In an Instant(35)

I groan in frustration. Jesus, Aubrey, really? Are you kidding me?

“Yeah,” Aubrey says. “Now that I think about it, maybe she was.”





39

When my parents wake, still wrapped together, the day is so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Through the window, blue sky stretches to the horizon, vagrant clouds lazily drift along, and the sun shines with arrogance.

My mom unfurls from my dad without a word, and the desperateness that drew them together evaporates in the bright glare of the morning and the awful reality they face in front of them. Like a magnetic force, even while they still touch, dark energy repels them, and within minutes, they have returned to the isolated realms they’ve grown accustomed to over the last few years.

With the heels of her hands, my mom blots the sleep from her eyes, then stretches her arms over her head to wake her body as she stands, wincing slightly from the pain in her damaged ribs.

“Where’s Oz?” my dad asks, squinting at her through the brightness.

For the past two years, nobody except my dad has taken care of my brother. I would relieve him for brief periods, like when he needed to shower or when they went to the barber and it was my dad’s turn to get his hair cut, but other than that, my dad was the one who watched him. Oz had grown too strong for anyone else to manage.

The lack of freedom this caused created a rift the size of the Grand Canyon between my parents, and they fought about it constantly. My mom wanted to look into a long-term solution: a home or at least part-time care. My dad refused.

“You want him drugged up and chained?” my dad would argue. “Because that’s what they’ll do to him, Ann. That’s what you’re suggesting.”

“I’m suggesting that at least on the weekends, we place him somewhere where he’s safe so we can have a life.”

“We have a life, and Oz is part of it.”

“I get that, Jack, but he’s becoming all of it. We can’t go out. We can’t do anything together. And he’s getting dangerous.”

“He’s not dangerous.”

“He hurt that dog.”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“But he did. Whether he meant to or not, he hurt that animal. He doesn’t know his own strength, and he’s going through puberty. Think about what a dangerous combination that is.”

It was true. I’d seen it. Oz would get this lovesick look in his eyes whenever a girl walked by, especially blonde girls with large breasts, his features melting into desire and an unsettling yearning to touch.

“I’ll watch him,” my dad said.

“You can’t watch him every second.”

Their voices were hushed but heated, the way their arguments always were: angry rasps that lashed and slashed and filled the house with tension that lasted for days, until eventually the tension faded into deafening silence that made you almost miss the fighting.

My mom doesn’t know it, but my dad and I once took Oz to check out one of the homes she had talked about, a facility in Costa Mesa. We never made it through the front door. Oz took one look at the tenants walking the grounds, rocking on the grass, and mumbling to themselves, and he freaked out. My dad needed to tackle him in the parking lot to keep him from running into the street.

We never told my mom, and my dad never considered it again. Neither did I. Oz was ours; he didn’t belong in a place like that.

“Is he with Aubrey?” my dad asks, not particularly concerned. If absolutely necessary, Chloe or Aubrey could watch Oz, so long as he was sedated on something like Benadryl.

My mom sways slightly and grabs on to the rail of the bed to steady herself.

My dad’s head tilts.

My mom opens her mouth to speak, but the words don’t come out. Finally she shakes her head and lowers her eyes.

I watch as my dad’s face transforms from question to confusion to alarm and back again.

“I hiked out to get help,” my mom stutters. “And he went looking for me.”

“You left him?” my dad says, his distress transforming into something else entirely—color rising in his cheeks and his features narrowing, such fury on his face I can’t bear to watch it—and as I leave them, I wonder what we did to deserve such suffering.





40

We are home. My dad and Chloe were transferred by ambulance this morning and are now at Mission Hospital, two miles from our house.

I watch my mom as she walks into our empty home, Bingo at her side. Seeing Bingo makes me extraordinarily happy. He survived unharmed, and I almost can’t believe it. Aubrey and Ben have been looking after him, and by the looks of his round tummy, I’d say Ben has been spoiling him rotten.

The quiet is shocking, so unlike our house it feels foreign. The living room is still a mess from preparations for our trip thirteen days ago. The storage bins that hold our ski clothes lie open in the living room. My school backpack is thrown beside the staircase. Oz’s plastic soldiers are lined up on the floor preparing for war. Chloe’s combat boots are kicked off beside the couch.

I stare at the boots, remembering her last-minute choice to switch them out for her ancient felt-lined Sorels. A choice that in retrospect probably saved her life.

My mom walks past it all and stumbles up to her room. She peels off the clothes she’s lived in for the past ten days, throws them in the trash, then takes a shower that lasts until the water turns cold. Wrapping herself in a thick robe, she rubs lotion into her chafed hands, then returns downstairs and pours herself a glass of wine. Then another. After the third, she climbs back up the stairs, curls into her bed, and almost sleeps.