The Impossible Knife of Memory(6)

“Mr. Cleveland thinks you may need a tutor.”

Some statements beg for a response. I shrugged.

“He’ll talk to you about it.” Benedetti pried the foil top off three plastic containers of chemical milk, poured them in her cup, and changed her angle of approach. “How is your father doing?”

This time, she let the silence draw out, waiting for me to become uncomfortable enough to open my mouth. The sobbing of the girl next door soaked through the drywall and filled the room.

“I can’t remember if he played football or basketball,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he knew my little brother. Was he with that group of guys who got in trouble for the party at the quarry after the championship game?”

I shrugged again. Dad rarely talked about growing up in Belmont, but I wasn’t about to let her know that. The first time we met, Benedetti told me that I could trust her and tell her anything. People who have to announce that they are trustworthy deserve to be lied to.

She waited, eyebrows up, wanting me to say more. I counted the seconds, one after another, watching them drop like heavy rocks down a deep well. Benedetti caved after one minute, twelve.

“The thing is, I’m having a hard time getting ahold of your father,” she said.

I did not respond.

“I called his work number, but they said he quit a couple weeks ago. Does he have a cell phone?”

Quit? He quit?

She leaned forward, like she sensed that something was wrong.

“What do you need him for?” I asked.

She stirred her coffee with the black plastic stick. “We need contact information for all of our parents. Where is he working now?”

We had reached that point in the interrogation where I had to cough up some information or risk unnecessary aggravation.

“He’s taking time off to write a book,” I said.

“A book?”

It wasn’t a great lie, but in my defense, I was tired and I really should have eaten that bagel back in the cafeteria. I folded my arms over my chest and watched a red Sentra and a black Mustang scream into the student lot. The Sentra drove up and down the aisles, looking for a spot close to the building and finding nothing.

“About the war,” I added.

“Perfect.” She stopped stirring. “I want to invite him to be a part of our Veterans Day assembly, too.”

“Save your breath,” I said. “He hates that stuff.”

The Mustang headed straight for the back row, the only row with empty spaces, and parked under a maple tree with leaves so orange it looked like a glowing pumpkin.

“That’s what your stepmother said.”

The word exploded in front of my eyes and set the ceiling on fire. I forced myself to turn my head and focus on that tree and to count, two, three, four, five, before I answered.

“I don’t have a stepmother.”

Benedetti nodded. “The first time she called, I checked your records. I was pretty sure you hadn’t mentioned her. But she was persistent. After several calls, she emailed me the paperwork that proved she had been your legal guardian during your father’s deployments.”

“He never married her.”

“You lived with her,” Benedetti checked her screen again, “from the time you were six until you were twelve.”

“And then she left.”

She stirred her coffee again. “I gather there are still some hard feelings?”

“None, it’s just that she’s a scum-sucking idiot.”

Someone knocked gently before I could slap my own mouth for blabbing.

Benedetti got up and listened briefly to the person at the door. “I’ll just be a minute.”

A few leaves spiraled down from the maple tree at the back of the parking lot. Six years I lived with Trish, it said that on her computer. Truth? I barely remembered it. I’d get flashes here and there, like fireflies, gone before I could get a good look at them. The years before Trish? Clouds strung on a necklace, the smell of lemons, the sound of bees in a garden. The years of Trish? Nada. Méi shén me.

The years after?

After she left, we drifted back and forth across the country in a dented eighteen-wheeler—Dad steering, me navigating—stopping every once in a while in tiny towns that seemed like islands in the middle of an ocean of corn or snow or sand. We’d stay a month or two, until the past caught up to him and blew us out the door again. The miles under the tires helped fade everything we didn’t want to remember into a vague pattern of loosely knit-together shadows that stayed just out of reach, where they belonged.

My heart suddenly revved, then raced, and no, no, no.

Not going there. No need. Don’t want to. Not going to. Just breathe. It’s all good. I’m good. Dad is fine. Focus, focus. Orange tree.

Lines of cars. Sun bouncing off windshields.

Asphalt. Lines of tar filling in the cracks.

Just breathe.

The girl next door had stopped crying.

Benedetti came back in and sat down. “Right, where were we?” She took a long swig of coffee and set the cup next to her keyboard, the rim stained with beige lip gloss. “Your stepmother is concerned about you and your father. She told me a few things that contradict what your father said when he enrolled you. That’s another reason I need to talk to him.”