The Impossible Knife of Memory (20 page)

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So I told him . . . most of it.

Rebecca, my biological mother, was T-boned by a drunk driver when I was a baby. Dad was fighting insurgents in the mountains, but the army gave him a couple of weeks to come home and sort things out. Battle zones don’t have day care, so he took me to his mother’s. Gramma raised me until she died, just before I turned seven. That was when Trish took over. She was Daddy’s base bunny, his stateside girlfriend who said she loved babysitting.

(I skipped the part where I really loved her and I used to call her Mommy because it sounded so dumb and pathetic.) “What about your mom’s relatives?” he asked. “I don’t remember meeting them. At some point they

died. My grandma was all the family I needed.”
I glanced in the mirror. No one was waiting there. “What happened to your dad?”
The kindness in his voice almost sent me over the edge. I took a moment to clear my throat, then gave the short,

clean version: two tours in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan. How he earned the Purple Heart. Talked about the number of stitches in his leg, visiting him in the hospital, watching him in physical therapy. The drinking, the fighting, and how happy I was when they sent him back overseas again and how bad I felt about being happy. The IED that blew up his truck and his brain and his career. More months in the hospital, then the big welcome home, dog tags turned in, army days over. (That was before we knew about the fraying wires in his skull. Before we knew that he could turn into a werewolf even if the moon wasn’t full.)

Trish drinking wine at breakfast. Trish walking out. “Did he get a new girlfriend after she left?”
I shook my head. “That’s when he became a truck driver. He couldn’t figure out anything else to do with me, so I rode with him.”

“What about school?”
“He homeschooled me. Unschooled me. It was kind of awesome for a while: him driving, me reading out loud, the two of us talking about everything, fractions and evolution, Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet and which Hemingway book is the best. Every once in a while, he’d get a bug up his butt that we needed to settle down in a little town somewhere, but a few weeks or months later, he’d get a different bug and,
boom
, we took off again.”
Finn crawled around the mirror and sat next me. “How’d you wind up here?”
I took a deep breath. “He got arrested in Arkansas last year. Public drunkenness.”
Finn leaned against me, warm and solid.
“He was only in the jail overnight, but he came out completely set on moving back here. Said I needed to go to a regular school to get ready for college.”
“Makes sense.”
“I thought the move would be good for him, that he’d hook up with old friends and get a decent job. Instead it’s like a bomb has started ticking in his head.”
“What about Trish?” he asked quietly.
“She’ll make it blow up early.”
My stomach hurt from going too far, telling too many secrets. I should have kept the past locked away so it couldn’t screw up the way I was trying to get by one day at a time. That was Dad’s problem, right? His worst yesterdays played on a constant loop in his head and he couldn’t (or he wouldn’t) stop paying attention to them. At least on the road, there had been times when we’d outrun the memories. Now they had us surrounded and were closing in.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I leaned forward and blew out the candle. “Can we go to bed?”
We walked up the stairs, Finn a step in front of me, reaching back to hold my hand. He turned on the desk lamp in his room. The walls were covered with posters of indie bands I never heard of, Russian travel posters, and mostly naked women posed on gleaming motorcycles. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase overflowed with paperbacks, and gaming controllers crowded around the computer monitor and keyboard on his desk. It smelled like body spray and Fritos.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “If, you know, you were going to come up here. But I cleaned, just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“Yeah.” He closed the door and hit the space bar on his computer. The screen lit up with an image of a fire burning in a fireplace and jazz poured out of the speakers. He shut off the desk lamp, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me. He tasted of maple syrup and butter and pancakes and bacon.
Now. I will stay in right now, this minute. Build a fortress with Finn and keep yesterday locked out
.
And . . . somehow we found ourselves on his bed. And our clothes started falling off because everything felt good, felt right. The world on the other side of his door didn’t exist. His mouth, his hands, the muscles of his shoulders, the curve of his back; that was all that mattered. Tomorrow . . .
Shit
.
I sat up.
“What?” He sat up, too, breathing hard. “Did I do something wrong?”
“I thought of a bad word.”
“A dirty word? I know all of them. Do you have a favorite?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow isn’t a dirty word.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Is it?”
“I said it was bad, not dirty.” I shivered and pulled the covers up to my chin. “Tomorrow as in reality, as in we can’t go as far as we want. Reality sucks.”
“Don’t think about tomorrow.” He ran his fingers down my arm, making me shiver again. “It’s not sexy.”
“You know what’s not sexy?” I pushed his hand away. “Babies. Babies are not sexy.”
“But I bought condoms,” he said. “I even practiced putting one on!”
The lost-puppy look on his face made me smile. “I’m proud of you, Boner Man, but that’s not enough. I have the worst luck in the whole world. If anyone on the planet was going to get pregnant tonight, it would be me. The last thing I need to think about is a baby.”
He groaned and rolled on to his back. “Stop saying that word!”
“Baby, baby, baby.” I picked my shirt off the floor and put it on. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Why are you getting dressed?”
“You have to take me home.”
He dug around in the covers for his shirt and pulled it on. “Do you want to go home?”
“No. But if I stay, you’ll be too tempting and we’ll be stupid and my life will be over.”
“I’m not going to ruin your life and we’re not going to be stupid.” He opened his closet door and reached for something on the top shelf. “You mind a sleeping bag?”
“Why?”
He tossed a tightly rolled sleeping bag at me. “Postmodern bundling,” he said. “You stay in yours, I stay in mine.”
“Sleeping bags can be unzipped,” I said.
“I don’t break promises,” he pulled down a second bag, “and I’m pretty sure you don’t, either.”
It took a little while to rearrange the pillows and figure out how to keep the sleeping bags from sliding off the bed, but finally we crawled in and set our phones to wake us up just before dawn. We fell asleep instantly, without even kissing each other good night, like we’d been enchanted.
When our alarms went off, we staggered downstairs and woke up Topher and Gracie. Finn dropped me off at the bottom of my driveway and watched as I keyed Trish’s car on my way to the front door. I snuck in the house without waking up the dog, crawled under my covers with my clothes on, and fell back asleep just as I was getting ready to cry.

