His father focused on the lit end of his cigarette, puffing until the cherry glowed a healthy orange. He inhaled and then let a long, thin stream of smoke out the corner of his mouth, prolonging the moment, Simon thought, maybe even relishing it. Simon braced himself for anger or disbelief, even pity. Instead, his father said, “I thought you had.”
“What? You did?”
“Give me some credit, Simon. I’m not an idiot.”
“But then . . . why didn’t you say anything? Why did you let me lie to you like that?”
“Because I wasn’t going to shame you into telling the truth. You’d tell me when you needed to.” He paused. “And isn’t that what happened?”
“Jesus, Dad.” Simon had to laugh. Of course his father would sit silently by and watch Simon dig himself into such an absurd and unnecessary hole, the behavior fitting Michael in its passive-aggressive combination of tact and cruelty by omission.
“I don’t know why you dropped out though,” Michael said. “I was hoping you’d tell me that sometime.”
“I had some difficulties with anatomy lab.” His father tapped his cigarette expectantly against the ashtray’s edge. “I, uh, well . . . I guess I kind of had a breakdown.” Why not call it what it was? “I saw Amelia everywhere. The way she was in the morgue, I mean, that Amelia. I still see her like that sometimes, in dreams mostly, sometimes just when I close my eyes.”
“But it was worse then?”
“Yeah. Much worse. The girl we were dissecting . . . I guess, for me, she became Amelia, and I couldn’t stand what we were doing to her.”
Michael stared down at the kitchen table. He rubbed his thumb across the wood, smearing spilled ash into the grain. “What have you been doing since you left school?”
“I don’t want to talk about that. But it’s over. I hope it is, anyway.”
Michael nodded as though he’d expected this answer. “Could you go back if you wanted to?”
“Not to that school, no.”
“A different one?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Then do it.” Michael lifted his eyes from the table. “You look at my life and you see a waste, don’t you?”
Simon flushed. “No, I—”
“Stop.” Michael raised his hand. “I know you do. You think I’ve given up, and it’s true, in some ways I have. But I also hoped I might put my ruin to some use. I thought I could take on most of the grief and pain over what happened to Amelia so you wouldn’t have to. You’d be free to live.”
“Wait,” Simon said. “It’s not like there’s a fixed amount of suffering, and if you take on more, there’s less left for me. It doesn’t work like that.”
“It can if you let it. My life is done changing or improving, Simon. This”—he gestured as though to take in the house, Rockaway, the available world—“this is what’s left for me.” The words bordered on hyperbole, but the way his father spoke was restrained and shorn of self-pity. “I’m not telling you to forget her. But, you want to make your sister’s death mean anything? Go out and do something good with your life.”
Michael fell silent then. Simon felt the warmth of the whiskey spread through his body. The kitchen smelled of burned coffee and sausage, a cocooning thickness to the warm air. Frost edged the windowpanes, and the sky outside was heavy and gray as poured concrete.
“Dad,” Simon said.
“Yeah?”
“Is it all right if I stay here for a while? Just until . . . I don’t know exactly. Until I don’t have to anymore.”
“You don’t have to ask.” Michael stood and brought Simon’s dirty plate to the sink. “Stay as long as you need.”
• • •
Simon left his father in the kitchen and carried his bag up the stairs, to his old bedroom. He turned on the lamp and sat on the mattress. He wondered where Maria was at that exact moment. It was difficult to imagine her progress when he didn’t know where she was going, what her plan was. What they had done together—what she had forced him into doing—was unforgivable, and their complicity would bind them forever, no matter how far the physical distance between them. An invisible, unbreakable string. She was strong—he knew that—stronger than he could have imagined, but still he feared that her suffering wasn’t finished. He hoped, despite everything, he was wrong about that. He hoped that her wounds, all of them, of body and psyche and spirit, would heal with a perfection he knew wasn’t often granted. He hoped she might one day discover a peace that didn’t rely upon the promise of violence, that she might one day be happy. But he also knew that what he hoped for her—what he wanted for her—didn’t matter anymore. This was her own life. It wasn’t about what he wanted, and it never had been.
Simon pulled Amelia’s lockbox out of his duffel and held it for a few minutes in his lap. He spun the combination and removed her diary. He ran his thumb over the red cover, the edges of the pages wavy and brittle. Then he removed the elastic strap and opened the book, and he began to read.
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The Dismantling Page 29