The Impossible Knife of Memory

  He turned the television off. “Andy-filter?”

  “You don’t think I have a right to be upset?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Friday night I split wood and fell asleep reading about the Spartans.”

  “What about when I came home?”

  “You never went out,” he said.

  “You don’t remember?”

  He frowned. “Remember what?”

  When we first hit the road, I’d been clueless. I was twelve, confused and brokenhearted about the way we left home and about Trish. Getting by minute to minute was my strategy. It was at least a year before Dad started to take unapproved “sick days,” and a year after that before I connected the dots that led from him spending the night in a bar to him waking up, puking, and moaning. He got fired a couple times for it. That always led to months of clean living and on-time deliveries until he’d stumble again and fall down the rabbit hole. But he’d never gone this far. He’d never forgotten what he did the night before.

  “This is stupid.” Dad picked up the remote. “I’m not going to be interrogated by my own kid.”

  I snatched the remote. “You blacked out, Daddy.”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “When I got home you were waving the splitting maul around like the crazy bad guy in a horror movie. You humiliated me in front of my friend.”

  Spock jumped off the couch, shook himself, and fled for the kitchen.

  “What did I say to her?” he asked.

  “To who?”

  “Your friend.”

  “It was him, not a her. Jesus, you don’t remember any of it. Was it just booze or did you take pills, too?”

  He paled, but narrowed his eyes. “There’s no law against a grown man getting a little shit-faced in his own house.”

  “There’s a difference between getting drunk and getting so drunk you black out,” I said. “That’s a bad sign, Dad. A really bad sign.”

  “Pack the attitude away, young lady. I drink. Sometimes I don’t remember. That’s how it works.”

  “This has happened before?”

  “We’re done talking. You want pizza?”

  “Give it to the dog,” I said.

  47

  I’d been at Gracie’s for only one day, but dirty dishes filled the sink, and the trash can smelled like sandwich meat gone bad. Directions to Roy’s camp still hung on the wall, stuck on a nail. In the living room, the Giants scored and the crowd went nuts.

  I was hungry for pizza and wings, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The peanut butter was in the cupboard next to the stove and the bananas and bread were on the counter. After I made the sandwich, I opened the fridge for something to drink and stopped. On the top shelf, next to a cloudy jar of pickles and a tub of expired cottage cheese, sat a stack of mail.

  Another first. Dad never left mail lying around anywhere, much less in the refrigerator.

  The catalogs for garden supplies and special tools for arthritic hands still arrived monthly, even though my grandmother had been dead for more than a decade. Dad got a couple of credit card applications and a VFW magazine that I knew he’d throw out without reading. The last two envelopes were addressed to him, too. I poured myself a glass of milk.

  It’s wrong to open another person’s mail, right? Especially if that other person is your parent, because parents are supposed to be in charge and they’re supposed to make all the decisions, and there might be things in the mail that are none of your business, because even in high school you’re still a kid. Or at least sometimes, you want to feel like you are.

  I carefully opened the first envelope, from the bank. Dad had overdrawn the checking account by $323.41, plus fees. I took a bite of my sandwich and a sip of milk and opened the second envelope, a note from the VA that listed all the appointments he’d missed and “strongly urged” him to call their office. I wasn’t so hungry after that. I washed the dishes and emptied the garbage. After I put a clean bag in the trash can, I dumped the catalogs in it. That’s when the third envelope, addressed to me, fell out of the gardening supply catalog.

  Roy sent it.

  He said that he’d talked to Dad on the phone a couple times, but he didn’t think it would help. He apologized for not being able to do more. He apologized for how short the letter was, but his unit was leaving earlier than planned.

  I know it’s not fair, but you have to be the strong one,

  he wrote.

  You have to be patient with him, even when you don’t want to be. He’s still wounded, don’t forget that. I’ll call when I can.

  Gotta hop.

  “Uncle” Roy

  * * *

  I made Spock sit between us on the couch, the demilitarized dog separating Dad and me like the zone that keeps the peace between North and South Korea. I ate a slice of pizza and three chicken wings. That made him happy. I stared at the screen and tried not to wince when Dad yelled at the refs. The teams crashed into each other, helmets hitting helmets, necks snapping backward, bodies falling. Dad twitched and jerked with every hit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a mirror, and in the mirror we were sitting on that couch, me twenty years old, thirty years old, then forty, then fifty, and Dad, always the exact same age, timeless, unshaven, dirty, eyes bloodshot and empty. The Eagles quarterback was sacked at the beginning of the third quarter and taken to the locker room. From that point on, the Giants scored at will.

