The Impossible Knife of Memory (26 page)

I pushed my way toward the front of the store, ignoring the complaints and curses people threw my way, until I finally broke free into the mall.

Finn found me a few minutes later, clenching the railing. “Where’s your bag?” I asked.
“There’s another store by the food court.”
I licked my lips. Hordes marched past us, shrieking

like crows into their phones, carrying small fortunes in big shopping bags, their faces distorted in the reflection of the hanging silver-and-gold decorations.

“Take me home,” I said.

“I have to get a shirt,” he said slowly and loudly, as if I was deaf.
“Come back and get it after you drop me off.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” He leaned in to kiss me.
“Don’t.” I stepped away from him. “I’m not playing. I hate it here, I want to go home.”
“Is something wrong? Is it your dad?”
“He’s not answering the phone.”
“He never answers the phone. Just give me fifteen minutes.”
No answer. No answer.
“No, we have to leave right now.”
“Since when did you become a drama queen?”
My legs moved.
I bumped, shoved, slipped into tiny cracks in the crowd, needing to get
Out! Out! Out!
as soon as possible. I couldn’t stop the pictures in my head, explosions like a flash-bang grenade was going off behind my eyes: carnage in the street, bodies on the floor of a pizza shop, a movie theater, the county fair. I walked as fast as the crowd would let me, eyes scanning for exits, hair tingling on the back of my neck as if someone, somewhere was pushing the button that would detonate an explosion. Lining me up in his sights and pulling the trigger.
Say the alphabet. Count in Spanish. Picture a mountain, the top of a mountain, the top of a mountain in the summer. Keep breathing.
None of my father’s old tricks worked anymore.
Finn caught up with me just before I slipped out the door. He grabbed my arm, spun me around. “What’s going on?”
The me of me curled into a dark corner in the back of my skull and some Hayley-bitch version I’d never seen before came out roaring. “Leave me alone!”
“Why? Tell me, please.”
“Forget it,” the bitch said, using my mouth, balling my hands into granite fists. “Forget everything. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and this is all a waste of time.”
“But—” Finn started.
The bitch wanted to fight, wanted to scream. She wanted someone else to get in the middle and give her an excuse to kick, to punch, and hurt. She looked at the zombie shoppers who had stopped to watch the sideshow, stared at them, daring them to say anything.
“I’ll take you home,” Finn said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Or Monday, whenever you want.”
The look in his eyes went right through the me of me, piercing my heart, but the bitch was in control.
“We’re done,” she said in my voice, sounding stronger than I felt, bluffing her way through the end of this game. “I don’t want to be with you. I’ll take the bus home.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“Clever boy,” the Hayley-bitch said. “Just leave me alone.”

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The bitch in me was mostly quiet by the time I woke up Thanksgiving morning. I could still feel her lurking in the back of my skull, reminding me how thin the ice was. I turned on the parade and turned up the volume. The first three giant balloons were cartoon characters I’d never seen before.

I hadn’t called or texted Finn. Of course, he hadn’t called or texted me, either. I didn’t know if he was home or in Boston or on the turnpike or maybe he was still asleep.

Bitch Voice: better off without him, he doesn’t understand, you can’t trust him.
I knocked on Dad’s door. “It’s Thanksgiving. We’re going to Gracie’s for dinner, remember?”
“Four o’clock,” he said.
“Don’t drink,” I reminded him. “You promised.”
I found Gramma’s recipe box, pulled the card marked
Mason Apple Pie
, and watched a bunch of videos to learn how to make a pie crust. I took the butter out of the fridge so it could soften. Set out the flour, salt and ice water, bowl and forks. Peeled the apples. Sat on the couch and watched the Hatboro-Horsham Marching Hatters perform in front of the grandstand. Wondered what possessed a school to call itself the Hatters. Looked up why my apple slices were turning brown. Ate half of the apple slices.
The parade ended. Football began.
I ate the rest of the apple slices and pulled some more cards from Gramma’s recipe box.
Anna Chatfield’s Key Lime. Esther’s Pumpkin w/Walnut Crust. Peg Holcomb’s Perfect Pumpkin. Edith Janack’s Apple Crisp. Ethel Mason’s Mincemeat.
And a small surprise:
Rebecca’s Lemon Cake.
My fingers hovered above the keys of my phone, wanting to talk to Finn. Did his shirt itch? Was his whole family sitting around the table, everyone dressed to kill? Was there any way to explain to him why I’d been so mean?
No. I barely understood it myself. I just knew that I wanted to push him away from me more than I wanted to hold him close.

Dad stayed in his room all day, not even coming out to watch football. My pie was came out burnt on the edges and a little watery in the middle, but I thought that for a first try, it wasn’t too bad.

