The Impossible Knife of Memory(76)

The parade ended. Football began.

I ate the rest of the apple slices and pulled some more cards from Gramma’s recipe box. Anna Chatfield’s Key Lime. Esther’s Pumpkin w/Walnut Crust. Peg Holcomb’s Perfect Pumpkin. Edith Janack’s Apple Crisp. Ethel Mason’s Mincemeat. And a small surprise: Rebecca’s Lemon Cake.

My fingers hovered above the keys of my phone, wanting to talk to Finn. Did his shirt itch? Was his whole family sitting around the table, everyone dressed to kill? Was there any way to explain to him why I’d been so mean?

No. I barely understood it myself. I just knew that I wanted to push him away from me more than I wanted to hold him close.

Dad stayed in his room all day, not even coming out to watch football. My pie was came out burnt on the edges and a little watery in the middle, but I thought that for a first try, it wasn’t too bad.

Gracie texted just before four o’clock: plans changed can u com at 6? I wrote back:

sure

An hour and a half later, she texted: thxgving canceled

ttyt

I carried the pie to her house. Cardboard turkeys and black Pilgrim hats were taped to the first-floor windows of Gracie’s house. (Did they really wear hats like that? If you were on the brink of starvation, would you really care about your hat?) Tall, narrow windows flanked the front door, covered by bunched-up lace curtains that made it impossible to see inside.

I rang the doorbell, but nobody answered.

Gracie called at ten and gave me the blow-by-blow description of the battle between her parents that had caused the cancellation of the dinner. Instead of being hysterical, she spent the night finishing her applications to four universities in California.

Just before midnight, I texted Finn to say happy Thanksgiving. He didn’t answer.





_*_ 78 _*_

I became a little unstuck in time after that, drifting like a dead leaf caught in the current of a half-frozen river, bumping into rocks, spinning in slow eddies, not worrying about the waterfalls ahead.

It snowed again on the first day of December. The cold switched my brain to hibernation mode, shutting down the ability to think in favor of keeping my internal organs functioning. The downside was that it also created minor memory glitches. I was halfway across the parking lot that afternoon before I remembered that Finn and I hadn’t talked in a week and I couldn’t ride home with him. I wouldn’t get in his car even if he asked me to. At least, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t.

On the bus, I jammed in my earbuds, dialed up Danish death metal, and played it loud enough to make my ears bleed. By the time I walked up the driveway, my head hurt and I was almost deaf. It felt good in a sick way.

I flicked off the music, turned the doorknob, yanked open the front door, and almost pulled my shoulder out of the socket. The door was locked. Dad hadn’t locked it in weeks, but I didn’t give it much thought, because something trickled in my ears and I worried that maybe the music had punctured my eardrums and fluid from my brain was leaking.

Get a grip and stop catastrophizing.

I unzipped the front pocket of my backpack and reached for my keys, but they weren’t there. I emptied my backpack onto the front porch before I remembered the last place I’d seen them: next to my computer. I’d left in such a rush that I’d forgotten to grab them.

Crap.

I rang the bell and knocked on the door. Nothing. If he was sleeping in his room, I’d have to go to Gracie’s or hang out at the park until he got hungry enough to wake up.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

I jogged back down the walk. The rig was still in the driveway, hood down and doors locked. I peered through the dirty window into the garage. The pickup was parked inside. No tools that needed to be put away. No sign of Dad. The back door off the kitchen was closed and locked, too. I checked all the windows that I could reach. I couldn’t tell which were painted shut and which were locked, but none of them would budge.

That’s when I smelled something burning. Saw smoke rising from the fire pit, which we hadn’t used in over a month. I walked over to it, thinking maybe he’d started a fire to cook hot dogs or something.

He’d been burning his uniform. Scraps of his jacket and pants lay at the edge of the fire. The half-melted boots smoldered in the middle.

I ran back to the living room window, cupped my hands around my eyes to cut down on the glare, and tried to see inside between the curtains. The living room had been trashed. The upside-down couch was blocking the way to the dining room. Stuffing from the couch cushions had been flung everywhere and looked like dirty cotton candy. The recliner had been chopped to bits. The ax handle stuck out from the gaping hole that had been chopped in the drywall. The cuckoo clock lay in pile of splinters.

My father was curled into a ball on the floor. Blood on his face. Blood staining the carpet under his head, Spock lying next to him.

A girl screamed.

!!!NONONODADDYDADDYNODADDYNONONONONONOOOO!!!

Spock howled.

The screaming girl slapped the window with her palms, pounded the window with her fists, bent down to grab her backpack. Spock ran to the window and put his front paws on the sill, barking. The girl threw the backpack at the glass and it bounced off. She was thinking, Why can’t I break it, how do I break it, grab a log, break the window, shatter the glass, a rock, a big rock, break it into a million pieces and get to him, crawl over the broken glass and get—