“Okay,” I plead. “Okay, okay.”
Will I someday drown in my emotions? Will an undertow drag me right down under a crazy sea of sadness and happiness and rage? Maybe.
“That was rough,” Key whispers. “I —”
“Maybe you’re right. But that’s still a ways off.”
Silence.
“Makes you wonder, though, how it is I didn’t kill Dad.”
“So you do think I killed Dad.”
“No, Key. I’m not saying you killed him. I know you didn’t. I’m only wondering how I didn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Key admits. “You might have two nights ago.”
The night my father beat up Key. “You’re right. What he did —”
“But I needed you,” Key said. “And he needed you. Remember? So you let him go.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t always have to follow your emotions to some terrible place.”
I see the trap. If I’m at the mercy of my emotions, then I’ll go wherever they lead me, and I don’t ever have to take real responsibility for being a monster. If I’m not at the mercy of my emotions, then I can exercise some control and one day become a reasonable, mature human being capable of having friends, a girlfriend who lasts, a job and a family — and I will have the responsibility of getting myself under control.
The fact is sometimes one instinct outweighs another. The night my father attacked my brother, my instinct to help Key finally outweighed my instinct to kill my father. I felt no more in control of myself that night than any other. My mind’s an ocean.
“Key,” I say, breaking the quiet, “we have to talk about what happened in the ravine. Just us. Before we talk to anyone else.”
“Before the police,” he says. “A delayed response.”
“Believable,” I say. “In our shock, we didn’t call. Or —”
“We can call after we discover what happened, sometime in the future, an hour or two from now.”
“Something like that.”
Key shook his head. “It’s a lie, Rad.”
“I know. But what choice do we have?”
THREE
I was standing with Dad right up until he was gone.
I watched him, Rad. As he fell.
It all happened in silence. Even the trees, the branches that broke, and his back and his head and his legs —
Not a sound.
When I got to the platform, he asked me, “Did you pass my wife on your way down?”
Mom, Rad. He asked if I passed Mom, as if he didn’t know who I was. I know it’s not strange anymore, but it still makes me shiver. I said no.
“You didn’t see Diane?” Dad looked confused. “That’s strange. She just left, and I could hear her on the ladder. I was counting her steps. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, all the way up, and then you came. How could you miss her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t explain it.”
“Hm,” Dad said and searched my face.
“How is she?” I said.
“Diane? I can’t say for sure. Too happy, maybe. Excited, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”
“Why do you think?”
“I can’t guess,” Dad said, “but I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’s dead.”
I thought I might break apart right there.
“You thought I didn’t remember my wife’s dead?” He shook his head. “Diane’s dead all right, eight years, but I couldn’t tell her that.”
Dad watched me for a couple of seconds. He said, “What brings you here?”
“You do. Do you know who I am?”
“I guess I should,” he said.
“Would you like me to tell you who I am?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’m Key.”
Dad frowned, smiled, frowned, smiled.
“Diane’s son,” I said. “Your son.”
“Ha!” he laughed. “Last time I saw you, you were a skinny kid, thirteen or fourteen, all eyes and lips and feet. Look at you now. Come here. Let me give you a hug.”
He held me, Rad. When was the last time Dad hugged us for his sake or ours? And he held me too hard. Clinging for life, maybe. I don’t know. Then he stepped back away from me, arm’s length, to take me in, you know? I thought he’d go over the side right then. But I had him in my hands, and he had me in his. He wouldn’t let go.
“I miss Diane,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “You loved each other.”
“Never a truer word,” he said. “Whether I die now or in forty years, I will always miss my wife’s light.” He frowned again. “What happened to your face? Who did that to you?”
“My brother, Konrad,” I said. Sorry I blamed you.
“Oh?” Dad’s eyes flickered, but he pushed some thought away, or his memory. “You boys should take it easy. You got the worst of it, I guess.”
I couldn’t tell him, Rad. I couldn’t tell him what he’d done to me.
* * *
ı
I don’t know when I took Key’s hand. It didn’t seem strange. We used to hold hands to and from school until fourth grade, right up until I had my butt kicked for it by —
Doesn’t matter who. I got beat up for holding my brother’s hand.
And I’m holding Key’s hand now at the kitchen table, our father lying dead behind our house, his body food for insects, birds, and mice.
I hold my brother’s hand while he tells me about what happened on the platform. I let go so he can wipe his nose with his shirt. I have to wipe my own face, and I realize I’m wearing a T-shirt Key gave me on our last birthday: World’s Okayest Brother.
“Key, I have to know. Why did you go down there in the first place, to the platform?”
Key snorts and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “What do you mean?”
“We don’t ever go down there. So?”
Key sits very still, and I let go of his hand.
“Key?”