Gracie texted just before four o’clock:

plans changed can u com at 6?
I wrote back:
sure

An hour and a half later, she texted:
thxgving canceled
ttyt

I carried the pie to her house. Cardboard turkeys and black Pilgrim hats were taped to the first-floor windows of Gracie’s house. (Did they really wear hats like that? If you were on the brink of starvation, would you really care about your hat?) Tall, narrow windows flanked the front door, covered by bunched-up lace curtains that made it impossible to see inside.

I rang the doorbell, but nobody answered.

Gracie called at ten and gave me the blow-by-blow description of the battle between her parents that had caused the cancellation of the dinner. Instead of being hysterical, she spent the night finishing her applications to four universities in California.

Just before midnight, I texted Finn to say happy Thanksgiving. He didn’t answer.

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I became a little unstuck in time after that, drifting like a dead leaf caught in the current of a half-frozen river, bumping into rocks, spinning in slow eddies, not worrying about the waterfalls ahead.

It snowed again on the first day of December. The cold switched my brain to hibernation mode, shutting down the ability to think in favor of keeping my internal organs functioning. The downside was that it also created minor memory glitches. I was halfway across the parking lot that afternoon before I remembered that Finn and I hadn’t talked in a week and I couldn’t ride home with him. I wouldn’t get in his car even if he asked me to. At least, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t.

On the bus, I jammed in my earbuds, dialed up Danish death metal, and played it loud enough to make my ears bleed. By the time I walked up the driveway, my head hurt and I was almost deaf. It felt good in a sick way.

I flicked off the music, turned the doorknob, yanked open the front door, and almost pulled my shoulder out of the socket. The door was locked. Dad hadn’t locked it in weeks, but I didn’t give it much thought, because something trickled in my ears and I worried that maybe the music had punctured my eardrums and fluid from my brain was leaking.

Get a grip and stop catastrophizing.
I unzipped the front pocket of my backpack and reached for my keys, but they weren’t there. I emptied my backpack onto the front porch before I remembered the last place I’d seen them: next to my computer. I’d left in such a rush that I’d forgotten to grab them.
Crap.
I rang the bell and knocked on the door. Nothing. If he was sleeping in his room, I’d have to go to Gracie’s or hang out at the park until he got hungry enough to wake up.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
I jogged back down the walk. The rig was still in the driveway, hood down and doors locked. I peered through the dirty window into the garage. The pickup was parked inside. No tools that needed to be put away. No sign of Dad. The back door off the kitchen was closed and locked, too. I checked all the windows that I could reach. I couldn’t tell which were painted shut and which were locked, but none of them would budge.
That’s when I smelled something burning. Saw smoke rising from the fire pit, which we hadn’t used in over a month. I walked over to it, thinking maybe he’d started a fire to cook hot dogs or something.
He’d been burning his uniform. Scraps of his jacket and pants lay at the edge of the fire. The half-melted boots smoldered in the middle.
I ran back to the living room window, cupped my hands around my eyes to cut down on the glare, and tried to see inside between the curtains. The living room had been trashed. The upside-down couch was blocking the way to the dining room. Stuffing from the couch cushions had been flung everywhere and looked like dirty cotton candy. The recliner had been chopped to bits. The ax handle stuck out from the gaping hole that had been chopped in the drywall. The cuckoo clock lay in pile of splinters.
My father was curled into a ball on the floor. Blood on his face. Blood staining the carpet under his head, Spock lying next to him.
A girl screamed.
!!!NONONODADDYDADDYNODADDYNONONONONONOOOO!!!
Spock howled.
The screaming girl slapped the window with her palms, pounded the window with her fists, bent down to grab her backpack. Spock ran to the window and put his front paws on the sill, barking. The girl threw the backpack at the glass and it bounced off. She was thinking,
Why can’t I break it, how do I break it, grab a log, break the window, shatter the glass, a rock, a big rock, break it into a million pieces and get to him, crawl over the broken glass and get—
The body moved. Uncurled. It sat up, wiped its face on the front of its T-shirt, and turned to look at the wailing girl, pounding on the other side.

