These Gentle Wounds

by Helene Dunbar

  Jim pretty much lets Kevin deal with me. But I’ve learned that when he gets to the point where he puts his foot down about something, he means it.

  “Gordie?” he asks softly. “Are you listening?”

  What a ridiculous question. Of course I’m listening. It’s my whole freaking life we’re discussing. How could I not be listening? All I want is for him to take a stand and to tell me that he’s going to fight it. That he agrees my father has no right to be anything in my life.

  “Hey,” he says again, louder this time.

  I look up and see Kevin standing behind him. He’s clenching his jaw and nodding his head, urging me silently to say something.

  “Let me hear it, kid,” Jim says.

  I give up. “Handle it, then,” I say. “Just handle it.” I run upstairs, because I know there’s nothing else he can say to me tonight that matters.

  I slam the door harder than I need to and lie on Kevin’s disheveled bed. It used to bother me that he’s such a slob, but now I kind of envy him. I wish I could stop caring about everything being in its place and making sense.

  His side of the room is littered with dirty jeans, scraps

  of paper with his indecipherable writing on it, and a couple of wooden spoons, although I’m not sure I want to know what those are doing here.

  The only thing that’s neat on his side of the room is the stack of college catalogs on his desk. Figures.

  I get up and throw the whole stack across the room, which isn’t as satisfying as I would have hoped. Then I flop back down and let my mind go.

  And of course it goes to my father. I have no choice about that.

  My father worked with contracts or proposals or something that meant he collected piles of paper and got paid for it.

  Most office guys come home at night, I think. But he’d disappear for months at a time.

  I have a few memories of him.

  Him beating Kevin with the leather belt Mom made us save up to buy for him for Father’s Day.

  And watching him and Mom throw empty liquor bottles at each other, the glass shattering all over the living room floor.

  And him at the funeral, not looking sad, but pissed, like Mom had finally gotten one over on him. As if killing the kids meant she’d finally gotten the last word. I watched him all through the service to see if he would cry, but he never did.

  I guess that’s where I got the crying thing from. I don’t cry anymore. Ever. Not even at the funeral, although I was sad, not pissed. Pissed came later and left a whole lot of nothing in its wake.

  Honestly, there are times I want to cry. Times, like now, when I think it would feel good to let everything seep out of me. But I can’t.

  I think maybe I’ve forgotten how.

  Or that all the water in the river washed my tears away.

  Seven

  The trick to being a good goalie is to focus on the puck. I mean, what the hell else would you focus on when you’re in the crease and people are shooting six ounces of hard rubber at your face?

  But it’s amazing how many things there are in hockey to be distracted by. The other team. The fans. Your coaches. Dumbass defensemen baiting you for fun. The insipid music they play during stoppages. How hot it can get under the padding.

  I’m pretty good at ignoring it all. But during our pre-game, Walker flits around the crease like a mosquito, like there’s nothing else on the ice he needs to be doing.

  “You’re gonna stick around today, right?” he asks as I brush the ice from his snowplow stop off my legs.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m here.” I dive to my left and barely catch a shot I would have nailed if he’d been off practicing himself.

  A whistle blows as I pull myself up.

  “You two want to stop coordinating your prom outfits and play some hockey?” Coach yells.

  I don’t answer him. I just get back into my crouch, ready to go.

  Walker does one more slow circle around the net. “Keep your head in the game, Gordie. We need the win tonight.”

  I sigh and avoid telling him that if he’d go away, my head would be plenty in the game. I know that with him, it’s nothing personal. He just cares about winning more than anything.

  He starts to skate off and I sense, more than see, something flying toward me from the right. I leap up and bat it away. Walker spins around with a goofy grin and gives me a nod like he’s just remembered I’m actually pretty good at this.

  I succeed at reminding him of that a few more times as we shut out one of our closest rivals, the Cougars. Then I stumble home to collapse.

  Aside from all of the other things I love about it, hockey is great because it makes me so tired I swear the memories can’t get in. And that’s always a good thing.

  But tonight something pulls me out of a deep sleep, and I don’t know what. I don’t think it’s anything inside me for once, but the room is somehow too quiet. I keep my eyes shut, hoping I’ll fall back asleep without starting to think too much, or spinning off somewhere. But the switch in my brain is clicked to “on” and there isn’t anything I can do about it.

  I open my eyes to see Kevin standing next to our bedroom window. He looks like he’s still asleep, but I’m the sleepwalker, not him.

  “You’re awake,” I say, to test out my theory. I wrestle out of the cocoon of blankets I sleep under and sit up, rubbing my eyes.

  It takes him a minute, but then he sits down on the edge of my bed. “When did you get so observant?”

  I let his sarcasm float up into the air and out the window with the breeze. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “You look strange.”

  “Move over,” he says, pushing my legs away. I sit up and draw my legs up. Kevin scootches fully onto the bed, forming a right angle to me, and leans his back against the wall. His legs hang partially off the end.

  I wait for him to say something else, but he just sits there looking like he’s a million miles away. I wonder if that’s what I look like when I’m spacing out—like it’s only my body on this planet.

