The Impossible Knife of Memory(72)

We argued about everything: my attitude, the weather, how to boil eggs, the size of the phone bill, the smell of the garbage. He shot down my plans and then came up with some of his own, all of them stupid. One night he said that we were going to move to Costa Rica. When I brought it up the next morning, he called me a liar and said I was trying to make him paranoid. He said I should get my GED as soon as possible so he could send me to college in January. Twenty-fours hours later, he forbade me from taking the GED, but told me to start thinking about being a nanny overseas. There were the days when he’d disappear in his head without saying a word. He couldn’t sleep more than an hour or two at a time without waking up shouting or screaming. He always apologized for that, once he calmed down.

The second semester started in the middle of all this, looking pretty much like the first semester, except with heavier jackets. They made us memorize and puke up more facts, write more useless essays according to a fascist essay formula and, above all, take tests to prepare for taking even more tests. My conscientious objection to most homework had put my grades in the toilet, but the only class I had outright flunked was precalc. Benedetti finally took pity on me and busted me down to trig.

Then came the night of the phone call.





_*_ 74 _*_

I was in the middle of a nightmare in which I’d sat down to a history final and couldn’t remember anything except my name. At first, I thought the ringing noise was the bell at the end of the period. As I crawled to the surface of waking up, I thought it might be Finn, but he hated talking on the phone and never called.

I pushed the button to answer.

“Is this Emily?” asked a woman’s voice. I could barely hear her over the loud music and shouting in the background. “What did he say her name is? Sally?”

A wrong number. I hung up and fluffed my pillow. I had just closed my eyes when the phone rang again.

“Hayley,” the woman said. “Your dad says to ask for Hayley. Is that you?”

“My dad?” I sat up. “Who is this? What’s going on?”

“Here, you talk to her.” The phone was fumbled and dropped. When it was picked up again, it was my father’s voice, but I couldn’t understand a single word he said.

“Daddy, what did you say?” I went into the hall. The lights were all on. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

The phone was fumbled again, then the background noise faded. The woman spoke. “Your dad is so drunk he can’t remember where he put his truck, which is good because he’s too wasted to drive. He got in a fight and the boss is kicking him out. I checked his pockets; he doesn’t have any money left.”

“Is he hurt?”

“You need to come get him, sweetie. This is a shitty neighborhood after dark. Got a pen?”

“Hang on.” I ran to the kitchen and found what I needed in the junk drawer. “Okay, I’m ready.”

She gave me the address and directions. “How soon till you get here?”

“I don’t know. I have to find a car. Can you keep an eye on him until I get there?”

She shouted, “In a minute!” to someone else, then said, “Hurry.”

There was no time to be embarrassed or angry or ashamed. I called Gracie while I was walking to her house. “Wha . . .” she mumbled.

“I need your mom’s car.” I explained the situation, then

repeated it until she woke up enough to understand what I

was saying.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said. “Just put her

keys on the front seat. I know the code to open the garage.” “Don’t open the garage door!” she said. “Mom always hears it, no matter what. If you try to sneak her car out,

she’ll call the cops, I guarantee it.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Call Finn.”

I stopped in the middle of the empty street. “I don’t

want him to see Dad like this.”

“Do you have a choice?” she asked.

Finn didn’t say anything when he picked me up. We didn’t talk at all as we drove. The fight on the phone—him saying I should let Dad wake up tomorrow morning in his own puke in an alley, me calling him a heartless bastard—had drained us both.

(He’d only gotten in his car when he realized I was headed to the bar on foot.)

He didn’t say anything until he parked in front of The Sideways Inn. “I can’t let you go in there alone.”

“You have to,” I said.

“It’s dangerous.” He pointed at a group of guys hanging out in a doorway down the block. “Look at them. They’re just waiting to pounce.”

“Hardly,” I said. “They’re hoping that we’re stupid enough to leave your car empty so they can break in and steal the radio. This heap is old enough that they could hotwire it. Then we’ll really be stuck here.”

“But,” he said.

I opened the door. “Keep the engine running.” “Get out of here!” the bartender yelled as I walked in. “You’re not old enough.”

The music was so loud that I could feel it in my fillings. The dark room was filled with shadows leaning against the wall, bending over the pool table, and slumped into chairs around battered tables, all of them staring at me. I wanted to turn around and run, but I put my shoulders back and walked straight to the bar. “I’m looking for my dad.”