Whisper to Me(48)

“Hey, honey,” said Dad. “Why are you smiling?”

“No reason,” I said.

“Well, it’s good to see.” He held up a bag. “I’m making meatballs. And …” He hesitated. Then he held up another bag, this one clear and blue. “And … I got a movie. I mean, if you want. It’s no big deal. The girl at the store said you would like it. I mean, she thought you might—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, maybe.”

Dad blinked at me for a second. Almost every night he was suggesting TV or a movie or going out somewhere, and every night I said no. “Oh. Oh, that’s great, honey.” He turned around and headed to the kitchen, and a very small part of me noticed him wiping his eye with his sleeve like he had shed a tear, and all the rest of me refused to notice this at all because it would mean consciously realizing how much he loved me, and that was something so painful it might create a supernova right here on a New Jersey street, suck the whole solar system into it, turn it to atoms.

Even now, my fingers are white as I type.

But where was I?

Oh yes, the DVDs.

See, before the voice, box sets used to be a big part of our lives, mine and Dad’s. We didn’t talk about much, me and my dad, but we did talk about Tony Soprano and Walter White.

After the voice: there was basically nothing. I mean, Dad was into collecting millipedes. I liked books. There was really nothing we shared. We lived in different parts of the house.

But that night, we shared the meatballs that Dad made—they were awesome; please bear this in mind along with the bacon and the pancakes—and then some nut-free chocolate ice cream. Dad told me stories about work, and I told him how I had started a book that day, and he wiped his eye again so I shut up.

But then he told a joke, a lame joke about one of his regulars and I …

I …

I smirked.

Everything about that night is bright lacquered in my memory; I could almost reach out and touch it all. It was a crappy old plastic-covered table in a small kitchen in New Jersey with green cabinets from, like, the seventies, but I felt like I was in a palace. The halogen strip light in the ceiling was bathing us. I felt like the whole world was full of light.

I reached out for more ice cream.

“Seriously?” said the voice. “With your ass?”

I lowered the spoon very slowly. I checked my G-Shock. 8:10 p.m.

“I’ve missed you,” I said. I chose my words very carefully, knowing they would go for the voice and Dad both.

Dad smiled. “I’ve missed you too, Cassington.” That was an old nickname he hardly ever used anymore.

THE VOICE: silence.

“I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you all day,” I said.

Dad got all embarrassed then and gruff and alpha male. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, me too.”

THE VOICE: “No more ice cream. You barely fit into your jeans. You could be pretty, if you looked after yourself better. If you weren’t so—”

“Thank you,” I said.

THE VOICE: silence.

DAD: silence.

I started clearing away the dinner stuff. “Can we watch a movie tonight?” I asked.

Dad looked puzzled. “I told you I got one, Cass. So, yeah.”

But of course I wasn’t asking him. I kept listening as I washed the dishes. We didn’t have a dishwasher. Mom used to say, we do have a dishwasher, and it’s me. But it wasn’t her anymore. It was me.

THE VOICE: silence.

“Can we have popcorn too?” I asked.

“Sure, honey.”

THE VOICE: “No popcorn. Just the movie. And don’t enjoy it too much. I’ll be watching.”

“I’m okay actually, thanks, Dad. Just realized I’m too full.”

“Sure.”

We went into the living room. Dad slotted the DVD into the player. The girl in the store was right; it was pretty good. I curled up on the sofa and Dad put his arm out and I leaned against him.

It was nice.

Then, like an hour into it, something happened in the movie that made me laugh.

“Bite your tongue,” said the voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Dad peered at me. “You don’t have to apologize for laughing, Cass.”

“Bite it,” said the voice.

And I did it; I mean, I was negotiating, I was scheduling and being polite and all that stuff, but the voice still scared me. And it had let me have this time with Dad.

I bit my tongue.

“Harder.”

I tasted salt blood, rushing into my mouth.

“Enough,” said the voice.

“Can we watch the rest?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Dad. “It’s like ten. It’s not late.”

“No,” said the voice.

I sighed. “I’m super tired actually, Dad. Tomorrow night?”

“Sure,” said Dad.

“Maybe,” said the voice.

Hell, that was a victory in my book. We got up and turned out the lights and powered down the TV. Dad went into the bug room, and I followed him in. He lifted the first lid and started taking little pots of food from a drawer beneath the wooden workbench. Artificial light glowed all around us; blue UV.

“Here,” he said, when he saw that I was there too. He handed me a stick insect.