These Gentle Wounds (13 page)

Nineteen

Someone way smarter than me would have figured out that making plans is asking for trouble. Assuming that things will be okay is a sure-fire way to disaster. Thinking I could possibly be happy is like flashing a beacon to the universe asking for everything to suck as much as possible.

I give up on going to the rink and spend the whole walk home working myself up to listen to Sarah's music. I pull the photo she took of me out of my book, shove it back in, and take it out again, just to prove that it's real.

I think about her hand in mine. And next year. And normal.

I'm still looking down at the photo when I get to the house. It isn't until I walk straight into the shrubs that I look up and see the front door open and the strange car in the driveway.

Regardless of what Sarah says, surprises aren't good. My mind blurs with ways to get back to school, the playground, the rink.

I read a book last year about how people cope after something happens to them. It said everyone falls on one end or the other of a fight-or-flight response. Some rush into danger, thinking they can head it off. Others try to get away as soon as possible. I just kind of freeze, like someone has super-glued my feet to the floor.

Kevin must have been waiting for me, because he flies out of the house before I can unfreeze and put any of my exit strategies into action.

“Who's here?” I ask, although I don't really want to know.

“DeSilva.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and leaves it there. “You need to talk to her.”

That doesn't make me feel any better. As much as I like her, Amy DeSilva is only bringing bad news these days.

“Crap. Why?”

His arm snakes behind my neck and pulls me forward. “I don't know. She wouldn't say anything to us until you got here.”

Us
. I swallow down the fear that rises in my throat. “Jim's here too?”

“Yup. Full house.”

Jim is never home this early. He must have known she was coming. Worse, he must have known she was coming and didn't tell me.

I imagine that the roots of the trees are coming up through the ground and tying my feet down. I'm not sure I can move, but Kevin's arm is strong and pushing me forward. Their voices, Ms. DeSilva's and Jim's, float out of the house.

Everything goes quiet when Kevin pulls open the screen door and pushes me inside.

I put my backpack down and head toward the dining room, where they're sitting at the paper-covered table.

Ms. DeSilva gives me a hug. “Sorry for doing this so unexpectedly, Gordie, but I just picked up this paperwork and it didn't seem like it should wait.”

“Just tell me.” I'm not trying to be rude so I reluctantly add, “Please.”

My skin feels electric. I need to keep moving, but there are too many people in the room. No escape.

Kevin must see me starting to panic because he comes up behind me and puts a hand on each of my shoulders. “Let's go sit down and hear what she has to say.”

He leads me to the table and we take two seats in the middle. Jim is at one end and Ms. DeSilva is at the other. I have a very quick flash of memory, one I've never had before.

We're in the old house and sitting down to dinner. All of us together, which is rare. My father's not around much and things are usually too chaotic for regular dinner times.

It's my birthday. The twins aren't born yet, but Kayla is. I think I'm seven or eight. Mom made me a cake shaped like a hockey stick. We're all eating dinner. Like this. Around a table. There are cake crumbs everywhere. My father is yelling at Kayla for getting frosting on the tablecloth.

My arm shakes and Kevin's hand squeezes my wrist.

“Sorry,” I say, turning to Ms. DeSilva. I wish I knew how to explain to her that I'm okay. I mean, I'm not having a seizure or anything. It's just a spin. I'm not going to bite my tongue off.

She takes a deep breath and shuffles the papers in front of her. It feels like it takes a million years for her to say anything.

“Gordie, what do you remember about us trying to reach your father after the … incident?”

What I remember the most is that word. “Incident.” It was the one she always used. “Accident” was never right, and no one was going to come out and call what my mother did “Murder.” Not around me, anyway.

I search my brain for something else. There's … nothing.

“I don't remember,” I say. “Just being here, I guess. At Jim's. I remember the … ” In my head, I see my father at the funeral, all in black. Staring at me. Mom and the kids are in boxes and …

I shake my head hard.

“He … ” This is also something I'm missing a word for. I don't like to think of him as my father, but I have no other way to refer to him. “He didn't want me, after.”

I don't say out loud that my father not wanting me is the thing I'm most grateful for in the universe, because as much as it makes me happy, it also hurts like hell. I've never really understood how that works.

Ms. DeSilva's face falls a little. I get it. This sucks. This all sucks. I was just a little kid and no one can go back and change the past and now I'm all fucked up. That still doesn't mean I want to deal with those damned looks.

“It isn't necessarily true that he didn't want you, you know,” she says, oblivious to the pressure that's building in my head. “It's just that after the funeral we couldn't locate him. We figured he was dealing with everything that happened in his own way and that he'd come forward eventually.”

She pauses and waits to see if I'm going to say anything, but there are no words in my mouth at all. All I'm aware of is that the thing in my stomach is starting to tighten.

There's no one to bail me out. Even Kevin is sitting rock-still and looking a little green.

DeSilva continues. “After a while, when we didn't hear anything, I petitioned the court to award guardianship to Jim so that you and Kevin could stay together. And the judge agreed.” She looks from one of us to the other. I can tell there's something big to come. It's a good bet I don't want to hear that either. “Do you have any questions so far?”

We all shake our heads.

I realize I've been holding my breath when I try to let it out and it feels like it's sticking in my lungs. I lean over and grab a pen off the table. I'm sure I look like an idiot, but clicking that pen is the only thing that's going to keep my heart from exploding.

I close my eyes and focus on the clicks until I'm breathing kind of normally again.

Kevin knocks into my leg and holds his hand out for the pen. I'd tell him to fuck off if DeSilva weren't here, but I'm not going to cause a scene over a stupid plastic pen.

When I hand it over, he puts it on the other side of the table.

I glare at him and start twisting the bracelet. I know he's happy because it doesn't make any noise, but it doesn't help as much either. Not that he gives a shit.

