A Day Trip to a Foreign Country

Dave felt the forced smile on his face start to ache. It was the same smile he wore at parent-teacher interviews and when making small talk with neighbours. He pointed towards the Johnston Terminal. "They've got some cool shops in there. A great kite store, I think. Or we could, you know, get some food first?" He was trying for 'enthusiastic dad', but the tone landed somewhere near 'desperate game show host'.

Art, his sixteen-year-old son, offered a noncommittal shrug. His gaze was fixed on his phone, thumbs flying across the screen. He hadn't looked his father in the eye since Dave had picked him up an hour ago. He was a stranger who happened to have Dave’s old nose and his mother’s stubborn jawline.

"Food, then," Dave said, seizing on the closest thing to a decision. "My treat."

They walked towards The Forks Market, a cavern of exposed brick and steel beams. The air inside was thick with a dozen competing smells: coffee, pizza, cinnamon, curry. A wall of sound hit them—the clatter of trays, the roar of conversation, a busker playing a cheerful but mediocre guitar riff. To Dave, it felt vibrant, alive. To Art, judging by the grimace on his face, it was just noise.

They did a slow lap of the food court. Dave suggested pizza, burgers, fish and chips. Each suggestion was met with another shrug. Art was a fortress of adolescent indifference, and Dave had forgotten the password.

"Just pick something, Art. Anything," Dave said, the cheeriness finally fraying at the edges.

"Fine. Whatever," Art muttered, and pointed at a noodle bar. It was the one place Dave actively disliked. Of course.

They stood in line in silence. Dave rehearsed conversation starters in his head. *How's school?* Fine. *Still playing soccer?* No. *Are you seeing anyone?* Are you kidding me? He felt like he was trying to communicate with someone in a foreign country, a country he used to be a citizen of but had been exiled from years ago.

A Treaty of Cold Noodles

They found a small, sticky table on the upper level, overlooking the chaotic ballet of the market below. Art immediately buried his face in his phone again. Dave sat opposite him, methodically pushing noodles around his bowl with a plastic fork.

"So," Dave began, the word landing on the table with a thud. "Your mom tells me you're thinking about universities."

Art's thumbs paused. He didn't look up. "Yeah."

"That's great. Really great. Any ideas where? What you might want to take?"

Another shrug. "Dunno. Maybe out east."

Out east. As in, as far away from Winnipeg, and him, as possible. The thought stung more than Dave expected. "Well, whatever you choose, just make sure it's something practical. Something that leads to a real job. Your mom and I, we didn't have a plan. It's important to have a plan."

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment the words left his mouth. It was condescending. It was preachy. It was everything he had promised himself he wouldn't be today.

Art finally looked up from his phone. His eyes, which were a startlingly dark blue, were narrowed. "A plan? Like the plan you had when you decided to move out?"

The attack was so sudden, so direct, that Dave felt the air leave his lungs. "That's... that's not the same thing, Art. That was complicated."

"Doesn't seem complicated," Art said, his voice quiet but sharp as glass. "You had a family. Then you didn't. Seems like a pretty simple plan."

"It wasn't a plan to leave you," Dave said, his own voice rising. A woman at the next table glanced over. "It was about me and your mother. It was never about you."

"Everything is about me!" Art hissed, leaning forward. "It was about me when you missed my grade eight graduation because you were 'finding yourself' in Banff. It was about me when I had to learn how to tie a tie from a YouTube video for the winter formal. Don't you dare say it wasn't about me."

The accusation, the raw, itemized list of his failures as a father, silenced Dave completely. He had no defence. It was all true. He had wrapped his own selfishness in the language of 'personal journeys' and 'needing space', and his son had been paying the price ever since.

"You think buying me noodles makes up for any of that?" Art continued, his voice thick with a pain so deep it sounded like anger. "You think one stupid day trip to The Forks erases years of not being there? It doesn't. It just... makes it worse. It's pathetic."

He pushed his barely touched bowl of noodles away. The plastic container scraped loudly against the tabletop.

"I'm done," Art said. He stood up, grabbing his backpack. "I'm taking the bus home."

"Art, wait," Dave pleaded, reaching across the table. But his son was already gone, disappearing into the anonymous market crowd.

Dave was left alone at the sticky table with two bowls of cooling noodles. He looked down at the chaotic scene below, all the families, the couples, the friends, all of them laughing and talking, existing in a world of easy connection that felt a million miles away. The harsh lesson of the day was this: you couldn't build a bridge with a single visit. Some gaps, once created, were too wide to cross. And he was standing on the wrong side of the river.