  After the game, I took Spock for a walk, the envelopes in the pouch of my hoodie, resealed as best I could. We walked until night fell and the safe, little houses on our side of town had all closed their curtains. Our curtains were still open. Dad was asleep on the couch, beer bottle in hand. I put the mail back in the mailbox and hoped the next day would be a better one for him.

  48

  I took the bus Monday morning. Finn was never going to drive me anywhere again.

  I didn’t see him in the cafeteria first period. Didn’t actually go to the cafeteria. Went to the library. The Genocide Awareness table was gone. Nothing had taken its place. Tried to fall asleep in a corner where no one could find me. Couldn’t sleep. Counted the holes in the ceiling tiles, decided they were probably made of a chemical that was causing cancer to bloom in my lungs.

  Each tile had 103 holes.

  I trudged through the day. Classroom. Locker. Hall. Classroom. Caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the tall windows along the corridor to the B wing. I was shuffling, books weighing down my arms. Defeated, like a zombie who’d been dragged from the grave and bitten, but who didn’t feel the hunger yet. Wasn’t quite assimilated into the hivemind of delirium.

  Ms. Benedetti stopped me in the hall, complained about playing phone tag with Dad, and shoved SAT paperwork into my hands, babbling away about the need to shift my paradigm and look over the next horizon. I threw the paperwork away as soon as she was out of sight. In English, Brandon Something pegged me with spitballs every time Ms. Rogak turned her back. I picked them out of my hair before she noticed. I really didn’t care enough to do anything else. Found out in gym class that Gracie had gone home sick. I told the aide that I was going to puke and spent the next two periods staring at the tiles above the cot in the nurse’s office. They were smaller than the ones in the library. Maybe they didn’t leak as much cancer.

  I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I’d been vulnerable. I’d dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.

  I was an idiot.

  In history, Mr. Diaz misstated so many facts about the issues that led to the Civil War that I was sure he was baiting me. He stopped me when I was headed out the door at the end of the period to ask if I was okay.

  “I’m fine,” I told him.
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  * * *

  I was first in line when the bus pulled in. Took the seat on the left, two rows from the back. Stared at the zombies on the sidewalk dramatically reciting their lines, stalking to the edges of their stages, playing at life.

  Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they’d go to and what they’d major in and how much they’d earn and what car they’d buy? They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell.

  And then what?

  Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of mints was beginning to make sense.

  “Excuse me?” a voice said. “Can I sit here?”

  I turned to say no, but he was already sitting down.

  Finnegan Trouble Ramos.

  I opened my mouth, but he put his finger on my lips.

  “Shh,” he said. “Please. Let me say this before I chicken out again, okay? First, I’m sorry I didn’t call or text you or show up this morning.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dropping down and bouncing up like a basketball.

  “I really like you, Hayley Kincain. I want to be with you as much as I can. I get that it’s weird at your house, scary maybe, and your dad can be a jerk. You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to, but it kills me because you are so beautiful and smart and awesome and I don’t want anything to be scary for you, I just want—”

  He paused for a breath.

  I reached out and put my hand at the back of his neck; I pulled myself close to him and I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.

  49

  So. That.

  Right?

  That feeling in your stomach when you hear him whistling off-key, down the hall. That way your heart trips and then hammers against your ribs when he sees you and he grins like a little kid at the top of a steep, shiny-hot slide. Call it hormones, an early-stage bacterial zombie infection, or a very pleasant dream I was experiencing; I didn’t care.

  I liked That.

  50

  Two days later, I came home to find that the hood of Dad’s pickup was warm and ticking, like he’d just pulled in the driveway. I opened the door to check the odometer. Twenty-three miles had been put on since I left for school.

  “Hop in!” Dad called from the garage.

  His cheery tone of voice made me suspicious. “Why?”

  He stood up, holding a hand pump and a basketball. He bounced the ball once and grinned. “Got a surprise for you.”

  I hesitated. Since Sunday, he’d been quiet, but not sober. “Are you okay to drive?”

  He laughed. “I’m running on coffee and sweat today, nothing else.” He bounce-passed the ball to me. “It’ll just take a couple minutes. Get in.”

  I didn’t notice the paint until we were on the road: two shades of yellow and a dark blue dotting his forearms and knuckles. He had paint on his shirt and jeans, too. He sang off-key with the radio, his breath smelling of mint gum, his hands steady on the wheel and gearshift. I was beginning to see a pattern. After the bonfire argument, he’d made nice and taken me to the cemetery. After his ax-murderer bit in the garage and the fight we had about it, here he was acting happy again. Well, happy-ish.

  My phone buzzed. It was probably Finn, but I didn’t take it out of my pocket. I didn’t want to trigger Angry Dad again.

  The song ended and an obnoxious commercial for a used-car dealer came on. Dad turned the radio off.

