Burn Before Reading(59)

This new house is too quiet, too big and empty at night. Even in the day it echoes, my footsteps louder than I’d like. The paintings on the wall are just impartial snapshots of oil and watercolor, not a single family photo there to greet me.

I wander down to the kitchen and open the fridge, rummaging around for a soda.

“You’re up late.”

The voice is undoubtedly Dad’s. I groan inwardly, and straighten. He’s sitting at the kitchen table by the French windows, in the dark, the only thing in his hands a necklace I recognize instantly – Mom’s amethysts.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“That’s no way to speak to me,” Dad says with a sneer. “Why don’t you come sit down?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Nightmares keep you up again?”

I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Because they keep me up, too. But for different reasons, I assume. Mine are about your mother, and yours are about, I don’t know. Being homosexual, or somesuch.”

I don’t even allow him the pleasure of seeing me flinch. “And people wonder where I got my asshole genes.”

“It’s true,” He agrees. “You got everything negative from me. Your mother was an angel.”

“She was a person,” I correct him. “She was impatient, she was too hard on herself, she –”

“She was none of those things,” Dad says immediately. “Time has warped your perception. She was good, and kind, and we didn’t deserve her.”

“You’re the one who’s time-warped,” I snap. “Speak for your own damn self. Sure, you didn’t deserve her. But we did.”

Dad straightens, his eyes burning.

“You deserve nothing. You were the burdens that drove her to carelessness – she was worried the whole morning about your ear infection, she was sleep deprived the whole night before, worrying about you –”

“Fine!” I shout. “You want to bring that up? Fine. I’m the reason she died. Are you happy? Does that make you feel better about your sorry, self-pitying ass? Does it make you feel good to blame me for losing the only person you ever fucking cared about in this world?”

The silence after my shout rings. Dad stares me down, and for a second I swear to God he’s getting ready to deck me.

“This is how you three honor her memory?” Dad asks, so cold it chills me to the bone. “By wasting your youth on….parties and drugs? Wasting it on….on men.”

This time, I can’t hide my flinch. Dad stands, his full height amplified by shadow.

“You disgust me,” He hisses. “And its nights like these that I wonder why I still care about you. It’s nights like these that I wished it would’ve been you, not her.”

I stare at the wall, past him. Through him. I’m used to it, to the these exact words, said over and over again in so many different ways, at so many different times since she’s died. I learned to put up a barrier between the hurt and me. But tonight, I’m left raw and bleeding, and his words burn like salt in my wounds.

He leaves. He doesn’t stick around to take his words back. He never does. And after this long, I’d never believe his sincerity if he did. He genuinely believes everything he says. He believes I should’ve died, back then. He wishes I did.

It’s only when he’s gone do I dare to move, to breathe. Fury and helplessness war with each other in my lungs, and I throw the soda can at the wall, watching it dent. Useless. Everything feels so useless, when I talk to him.

I promised myself long ago I’d never think of him as my father again.

But sometimes I want to. Sometimes, I desperately want to.

*****

BEATRIX



When I want to, I do a great job of forgetting people.

It took me a week, but everything Wolf-related in my mind went into my mental trash can. The way he looked at me in the dress – gone. The way he glared at me when I tried to stop him from ‘bullying’ that freshman – gone. The way he dumped a vase of puke on Eric to get him away from me – gone.

The way he held me in the garage, smelling like oil and cinnamon and laughing – gone.

Wolfgang Blackthorn was officially a zero in my head; someone I was convinced I’d never think about again. He wanted to be enemies, so I erased every nice memory I had of him, stored it so far back in my head I’d never remember them again. It helped a lot of big tests were coming up, and I had to study for all of them. The flood of information served as nice, fertile dirt to bury him under.

I was going to study, ace these tests, spy some more on his brothers, and – once my scholarship was secure - live out the rest of my time at Lakecrest minding my own business, all the way to NYU’s doorstep.

Dad hadn’t fully recovered from his locked-room episode. He’d linger there for a day before coming out and making a bunch of food for me, and then disappearing again. The food was an improvement, at least. I don’t know what he did in his room, but I knew sometimes, when TV wasn’t enough of an escape, he’d start writing again. He used to be a novelist, after all, before the depression got so bad he couldn’t put two words to a page anymore and his editor and publishing house dropped him. If I pressed my ear to his door, I could hear the steady ‘click-clack’ of keys on a keyboard.