These Gentle Wounds

by Helene Dunbar

  I look over at Jim, who is examining the wood grain of the table like he’s never seen it before.

  “Which means?” This time Kevin beats me to it. I don’t have to look at him to know his teeth are clenched together.

  “It means, Gordie, that while it won’t necessarily be granted, your father is within his legal rights to step forward and ask to play some role in your life.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I know that I’m rocking, embarrassingly, back and forth in my chair, but it feels like every atom in the room is pushing me in a different direction. One more word about him is going to make me break into so many pieces that not even Kevin, not even Sarah, could put me back together.

  I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, even though he’ll never know that his dumb kid, who is meant to be dead, sat at this table and sobbed. But the tears are stinging the back of my eyes like the boric acid Kevin uses in his cooking and I don’t know where they can go but out.

  As they start to spill down my face, I clench my hands as tight as I can, one pulling the leather of the bracelet hard enough to dig into my wrist. I know it should hurt, but all I feel is numb.

  Everything and everyone in the room fades away until, finally, Jim asks the only question left in a voice that sounds sad and guilty and filled with more emotion than I’ve ever heard come from his mouth. “Is that what he’s doing? Asking to take Gordie back?”

  “He’s … ” Ms. DeSilva starts and I close my eyes, waiting for her answer. “Considering it,” she finishes just as the bracelet snaps and breaks.

  Kevin tries to grab at me as I launch out of the chair, but I swerve around him, snatch my bag, and pound up the stairs.

  I’m gasping for air. For a minute I think about breaking the window, but even I’m not stupid enough to trust myself right now.

  Jim is always telling Kevin to give me space when I’m upset, but my brother never listens. I’m not sure why he’s listening now, or if I want him here, or if I want to be alone, or …

  I rub the back of my neck, hard, wishing that everything in my head would stop screaming.

  I rip open my backpack. Papers fly everywhere. I rummage around until I find Sarah’s MP3 player, and then I remember I don’t have any headphones because I don’t listen to music.

  But Kevin does.

  I rifle through his desk drawer. I move some receipts, coins, and an unopened pack of condoms around until I see the wires peeking out from under a photograph of us. Of all of us.

  Kevin never lets me put pictures of Mom up on the walls, not even on my side of the room. He says he can’t look at them, and that they’d just screw me up, and maybe he’s right.

  Actually, I’m not sure if it’s the condoms or the photo that freaks me out the most. It feels like my brother’s been lying to me in more ways than one.

  I pick the photo up. Finding it is like discovering a present under the Christmas tree you didn’t even know you wanted until you took all the wrapping off.

  I know where we are.

  The backyard wasn’t big, but there were a couple of old trees and a swing set. There was enough room for me and Kevin to play catch.

  We’re sitting on a blue-and-red-plaid blanket. The twins are propped up in the front, near the lilac bush. Kayla is sitting on Mom’s lap. Kevin and I sit next to each other. I’m tucked under his arm, which is draped around my neck.

  I’m holding a hockey puck in my hands even though it’s summer. There’s a picnic basket off to the other side and Mom is smiling, happy. I wonder who took the photo. I wonder who was there with us to witness and preserve her happiness.

  I try to remember that day. I try to remember the smell of lilacs, but all I can think of is the smell of Sarah’s hair. I try to remember the feel of the puck in my hands, and, more than anything, the feeling of Mom sitting next to me, us all being together.

  There is a question in my head. One I try never to ask. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to push the question out, but it won’t leave. It knocks, knocks, knocks on the side of my brain, demanding to be answered, but I can’t answer it. The question is, “What if?” What if Mom hadn’t done what she did? Where would we all be? Would she be better? Would she still wear her hair long? Would Jason like hockey? What would it have been like to grow up normal? What would I be like?

  I reach down to snap the bracelet, but then remember it broke. I need to find the other one. I need air. I need these questions without answers to be gone. They make me feel like I’m drowning again. I …

  I take the picture and sit on the bed. I can’t stop looking at Mom’s smile. At how relaxed Kevin looks, grinning wide for the camera.

  I even look at the kids. I remember how they were all so quiet in the back of the car until they weren’t anymore and how I just left them there. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed inside the car with them like I was supposed to.

  I shouldn’t, but I miss my mom. I can’t help it.

  Tears are pouring down my face like rain, like the river. My shirt sleeve is soggy and full from trying to wipe them away. I give up and just let them flow and spin me around like a whirlpool.

  Somewhere a door opens, but it sounds far, far away.

  The bed dips as Ms. DeSilva puts her arms around my shoulders and pulls me toward her.

  The way she’s holding me reminds me so much of Mom, I forget I should be embarrassed to be falling apart like a terrified little kid. I lean into her warm arms and close my eyes. I can feel myself shaking and crying at the same time.

  Somewhere, far off, I hear that Sylvia Plath poem Mom used to read. “Aquatic Nocturne,” it was called. The music of my mom’s voice wraps around me and I’m five again, curled up on the chair next to her, sucking my thumb and imagining life under the water. The edges of my mouth curve into a lazy smile as I drown, drunkenly, in the moment of a memory I never want to end.