It sounds like everyone exhales at once, and Ms. DeSilva starts talking again.

“Because your father never stepped forward, and because we just didn't want to put you through anything else at that time, we chose not to pursue any more formal arrangements. We would have had to go to court to charge him with neglect or abandonment.”

“And?” I know there's something horrible lingering somewhere on the tip of her tongue and if she doesn't spit it out soon, I'm afraid that not even the stupid band on my wrist is going to be enough to keep me from losing it right here.

“Jim never officially petitioned to adopt you. You need to understand that it isn't because he didn't … doesn't care about you. There were no other relatives in the picture, and we just didn't think it was necessary. Instead he was granted guardianship.”

I look over at Jim, who is examining the wood grain of the table like he's never seen it before.

“Which means?” This time Kevin beats me to it. I don't have to look at him to know his teeth are clenched together.

“It means, Gordie, that while it won't necessarily be granted, your father is within his legal rights to step forward and ask to play some role in your life.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I know that I'm rocking, embarrassingly, back and forth in my chair, but it feels like every atom in the room is pushing me in a different direction. One more word about him is going to make me break into so many pieces that not even Kevin, not even Sarah, could put me back together.

I don't want to cry. I don't want to give him the satisfaction, even though he'll never know that his dumb kid, who is meant to be dead, sat at this table and sobbed. But the tears are stinging the back of my eyes like the boric acid Kevin uses in his cooking and I don't know where they can go but out.

As they start to spill down my face, I clench my hands as tight as I can, one pulling the leather of the bracelet hard enough to dig into my wrist. I know it should hurt, but all I feel is numb.

Everything and everyone in the room fades away until, finally, Jim asks the only question left in a voice that sounds sad and guilty and filled with more emotion than I've ever heard come from his mouth. “Is that what he's doing? Asking to take Gordie back?”

“He's … ” Ms. DeSilva starts and I close my eyes, waiting for her answer. “Considering it,” she finishes just as the bracelet snaps and breaks.

Kevin tries to grab at me as I launch out of the chair, but I swerve around him, snatch my bag, and pound up the stairs.

I'm gasping for air. For a minute I think about breaking the window, but even I'm not stupid enough to trust myself right now.

Jim is always telling Kevin to give me space when I'm upset, but my brother never listens. I'm not sure why he's listening now, or if I want him here, or if I want to be alone, or …

I rub the back of my neck, hard, wishing that everything in my head would stop screaming.

I rip open my backpack. Papers fly everywhere. I rummage around until I find Sarah's MP3 player, and then I remember I don't have any headphones because I don't listen to music.

But Kevin does.

I rifle through his desk drawer. I move some receipts, coins, and an unopened pack of condoms around until I see the wires peeking out from under a photograph of us. Of all of us.

Kevin never lets me put pictures of Mom up on the walls, not even on my side of the room. He says he can't look at them, and that they'd just screw me up, and maybe he's right.

Actually, I'm not sure if it's the condoms or the photo that freaks me out the most. It feels like my brother's been lying to me in more ways than one.

I pick the photo up. Finding it is like discovering a present under the Christmas tree you didn't even know you wanted until you took all the wrapping off.

I know where we are.

The backyard wasn't big, but there were a couple of old trees and a swing set. There was enough room for me and Kevin to play catch.

We're sitting on a blue-and-red-plaid blanket. The twins are propped up in the front, near the lilac bush. Kayla is sitting on Mom's lap. Kevin and I sit next to each other. I'm tucked under his arm, which is draped around my neck.
I'm holding a hockey puck in my hands even though it's summer. There's a picnic basket off to the other side and Mom is smiling, happy. I wonder who took the photo. I wonder who was there with us to witness and preserve her happiness.

I try to remember that day. I try to remember the smell of lilacs, but all I can think of is the smell of Sarah's hair. I try to remember the feel of the puck in my hands, and, more than anything, the feeling of Mom sitting next to me, us all being together.

There is a question in my head. One I try never to ask. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to push the question out, but it won't leave. It knocks, knocks, knocks on the side of my brain, demanding to be answered, but I can't answer it. The question is, “What if?” What if Mom hadn't done what she did? Where would we all be? Would she be better? Would she still wear her hair long? Would Jason like hockey? What would it have been like to grow up normal? What would
I
be like?

I reach down to snap the bracelet, but then remember it broke. I need to find the other one. I need air. I need these questions without answers to be gone. They make me feel like I'm drowning again. I …

I take the picture and sit on the bed. I can't stop looking at Mom's smile. At how relaxed Kevin looks, grinning wide for the camera.

I even look at the kids. I remember how they were all so quiet in the back of the car until they weren't anymore and how I just left them there. Sometimes I wish I'd stayed inside the car with them like I was supposed to.

I shouldn't, but I miss my mom. I can't help it.

Tears are pouring down my face like rain, like the river. My shirt sleeve is soggy and full from trying to wipe them away. I give up and just let them flow and spin me around like a whirlpool.

Somewhere a door opens, but it sounds far, far away.

The bed dips as Ms. DeSilva puts her arms around my shoulders and pulls me toward her.

The way she's holding me reminds me so much of Mom, I forget I should be embarrassed to be falling apart like a terrified little kid. I lean into her warm arms and close my eyes. I can feel myself shaking and crying at the same time.

Somewhere, far off, I hear that Sylvia Plath poem Mom used to read. “
Aquatic Nocturne,” it was called. The music of my mom's voice wraps around me and I'm five again, curled up on the chair next to her, sucking my thumb and imagining life under the water. The edges of my mouth curve into a lazy smile as I drown, drunkenly, in the moment of a memory I never want to end.

I can picture the sea creatures, shining in the light, floating weightlessly. I want to be like them. Free.