“I saw him go down, Rad. I saw him take the ladder.”
“And?”
“And I had a bad feeling.”
“What kind of bad feeling?”
“I don’t know. After the other night —”
“Did you want to talk to him about what happened?”
“There’s no talking to Dad. And anyway, he didn’t remember anything about it.”
“He almost killed you, Key. How could he forget?”
“I don’t know, Rad. I don’t think he was pretending not to know.”
“Did you go to confront him?”
“No. I don’t know. I didn’t trust what he would do. I thought he might jump or something.”
“Or something?”
“You were there, Rad. He almost killed me. You said so yourself. Maybe he felt guilty.”
“You just said he acted like nothing had happened. He said he missed Mom. Is that when he fell, Key? After he told you he missed Mom?”
Key shakes his head. “No.”
“Maybe he jumped.”
“No, Konrad.” He raises his hands. “Let me think.”
“Maybe he remembered and felt guilty and jumped. Maybe —”
“Rad. No.” Key clenches his fists against his eyes. “No, he didn’t jump.”
“What then?”
“Something like a dream. And when I woke up, Dad was falling away.”
“A dream? I don’t understand.” I watch my brother.
“No,” Key says. “I don’t either.”
* * *
ı
I wasn’t exactly honest when I said we were happy right up until my mother died. That would have been easier, I think. If we went instantly from happy to unhappy. But the true story is a little more complicated. It alway
s is.
Seven months before my mother died, everything in our family changed. Key and I don’t quite remember the moment the same way, but we agree deep trouble started the night my father asked for a drink.
My father, a lawyer then, got home from work one night a little on the early side, six or so, and emptied his pockets as he always did — his keys, wallet, pen knife, and change — onto the dining table. He left these things on the table with three gift-wrapped packages.
“Where is everybody?”
My mother was fixing dinner, and Key and I were playing in the basement. By the time Key and I got upstairs, our parents were kissing, and we greeted our father. We saw the gifts, and my father put his finger over his mouth to keep my brother and me quiet.
“I have news and I have gifts,” our father said. “Which do you want first?”
“The news,” Key said.
“All right, the gifts,” my father said, and he winked at Key. Everything up to now felt right. My father in good humor, teasing Key and me, and my mother right there, close.
Then the train came off the tracks.
“Diane,” my father said. “Pour me a drink.”
My mother hesitated. “Sure,” she said, a little slow. “Water?”
“No, Diane, an actual drink. Don’t we have scotch?”
Key and I would count three things wrong with this exchange. First, my father only ever used my mother’s name when he was stressed, or to call to her from another part of the house, or when he was around acquaintances, people we didn’t really know well. Otherwise, our father called my mother by pet names. That night, before he asked for his drink, my father didn’t seem anxious, my mother was standing right in front of him, and he had his family around, no friends, strangers, or acquaintances.
Second, my father only drank alcohol to pour a sip from a bottle of wine he’d bought my mother, to test it. Every so often a beer, but he never looked as if he enjoyed it.
Third, my father didn’t sound like my father. He always had a low voice, and he tended to speak slow, almost with a drawl. But there he was, growling and biting off his words. The request, the order for a drink, which came without his usual politeness, without his please and thank you. It sounded threatening. As in, “Pour me a drink, Diane, or you’ll be sorry.”
Key and I glanced at each other and at our father.
He handed me a gift without looking at me. “We have scotch, yes?”
“Yes,” my mother said. “Absolutely. One scotch coming up.”
“Rad,” my father said, “you’re dawdling. Open it up.”
It was a model I would have to put together. An airplane. Plastic. Whatever.
“Like it, buddy?” The word buddy sounded all wrong, as if he actually said twerp.
“Yes —”
“My drink,” he interrupted. I knew right then, my father had already been drinking, might already be drunk, and I was scared. “Leave the bottle right there, Diane.”
He handed Key his gift, my mother hers. “Which of my two lovelies should go first?” he said and drank back the scotch.
“I’ll wait for Mom,” Key said.
“No, darling,” Mom answered, “you first.”
“Well, one of you, please,” my father spat. “Key, here, I’ll help you.” He took the gift out of my brother’s hands and opened it up.
A brunette Barbie, for my brother who already —
“Take it,” my father handed over the doll. “It’s your last one for a long, long time.”
Key smoothed the doll’s hair and looked at Mom, who was staring at my father as he poured himself another drink.
My fear grew and grew, and I thought I might be sick. This man wasn’t my father.
“John,” my mother said. She only used his first name when she was nervous or needed him to focus. “What’s happening?”
“We’re sitting here, and my family’s opening gifts. That’s what’s happening.” He drank. “Your turn.”
“John, this isn’t right.”