  It scares me. I nudge his leg, hoping it’ll bring him back to our room. My stomach is starting to feel tangled. I don’t think I can handle him spinning off somewhere, because then who would be here to bring me back? I’ve never really thought about the possibility that it could work in reverse.

  He turns and I can see from his eyes that he’s really here. I exhale as he asks, “You win tonight?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Shutout. But I think Cody Bowman might get suspended for an illegal hit.”

  Normally that news would bring a smile to his face, but Kevin doesn’t really react. “I have to talk to you about something.” His low and breathy voice gives away his stress.

  The snake in my stomach coils tighter.

  “Your dad … ”

  He really couldn’t have chosen two worse words to start a sentence. That alone makes me want to be somewhere else instead of listening to anything about my father that has Kevin this upset. I push against the wall and feel it press against each vertebrae through the soft fabric of my T-shirt. If I push hard enough, maybe I’ll come out on the other side, where I can walk through the air and breathe without this horrible pressing feeling in my chest. Without my stomach spinning around like a carnival ride.

  “Ice?” Kevin grips my bare leg hard enough that I can’t spin off even though I sort of want to. His fingers dig into me like a vice. “We can do this in the morning if you want. I shouldn’t have woken you.”

  I want to say that yes, we should put this off, but I know I’ll never get back to sleep without knowing. “No. Tell me.”

  I hold my breath and wait for words I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear. It’s like I can feel every molecule of air that’s jostling inside me for space. I hold them all in until it hurts my lungs and I’m slightly dizzy. It isn’t until I exhale that Kevin fin
ishes his sentence.

  “He didn’t sell the old house. He’s back. He’s living there.”

  Everything freezes. Everything. Time itself shuts down. I didn’t think anything could be worse than having to see him, but they will have to tie me up and drag me there to get me into that house. And even then, I promise that it will only be my body that makes an appearance because I, the part that is me, am not going to set foot in that house ever again.

  Even after That Day, I didn’t go back. Kevin and Jim went and got my stuff. We all assumed he’d sold the house. I thought he’d be in California, or the Antarctic, or on the moon by now. Not one person ever said to me that they thought he’d keep the property. That he’d live here ever again.

  Kevin squeezes my leg, hard enough this time that I might have a bruise tomorrow.

  “Stay with me,” he says.

  If I cross the threshold of the door to that house, I’m going to drown like Mom wanted me to.

  Kevin’s fingers chain me. I try to pull away, but I can’t. There’s no way he’s going to let me out of this conversation now.

  “What’s going to happen?” Even to me, my voice sounds shaky and broken. Fuck.

  Kevin takes my question literally. “He’s coming over here tomorrow to talk to Jim.”

  I jerk hard and my leg pulls away from under his hand.

  It’s amazing how many different kinds of silence there are. I mean, the room is totally quiet. Kevin is, I think, holding his breath, waiting to see how I’m going react. And I’m listening, listening, listening, to see if anything makes sense. But all I hear is stuff from outside, like a distant car alarm and a bird that must be blind or something and doesn’t know it’s night because it’s screaming right outside the window.

  And then Kevin’s voice comes blazing through it all. “My dad promised you wouldn’t have to see him while he’s here. But it’s good they’re dealing with this head-on, right?”

  I know Kevin is trying to make this better. And maybe he’s even right, but it’s like someone telling you that whatever it is that scares you the most—giant spiders, or zombies, or guys with saws for hands—will be in your house, right under your room, and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

  I don’t realize I’m shivering until Kevin throws a blanket at me.

  “I’m sorry, Ice. I really am.”

  We spend a lot of time apologizing to each other. I’m pretty sure that’s not normal brother behavior.

  I should tell him it’s okay. That I know it isn’t his fault. That I appreciate everything he’s ever done for me. I should tell him that I know I’m really lucky he’s my brother, that I don’t know what I’d do without him.

  I should tell him all of those things. But I can’t.

  All I can do is to sit here and think about next year, and about being normal, and try to pretend none of this is happening.

  Eight

  I learned a long time ago that you can hear whatever’s going on in the living room through a vent in the upstairs hall. The voices coming through the floor are so loud I wouldn’t even have to lie flat on the metal to hear them, but I do anyhow.

  Their words circle like birds. Kevin’s is an eagle—strong, clear, and determined. Jim’s is more of a seagull, grasping at scraps and not knowing what he’s getting until it’s in his mouth. My father is the vulture, dark and rumbling with an agenda all his own that serves no one but himself, looking to destroy anything and everything in his path.

  I have to focus really, really hard to keep the voices straight in my head, to keep them from carrying me away with their sharp claws. I hook my fingers onto the metal of the vent and hold on tight. The harder I squeeze, the better my chances are of staying focused.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think. The law says I’m entitled to see him,” I hear in raspy vulture tones. There’s no point in trying to keep my other hand from seizing up at my side. Instead I focus on breathing and trying to keep my brain from seizing up too.

