Push(81)

As I dig through the box, I find that it is indeed filled with positive memories. Books I read in high school—To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Count of Monte Cristo. CDs I left behind when I went to college. Dried-up bottles of nail polish. I lay them all out on my bed next to David. He laughs at the obnoxious colors. Once again, I tell him to “f*ck off” and remind him that I was a hot number in high school. He smirks at me and tells me that I still am. I kiss him on the cheek, and I think I see him blush.
The second box is filled with volleyball ribbons and trophies. When I put them on the bed, David picks a few of them up, rolling them around in his hands and smirking. He is suddenly filled with questions about what position I played, if I played any other sports, why I didn’t play in college. It is a great conversation, filled with a delightful energy and rife with hints of David’s appreciation for “sporty girls.” One of my old balls is tucked into the bottom of the box, and even though it is half deflated, we spend a bit of time playfully hitting the ball back and forth over the bed. David is on his feet now, obviously feeling more comfortable with what is in the boxes. He helps me empty the third one.
Amongst a few more books and knickknacks, I find two photo albums. One is of my family when I was young. I show David the pictures of my mother and brothers first. They were taken before I was even born. He says my brothers look like a couple of little nerds. I smile and tell him again that they were sweet kids when they were young. My father is in a few of the photographs as well, though he was probably behind the camera for most of them. He is sinewy with light hair, and in my favorite photograph, his arm is draped around my mother’s shoulders and I am standing at his feet. I must only be about two years old. My hair is pulled back in a barrette, and my smile is as wide as the ocean. It fills up my entire face. David picks up the photo album and holds it close to his face, examining me carefully and noting how much I looked like my mother even then. He says that my mother was beautiful, and he can see how bad my father had it for her by the way they are touching in some of the pictures. He winks at me when he says it, and it makes my insides smile.
The other photo album is smaller and consists of pictures that were taken after my father died. It is filled with images of my brothers playing high school football. I know that our babysitter, Carol, took most of these pictures because Michael and my mother seldom made it to the games. There are images of both Ricky’s and Evan’s college graduations; in them Michael is smiling like a motherf*cker, no doubt happy that tuition payments were over for a few years. Come to think of it, Michael only ended up paying for one semester of my college tuition, so, by all rights, he should have looked even happier than he did. There are also a handful of pictures of me in the album. A few from volleyball games, a team photograph from the eleventh grade, and a half-dozen pictures taken before my senior prom. When David asks me about it, I tell him all about Peter Beckman, about how he was the only non-shitty-ass boyfriend I ever had. Until now, anyway. And then I tell him how Michael ended it. David does not look a bit surprised when I tell him about prom night.
The last box contains some stuff from the desk I had in my bedroom. A mug I used to keep my pencils in, a Mickey Mouse stapler, a pink desk lamp, a flowered plastic desk set. There is a framed photograph of me and my friend Susan on a summer vacation at the beach. Her family invited me to come with them the summer before our junior year, and it was one of the few times that Michael didn’t interfere. There are also a couple of items from the corkboard that used to hang in my room. Ticket stubs, one or two postcards from my mother, and the Simpsons badges I collected in middle school. In the bottom of the box, in a small silk bag, is a gold bracelet that Peter gave me at our high school graduation. He told me he had planned to give it to me on prom night, but he never had the chance. I never wore the bracelet because it was inscribed with “E.S. + P.B. = <3.” It freaked me out to see the sideways heart and know that Peter might have loved me. Especially because I didn’t love him back.
David thoughtfully watches me sort through everything, asking an occasional question and offering a supportive comment whenever he thinks it’s necessary. I toss what I don’t want into a box and pack the items I do want into another. I tuck the “keeper” box back into the closet as David leaves the room and comes back holding the last two beers from the kitchen. I joke that I wish it was whisky instead. He grins and tells me to call in an order for Chinese. He’ll stop at the liquor store down the street on his way back from picking up the food.
“Now that is an exceptional idea,” I say with a smile, and he is out the apartment door before I can say thanks.
The Kooks were followed by the Crash Kings long ago, and when that album ended, David’s iPhone started playing a band that I never heard before. I pick up his phone to call in the food order. I’m about to dial when I see that the last number David called is still listed on the call screen. 241-375-2229. My stomach drops. It was dialed last night at 11:36, when I was already asleep. And it ended at 11:42. A six-minute phone call.
I stare at the number. It is the number that I had to memorize halfway through the second grade. It is the number that Peter Beckman and Bobby Sarson dialed over and over again. It is the number that I wrote on all of my college applications. It is the number that the police dialed to tell Michael about my mom’s car accident.
What the f*ck.



chapter Thirty-Six

I stare down at the numbers on David’s phone, and I can feel the blood rush into my head. My heart is pounding in my ears, and my skin is starting to bristle and burn. I suck air in through my nose, trying to keep myself from going ballistic, but I can feel the anger and confusion filling every muscle in my body. I can feel myself losing control. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my reflection in the bedroom mirror? and I nearly toss the phone into my own face, shattering it into a million shards of glass. But instead, I close my eyes and breathe, trying to think of a reason why David would spend six minutes on a phone call to a dead man’s house while I slept. I am trying to regain my composure. Trying to placate my enraged mind with a reason.