All the Bright Places(39)

I walk over to him so I’m in his line of sight. I stand there, hands in pockets, and stare at him until he looks up. “Christ,” he says. “Don’t go sneaking up on people.”

“I’m not. Unless you’ve gone deaf in your old age, you had to hear me coming down those stairs. Dinner’s ready.”

“I’ll be up in a while.”

I move over so that I’m in front of the flat screen. “You should come up now. Your family’s here—remember us? The originals? We’re here and we’re hungry, and we didn’t come all this way to hang out with your new wife and child.”

I can count on one hand the times I’ve talked to my father like this, but maybe it’s the magic of Badass Finch, because I’m not one bit afraid of him.

He slams the beer so hard against the coffee table that the bottle shatters. “Don’t you come into my house and tell me what to do.” And then he’s off the couch and lunging for me, and he catches me by the arm and wham, slams me into the wall. I hear the crack as my skull makes contact, and for a minute the room spins.

But then it rights itself, and I say, “I have you to thank for the fact that my skull is pretty tough now.” Before he can grab me again, I’m up the stairs.

I’m already at the dinner table by the time he gets there, and the sight of his shiny new family makes him remember himself. He says, “Something smells good,” gives Rosemarie a kiss on the cheek, and sits down across from me, unfolding his napkin. He doesn’t look at me or speak to me the rest of the time we’re there.

In the car afterward, Kate says, “You’re stupid, you know that. He could have put you in the hospital.”

“Let him,” I say.

At home, Mom looks up from her desk, where she is attempting to go over ledgers and bank statements. “How was dinner?”

Before anyone else can answer, I give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which—since we’re not a family that likes to show affection—leaves her looking alarmed. “I’m going out.”

“Be safe, Theodore.”

“I love you too, Mom.” This throws her even more, and before she can start crying, I am out the door to the garage, climbing into Little Bastard. I feel better once the engine has started. I hold up my hands and they’re shaking, because my hands, like the rest of me, would like to kill my father. Ever since I was ten and he sent Mom to the hospital with a busted chin, and then a year later when it was my turn.

With the garage door still closed, I sit, hands on the wheel, thinking how easy it would be to just keep sitting here.

I close my eyes.

I lean back.

I rest my hands on my lap.

I don’t feel much, except maybe a little sleepy. But that could just be me and the dark, slow-churning vortex that’s always there, in me and around me, to some degree.

The rate of car exhaust suicides in the States has declined since the mid-sixties, when emission controls were introduced. In England, where emission controls barely exist, that rate has doubled.

I am very calm, as if I’m in science class conducting an experiment. The rumble of the engine is a kind of lullaby. I force my mind to go blank, like I do on the rare occasions I try to sleep. Instead of thinking, I picture a body of water and me on my back floating, still and peaceful, no movement except my heart beating in my chest. When they find me, I’ll just look like I’m sleeping.

In 2013, a man in Pennsylvania committed suicide via carbon monoxide, but when his family tried to rescue him, they were overcome by the fumes and every single one of them died before rescue crews could save them.

I think of my mom and Decca and Kate, and then I hit the opener, and up goes the door, and out I go into the wild blue yonder. For the first mile or so, I feel high and excited, like I just ran into a burning building and saved lives, like I’m some sort of hero.

But then a voice in me says, You’re no hero. You’re a coward. You only saved them from yourself.

* * *

When things got bad a couple months ago, I drove to French Lick, which sounds a helluva lot sexier than it is. The original name was Salt Spring, and it’s famous for its casino, fancy spa and resort, basketball player Larry Bird, and healing springs.

In November I went to French Lick and drank the water and waited for it to fix the dark, slow churning of my mind, and for a few hours I actually felt better, but that might have been because I was so hydrated. I spent the night in Little Bastard, and when I woke the next morning, dull and dead feeling, I found one of the guys who worked there and said to him, “Maybe I drank the wrong water.”

He looked over his right shoulder, then his left, like someone in a movie, and then he leaned in and said, “Where you want to go is Mudlavia.”

At first I thought he was high. I mean, Mudlavia? But then he said, “That up there’s the real deal. Al Capone and the Dillinger gang always went there after some sort of heist. Nothing much left of it now except ruins—it burned down in 1920—but them waters flow strong as ever. Whenever I get an ache in my joints, that’s where I go.”

I didn’t go then, because by the time I returned from French Lick, I was tapped out and that was it, and there was no more traveling anywhere for a long while. But Mudlavia is where I’m headed now. Since this is serious personal business and not a wandering, I don’t bring Violet.