In Sight of Stars(13)

“Crying seems pointless,” I say. “Like spilt milk, right?”

“According to whom? Is this an issue with your family?”

I shrug. “You mean with my mother? She’s pretty much the only family I’ve got left.”

“Yes. Your mother, then.”

I squeeze the orange stress ball, then pick at a cuticle on my thumb.

“Let’s just say she isn’t much of a crier.” I can hear the crackle of anger in my voice, but I can’t control it. “Anyway, she’s right. Crying proves nothing.”

“What are you referring to, here? Something specific? Klee, did she not cry when your father died?”

I inhale sharply and stare up at Daubigny’s Garden. The room is a vortex, the missing cat a big black hole in my heart.

*

It’s after school, late, and I have to take a piss bad. The subway was delayed nearly half an hour.

I drop my jacket and portfolio inside the front door as I call out, but my mother doesn’t answer. Right. She’s not home. She’s never home. Probably has some fund-raiser or something.

“Order in if I’m not back by dinner,” she always says. “I’ll leave a credit card on the kitchen counter.”

I rush to the bathroom, unzip, and go—sweet relief—then walk to the sink to wash. But a shadowy darkness stops me, hulks through the frosted shower doors.

Dirt spatters. Sprayed across them.

No, not dirt. Not brown.

Red.

Crimson across both shower doors.

Something is wrong.

An ice-cold feeling washes over me.

I walk over and slide them carefully open.

He’s in there, my father, crumpled, on the shower floor. Blood and bits of skin everywhere.

But no, he’s at work! It’s not him!

I scream—I must, because she’s here now, too. My mother has come in. I don’t even know where she came from.

“Jesus! Klee!” She screams, then lets out a strange, hollow sound, before pushing me away from the shower door. “Get out of here! Don’t look! Go away!” She falls against it, trying to shield the whole scene with her body.

“I. Said. Get. OUT.”

We stand, motionless. Me, I don’t know what I am doing. I feel frozen. My body trembles in fear. She seems so small and frail, collapsed in her pink suit and her fancy, high-heeled shoes. Her coat hangs open, her leather handbag is still slung over her shoulder.

She’s breathless. I can smell the city, the cold winter air on her coat.

A sound escapes again. Not words. Something foreign and animalistic.

“Jesus Christ!” she finally says, her voice charged with anger. “Not this. Not this! I can’t … I won’t…”

She shakes her head, hands over her face, as if this will help her unsee it. Unsee his skin and blood and shattered bone.

“I. Just. Cannot.” My mother’s fury crackles. She rights herself and moves forward, leaving the gun, the mess of blood, the pieces of skin.

She walks out. I stand, frozen.

“Klee! Out! Now!” She grabs my arm, pulling the door shut hard behind us.

In the hallway, she inhales sharply, and says, “I’ll call nine-one-one.” I nod, every inch of me still quaking. “And Isabella,” she adds, moving toward another room. “Someone … Some kind of service to clean this all up.”

*

“Klee?”

I can’t answer because I’m all choked up again.

“Did you need her to express that she cared in a different, more definitive way?”

I close my eyes because the room is reeling.

Maybe I did. Who knows what I needed back then? Whatever I needed, she didn’t offer it. Not to me, or to him.

“Okay, too soon,” Dr. Alvarez says, more to herself than me. “Maybe we can explore that later. For now, let’s stay on more concrete things. You were talking about the city, how you miss the noise. Let’s go back to that.”

I breathe more slowly, open my eyes again. “I didn’t want to move … I only had to finish my senior year. I had my life, my friends … but she insisted.”

“And you miss them.”

“Not just them. My school. The city. Everything.”

“I can imagine.”

“But yeah, my friends. My friend Cleto, especially. The people and the traffic, and the garbage. The asswipe bicyclists who don’t give a shit if you’re in a Hummer or a delivery truck, or on foot.” She laughs a little at that, like she appreciates the sentiment. “And, the pigeons,” I add. “I know it’s not possible, but I miss the fucking pigeons.”

“Well, I have good news for you, then. We have plenty of pigeons here in Northhollow.”

I let my eyes meet hers. “Only lame-ass suburban ones.”

“You have a good sense of humor,” she says. “I bet that has served you well.”

Maybe. But, it sure as hell hasn’t saved me. “It didn’t stop me from acting crazy,” I say. Saying it makes my chest constrict so tightly it feels like I can’t get air in.

I don’t want to be crazy. I don’t want to be in here.

I suck wind and put my head between my knees.

“What if I am crazy?” I say, trying to sit up again. “What if I can never be normal again?”