The Impossible Knife of Memory(89)

The snow shifted again. I thought he was ready to jump and I suddenly realized that he was right. I wasn’t going to dive in after him. The past was about to end for us both and it made me sadder than I had ever been in my whole life. So sad that the spinning of the Earth slowed.

My tears hit the snow, sizzling.

“Hayley Rose, listen.” His voice caught. “You are standing on an overhang. Just snow. No rock.”

“Sir!” shouted a voice behind me.

I looked over my shoulder. Finn stood on the other side of the fence with a cop.

“Don’t move,” the cop said. “Either of you. We’re getting some rope. Don’t move. Don’t speak.”

“Listen to him, Hayley.” Dad’s deep voice rumbled across the snow.

“You don’t want me to fall? Or jump?”

He had moved toward me. “No, sweetie. Shh.”

More voices came from beyond the fence: police, Finn, radios squawking, the metal jingling. The snow creaked under me.

“That feeling you have, Daddy, that you want me to be safe, you want me to stay alive? I feel that way about you all the time.” I sniffed. “If you kill yourself, then every minute of your life has been wasted.”

“I don’t know how,” he said. “How to live anymore.”

“When I got stuck or confused, you used to say, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ I love you, Daddy. My mom did, too, and Gramma. I hate to admit it, but Trish does, your buddies do. With so many people loving you, I know we’ll figure it out.”

Sirens wailed. “Just a few more seconds,” the cop said. “Stay still, both of you.”

The wind picked up again. He looked too tired to stand. I could almost feel the quarry pulling him in.

“You’re still alive!” I screamed. “You have to try harder because we love you!”

Daddy fought a sob, reached for me. It looked like he had just limped off the plane, the band playing, thousands of hands clapping, mouths cheering, waves of tears raining down to wash away the years of heartache. I stepped toward him, ready to fly up into his arms so I could hug his neck and tell him that I missed him so much.

The snow underneath me cracked, crumbled, and then everything disappeared.

Until my father saved me.





_*_ 94 _*_

If this were a fairy tale, I’d stick in the “Happily Ever After” crap right here. But this was my life, so it was a little more complicated than that.

Once the video of Trish begging the woman at the ticket counter to give her the last seat on the flight to Albany even though she was not a member of the frequent flyer program went viral, the airline decided not to press charges after all. The nurses said that when I opened my eyes and saw Trish standing over me, her nose packed with gauze (only her nose was broken in the scuffle, not her cheekbone, don’t trust everything you read on the Internet), I giggled and sang a song that didn’t make any sense. I think they are exaggerating. I don’t remember any of that.

Finn had wrecked his vocal cords at the quarry, screaming the whole time that I was too close to the edge. I honestly didn’t hear any of it. He was in my hospital room when they brought me back from the MRI.

“Tore my ACL,” I said.

“You on morphine?” He sounded like a bullfrog with a three-pack-a-day habit.

“Yeah, but it’s not enough. A kiss might help.” “Might?”

“It would have to be a very good kiss.” “Hmm,” he said. “I’ll try my best.”

The winds that had been blowing over the quarry for days had formed a fairly solid rim of snow that extended just beyond the cliff itself. That’s what I’d been standing on. That’s what collapsed. Dad broke three ribs and hyperextended his left elbow when he grabbed me. Rattled his brain again, too, but he didn’t let go. (My shoulder was dislocated, but I only fractured two ribs.)

When I jumped from the top of the fence, not only did I blow out my knee, but I got a grade two concussion, which was why, the docs said, everything had seemed so weird out there on the edge.

They were wrong.

Out there on the edge, the spinning of the Earth had slowed to give us the time we needed to start finding each other again.

They released me first; Trish was a nurse, after all, and we were sort of getting along so I asked if she would move in for a while and help me get better. Dad was transferred to a VA rehab place after the hospital. By the time he came home, he’d lost twenty pounds and looked ten years older, but the shadows had left his face, and he remembered how to smile.

We both had months of physical therapy (aka pain and torture): me for my knee and back, him for his busted elbow and his battered spirit. The demented soul who was my physical therapist laughed and high-fived me the first time I burst into tears when I was rehabbing my knee.

“Progress!” she shouted as she danced around me. “You’re sick,” I said.

“And you’re getting better.” She knelt in front of me.

“Can’t escape pain, kiddo. Battle through it and you get stronger. Cry all you want, but you’re going to bend that knee five more times. And then we will celebrate with pie.”

Dad called his version of Happily Ever After, “Good Enough for Today.” Some days were better than others. He got fired from a pizza place and the bowling alley before the post office rehired him, but he got along great with his therapist and was starting to talk about grad school again. He walked Spock every morning and every afternoon, coming home in the gloaming, just before dark.