It seemed to take my father a minute or more to put down his empty glass and stand up. He seemed to be gathering all his strength. He held out my mother’s gift. “Open it, Diane.”
It sounded like, “Open it, Diane, or I’ll kill you right here where you stand, in front of the children.”
What with my father who was not my father, his voice not his voice; with my frightened mother, my mystified brother; with all the quiet and slowness and promise of violence; with the gifts that felt heavy as lead; with all my fear and helplessness —
I wet myself.
* * *
ı
I’ve told you about my emotions. I got worse after my mother died. Much worse, no surprise. But when I was very young, I used to shake, throw tantrums, cry, and laugh and laugh until I’d pass out. Seriously, I’d lose consciousness laughing. And I’d wet myself.
I don’t wet myself at all anymore. That’s a good thing. I peed myself just once after that time in front of my mother and brother and the man I had known until then as my father, the man who would become a grief-stricken derelict. But that last accident was only a few years ago, when I was fourteen. It had nothing to do with fear or rage or laughing. I had forgotten to go to the bathroom before bed, and I dreamed of a very long and very satisfying pee, only to wake up having actually peed. I am being honest about this because I think everyone, or nearly everyone, has peed when they would rather have not peed, when they didn’t expect they would pee, as in their sleep, or when they laughed, or when they were afraid or in pain. And I don’t think I will ever wake from a pee dream without panicking. Honestly, I don’t understand why we wouldn’t pee during a vivid pee dream.
So, I have to correct myself. I haven’t peed myself for years, but I might pee myself sometime in the future if I feel hurt, frightened, sick, or have an especially lifelike pee dream.
The last time I wet myself in company, though, I was eight. It happened that night my father asked for a drink, the same night, he later told my mother, he got into a fist fight with a client and then punched his partner, threw a printer against a wall, quit his job, and decided to withdraw from the life he had made with my mother.
The only dispute about that event is what happened after I wet myself.
I claim my father covered his face and sat down, and that my mother hurried me and my brother to the bathroom, got me into the tub, and found me fresh clothes. I don’t know why my father covered his face, what he wanted to hide.
Key claims my father covered his face to hide his crying, and then my mother hurried me, and so on.
“You always think he covered his face because he was angry,” Key says, when we get into it, which might even have been as recently as a month ago. “You don’t remember Dad crying because you were embarrassed and afraid and couldn’t see straight.”
My brother’s right, of course, about what I was feeling. But I don’t remember my father crying. Not then, not ever. He didn’t cry when the police came to let us know my mother had been killed. He didn’t cry when we buried her. He didn’t cry with Key and me when the love of his life, and our mother, evaporated. He didn’t cry until —
To my brother, our father’s crying matters.
“He was sad,” Key argues. “And something in him had died.”
“That’s no excuse for anything at all.”
This is the argument between Key and me. But what about my mother? Maybe the crying, if my father did cry, forced my mother to hold on after my father gave up. Maybe she would have held on all the way until now, never divorcing him, never pushing him out, taking care of him forever. My mother, like Key, might have thought the crying meant my father still had a heart, even if it was broken for reasons none of us knew. And as long as he had a heart, she would stick with him.
I don’t know.
I pe
ed myself and, according to Key, my father fell back into his chair crying and covered his face. A little while later, as my mother was washing down my legs in the tub, and my brother was sitting on the closed toilet examining the toilet paper, the wallpaper, the back of his hand, anything but his half-naked and humiliated brother, I said to my mother, “What did Dad give you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t open it.”
“Jewelry,” Key said.
“A diamond necklace,” I said.
My brother unwrapped that gift five years later when my father finally ran out of money. A bracelet of pearls Key sold to pay for electricity, or our gas bill, or for my glasses, or for food, or for water.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
* * *
ı
I’m leading you to an island, our island, across a bridge I’m constructing as we go.
My father and my mother loved each other. We were happy, happy in our silliness, and then we became unhappy.
When my mother, Key, and I went back out to the dining room, my father was gone.
“Just stay here,” our mother said. “The two of you. Go upstairs to your rooms and wait.”
Key and I watched our mother leave, and then we followed.
My mother found our father sitting behind the wheel of his car, his forehead on the steering wheel, keys in the ignition.
“John?”
No answer.
“John, what’s happening?”
“I’m done.”
“Done with what?”
“With my job. With this life.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done.” And with that, my father started the car and backed out of the driveway.
We didn’t see him for four days.
That night, when Key and I were eight, after our father gave us gifts and asked for a drink, the night I wet myself, he left. He wouldn’t answer his phone. He made no effort to contact us.
Gone.
My mother, maybe terrified he’d left for good, could only wait. Four days, as far as Key and I could tell, my mother went without sleep, without food.
Island Page 3