Notes from My Captivity(37)

I had a gift for him: a pinecone I’d saved from one of our hikes and spray-painted gold in a special healing ceremony I’d thought up myself. I put it on the table next to him as I left and said, “I’ll see you, Daddy,” starting out very casually but crying by the time I reached the end of the sentence.

It was all over on a Saturday. Samantha and I were watching River Monsters when my mother came through the door with a strange expression on her face and handed Samantha her money and said, “That’s it for us, dear. You don’t need to come back.” Samantha’s face studied hers, and by the time the meaning sank into her, it had sunk into me and I said, “No, wait,” as if Samantha being handed the money was what would actually kill him and I had to stop it.

My dad didn’t want to be buried. He wanted to be cremated, and my mother respected his wishes. There was no big funeral, just a ceremony out on the mountain with some of his running buddies and his lawyer friends and our grandparents, who were too old to climb the mountain and so we moved everything to the base, which made sense to me, actually, because that’s where every trip begins and ends.

My mother washed and dried his jogging shirt and shorts and ironed them and kept them in his drawer, as if he’d be back some day needing to look really sharp and collected on his next run. There were a lot of things to decide: like, what to do with the half-finished Scotch that he liked and Mom didn’t, and where to put his clothes and his rowing machine, and what to do with the failed magic of the pinecone that the nurses thoughtfully wrapped up for us, and how to live without him. The entire event, from the night the door shut when my father went jogging until the day after the funeral, seemed to have taken place in the blink of an eye, just long enough for the house to be lifted up and have its parts twisted around like a Rubik’s Cube and set down with none of the colors matching.

For a while, I’d make my mother drive me to the mountains where his ashes were scattered just to see if maybe I could catch a glimpse of him. She took me a half dozen times until her grief counselor, right or wrong, told her to stop. But I never saw even a glimpse of him. I stopped believing then, in magic spells and wishful thinking and dreams that mean something. I didn’t even believe in God. I believed in what I saw and what was true. I had no more belief left for anything.

The girl who killed my father went on trial for manslaughter. Mom let me skip school for four days and go to the trial and sit with her and stare at the back of the blond head of the sorority girl who had blown .23 on a Breathalyzer (I was taking notes of the testimony) and had refused the offer of at least two sorority sisters to drive her home. Later, I got to stare at her horrible face and her sob-ruined blue eyeliner as she tearfully stated that she did not recall any events of that night, and her first conscious memory was coming to in the back of a squad car.

I looked straight at her, staring her down like her headlights had stared down my father. Nothing she said moved my heart. My mother sat beside me, never commenting, her expression totally blank, even when they read the verdict: guilty, as of course was the case. Not even when it came time for sentencing and this stupid drunk girl was given ten years’ probation plus mandatory alcohol counseling and six months’ suspended license for killing my father.

I hated her. I wanted to find her house, throw a rock through the window. Find out her number and call her in the middle of the night shouting things at her. I wanted to see her on the street and run her down with my bicycle. I wanted to send her anonymous letters full of curse words. Wanted to cut her hair off as she slept. Let the air out of her tires. Have a bunch of big kids hold her down while I ask her to her face: Do you know what it’s like to try not to cry when you’re doing the dishes? The way the back of your throat hurts and the steam makes your nose run but you don’t want your mother to notice that the joke she reminded you of that your father used to tell made you cry instead of laugh? Well, do you?

My ten-year-old mind teemed with revenge possibilities. I didn’t know how to un-hate her or how to turn it down into the low boiling resentment my mother seemed to have—the way her eyes narrowed when people stopped her in the grocery story to say “ridiculous” and “travesty of justice.” I couldn’t even say her name.

That’s when I decided to grow up and be a journalist. Tell the real story. The real truth. So girls like that girl couldn’t hide in her story. I’d rip it out page by page.





Fourteen


Night birds call. Things buzz and rattle. The forest cracks. My nerves jump. A light rain starts up, wetting my hair and driving away at last the mosquitos that have been pestering me. I scratch at the vicious welts on my face. My stomach, shrunk from fear and lack of food, feels like an overboiled egg. The pain from my broken arm comes in waves.

Somewhere in the dark, a wild family hunts for me as though I’m a wounded animal they need to drag back and salvage part by part.

Siberia means business. I’m still astonished at the speed with which it destroyed my trip, killed everyone I knew there, and left me alone. And yet, I’m proud of myself for getting away. Using my own grave as camouflage. The article I write, defending my stepfather and condemning this murderous family, will also contain this little fact.

That’s the hope I cling to now. I have an article to write. I have a story to carry. I stand up on tired and aching legs, using the hand of my good arm to massage each leg in turn, listening to the forest around me for sounds of my captors. They must have given up on me, the way they had to finally give up on the other creatures that outran them or outmaneuvered them and left their stew pot needy.