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When I finally rolled out of bed that afternoon, they were watching football in the living room. Trish was curled up in the recliner, rocking slightly back and forth, a thick book in her lap and hideous reading glasses pinching the end of her nose. Dad sipped a beer on the couch. A half-eaten sub rested on the table in front of him, and the dog was sprawled at his feet. An ugly, wooden cuckoo clock hung on the wall above his head, ticking loudly.

“Look who’s up,” Dad said.

I pointed to the clock above the couch. “Where did that come from?”
“Trish found it in the basement,” he said.
She looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “You look tired, Lee-Lee. Did you get enough sleep?”
Without any warning or asking for permission, my eyes teared up again. I should have ignored Finn. Should’ve walked to the bus station and gotten on the first bus without looking back. Spock rolled over and whined for a belly rub. When Trish looked at him, I wiped my face on my sleeve. Not that I was going to tell her, but she was right. I needed more sleep to deal with all of this, to deal with the bite of the blade, the ripping sound, and the flood

. . . she handed me the pen and I signed my first library card and they let me take out eight books that I could read as many times as I wanted . . .

. . . the snip of scissors and the smell of the glue, chaining one loop of paper to the next, red, green, red, green to hang on the tree . . .

. . . rows of M&M’s laid on the scratched kitchen table, her trying to teach me that multiplication and division could be fun . . .

Trish looked up at me. The light from the window was behind her and made it impossible to read the expression on her face. Focusing on the shadows made it easier

. . . she threw an ashtray at him and he ducked and it exploded into an ice storm of glass . . .
. . . finding her passed out on the couch with a stranger, both of them missing clothes . . .
. . . the sound of the door slamming the last time she left
to lock down the memories that kept trying to seep out.
Trish held up her book so that I could see the cover. “The new Elizabeth George. Do you like mysteries?”
Spock whined again and thumped his tail. He could smell the bullshit, too. Trish was already acting like she lived here. If I ran away, she’d make him fall in love with her again and God knows how that would end this time. But if I stayed and she stayed, I’d have to kill her and murder was still illegal.
Dad and Trish exchanged one of those grown-up looks that meant whatever happened next, I wasn’t going to like it.
He turned off the game and cleared his throat. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, heading for the door. “I’m going to mow the lawn.”
“Not yet,” Dad said.
“Please,” Trish added.
I stopped. Crossed my arms over my chest.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Dad scratched his head. “Should have told you she was coming, I know. I tried to the other day when we were shooting hoops, but I got distracted.”
Trish rocked faster. The recliner started to squeak.
“And I’m sorry I lost my temper last night,” he continued.
“Well,” I said, “as long as you’re sorry, I guess that makes everything better, doesn’t it?”
“I screwed up, okay?” Dad cracked his knuckles. “You weren’t exactly on your best behavior. Anyway. Trish needs to stay here.”
Trish jumped in. “Only for a week or so.”
“No sense in her wasting money on a hotel room,” Dad said.
“What about the pig barn down the road?” I asked.
The squeaking recliner sounded like a mouse caught in a trap. They exchanged another annoying glance and my last nerve snapped.
“Don’t look at her like that!” I yelled.
“Hayley, please,” Trish said.
I whirled around. “Shut up!”
“Hayley!” Dad said.
Trish shook her head. “Give her some space, Andy.”
“Give me space?” I echoed. “Did you learn that from a fortune cookie?”
“You can’t have it both ways,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“You tell me to shut up and then you ask me a question. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose.” She pushed the reading glasses into her hair. “I’m an nurse now, Hayley. Got my degree. I’m up here for some interviews. Andy offered me a place to stay, as an old friend, nothing more.”
“Just as a friend,” Dad repeated. “She’s staying in Gramma’s room.”
I hoped Gramma’s ghost heard that. I hoped she was gathering her dead lady friends together to haunt and terrorize Trish. Maybe she could get Rebecca to help, along with the Stockwell family and everyone else from the graveyard, hundreds of dead people to crowd into the bedroom, Gramma tapping Trish’s shoulder and politely suggesting that she get the hell out and leave us alone.
Spock jumped up and shook himself, raising a cloud of fur and dander that hung in the sunlight.
“All right then.” Dad slapped his knees and stood up, as if everything was decided and I wasn’t on the verge of running in the garage to get the splitting maul.
“Where are you going?” Trish asked him.
“The choke on the lawn mower sticks,” he said. “I’m going to start it for her.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m going to Gracie’s.”

