by Sandra Block
I hear my mom call again, and I shut the closet door. When I come down, Dahlia is standing there, her arms crossed and looking awkward. Relief fills her face as I join them. “Ready to eat?” I ask.
“We have been,” my dad answers, which is his way of being an asshole as usual.
“It’s fine,” my mom says, which is her way of trying to defend me as usual. We all sit around the formal dining room table. I told Mom not to make a big dinner or anything, but she did anyway and said we’d have leftovers tomorrow for Christmas.
“Mmm,” Dahlia says, scooping out her tofu dish and green beans and helping herself to salad. “I was starved.”
“Me too,” I say, laying a shiny slice of ham on my plate. It’s almost eight o’clock already. We had to leave a bit late, because we did a big reboot while none of the lawyers were there to complain. I take a first delicious, warm bite and feel at home again. It’s quiet while everyone ladles dishes and starts eating.
“So, James says you’re a paralegal?” my dad asks, a thin rectangle of ham on his fork.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s right.”
“How did you get into that line of work?” he asks, swallowing.
“Well, I hope to be a lawyer. Eventually.”
“Oh,” he says, approval in his voice. “Where did you go to college?”
“Dad,” I say to the third degree he seems to need to give all my friends. And I don’t have very many of them.
“Harvard,” she says.
His head shoots up from his plate at the response, and I almost have to laugh. A month ago, before she got her degree, he wouldn’t have given her the time of day. She wouldn’t have been worth speaking to. They say I see things too black-and-white, but really, it’s my father who doesn’t have time for gray areas.
“Well, that’s very impressive,” my father says.
“Thanks.” Dahlia spreads out some green beans on her plate. I wonder if she even likes green beans. “Took me a little while, but I finally did it.”
“Our son applied there,” my mom says. I can see my father squirm in his seat.
“Oh, I didn’t know that.” Dahlia turns at me with surprise. “Well, anyway, MIT’s just as good.”
“No, not me,” I mutter.
“Robert,” my father says. “Not James.”
Dahlia takes a big drink of water, looking totally confused, and I know now how stupid it was to bring her here. To think we could act normal and it would all be okay. I should have told her. Jamal was right. I should have told her for sure.
“I haven’t heard about Robert,” Dahlia says carefully.
My father flicks me a look of disgust.
“He passed away,” my mom says. She tries to say it sort of matter-of-factly so no one feels bad, but I can see her chin tremble just a little.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Dahlia puts her water glass down. “And Ramona too. How awful.”
There is a terrible silence then.
“Excuse me?” my father asks, bewildered.
“Oh.” She turns bright red. I’ve never seen her blush like that. “I’m sorry,” she says, almost like a question. Like she isn’t sure what she’s sorry for. She checks with me in desperation, but like a mute idiot, I can’t speak.
Again, there is silence, followed by little clinks of silverware as my mom stares at her plate, but then she brings her hand up to her mouth so she doesn’t cry. Finally, she stands up and races out of the room.
My dad glares at me. “Are you happy now?”
“I’m sorry,” Dahlia says. “I didn’t—”
My father stands up, throwing his napkin down. “I told you, James.” He points a trembling finger at me, ignoring Dahlia entirely. “I do not want to hear that name in the house. Ever.”
“But that’s not right,” I say, shaking my head.
“It’s the rule, James,” he states like he is the maker of all rules. Like he is some kind of D&D wizard. For some reason, this makes me furious. I’m tired of accepting everything he says. I’m tired of my mom sticking up for him because he’s a big bully. He does not make the rules. He does not make the laws of the universe.
“No,” I say, louder now. “It’s not the rule. You’re wrong.”
He pounds his fist on the table, making the silverware jump. “I said it is, and it—”
“No!” I yell, standing up too. It feels good, yelling at him. My voice is unbelievably loud. And I realize right then that I am taller than him. Bigger than him. I don’t get how I never noticed this before. He isn’t towering over me anymore, and I’m not a little boy. “You are wrong,” I say again, slowly. “You can’t erase her, Dad. She is not null. She is not void. She had a value.”
“There is no her.”
“She loved you, Dad,” I say. “And you loved her. That has a value, an absolute value. It is not correct to call that zero.”
“No.” He shakes his head.
“Love,” I say. “That has a value.”
My dad sits back down and clears his throat. He takes in a long breath. “I have told you before that we do not say that name in this house. Whether you like it or not, that is the rule. And as long as you stay in this house, you will live by my rules.”
I look over to see Dahlia staring at the table, and I feel terrible because this is all my fault, so I make a decision. The only way I can make things sort of right.
“You don’t have to worry about it,” I say. “We’re not staying in your house.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Five Years Ago
I remember her by the tea.
Seeing her office now, I realize what a fog I must have been in back then. I barely remember the side street, the rickety stairs, the stuffy waiting room. But I remember the tea.
And she remembers me.
“I wondered if you’d be back,” she says with pleasure, as if I were a long-lost friend.
“I am,” I answer, a touch embarrassed at her exuberance. I tell her about going home. I tell her about my new job. Eli. And I tell her about the dreams.
“Classic PTSD,” she says.
“I know,” I say. I’ve done my fair share of reading on it. “But it’s more than that. It’s like the dreams stay with me all day.”
She nods, as if this is not news to her.
“Then I’m left with this nagging feeling that if I could just remember, then everything would be okay. And I try. But the more I try, the more I can’t.”
She nods again. “It’s tough.”
“Yeah.”
In the pause, she takes a sip of tea. “How about the suicidal thoughts?”
“At bay,” I answer, honestly. “For now.”
