The Impossible Knife of Memory(85)

“Well, good.” He stood and patted my head. “She’d like that.”

For three days and three nights after that, it snowed. Our town had giant snowplows so the roads were more or less clear, but poor Spock grew so grumpy about having to stick his private parts in the snow to do his business, I finally shoveled out a potty patch for him and added it to the growing list of things I never thought I would do but did, anyway.

Dad was a dimly seen shadow, only leaving his room to use the bathroom or to make a sandwich or to dump more dirty dishes in the sink. I’d say “Hey” or “How you doing?” or “Want a cookie?” He’d grunt or say “Fine” or “No.” His cold was no better, no worse, and he snored so loud that paint was flaking off the walls.

Trish stopped by in the middle of the night on the twenty-eighth and left a card for me that contained a gift certificate for the mall. She scribbled a note on the envelope telling me she was flying to Austin in the morning to visit her sister and that she’d be back right after New Year’s.

I had baked her an apple pie for a present, but nobody told me when she going to stop in, and nobody told me she’d be spending the rest of the week in Texas, so I split it with Spock and the ghost of my father.





_*_ 89 _*_

Why did I voluntarily wake up at seven o’clock in the morning on the fourth day after Christmas? Love messes you up and makes you do strange things, that’s why. Finn was guarding at a massive all-day swim meet and had bewitched me into saying I’d spend the day at the pool so we could hang out on his breaks.

It was still dark out, snowing even heavier than it had been the day before. Frost was etched on the inside of my window, another sign that we needed to re-insulate the house. Finn had promised that the viewing section above the pool would be in the nineties. The thought of being that warm was the motivation I needed to get me out of bed.

I almost collided with Dad, freshly showered, in the hall.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, waving at the steam that poured out of the bathroom.

“It’s all right. Why are you up?”

“Swim meet, remember?”

“When do you leave?’

“Ten minutes. Don’t worry. He’s going to have his mom’s car. She just got new tires.”

“You’ll be back for dinner?”

“I think so.”

He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re getting used to all this, aren’t you?”

Something in his tone of voice made me suspicious. “Define ‘this.’”

He rubbed his hand over the scraggly beard that was beginning to look like gray-speckled moss on his pale, worn face. “This school. This house. This what’s-his-name.”

The shower dripped loudly. He was laying the groundwork, getting ready to tell me that when Trish got back, he’d definitely be going on the road again and leaving me with her.

“You seem happier,” he continued.

“Maybe,” I said. “A little.”

The combination of the beard and the fatigue in his eyes made me uneasy, but we were miles past the place where I could ask how he was feeling or even what was wrong.

He startled me with a quick, fierce hug. “Get in the shower. I’ll make a classic peanut butter and banana you can eat in the car.”

The swim meet was delayed one hour, and then two as the buses from other districts crawled through the storm toward Belmont. It was finally canceled when state troopers shut down the Thruway. The blowing snow turned the fifteen-minute drive back to my house into almost an hour and shook Finn up so much I thought I’d have to pry his fingers off the steering wheel with a crowbar. His mother called while I was making hot chocolate to tell him that the snow would stop soon, but he should stay at my house until the plows got caught up.

We settled in on the couch with our hot chocolate, a bag of marshmallows, the game controllers, and the unzipped sleeping bag spread across our laps.

“Who are those presents for?” Finn asked as we waited for the game to load.

“What presents?”

“Under the tree.” He pointed. “Look.”

Two small boxes, wrapped in the reused Christmas paper that we’d thrown out days before, had been hidden deep under the tree in the drift of pine needles. One had my name on it, the other was addressed to Finn.

“Those weren’t here this morning,” I said.

“From your dad?”

“Must be.” I shivered. Even with the furnace running, it felt like the house was getting colder. “Let’s open them.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for him?” Finn asked.

“There’s a good chance that he’s given us something weird. We’ll take a peek and rewrap them.” I carefully slid my finger under the tape to loosen it. “That way we’ll know how to act when we open them in front of him.”

The paper on my gift fell away easily.

“Your father gave you a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese?”

“Of course.” I shivered again. “Doesn’t your dad do that? Your turn.”

Finn’s small box clunked when he shook it. The wrapping paper practically fell off to reveal a box that used to hold four sticks of butter. The tape holding the ends together popped opened. A metal star made of bronze tumbled into his lap.