  I can picture the sea creatures, shining in the light, floating weightlessly. I want to be like them. Free.

  My hand clenches around a section of the bunched-up comforter like it’s a life raft. If I can hang on tight enough, maybe I can stay here where it’s warm and safe. Where everything in the water is beautiful, and friendly, and not crying or praying. Where it’s okay that I didn’t run for help on The Night Before. Where it’s okay that I didn’t save the kids. Where it’s okay that I didn’t die.

  Somewhere under the words of the poem I hear soft shhh, shhh sounds that make my breathing slow down and most of my tears go back to wherever it is in your body they live.

  The arm around my shoulders tightens and then releases. I surrender and open my heavy eyes, which drop a fresh set of tears onto my shirt.

  I want to apologize for acting like this, for being like this, but I don’t trust my voice to work or my tongue to form any of the tangle of words that are bouncing around in my head.

  Instead, I wait for her to tell me that I need to grow up, that I should have stayed in that car, that my father will be doing the right thing if he just tosses me into a hospital and throws away the key.

  But here’s the thing. She doesn’t.

  “You have your mom’s eyes, you know,” she says, staring at the photo she’s taken out of my hand.

  I’ve heard that since I was a kid. That my eyes, which are the green of worn sea glass, are just like my mom’s.

  But for the last five years, everyone has expected me to hate my mom for what she did. Even Kevin. It’s like his own feelings are so complicated he can’t put them into words, which means we rarely talk about her. And when other people talk about her, there’s always something snide and sharp behind their words.

  Even when I’ve tried—just because it seems to be what everyone wants—I’ve never been able to hate her. Instead, I just miss her a whole lot. And thinking about Ms. DeSilva’s words, thinking there might be something left
of my mother in me, actually makes me try to smile a little.

  “It’s going to be okay, Gordie. I promise,” she says.

  I want to tell her not to say that. She can’t possibly know. But I want to believe her so badly that I’m shaking with it.

  Nothing I could say will change anything that’s happening, but I hear “It isn’t fair” coming out of my lips.

  Even I know it’s the worst kind of whiny complaint and doesn’t even come close to scratching the surface of anything. I’ve tried so hard to roll with the punches, but I don’t understand why they keep coming. When does it all stop? When does it not have to hurt anymore?

  I expect her to tell me more of the legal stuff, and how getting my mom pregnant entitles my father to all of the terrible things he’s done and all he has yet to do, but she doesn’t.

  She just tightens her hold on me and says, “You’re right. I know that. So much of what’s happened to you isn’t fair.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes as she rocks me like a little kid, back and forth on the bed.

  “I bet you get angry sometimes,” she says.

  What’s really strange is that I usually don’t. I leave all the anger for Kevin. Sometimes I feel like I’m a sponge, soaking up all the sadness for both of us.

  I don’t know how to say that to her, so I shrug.

  “You know what, though?”

  I shake my head, because I really have no idea about anything right now.

  “I think you’re very brave,” she says.

  A laugh pushes out of me. Kevin is the brave one, not me. There’s nothing brave about what I did The Night Before, or when I swam out of Mom’s car and left the kids there. There’s nothing brave about not being strong enough to keep myself from cracking into a million, sobbing pieces.

  “I mean it,” she says and strokes my hair. “And some day you’re going to realize it too.”

  If she believes that, maybe she’s the crazy one.

  The room is silent except for the sound of the blood racing through my head, my shuddering breaths, and the squeak of the bed. Time passes.

  “The law is very black-and-white,” she says in a far-away voice. “But the court is set up to look out for kids like you. We’re going to take this one step at a time, together.”

  I look up at her and blink to refocus my eyes.

  “In the meantime,” she continues, “will you do me a favor?”

  She removes her arm from my shoulder and I’m as cold as if I’d just stripped naked in the middle of an ice rink. She holds out a card to me.

  “This is my business card. It has my cell phone number on the back. I want you to promise that if you need to talk, or if anything happens that you can’t deal with, you’ll call me.”

  I take the card, and it feels a little like the way Kevin’s hand feels on the back of my shirt when we’re up on the walk.

  “Sometimes people put a phone number in their cell and instead of listing a name with it, they put the initials I, C, E. ‘ICE,’ for ‘In Case of Emergency.’ Just think of me as your emergency number.”

  I think it’s kind of funny about the initials and all, but really, it feels surprisingly good to know there’s someone besides Kevin who gets what a mess I am and still gives a shit.

  She takes my chin in one of her hands and looks right into my eyes. “I know it might not feel like it, but you’re going to be okay, Gordie. Just hang in there for me. Promise?”

  My eyes follow as she gets up and heads to the door. What I really want is for her to come back and put her arm around me and just let me cry some more, but saying that would make me sound like a nutcase, so I let her go.

  After she leaves, I pick up the photo again. Staring into Mom’s eyes is kind of like staring into a mirror, but at the same time I try to see something in there that says “I’m going to kill my kids,” and I just can’t read that in her expression.

  I give up and put the photo down, along with the business card.

  Sarah’s MP3 player is still on the bed, so I plug the headphones in and push them into my ears, finally getting them to stay and not fall out. I’m not sure I really want to listen to anything, but after a few minutes of spinning the wheel, I see a playlist with my name on it and curiosity gets the best of me.

  I push “play” and the music starts. At first it makes me uncomfortable. It isn’t like I haven’t heard music in five years, it’s that I haven’t heard it being shot right into my brain like this. I squirm and sit on my hands to keep from ripping the headphones out. Then I can’t help it. I have to reach up and take one of them out. I have to walk over to the door and open it and listen to make sure nothing horrible is happening downstairs. That I’m not making the same mistake I made The Night Before.

  Everything downstairs is pretty quiet. All I hear is the soft murmur of voices. So I put the buds back in and sit down on the bed and close my eyes. I try to focus on the music. Sarah’s music.

  I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t it. I thought flutes were supposed to be gentle and floaty. There is something gritty about this. These notes have teeth.

  Sarah told me she learned to play from an old British guy that lived down her street who was in a rock band a long time ago. She stood and watched him playing on his porch one day and begged her parents to pay for lessons. It gave her something to do when they were fawning over Luke, she said. Playing took the place of parents, friends, everything.

  There’s a guy singing and his words aren’t angry. But Sarah’s flute behind him is. It makes sounds I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before. They’re beautiful and ugly all at once. I let them wrap up around me and try to understand why she’s so angry. I guess it’s her parents, but really, I know nothing about normal families.

  I let myself slip off into the middle of the songs. They circle around me and carry me to somewhere else. Listening to her play makes me feel like she’s next to me. I wonder what it will be like to watch her show, to see her playing these angry and dramatic notes. I wonder what I’ll see in her eyes.

  I don’t know how much time passes before I feel a tug on the wires going into my ears. I open my eyes to see Kevin sitting on the blue comforter. He leans over and gently pulls the headphones out.

  The sudden silence in the room is like coming out of a spin.

  “What are you listening to?” he asks. I can tell he’s split between asking whether I’ve lost my mind and trying to hide his surprise that I’m listening to anything at all.

  “Sarah’s in a band,” I say. My voice is hoarse, like I’ve been screaming. “She wants us to come see them play on Thursday.”

  I hope against hope we’ll just sit here and talk about music, and plans, and whether he has enough gas in his car to get us there and back. That we can pretend that nothing else is going on. But I know that’s impossible, given that I’m sitting here covered in old tears and teetering on the edge of crazy.

  He picks the photo up off the nightstand and stares at it for a million years.

  “You look like her, you know,” he says, not taking his eyes off it. I peer over his arm, trying to see her like he does. Then he crashes his shoulder into mine. “And you might be just as nuts.”

  “She wasn’t … ” I start, but I can’t finish the sentence. I grab the photo out of his hand and put it back on the nightstand.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

  “What? Sarah’s show?” I’m only half being a smart-ass.

  “No joke, Ice. I think we need some sort of a plan here.”

  A plan? Plans are for people who have options, who can choose A instead of B. No one is letting me choose anything. I lean back into the wall and wipe my face off on the bottom of my shirt. I search my head for options. I can’t find any. My hand starts jerking and since it’s only Kevin, I let it. It feels like an out-of-control drum
mer is playing against my leg.

  “Like, leaving?” I ask. It’s the only thing we’ve talked about.

  Kevin leans up against the other wall and wraps his arms around himself. “I don’t know. I don’t think leaving really makes sense.”

  “We could hitch to Canada,” I offer. We’re about twenty minutes from the border. Sometimes Jim talks about how he used to cross it for dinner. I always thought it was cool to imagine going all the way to another country just to eat.

  Kevin runs a hand through his hair. “We have no money, Gordie. And no passports. What do you want to do? Live on the street?”

  “Maybe if we ask Jim, he’ll give me access to the money in the bank,” I say, but even as I say it, I know there’s zero chance of that.

  Kevin looks at me like I’ve finally lost it. “That’s not happening. Wouldn’t it just be easier to kill him?”

  There’s a challenge in his eyes. I think he actually believes that killing my father is a good option.

  “Kill him.” I roll the words around in my mouth. It would end this whole thing once and for all. But as much as I might want to, I know I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not because murder is wrong or anything as moral as that. What’s keeping me from committing patricide is actually far more selfish. “We can’t,” I mumble. “You’re too close to eighteen.”

  I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t get it.

  “If we got caught, they’d send us to different prisons. I’d never see you again,” I explain.

  Kevin squints, staring at me. I can see him fighting against a smile as he shakes his head. “You are nuts. You know that, right?”

  I know he’s just kidding, but then his body tenses and he slaps the wall hard enough to make me jump. “Damn, I don’t know what to do.”

  “I don’t know either,” I say. My voice sounds small and far away, like it’s coming from under water. I’m suddenly so tired, all I want to do is sleep for a long, long time. “You don’t have to do anything,” I add, but the words take so much effort that I’m not sure I’ve even said them until he replies.