A World Without You(31)

Mom has Bo wrapped up in a hug, and I squeeze past them to refill my glass with Diet Coke from the fridge.

“Hey,” I say to Bo.

“Hey,” he says back.

I return to my room.

Usually, Mom lectures me about spending too much time in my bedroom. Not on the weekends, though.

I camp out on my bed with my laptop and As I Lay Dying—extra credit for AP lit, even though I hate Faulkner. The rest of the family pretty much follows suit. Dad hides in his office. Bo keeps his notebook in front of his face, blocking anyone from making eye contact. Only Mom flits around the house, dusting, vacuuming, straightening pictures, cleaning mirrors, going from room to room as if she can fill all the empty spaces.

At noon, there’s a bang on Bo’s bedroom door, across the hall from mine. For a moment, I freeze, not unlike a rabbit that’s heard a predator. You can tell a lot from the sound of knuckles on a door. A tap-tap knock is friendly; a quick rap is urgent. This was the deep thud of a fist against wood. I creep off my bed, tentatively inching my own door open so I can see what’s going on.

Dad stands in the hallway with a power drill in his hand.

“What?” Bo asks. He means, What do you want? but I hear the old sullenness in his voice, the challenge in his tone, just like he used to sound so often before he went to Berkshire. That one word—“What?”—holds more of a threat than his balled-up fists.

“I’m taking the door down.” Dad’s white-knuckled hand has a tight grip on the drill.

“What?” Bo repeats. “Why?”

“Dr. Franklin,” Dad says, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I take a step further back into my room, although I linger near my open door.

“The Doc wouldn’t just tell you to take my bedroom door away,” Bo says, his voice rising. “Stop! Why are you doing this?”

Dad stomps forward, his large presence enough to make Bo back down. Dad touches the power drill to one of the screws.

“Wait!” Bo says. “This is ridiculous!”

“We have to keep an eye on you,” Dad says, his attention on the hinge. The drill whirs, and one screw is out.

“What the hell?” Bo shouts.

“Watch your language!” Dad whirls around, glaring at him.

“Treat me like a human being, then!”

“We’re doing this for your safety,” Dad growls.

“The hell you are.”

“I said, watch your language!”

“If I could close my damn door, you wouldn’t have to listen to me!”

I carefully shut my bedroom door, but I can still hear them fighting in the hallway. My phone buzzes, and I pick it up. It’s a text from Rosemarie: a picture of her face with her eyes rolled into the back of her head and a slack expression. Entertain meeeeeeeee.

In the hallway, Dad shouts something about safety, while Bo storms into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. A second later, Bo opens the door and yells down the hall: “Is it okay to pee behind a closed door? Or do you want to remove this one too?”

What’s up? I type into my phone.

“Son of a bitch!” Dad shouts, and then I hear the drill bang against the hardwood floor. I’m not sure if he’s cursing because he dropped the drill, or if he threw the drill down because he’s mad at Bo.

Can I come over? Rosemarie texts. Super bored.

Nah, I type. My friends know that Bo is at a special academy, but they think it’s a military school or something. And they don’t know that he’s home every weekend. It’s not really a secret; I’d just rather not discuss him at all. Life’s more boring here, I text.

Then you come here.

I look up from my phone, at my closed bedroom door. Outside, my dad has resumed drilling, and I can hear the sound of ripping wood.

I can’t. Mom wants me home.

Come onnnnnnn, Rosemarie says. Tell your mom it’s my birthday.

Lol, that’s next month.

Rosemarie sends me a shrugging emoticon. They don’t know that. And my gramps is over, so we do have cake.

Outside, the hallway is silent. Lololol, be right over.

I stuff my phone into my pants pocket. I hesitate for a second, then I twist the doorknob slowly and peek outside.

Bo’s door is gone. The wood at the bottom of the doorframe is splintered, as if Dad kicked it off instead of bothering with the drill. There’s a huge, white gouge in the floor from where the drill fell on it. The bathroom door is still shut, and Dad’s nowhere in sight.

I creep down the hall, away from my bedroom and past Dad’s locked office door. I wait until I’m at the bottom of the steps before I call softly, “Mom?” She doesn’t answer, so I go looking for her. I find her in the den, on her hands and knees, polishing the wide wooden legs of the coffee table so forcefully that the little brooch she’s wearing on her blouse shakes. Dad gave Mom that pin after I was born: a tiny golden bee dangling from an enameled bow to represent my and Bo’s names. Mom always wears it on the weekends when Bo is home, but never on the days between visits.

“Can I go over to Rosemarie’s?” I ask.

“Family dinner tonight,” Mom says without even looking up. Before Bo went to Berkshire, she never really cared about the idea of “family dinner.” Sure, she cooked, and sometimes we ate together, but it wasn’t a requirement. Now, though, she’s adamant: When Bo is home, we “eat as a family.” It never feels natural, though. Mom always places food on the table like it’s an offering, and even though she says the point is to stay connected, she hardly talks at all.