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“Tell me this is a nightmare.” I sat heavily on the swing, making the chains jingle. “Maybe that bacon we ate last night was spoiled. Maybe food poisoning is screwing up my brain.”

Grace moaned. “Please don’t talk about food.” “It’s like Halloween got stuck or something,” I said. “I wake up and there’s a witch in the living room and my dad is wearing a mask that almost looks like him, but not totally. Everything is weird.”
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised.” Gracie carefully sat at the bottom of the slide. Her little brother was playing with his friends over on the new climbing equipment. We’d headed for the old stuff to get away from the noise they were making. “Trish and your dad were together for a long time, right?”
I spun the swing in a circle, twisting the chains around each other. “That’s not the point.”
Gracie’s little brother, still wearing his Iron Man costume, came running over. “Kegan’s mom brought oranges. She said I can have one if you say yes.”
“Yes,” Gracie said. “But eat them over there, okay?”
“Can I have a bologna sandwich, too?” he asked loudly.
“Shh!” Gracie hissed. “My head hurts, remember?”
Garrett leaned close to her face and whispered loudly, “Can I have a bologna sandwich, too? Kegan’s mommy makes them with mayonnaise and ketchup.”
Gracie blew out a slow breath. “Eat what you want, buddy. Just don’t tell me about it.”
I waited until he was out of earshot. “You should puke and get it over with.”
“I hate puking.” She licked her lips. “What’s the point about Trish?”
I spun in one more circle. “The point is that she’s a terrible person.”
“Fix her up with my dad,” Gracie said as she leaned back on the slide. “That would solve both of our family’s problems.” She groaned. “Can a person die of a hangover?”
“If that was true, Trish would be dead by now.” I unspun quickly, the ground whirling beneath my feet. “Dad, too, I guess.”
“I can’t believe I did this to myself,” Gracie said.
“The worst part is that she’s in our house.” I dug my toes into the dirt and spun in the other direction. “Why can’t he see what she’s trying to do?”
“Stop stressing. You can’t change anything.” Gracie winced as the little girls chasing each other around the sandbox shrieked. “Parents get to do whatever they want. Will you stop talking and let me die now?”
“I didn’t realize what a whiner you are. Be grateful you didn’t get arrested.”
“I wasn’t going to drink anything.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “What was I thinking?”
“You weren’t thinking, dumbass, you were drinking. They’re opposites. Now focus: How do I get rid of her?”
“You don’t.” Gracie sat up, grimacing. “The world is crazy. You need a license to drive a car and go fishing. You don’t need a license to start a family. Two people have sex and
bam
! Perfectly innocent kid is born whose life will be screwed up by her parents forever.” She stood up carefully. “And you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then you’re the dumbass.” She sat on the swing next to me. “Maybe this is a sign.”
“Of what?”
“A sign that you need to look ahead. At college and stuff. You gonna apply to Swevenbury?”
“Funny,” I said.
“Too close? What about California, lots of schools there. Get as far away as you can.”
“What about our commune?” I spun in another circle, bringing the twisted chains so far down that I had to lean forward so my hair wouldn’t get caught in it.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Last night you said the four of us—you, me, Topher, and Finn—should raise goats on our commune.”
“Liar,” she said. “I don’t even like goats.”
“Sissie!” Garrett ran over to the swing set and shoved half of his bologna and mayonnaise and ketchup sandwich in Gracie’s face. “Want some?
“Oh, God,” Gracie said, lurching for the trash can.
“Give it to me, buddy,” I said. “Sissie doesn’t feel so good.”