m a glass act.”

On TV, a gaffer blew into a pipe, making a bubble form in the ball of molten glass on the opposite end. I thought of Greg—he loved that part.