The Impossible Knife of Memory(20)

I stayed on the edges of the conversations for the next few hours. I made three-dozen deviled eggs, ran the dishwasher, and kept an eye on my father, waiting for him to get drunk. But he didn’t. He drank soda and lemonade, even as all the other guys pounded beer and Roy sipped Scotch. This was a new version of my father, comfortable in his skin. Happy to joke about life over there and his scars and the bullshit they all had to deal with from desk-jockey officers and lying politicians.

I couldn’t believe what I was watching.

Dad hated talking about the war and never did it sober. Half the time he didn’t even want people to know he was a vet. Strangers often said things like, “Thank you for your service,” because they meant it and they thought that was the right thing to do, but the problem was it set off a series of detonations inside my father that sometimes ended with him punching a wall or the face of a jerk in a bar. The worst was when he accidentally found himself in conversation with the family member of a soldier who had been killed. The sadness in their eyes would blow another hole in his brain and then he’d go dead quiet for days.

And yet here he was, as sober as Spock and me, and being a soldier was all he could talk about. And he was laughing.

Roy had brought a couple of grills and soon the hot dogs and hamburgers were piled high and the guys in the backyard chowed down. I got a look at the cooler, which was filled with six kinds of ice cream plus whipped cream and a bunch of half-frozen candy bars that Roy told me were going to be chopped up and mixed with the ice cream, and I was a confused, but happy and grateful girl.

Until Michael showed up.

After Gramma died, Michael rented her house from my father; apparently, they’d been buddies in high school. He moved out when we moved in, but he came back more often than I liked. The way he looked at me creeped me out and I was beginning to think that he was the source of Dad’s weed. He’d never done anything that I could complain about to Dad, but whenever he walked in the door, I felt the need to be somewhere else. Roy and his guys would have Dad’s back if Michael wanted to do anything profoundly stupid.

Covering the football game for the newspaper seemed like a good idea after all.





_*_ 27 _*_

The crowd in the stadium roared so loudly I couldn’t hear what the mom manning the ticket booth said.

“Why?” I asked again.

She glared and waited a beat for the noise to die down. “Everybody pays to get into the game. No exceptions.”

“But I’m the press,” I whined. “On assignment.”

“Students get a dollar discount.” She put her hand out. “Four dollars or don’t go in.”

I paid her. Finn now owed me nineteen bucks.

The bleachers were a wall of people dressed in Belmont Yellow. For one second, it felt like they were all staring at me, that they all knew I came to the football game alone and didn’t know where to sit, but then a whistle blew and the football teams on the field behind me crashed into each other and the crowd cheered and jumped up and down. I was invisible to them.

I turned my back to the stands. On the other side of the field sat the enemy, the Richardson Ravens, dressed in black and silver. Beyond the goalposts at the far end of the field rose a gentle hill that was dotted with people sitting on blankets, little kids zooming around them, cheerfully ignoring the sad excuse for a football game.

The referee blew his whistle and the two lines of players crashed into each other again, grunting and shouting. I couldn’t see what happened to the ball, but the Richardson side of the field erupted in cheers.

I texted Gracie:

hey

After a long pause, she wrote back:

at movie ttyl?

I sent a simple smiley face, because my phone did not have a smiley face that was wrapping her hands around her own throat and beating her head against a wall.

The two teams ran to their huddles to plot out their next bit of brilliant strategy. They ended the huddle and ran back to line up, each face inches away from the scowling face of the enemy, feet pawing at the ground like impatient horses. The quarterback grunted, the lines crashed together, and they all fell down again. Everyone in Belmont Yellow screamed and whistled.

Should I be writing this down? I looked up at the stands. Wouldn’t anyone who cared about this game be here? Why would they want to read about it? Answer: they wouldn’t. My earlier plan to get the stats and eavesdrop for quotes first period Monday was still viable and even more attractive than it had been on the bus. I just needed someplace to go that was not my house. It was only a quarter to eight. I could probably make it to the mall before nine.

what movie, I texted Gracie.

She didn’t answer, which meant she was with Topher, which meant any hope I had of crashing her Friday night plans had just evaporated. How lame would it be for me to go to Gracie’s house and ask her mom if she wanted to hang out? Mrs. Rappaport was a big fan of home makeover shows. Last time I was at her house, she’d been talking about redesigning her kitchen. Maybe we could watch a few episodes about countertops.

I shuddered. I’d be better off spending the evening chasing rats out of Dumpsters.

The clock clicked down the last few seconds to halftime, the refs blew their whistles, and people raced for the bathrooms and the food stand.

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered as I pressed against the fence that separated the spectators from the field. As soon as the herd moved past, I followed, intending to head for the parking lot, unchain my bike, and ride. Not home, not for a few hours. Just ride in the dark and hope that Topher and Gracie would have a huge fight and she’d call in tears and ask me to spend the night and mention that they had a lot of ice cream in the freezer.