In an Instant(76)
Chloe blushes as her hand barely lifts from her thigh to give a small wave back. This is how it’s been with them, tentative on her part and certain on his—a growing friendship, undeniable chemistry, and wary reluctance. Chloe’s scars are less than three months old, and her wounds on the inside are far worse than those that can be seen. Eric senses this and is endearingly gentle, but it doesn’t stop his face from lighting up when she walks past or his eyes from lingering as she continues on.
Chloe makes a show of not caring, but it’s an act. Today she wears ripped black jeans, a faded Metallica T-shirt, and worn-out Converse sneakers. Only I know she spent nearly an hour working on her hair to shape it into just-rolled-out-of-bed cute and rubbed Vaseline into her lips to make them shine.
She sits at the front desk, inputting this week’s ledger into the computer. She hears Eric throwing down a bag of food and his boots on the concrete growing closer, and her posture straightens. Her head stays bowed as he walks through the door, but I feel her pulse quicken.
He hardly slows as he walks past but manages to swipe the pencil from her ear. When she whirls, he tosses it to land in the spine of the ledger, then continues on, humming something to himself. And it seems like nothing, but it is definitely something. Chloe goes back to her numbers, reading the same column three times, a silly grin on her face.
88
Five days have passed since Easter, and things are precariously calm, as if all of us are holding our breaths.
My dad has begun physical therapy again and is attacking his rehabilitation with a vengeance. His therapist, an ancient woman, thick as a stump, shows little mercy as she tortures his leg into compliance. Unlike with the home health nurse from before, there is zero flirt factor with this woman, which makes my dad grumble and causes me to grin.
Each morning, after she leaves, my dad goes to the garage to lift weights, and then he hobbles around the neighborhood until his leg trembles with exhaustion. His determination is spurred by both desire to regain his strength and desire to return to work, to reclaim the life he once had, not just before the accident but before he needed to give up one love for another.
When Oz was three, my dad quit his job as a yacht captain, a decision of necessity when it became clear Oz was too much for a sitter to handle. Before my dad met my mom, he had been a lot of things—a river-raft guide, a ranger, a silver miner—but he’d found his calling on the ocean. Like it once did for me, salt water runs in his veins.
He used to tell me how it’s the last frontier, the only part of the earth not entirely known. His eyes would shine as he talked about how little is understood about its deepest depths, that two-thirds of ocean species still remain undiscovered, and that all the technology in the world still can’t predict a squall. He loved it—the adventure, the camaraderie of the crew, the unbridled freedom—and when he was forced to give it up, something went quiet in him. He missed it so much you could feel it. Every time we were at the beach, his eyes would squint at the horizon, and he would lick his lips. If he heard about a storm in some distant ocean, his jaw would flex and his muscles would tense, eager to jump into action.
My dad says goodbye to his therapist, then goes to the garage and loads the weights onto the bench press.
The garage is a shrine of sorts, a place untouched by my mom’s giant eraser. Bits and pieces of Oz and me are everywhere, stacked on the racks and hanging from the rafters, bats and mitts and old uniforms and bicycles and boogie boards and tennis rackets and golf clubs—a million memories collecting dust as my dad grunts and sweats and pushes himself to his limit.
Between sets, his eyes roam the remnants as he forces himself to remember us and refuses to let us go, a self-flagellation worthy of a saint or a devil. And as I watch, I wonder if my mom wasn’t right to throw it all away. This place is like quicksand, and each time my dad is here, it pulls him down, drowns him, and stops him from moving on.
The back corner is particularly awful. My softball bag and glove from my last game are still kicked in the corner. And my jersey, number nine, the same number my dad wore and his father wore, sits balled on top. I decide, looking at it—its color growing dingy and a layer of dust making it grimy—and then looking at him—beaten, angry, and miserable—that if I could, I would incinerate every last scrap of it with heat so blazing that not even a speck of ash would remain.
When my dad finishes destroying himself physically and emotionally, he stumbles into the house. I’m curious why today he doesn’t go for his walk, and I realize, when I join him in the kitchen, it’s because the Angels have a day game.
The Angels are our team—my dad, Oz, and me—and the three of us had a very specific pregame routine, mostly for Oz’s benefit, who loved rituals and believed in superstition. Before every game we held hands, closed our eyes, and chanted, “May the Force be with the Angels,” repeating it and repeating it until we were shouting with religious fervor. We only ate chicken wings and celery sticks with Hidden Valley ranch dressing, and we were required to each eat nine of each—one wing and one piece of celery before each inning. Oz was in charge of the clicker, and none of us were allowed to touch it during the game, or it was sure to jinx the outcome.
The house is empty. Perhaps this is why he does it. With great deliberateness and care, my dad prepares the chicken wings and celery. He talks to Oz as he pours the ranch dressing into a bowl. “Just the way you like it, buddy,” he says. Bingo lifts his head with great interest. “Angels against the Giants. It’s going to be a tough one.”