The Impossible Knife of Memory(32)

“Why would you go there?”

“Every couple of years someone jumps and kills themself. If you ask me, there has got to be a better way to go. Anyway, I called Mom back to tell her I hadn’t killed myself and then we got into a fight. Why? Because I didn’t make my bed this morning. That’s when I started crying again.” She tossed the tissue at a trash can and missed. “And now I’m a lump of snot.”

“A useless lump of snot who can’t even throw out her Kleenex.”

“Jerk,” she said with a faint smile. “Who won the card game?”

“I never figured out the rules.” I picked up Gracie’s used tissue and a couple of cigarette butts and threw them in the trash. “The nurse thinks that Doris is lucky because she can’t remember her life. She doesn’t understand how much she’s lost.”

“My nonna died of Alzheimer’s,” Gracie said. “The last ten years of her life she didn’t recognize anybody, not even Grandpa, and he visited her every day.”

“Was she in here?” I pointed at the building.

Gracie shook her head. “Connecticut. A week after we buried her, Grandpa died, too. Mom barely talked for a month after that.”

“What made her start again?”

“Talking?”

“Yeah.”

“Garrett.” She pulled a pack of gum out of her purse, handed a piece to me, and folded a piece in her mouth. “One day he told Mom he wanted to visit Grandpa in his grave. We packed a lunch and ate it at the cemetery. At first I thought it was gross, but it was actually kind of sweet. Hanging out with our dead grandparents became a thing. We go a couple times a year now.”

“You go to a cemetery on purpose?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Isn’t that the point?”

A gust of wind rose from the river, shaking the last gold leaves of the fragile birches planted around the patio.

“Sounds creepy.”

“It’s not like we dig them up. We have a picnic. Tell them what’s going on in the world. Garrett brings his report card and soccer photos. Haven’t you been to your grandmother’s grave yet? Didn’t your dad take you?”

Gracie had spent months patiently weaseling the hows and whys of our return to Belmont out of me. She didn’t know everything, of course, but she knew enough to be able to ask questions that could mess with my head.

“Time to go.” I stood up and pointed. “The bus is coming.”





_*_ 39 _*_

Dad and I had spoken only a few words to each other since the bonfire incident. This was becoming more of a habit, the not-talking, but it still made me uncomfortable. Nottalking with him was like trying to walk after my foot had gone to sleep. Everything felt weird and heavy.

I took a deep breath and knocked on his door. “You awake?”

The door opened. He was dressed in jeans and a longsleeved Syracuse Orangemen shirt and he was freshly shaved, to my surprise. Over his shoulder, I could see an open email on his computer screen, but it was too far away to see who he was writing to or what he was saying.

“You’re home late,” he said. “Everything okay?”

He smelled of soap. Not weed or booze, not even cigarettes. This was another part of his apology, maybe, for what had happened on Saturday.

“Where’s Gramma buried?” I asked.

His eyes opened wide. “Don’t remember the name of the place. It’s near the river. Why?”

“I want to go there,” I said. “Now.”

“Can’t. It’ll be dark soon.”

“I don’t care.” Pins and needles shot through me, that dreadful, awkward feeling of something waking up inside. “I really want to see it.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” he said. “After school.”

“You don’t have to come with me. If you draw me a map, I can ride my bike there.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I was at the nursing home after school,” I said, “for my volunteer hours. It made me think of Gramma and I don’t know why, but I really want to see where she is. It’s important.”

I hadn’t planned on telling him the truth. It had become easier to lie about most things because it didn’t hurt as much when he ignored me. In my defense, I hadn’t planned on finding him clear-eyed and sober, either. It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.

He looked over his shoulder at the window. “We’re gonna need jackets.”

The old headstones at the front of the cemetery were so worn that the blue jays and chickadees mocked me for trying to read them. We walked quickly for a few minutes, then Dad stopped at a crossroads where the stones were easier to read. He was squinting against the falling sun, trying to figure out the right path. I studied the family plot.

abraham stockwell 1762–1851

rachel stockwell 26 feb 1765—22 feb 1853

thaddeus stockwell 1789—12 nov 1844 rest in peace sarah d. 1827

Four small headstones topped with stone lambs lay on the other side of Sarah.

baby 1822

baby 1823

baby 1825

baby 1827

“Know what they call this?” Dad asked, his voice back in teacher mode.