  “I ran into Tom Russell in the grocery store.” He took a deep breath. “He was buying carrots.”

  I had no idea where this was going. “Were they on sale?”

  He turned left and stopped along the curb in front of a small park I’d never seen before. The swing set was empty. A couple of old people sat on a bench watching dogs chase tennis balls that they tossed onto an empty basketball court.

  “Didn’t notice,” Dad said. “The point is that Tom’s a contractor. Small jobs mainly: roof repair, gutters, painting, that kind of thing. Anyway, he was buying carrots, like I said, and he recognized me from high school. We got to talking and one thing led to another, and it turned out he’d had a guy not show up for work today.” He pointed to a small house with green shutters across the street from the park.

  “Voilà.”

  “Voilà?”

  “I painted the kitchen and the laundry room in there. Only took five hours. Tom paid me cash, everything under the table. Not too shabby, huh?”

  His face lit up with real excitement, not the kind that comes in a bottle or a bong. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him like this. “That’s fantastic, Dad.”

  “I thought you’d like hearing that.”

  “Tell me more,” I said. “Is this going to be a part-time thing? Full-time? Did you know any of the other guys?”

  “I worked alone,” he said. “Had tunes playing and the windows open. It was a good day, princess.”

  “What time does he want you tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your buddy there. The guy who hired you.”

  “Tom?” He turned the key enough to glance at the time, then took the keys out. “Said he’d call if something else came up.” He picked up the ball and opened the door. “We haven’t shot hoops in forever. C’mon.”

  * * *

  It took him a long time to find his rhythm. I fetched the balls that clanged off the rim and bounced off the backboard. For about ten minutes, he made one shot for every five he took.

  “Painting took more out of my arms than I thought,” he said.

  “It’s been a while,” I said.

  I ran through topics in my head, trying to find something to talk about that wouldn’t lead to trouble. I couldn’t bring up Finn, for obvious reasons. He didn’t want to talk about work. I didn’t want to talk about school. Politics was completely out of the question. Spock had started to gnaw on a hot spot on his hind leg, but to talk about that we’d have to talk about a trip to the vet and that would lead to talking about money and how we didn’t have any because of everything else we couldn’t talk about.

  By the time he’d started to sweat, his bad leg was dragging a bit, but his hands were remembering what to do. He dribbled, one, two, three, leaned a bit on the good leg, pulled in his shooting elbow and launched the ball in a beautiful arc that fell, swish, through the basket.

  “Nice!”

  He grinned and made three more shots in a row. “What time is it?” he asked as I grabbed the rebound.

  I passed him the ball and checked my phone. (Finn had texted five times.) “Quarter after. Why?”

  “Just curious.” He dribbled with his left hand. “Finally got ahold of your guidance counselor today.”

  “Ms. Benedetti? Don’t listen to her. She lies about everything.”

  “Don’t worry. She likes you.”

  “What did she want?” I asked carefully.

  He bounced the ball between his legs and passed it to me. “Still struggling in math, huh?”

  I put the ball on my
hip. “I have a tutor.”

  He wiped his face on his shirt. “Sounds like you’re spending a lot of time in detention.”

  I dribbled the ball. “Cruel and unusual punishment, remember?”

  “Maybe you should work on your diplomacy a little bit.”

  I shot and missed. “They’re all lunatics.”

  “Teaching kids like you?” He chuckled, grabbed the rebound, spun around me, and made a layup. “Can you blame them?”

  I caught the ball and dribbled it behind my back. “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  I passed him the ball and watched him make a couple of layups. Maybe Benedetti hadn’t talked to him about Trish or she had and he didn’t want to discuss it with me. A loud motorcycle headed toward the park. A couple of guys had arrived and were shooting at the other basket. Dad watched them for a minute, dribbled to the foul line, sank a free throw, and raised a triumphant fist.

  “Not bad for an old guy, huh?”

  Asking about Trish would spoil everything. It wasn’t worth it.

  “Watch this,” Dad said.

  He dribbled, cutting left, then right, like he was faking out an invisible opponent. He spotted up and tried to jump, but stumbled, landing hard and wincing. The ball sailed over the backboard.

  “Oh, God, I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He limped a few steps. “Just need to walk it off. Get the ball, will you?”

  I found the ball under an SUV across the street as the engine of the motorcycle revved loudly, then cut out. I stood, then ducked back down, trying to keep out of Dad’s sight. He looked around once, then hurried over to where Michael sat straddled on his Harley. The exchange—something in Dad’s hand, something in Michael’s—happened so fast nobody else would have noticed it.

  My phone buzzed and I took it out of my pocket.

  Sup?

  Finn wrote.

  have you been kidnapped by aliens?