Push(45)

“Oh, yeah?” he asks in surprise.
“Yeah.” I’m not sure if I should go on, but I can’t help myself. “It says that you care about me. And that all the shit that went down with Michael over the years doesn’t matter to you. You clearly don’t want to know what’s in this box, and that tells me that you’re willing to know only as much about me as I want you to know. And that, to me, is a respect thing, and I want you to know that I appreciate that. I appreciate that you respect my past as the past. I only hope that by opening this box and possibly dredging shit up, things aren’t going to change between us. Because I like us.” And now, in addition to feeling sick about Michael’s package, I feel sick about Googling David. I feel sick that I couldn’t afford his past the same respect that he is affording mine. I want to spill it. I want to tell him that I know about Anna Spaight and how he lost her. I want to beg his forgiveness for my hypocrisy. But I won’t. Because I am a chickenshit.
“That’s some deep stuff, Emma,” he says with a smattering of sarcasm. I look up at him, and his lips are curled into a grin. I feel relieved and annoyed at the same time.
“Fuck you,” I say as I lightly smack his arm. “But I mean it.”
“I know you do,” he says, “and I do care about you. As a f*ck-buddy, I mean.” Now I am really annoyed.
“Okay, fine,” I say, “here’s the deal. If you still like me after seeing whatever the hell Michael put in this box, then you can graduate to being my boyfriend.”
“Really? Jesus, that’s some good shit.” He steps back from the table and puts his hands in his pockets. “Go ahead. Open the box. It doesn’t matter what’s in it. It won’t change things now. Even if it’s a videotape of you snorting coke with the pope, you’re stuck with a carpenter for a boyfriend.”
“Lucky me,” I say as I open the box and pull out a mass of wadded-up newspaper.
“Lucky me,” David says. I look up at him and smile.
In the crumples of the newspaper are my real father’s dog tags. They are cut into pieces, and the chain that used to hold them around his neck—and mine—is broken in half. I sit with these small fragments of my father resting on my open palms. I look up at David, and I feel the blood drain from my face.
“He kept them. That f*cker. He kept them,” is all I can think to say. I fold my hands around the pieces and close my eyes. I want to scream. I want to get that gun out of my drawer and pop Michael’s f*cking head open with it. David must know that I am swimming in hatred because, when I open my eyes, he is kneeling on the floor next to me.
“Dog tags,” he says, not wanting to ask more.
I take a deep breath. Here we go. “They were my dad’s. He was deployed when I was like three or four. He was gone for a year and a half, and when he came back, he gave them to me. I used to wear them everywhere.” The anger is washing off of me, and now, now I feel sad. I want to keep talking. I want to tell David everything. I want him to fix me.
I slide out of my seat and sit down next to him on the floor. I am still holding the dog tags, my hands in my lap. “I guess I didn’t know my dad that well because I was so young when he left, but I do remember thinking he was the bomb. He was so much fun. My brothers were actually pretty sweet back then—they used to stick up for me. All three of them watched over me and kept me in line. My dad used to play games with Ricky and Evan and me, and my mom was so freggin’ happy all the time. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t really that way, but I just remember it being so great when I was little. And I remember the day he came back. My mom was so incredible. She made it this really big deal. She made everything special for my dad. And for my brothers and me. That picture of me and her next to my bed, that was taken at a family reunion a few months after my dad came home. He was a hero, you know? I always felt like everybody looked at me like I was special because he was my dad. Because my dad did this amazing thing. Because he came home, and he fit himself right back into life. And my mom, you know, she made it so that he could do that. Without a single glitch. He slid right back into place.”
I look up at David, and he is staring at the dog tags in my hand. I think that he must want to know why they are cut into pieces. And why Michael had them.
“So, life was great. But then, when I was six, my dad got sick. Really sick. He had the stomach flu and then a few days later, he had trouble breathing, and he had this pinched feeling in his chest. My mom took him to the clinic, and the doctor said that he thought my dad had an infection in his heart, something called myocarditis. It’s caused by some kind of a viral infection, and the only way to diagnose it is through a heart biopsy. They came home from the clinic with some steroids, even though the clinic doctor suggested they go straight to the hospital for more tests. My dad said the biopsy was too invasive, and the steroids would fix it. And my mom, she didn’t make him go. She put on her rose-colored-glasses and said that he would be fine. A day later his heart failed and that was it. My dad was gone and everything changed.”
“Emma,” he says, “Jesus. That is horrible.”
“My mom met Michael at some stupid church thing a year later, and before anyone could argue, they got married, but I never understood why. Michael was never nice to her. Or me. I mean, she needed his money—she had three kids to raise. And I guess she figured that if she married him, none of us would ever want for anything. But it was more than that. She thought she didn’t deserve anything better.”