  “I swear to God, if you lay one hand on him—” This is from Kevin, who’s cut off by Jim, although I can’t hear Jim’s words.

  I must miss something else, because my father’s answer isn’t to Kevin.

  “Jim, this has nothing to do with you. You’ve stepped in and given him a home and I’m grateful. But he isn’t a child anymore.”

  Kevin laughs, but it isn’t his funny laugh. It’s sad and kind of mocking. It’s the kind of laugh that’s gotten him into trouble at school. He says the words “trust fund” and then there’s a sharp “shush” from Jim.

  We don’t talk about the money that people sent in after they read about what happened. I don’t really understand why they’d do that, anyhow, and Jim has barely mentioned it except to say that I’ll be able to go to college if I want to.

  “Look, that boy’s been through the ringer. You and Ava—”

  Jim has done the unthinkable. He’s mentioned my mom, and even though I’ve heard nothing from my father since the funeral, I know that isn’t going to go over well.

  “Are none of your business.” The vulture voice shuts things down and all is silent.

  I hold my breath expecting to hear a slap, expecting him to beat the hell out of Kevin like he used to.

  I press the side of my face into the vent until it hurts. I can feel each horizontal strip of metal pushing into my cheek like lines on a grill. But all I hear is nothing; if nothing has a sound.

  “Look, you haven’t even seen him in five years. What the fuck would you want with him now?” Kevin shouts. I hear stomping and Jim saying something. Then laughter swirls through the grate and around and around in my head. This laughter isn’t funny, either. It has razor-sharp edges, and teeth that bite and claw at me. I press my face harder into the grate, but not even the pain is helping. My breath is coming in little gasps. I want to float off to someplace else, but I’m just stuck here with this painful laughter in my head.

  Something tugs on the back of my shirt and I struggle because I’m sure it’s the vulture, coming to carry me back to the house. Kevin would understand, but I’m here alone and the bird’s claws are deep in my skin and pulling at me. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to fight it off, but I’m trying, trying, trying. Scratching at whatever I can reach. Kicking with my eyes closed at anything I can hit.

  And suddenly I’m slammed back against the wall. “Damn it, stop.”

  From out of nowhere Kevin is there and I’m breathing so hard I think I might pass out.

  “What the fuck?” he asks, and then runs his hand down my cheek. I reach up and feel the creases from the grate in my skin. In one place I feel sticky wet. I bring my fingers away and see blood.

  “Are you an idiot?” he asks. “Or just trying to torture yourself?”

  I don’t have an answer for him.

  “Room. Now,” he says and stalks off. I follow, resting a hand on the wall to steady myself.

  I fall into my chair and bend over with my head between my knees, trying to catch my breath. A drop of blood falls onto my jeans and I drag the bottom of my shirt across my cheek to catch the rest.

  “Look,” he lectures as he stalks back and forth in front of the closed door. “What the hell do you want me to do? I can’t be in two places at once. I can either be downstairs with them trying to make sure your worst nightmare doesn’t happen, or I can sit up here babysitting you. What’s it going to be? You’re really getting on my last nerve.”

  I look up just as he grabs the box of Kleenex and throws it at me harder than he needs to. I take one and press it against my cheek.

  Kevin sits down on his bed and says, “Maybe you should come down and deal with him. Maybe that’s just what both of you need.”

  “No way.” My father’s face isn’t one I ever want to see again.

  “So what do you want me to do?” Kevin asks, leaning toward me.


  “Go,” I say. “I’m fine.” But the words hurt as they come out of my mouth, all spiky and pointy edges.

  “Really?” he asks, like it couldn’t possibly be true. With every step he takes toward the door I feel the room getting bigger and bigger, and emptier and emptier, and I can feel myself start to panic. But no, I know he needs to be down there even if it kills me.

  I can’t say that, so I nod. He comes back and squeezes my shoulder. His voice is softer now. “Just stay here and try to hold it together. I’ll be back up as soon as he’s gone, okay?”

  I nod again.

  He leaves and I toss the bloodied tissues into the garbage. I pull out the first book I can find on the shelf, some old science fiction novel of Kevin’s, and wrap myself in a blanket and try to read. The words swim upside down like dying fish in front of my eyes. I push on my temples. My head hurts and my stomach is starting to churn again. I can feel a spin coming on. It’s so hard to stop the cycle once they start coming.

  I’m really, really tired of the past. I just want it to leave me alone and stay where it belongs. But it’s like that joke. You know, the one that says, “Don’t think about elephants” and as soon as someone says that, all you think about is not thinking about elephants, which is really thinking about elephants?

  Kevin is out playing, which means I get Mom to myself. She pulls out the book of poetry and gestures for me to sit next to her. I crawl up onto the chaise lounge, nestle my head under her arm and stick my thumb in my mouth. I’m five. Kevin would make fun of me if he was here, but Mom won’t; this is our special time.

  She reads my favorite poem in her soft voice, describing all the animals living under the water and how they’re moving in the fading light.

  I feel myself floating along with them. Bobbing in the warm water like I do in the tub. It’s warm and safe, and I like that I can be weightless in my head.