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“He’s dead,” Dad said.
I led him to a dining room chair and made him sit down.
The blood was coming from his nose and a long cut on his
chin.
“Who’s dead?” I asked. “Who did this to you?” He didn’t answer.
A burglary?
I looked over my shoulder. The TV was still
in the living room. Wasn’t that what burglars always took?
Michael.
I bet he owed money to a dealer or a shady friend
and he didn’t pay so the guy came to our house to look for
him. Dad had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he burned his uniform and he said “dead.” Had he
killed the guy? Was there a body somewhere?
“Daddy, look at me. What is going on?”
He closed his eyes, moaned. I ran my hands over the
scars on his head. “Should I call the police?”
“No, no,” he said wearily. “It was over there.” He put
his head in his hands and rocked back and forth, breathing
hard, like he was in the middle of a race.
The war. Another dead friend.
“You have to tell me,” I said gently. “Who was it?” Dad gulped back a sob. “Roy.”
Is there anything worse than watching your father cry?
He’s supposed to be the grown-up, the all-powerful grownup, especially if he’s a soldier. When I was a kid, I watched
him work out, scaling walls, lifting guys bigger than he
was, running miles in the heat wearing full gear and carrying extra ammo. My dad was a superhero who made the
world safe. He went overseas with his troops and chased
the bad guys out of the mountains so that little kids over
there could go to school and to the library and use the playground the way I did at home. The first time I saw him cry
wasn’t so bad because he still had metal rods sticking into
his leg. He was in pain. I understood that. After they pulled
out the rods, after Trish left, I’d wake up at night hearing
him sob, sniff like a child, like me, tears coming fast and
mixing with snot. He’d try to keep quiet, but sometimes the
sadness came over him as loud as a thunderstorm. Scared
the shit out of me, like riding a roller coaster and feeling
your seat belt snap just as the track turns you upside down. I patted his back, waiting for the storm to pass.

It took more than an hour and a lot of whiskey before he’d say anything more. Roy’s platoon had been caught in an ambush. Rocket-fired grenades, Dad said. Everyone who wasn’t killed was injured.

“They’ll never be able to complain,” he said. “How can you complain if you’re alive? Lose your arms, lose your eyes, a leg, or a foot; it doesn’t matter when you think about your brothers buried in the ground.”

L A UR I E H A L S E A N D E RS O N

He was drinking out of a plastic cup.
“Rotting in the ground,” he muttered.
His tears made tiny streams down the dried blood on

his cheeks. The stubble on his face was speckled with gray and white. The skin along his jaw sagged a little, making him look like he had aged ten years since breakfast. His hands were bruised, the knuckles oozing blood, probably from punching the holes in the drywall.

The dining room curtains had been torn down and sunlight flooded the room, bouncing off the glittering glass shards in the carpet. He had broken all of our glasses, all of our plates and bowls, too, thrown against the walls. The silverware drawer was in pieces and one of the pantry doors had been ripped off the hinges.

A monster had rampaged through the house. I picked up the dog and staggered to the door. It was a miracle he hadn’t cut his paws. The second he touched the ground, he started racing back and forth the length of our yard, from the house all the way to the cornfield and back, ignoring my calls to come, just running until he wore himself out and flopped by the fire pit where I was able to hook him to the chain.
Dad refilled his whiskey. I went for the broom to start cleaning. I swept up the big pieces of glass and china and drywall, hid the ax in my closet, set the couch back on its feet, and stuffed the guts of the couch cushions into garbage bags. I threw what was left of the recliner in the back of the truck. That would have to go to the dump. I cleaned for more than an hour and still he sat in that chair.
“A shower might feel good,” I finally suggested.
I crossed my fingers, hoping he wouldn’t start talking about how Roy would never shower again, Roy would never drink whiskey or love a woman or eat Thanksgiving at his mother’s house again.
“Nothing feels good.” His red-rimmed eyes didn’t blink.
I hesitated, not wanting to set him off. “How about something to eat. Eggs?”
He shook his head.
“Pancakes?” I asked. “Hamburgers?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat something. How about toast? I can make some coffee, if you want.”
“I just want some quiet, okay?” He stood up and patted my cheek. “But thanks.”
He grabbed the bottle and walked to the living room. The television was the one thing he hadn’t destroyed in there. He picked up the remote, turned it on, and clicked through the channels until he found a reporter talking about a late hurricane forming in the Gulf of Mexico. He sat on the cushion-less couch, poured himself another shot and tossed it back.
I spent the next morning picking out glass and broken dishes from the carpet. Thousands of slivers as thin as pins, sharp on both ends pricked my fingers. Gloves made the job harder so I finally used a comb, inch by inch through the living room and the dining room. I saved the kitchen floor for last because it was small and easy; just needed to wipe it down with damp paper towels, my knees protected by a scrap of cardboard.
By lunchtime, the floors were safe and I could let the dog out of the basement.
Dad slept.
In school, they were studying Homer, tangents, tonal systems, Dred Scott, and finger whorls. Finn was probably flirting and studying and finishing his applications and saving the world all at the same time. I kept hearing him say “You take care of him more than he takes care of you” over and over again.
When Benedetti’s office called, I said my father and I had flu again.