The Impossible Knife of Memory(44)

It’s wrong to open another person’s mail, right? Especially if that other person is your parent, because parents are supposed to be in charge and they’re supposed to make all the decisions, and there might be things in the mail that are none of your business, because even in high school you’re still a kid. Or at least sometimes, you want to feel like you are.

I carefully opened the first envelope, from the bank. Dad had overdrawn the checking account by $323.41, plus fees. I took a bite of my sandwich and a sip of milk and opened the second envelope, a note from the VA that listed all the appointments he’d missed and “strongly urged” him to call their office. I wasn’t so hungry after that. I washed the dishes and emptied the garbage. After I put a clean bag in the trash can, I dumped the catalogs in it. That’s when the third envelope, addressed to me, fell out of the gardening supply catalog.

Roy sent it.

He said that he’d talked to Dad on the phone a couple times, but he didn’t think it would help. He apologized for not being able to do more. He apologized for how short the letter was, but his unit was leaving earlier than planned.

I know it’s not fair, but you have to be the strong one, he wrote. You have to be patient with him, even when you don’t want to be. He’s still wounded, don’t forget that. I’ll call when I can.

Gotta hop.

“Uncle” Roy *

I made Spock sit between us on the couch, the demilitarized dog separating Dad and me like the zone that keeps the peace between North and South Korea. I ate a slice of pizza and three chicken wings. That made him happy. I stared at the screen and tried not to wince when Dad yelled at the refs. The teams crashed into each other, helmets hitting helmets, necks snapping backward, bodies falling. Dad twitched and jerked with every hit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a mirror, and in the mirror we were sitting on that couch, me twenty years old, thirty years old, then forty, then fifty, and Dad, always the exact same age, timeless, unshaven, dirty, eyes bloodshot and empty. The Eagles quarterback was sacked at the beginning of the third quarter and taken to the locker room. From that point on, the Giants scored at will.

After the game, I took Spock for a walk, the envelopes in the pouch of my hoodie, resealed as best I could. We walked until night fell and the safe, little houses on our side of town had all closed their curtains. Our curtains were still open. Dad was asleep on the couch, beer bottle in hand. I put the mail back in the mailbox and hoped the next day would be a better one for him.





_*_ 48 _*_

I took the bus Monday morning. Finn was never going to drive me anywhere again.

I didn’t see him in the cafeteria first period. Didn’t actually go to the cafeteria. Went to the library. The Genocide Awareness table was gone. Nothing had taken its place. Tried to fall asleep in a corner where no one could find me. Couldn’t sleep. Counted the holes in the ceiling tiles, decided they were probably made of a chemical that was causing cancer to bloom in my lungs.

Each tile had 103 holes.

I trudged through the day. Classroom. Locker. Hall. Classroom. Caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the tall windows along the corridor to the B wing. I was shuffling, books weighing down my arms. Defeated, like a zombie who’d been dragged from the grave and bitten, but who didn’t feel the hunger yet. Wasn’t quite assimilated into the hivemind of delirium.

Ms. Benedetti stopped me in the hall, complained about playing phone tag with Dad, and shoved SAT paperwork into my hands, babbling away about the need to shift my paradigm and look over the next horizon. I threw the paperwork away as soon as she was out of sight. In English, Brandon Something pegged me with spitballs every time Ms. Rogak turned her back. I picked them out of my hair before she noticed. I really didn’t care enough to do anything else. Found out in gym class that Gracie had gone home sick. I told the aide that I was going to puke and spent the next two periods staring at the tiles above the cot in the nurse’s office. They were smaller than the ones in the library. Maybe they didn’t leak as much cancer.

I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I’d been vulnerable. I’d dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.

I was an idiot.

In history, Mr. Diaz misstated so many facts about the issues that led to the Civil War that I was sure he was baiting me. He stopped me when I was headed out the door at the end of the period to ask if I was okay.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

I was first in line when the bus pulled in. Took the seat on the left, two rows from the back. Stared at the zombies on the sidewalk dramatically reciting their lines, stalking to the edges of their stages, playing at life.

Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who

L A UR I E H A L S E A N D E RS O N

were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they’d go to and what they’d major in and how much they’d earn and what car they’d buy? They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell.