He smiles. “Well, when I really want to go crazy, I ask the ladies for extra desserts,” he says with a wink. The ladies are the nurse’s aides who bring him his meals.
Dinner is pleasant, benign. No one says what they are really thinking. I linger in Dad’s room afterward. I don’t know what I want from him. Maybe it is what Kate has—his affection, even if forgiveness is not part of the package. He has been formal with me, saving all his smiles for Jess. Kate and Jess have gone in search of microwave popcorn to go with the movie Kate brought to watch with him.
It is just the two of us, and I wait while he gets ready for bed. He waves off my offer of help. He pokes first one withered leg, and then the other, into his pajamas, holding the railing that lines the room to keep from losing his balance. I note the swelling of his ankles and feet; they look like saggy nude-colored socks. He sits on his bed, scoots back against the pillows, and pats his stomach. “Think I overdid it tonight,” he says. I watched him at dinner. He ate a half slice of roast beef and a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes before nibbling a small piece of apple pie.
“Would it be better if we left you to sleep?” I ask.
“No, no, I like having you girls here.” He pats the spot on the bed next to him and I sit down.
“Daddy?” I am hesitant; I don’t even know what to ask. He turns his light blue eyes on me. They stand out against his impossibly pale skin and ghost-white hair.
“Hmm?”
“Are you still angry with me?”
Confusion skitters across his face. “Why on earth would I be angry with you?” He waves his hand as if shooing a gnat.
“About Jess.”
“Jess?” He narrows his eyes at me, trying to remember. “That was a long time ago,” he says. “You have to let that go.”
I am stunned. Me? Let it go? How can he so casually talk about it like it did not completely change the course of my life?
“But I can’t,” I say. I will not let him off that easy. He condemned me and my daughter and then took my mother from me right when I needed her most.
“You still mad at me for not walking you down the aisle?”
“No. I didn’t care about that. I just…”
He looks at me, a hesitant smile, leans towards me, waiting for me to let him off the hook like all he did was refuse to walk me down the aisle as if that could generate a lifetime of pain.
“What?”
Impatience colors his voice. I hear Jess and Kate in the hall talking to the nurses, smell popcorn. I have to say it now. I may never have another chance.
“You’ve never apologized. What you did was wrong.”
“What did I do?” he asks. “So, I wasn’t a perfect father. That’s what you’re upset about?”
“No, that’s not it,” I say, but Jess arrives in the room with three bags of microwave popcorn and a six-pack of coke. Kate slips in behind her and flashes a wine bottle at me from her purse. The moment is gone, but I watch him all evening, trying to catch his eye. I never do. Why do I need this? Why do I need him to admit he was wrong? Will that make any of it right?
“Did you talk to Dad?” Kate asks when we are alone in the hotel again. Jess is snoring at about the same decibel as her headphones. I slip off the headphones and adjust her covers, she opens one eye, then rolls over and is asleep again instantly.
“I tried. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“Because he probably doesn’t.”
I scowl. “He’s not that far gone.”
“What do you want from him?” Kate asks.
“I just want him to say he’s sorry.”
“Why?”
“So I can forgive him.”
“Why does you forgiving him depend on him being sorry?”
“That’s how it works!” I insist.
She shakes her head. “That’s making a deal. That’s not forgiveness.”
I toss and turn for hours, mulling over Kate’s words and my father’s lack of words. I have waited and waited for him to acknowledge that he was wrong so I can forgive him, but can I forgive him without that acknowledgment? As if his apology would release the resentment I have carried for so many years, like a weighted vest strangling my heart. Without it, would I see him differently? Could I love him? It is clear now that his decision to abandon me and take my mother from me is not one that has haunted him as it has me. The pain is mine, not his. Maybe that also means it is me who has the power to remove it, not him.
24
JESS
The words painted on the sidewalk in large messy black letters are impossible to read. I can only make out the words BITCH and DIE, but the message is obvious. When Mom sees them, she goes ballistic. It’s great to be home. Maybe we should have stayed in Arizona with my crazy granddad.
“Who did this?” she screams as we stare at the blurry letters. She storms into the house to call Kevin or the police, she wasn’t sure where to start.
I sit down on the stoop and stare at the words scrawled in black paint, each letter at least two feet high. For once, I don’t cry. Maybe my tears have finally run out. Or maybe whoever wrote this has plans for me. Plans I can’t seem to carry out myself. I imagine a car going by and a gun raised in my direction. I watch the movie play in my head over and over.
Kevin and the police pull up at the same time. I lock myself in my room, put in my earbuds, and blast The Violent Femmes. Wait until they all go away.
Later, when Mom calls him, Dad says he’ll come by and paint over the words tomorrow. He told Mom he was in the middle of something, but she said he was obviously drunk.
“I’m going for a run,” I say. I need to stretch my legs after the long drive. But more than that, I need to see Helen Mitchell’s house. It draws me like a magnet. No matter what route I take, every run leads me there. I pull up to a walk as I pass the picket fence, sometimes I run my fingers along it. There is rarely any movement at the house, but once I saw her sitting in a chair by a window reading. When she looked up, I sprinted away. I don’t know why I go there or what I’m looking for, but after being gone for two days, I need to see the house and look for Helen Mitchell.
“You can’t go outside,” Mom says. “What if whoever did this is still around?”
“I kind of doubt it. Not after the police were here. Besides, they did what they came to do.”
She sighs and sadness settles like a cloak on her shoulders. I’ve always liked that I have a ‘young’ mom. She has never looked like the moms of my friends, but tonight she looks a decade older. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she says.
If she had told me flat-out that I couldn’t, I’d still go, but the weariness in her words pins me down. I can’t leave her.
“It’s okay. I don’t have to run. Let’s watch something instead.”
Periodically all evening, we hear the police drive by, windows down and scanner running. We watch a movie, but neither of us can follow the plot and we turn it off before ten o’clock.
“It’s okay, Mom; go to bed.”
“I can stay up a little later,” she offers.
I look at the circles under her eyes, her hair needs a cut. She isn’t sleeping much more than me. Most nights, I hear her in the kitchen making chamomile tea well after midnight. I think about getting up and talking to her, but what would I say? All of this is my fault. I know I have been horrible to her. I can’t help myself. She’s an easy target. She always bounces back. “I’m sorry,” I tell her now. I want to say more, but I can’t. Mom puts her arm around me.
“We’ll get through this,” she says.
I frown but don’t sa
y what I think. There is no getting through this. Not in Jefferson. It’s not like people will ever forget, and forgiveness is just something people talk about on Sundays. In Texas we make people pay for what they’ve done. That’s why we kill more people than any other state. Forgiveness is for Yankees and weak people. What I have done isn’t forgivable; it’s a brand I will wear my entire life.
She touches my arm, takes a breath like she’s going to say something, but then doesn’t. We sit like that, and I pretend to watch the TV. “I’m sorry,” I say again, but this time it’s a bigger sorry, one that encompasses everything that’s happened since that awful Sunday. She nods but doesn’t speak because she’s crying. She pulls me to her and wraps her arms around me. I stiffen. If I hug her back, I will cry.
“Maybe we should move,” I say into her shoulder.
She lets go of me. “This is our home! We have lived here all our lives. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Couldn’t we go live with Aunt Kate?”
“We are not leaving. We will figure this out. Kate has her own life. She loves you like her own, but there is no room in Minnesota for us. Besides, it’s cold as hell there.”
“Hell isn’t cold.”
“Smartass,” she says, but she smiles, reaches out and touches my face.
I get up and go to my room. I pull out The Catcher in the Rye and read back over the parts I highlighted. I copy some of them into my journal.
“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
“It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”
“This fall I think you’re riding for—it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind.”
“It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t.”
I lay down but can’t sleep. I listen to mom closing up the house, making her tea, talking softly to someone on the phone, probably Aunt Kate, making sure she got home okay. A full moon lights up the street. I open my window and lean out, looking for the words on the sidewalk, but all I can see are large black blobs as if someone has painted over the words. There’s a movement outside, and my heart freezes. A light flashes at my window. It’s coming from Dylan’s house. On and off. On and off. It has to be Dylan. I turn my light on and off twice, too. In a moment, Dylan stands under the window. He hoists himself onto the sill.
“Hi!” he says and grins at me like it’s not the middle of the night and I didn’t just find him prowling the street.
“Are you crazy? The police have been up and down our street all night,” I tell him.
“I’m not worried about them,” Dylan says, still smiling.
“Well, if they see you sitting on my window ledge, they will arrest you.”
“Nah,” he says.
“You painted over what they wrote, didn’t you?”
“My mom has all kinds of shit in her craft cupboard.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Dylan is all right. Obviously, I underestimated him. “What’s the deal with the purple hair?” Dylan has a new purple streak down the side of his head, it shimmers in the moonlight.
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
Dylan laughs. “It pissed my mom off.”
“I bet.”
“I still have some dye left; you want me to do your hair?”
“Nah. Not my style. People already stare at me.”
“Then give them a reason to,” suggests Dylan.
You just never know about people. The night is clear; the stars as bright as they can only be in Texas. Dylan points out the constellations he knows. I’ve heard of most of them, but then he tells me about Cygnus, the Swan.
“Sometimes it’s called The Northern Cross, too. Anyway, Cygnus was racing with a friend across the sky and they flew too close to the sun. Their chariots burned up instantly, and they fell to the earth. But Cygnus’ friend was trapped at the bottom of a river and died.”
“That’s a horrible myth!”
“I’m not finished.”
“Well?” I prompt him.
“So Cygnus asked Zeus to help him, and Zeus told him he could turn him into the form of a swan so he could dive in the water and get his friend’s body and give it a proper burial.”
“Did he do it?”
“He did. The only catch was that he’d stay a swan.”
“Wow. That’s a good friend.”
“That’s what Zeus said, so he placed an image of Cygnus in the night sky to honor his unselfishness.”
“Cool.”
I love the stories in the sky. They beat the ones down here.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” I tell him.
He looks at me very seriously. “If anybody else gives you a hard time, I’ll have your back,” he offers.
“That’s sweet,” I tell him, “Thanks.”
I have no more faith Dylan can protect me than that his parents would applaud a few more streaks of color in his hair. He’s sweet, though. Just then a police car comes up the street. Dylan drops to the ground and sprints for his house. I close my window. In my journal I write,
“It’s easy to judge someone you don’t know, but much harder once you know them.”
— — —
On Monday, I go to all my classes for the first time since the accident. (Mom always lowers her voice when she says those words, so now I’ve begun doing the same thing in my mind.) It has been over a month and it’s like stepping into another dimension. I walk down the halls, braced for the onslaught of anger, but I’m met with stares and silence. When a guy bumps my shoulder in passing and mutters, ‘Bitch,’ it almost comes as a relief. My teeth hurt from clenching them and I have perfected the ability to look without seeing, staring right past people and never making eye contact.
I enter my Calculus class, creating a noticeable pause in conversation. Like a marionette operator, I force my legs to move and my body to take a seat. Most people in this class are seniors or nerdy underclassmen, so they are more focused on the board than my reappearance. Sheila always made fun of the ‘parade of freaks’ in Calculus, but I’m beginning to appreciate them. The bell rings, and I take my time organizing my stuff, letting the other students leave before me.
“Good to see you, Jess,” calls Mr. Cafferty when I’m almost out the door. I give him a grateful smile.
I catch a glimpse of Sheila before Latin, but she purposely ignores me. Kayla and Jamie circle her, her faithful disciples. They’ve worshipped Sheila for years, following her lead on everything, but Sheila always kept them at arm’s length, unless she needed them for something, like a ride to Johnny Mac’s before she got her license. Kayla sees me but looks away and doesn’t return my wave.
“Whatever,” I say out loud to no one in particular.
The few people who speak to me don’t mention the accident; they just say it’s good to see me, although none of them are people I’m particularly glad to see. Casey is in my Latin class. When I walk in everyone watches to see if I will speak to him. Thanks to Sheila, it’s common knowledge Casey sent the text that caused the accident.
When I walk by his desk, he glances up at me and then looks back at his homework. My regular seat is right behind him, but I find a seat in the back and pull out my work.
At lunch, I go to Ms. Ellen’s office. I can’t bring myself to go near my locker, so I carry all my books everywhere.
“Tha
t’s quite a load,” she says when I drop my bag in her office. “How’d it go?”
“It sucked, but I did it.”
“I’m here if you’d like to talk.”
I pull my lunch out of my backpack. The sight of my sandwich makes me nauseous, so I shove it back in the bag and open my water bottle instead.
“Talking about it might help,” says Ms. Ellen, her open face ready, she leans back in her chair.
Talking about any of it seems pointless. How I feel doesn’t change anything. Coach Mitchell is dead. It’s still my fault. “Everyone either stares at me or tries not to stare at me.”
Ms. Ellen nods. “They’re curious.”
I shrug. “I think it’s better if people stare at me than if they ignore me.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if they stare at me, at least they see me. Ignoring me makes it like I don’t exist, or maybe they wish I didn’t.” Like I do.
She nods.
“And what about this boy who sent the text?” asks Ms. Ellen.
I look away. “He’s nobody,” I tell her. I don’t know what I feel about Casey anymore. Mostly, I try not to think about him.
“But you said he asked you out in the text. Did you ever answer him?”
“It’s kind of impossible now.”
“What makes it impossible?”
I bite my lip. I look out the window. She doesn’t get it. “It just is.”
It’s a windy day and leaves are falling from the trees lining the sidewalk. I watch a leaf fall to the ground and tumble along until it gets caught under a bush.
“Why would the accident change this boy’s mind?”
I look at Ms. Ellen. Is she that dense?
“Because it was his text and now Coach Mitchell is dead?”
Ms. Ellen sighs. I pack up my things. When I get up to leave, she says, “I want you to do something for me.”
“What?” I just want to get away from her and all her caring about me, but she’s so earnest, I wait.
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