Still Life with Tornado(71)

I pick up the pieces of my umbrella and my owl from the living room floor and walk into the kitchen.

“That’s what he did to my umbrella,” I say, dropping the shards of evidence on the kitchen table. “And that’s what he did to my art project.” I point to the pieces of the ceramic owl. I don’t tell them he twisted my wrist because I still can’t believe he twisted my wrist.

Maybe that’s why I never said anything about Miss Smith and Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner. Maybe I still can’t believe what I saw.

The police stand in the middle of the tiny kitchen. They are huge in every way. They are both over six feet tall. They’re filled out with muscles and uniforms and guns. They wear hats and badges and shiny shoes.

“You made that stupid owl when you were a kid,” Dad says.

Mom tells me to go back outside. I sit on the stoop and watch the cars go by. I stand up and stare at the doorbell and think about ten-year-old Sarah and how she had to ring the doorbell to her own house last week. I feel like ringing it now—over and over again—until everyone inside goes crazy.

I still hear pieces of the conversation from inside because there’s only a screen door between us. The cops tell Dad to stay somewhere else tonight. They tell him to be reasonable. To come back tomorrow when he’s calmer. I don’t think that’s a good piece of advice, frankly. Dad resists it anyway. The cops say they can arrest him now, and Dad says he didn’t make threats against anybody. And then I hear the recording of Dad saying what he said to me only a half hour ago. You’re just a kid. You can’t make me hit you. Bring your mother in here. She’s the one who did this. She’s the one who wrecked all your stuff. Bruce recorded it on his phone. I didn’t ever want to hear that recording, but now that I have, it sends chills up my arms and I’m cold on a hot afternoon.

Dad yells at Bruce for a minute—mostly unintelligible stuff—and then the cops bring it back to the present. One tells him to go cool off for the night. Dad suddenly sounds panicky, like he knows this is really happening now—as if he didn’t know when he smashed my umbrella and my owl and the house. As if he didn’t know that he is a tornado. He says he has to fix the kitchen window that he broke. Mom says she can fix it. She says she’s been fixing his broken windows for twenty-six years. I look inside.

Dad sighs and says, “Shoot me now.”

“Don’t say that, sir.”

“Why not? I want to die.”

“Sir, really. You shouldn’t say that.”

“My whole life was wasted on this family. On her,” he says, glaring at Mom. “Just shoot me now. You can say I tried to take your gun or any of that other shit. I’d be out of my misery.”

This is art.

The cops look at each other. Mom shakes her head and asks all of them to step outside again while Dad stays inside. I get up and they arrive in front of me and no one seems to notice that I’m there.

Mom says, “Either you arrest him now and take him for a psych eval, or skip the arrest and just take him straight to the ER so he doesn’t do anything stupid. You know the rules.”

“He probably doesn’t mean it,” a cop says.

“I know he doesn’t mean it,” Mom says. “But he said it. If he does something dumb to himself tonight, you two are liable same as I am as an RN. But it probably isn’t a good idea for me to be the one solving this problem right now if you get my drift.”

? ? ?

Fifteen minutes later, Dad is in the back of a squad car and being driven away. When we walk back into the house, three Sarahs are in the living room. Ten-year-old Sarah has collected all the pieces of the ceramic owl from the kitchen counter where I left them and from the living room floor. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is trying to make sense of the disemboweled umbrella. Forty-year-old Sarah is putting the books back onto the bookshelf in some sort of order.

I have no idea what to say. Not to any of them.

Bruce is outside waiting for me to go to the school with him.

Mom says, “You girls must be hungry. How about lunch?”





D–U–M–B



Bruce doesn’t know what I’m doing, but he follows me anyway. Three buses, a block of walking.

He says something about wishing he’d have dressed more for the weather.

He says, “It’s good to face your demons. You can’t throw away your future over this.” Future, future, future.

He doesn’t say anything about how we’re not anywhere near the school he expected to visit today.

It’s about sixth period so the art room should be full of my class. As we approach, I hear glass breaking from upstairs. Someone else must be here. Someone came in since last week and tagged the entire hallway in bright pink graffiti. Words that don’t seem to fit together. ATTENTION. DIGEST. EXPLODE.

“Can I help you?” Miss Smith says.

“Hi, Miss Smith,” I say. “This is my brother, Bruce.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything. Bruce’s eyes show he is worried. Probably rightfully. The floor could collapse under his feet. We could get shot.

I look into the art room and Carmen is there and she says, “What up, Sarah?” and I wave and she gives me the code for call you later.

“Nice to meet you, Bruce!” Miss Smith says, smiling so wide bats could fly out of her mouth.