“You know, there’s a good group in the area on this. S.O.S.” Rae-Ann rifles through a drawer, then pulls out a stack of flyers and hands me one.
S.O.S. SURVIVORS OF SUICIDE. The cover is glossy with a cartoonish picture of a sad person. “Yeah, maybe,” I say. I’ve never been one for support groups.
“Check it out,” she says. “It might help.”
The flyer makes me think of Jeri, and I wonder how she’s doing. Maybe she would want to go with me. Or Eli. “So, what can I do about the dreams?” I ask.
She sighs. “We can talk about some methods to help. I don’t have a magic cure for you, unfortunately. Though there are some medications out there.”
“Which means seeing a psychiatrist.”
“Yes,” she answers. “Which wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“No, I suppose not.” I turn over the flyer.
Gathering the stack of pamphlets, she puts them back in the drawer and shuts it with a squeak. “Have you considered self-defense at all?”
This is an unexpected question. “No, why?”
“I’m not saying that would have helped in
the situation,” she assures me. “But sometimes it can help give you a sense of control back. I’ve found that can help in PTSD.”
I shift on the couch. “Judo? Karate?”
She motions to her own zaftig body. “As you can see, I’m not one to talk about it.”
I smile. “You look…good.” Which is true. She is overweight and fits perfectly in her body.
“Thank you, Dahlia.” She smiles. “Do some research. Try a few classes. See if something sticks.”
I nod, glancing at the clock. Our session is almost done, and I must say, I am feeling a bit better. I definitely need to get in touch with Jeri. The positive feeling sticks with me all the way home. A sense of possibility. Wrenching control of my life back. As I get off the subway, I pass a shop that I see nearly every day. I’ve wondered about it, but never ventured in. The blinking, tuna-orange neon sign, the dark interior. I decide to take a chance.
The bell rings as I walk in, glancing around. A man stands at the counter, middle-aged with a white goatee and some faded tattoos on his arms. “Hi. Can I help you with something?”
“I don’t know,” I say, uncertain, staring at the rows and rows of guns laid out on the wall behind him. A staggering array.
“Did you have any particular one in mind?”
“Not really,” I say, dazed. Then, I see one, shining out at me like a beacon. It’s oddly beautiful, like it’s calling out to me.
“Have you ever—”
“That one,” I say, pointing.
He turns around to look, and his face lights up. “Oh, yes. She’s a beauty, all right. The Beretta Px4. Compact, tons of power. Can’t go wrong with that one.” He takes it off the shelf and hands it to me gently, like a gift. It feels perfect in my hand. “No bullets in there,” he says. “So you can get a feel for the trigger.”
I lift the gun with two hands, point at the wall, and squeeze hard, with a satisfying click.
“Nice, huh?” he asks with a knowing smile.
“Very nice,” I say, smiling right back. “I’ll take it.”
“Great,” he says. “I’ll just have to do a quick background check. Make sure you weren’t in a loony bin or something,” he adds with a grin.
“Ha,” I croak out. And as I tap my fingers on the glass case, I make a quick decision. Worst case, I can always walk away. “Here’s the thing,” I say. “I was planning on paying cash…just so you know.”
“Cash, huh?” He stares at me. His tongue dabs his lips. Carefully, he says, “That would be five hundred dollars even then.” Though the sign below the gun clearly shows $259.99 in a bright-red sign in a black-markered starburst.
“That’ll be fine,” I answer without dropping eye contact.
I happen to have lots of cash on me, in fact. My dad just sent an influx from his “anything-to-keep-you-out-of-my-house” fund and I was going to start paying Eli back. But I can certainly give him some money tomorrow instead.
“Let me go check on that,” he says.
“I’ll be waiting,” I answer, trying for a light tone.
He’s gone for nearly a minute, probably for show. When he swings over from the back room, he’s all smiles again. “Looks good from my end.”
“Perfect,” I say, and he waits while I count out five one-hundred-dollar bills and lay them on the counter.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Dahlia
James throws our bags in the trunk and slams it. Among our stuff is something I didn’t notice before, an old teddy bear with loose stitching.
“Please, James,” his mother pleads. “Your father is sorry. You stay.”
“I can’t, Mom.” He gives her a brief hug, and she stands there. Her face is terrible, a rictus of sorrow. “I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He goes back to the car as I stand by my door, huddling in my coat. The night is cold and foggy.
“Sorry,” I say before stepping in the car. It seems gratuitous after all my previous sorries. Though I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. I climb into the car.
“I’ll call you,” he yells out to her, then shuts the window. She waves at us, desperately, like a lover waving her sailor off to sea. And just like that, we’re driving again.
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” I ask, as we start down his street.
James grits his teeth, his jaw clenching. “I fucking hate my father.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I say. “I meant about the other stuff. The fact that you had a brother?”
“Robert,” he answers.
“Yes, Robert. And for some reason, we’re not allowed to talk about your sister?”
It takes him a while to answer. “It’s hard to explain.”
I turn down the heater, which is blasting lukewarm air. “Try me.”
He grips the steering wheel tight, his knuckles a row of knobs. “I want to tell you.”
“Okay?” I give him some time, but he doesn’t say any more. “I’m here. Maybe I can help.”
His jaw starts gnawing again. “I can’t do this right now.”
After a bit, he turns on the radio, and I reach over and turn it back off.
“Please, Dahlia,” he says, his voice desperate. “Don’t do this.”
I put my hand on his arm, the fold of his black leather jacket. “What happened?”
Slowly, he pulls his arm away. “I can’t.”
The heater is flowing warmer, suffusing the car. “I told you,” I say. “I told you everything.” I don’t like the petulant note in my voice, but there it is. And it’s true. I’ve shared everything with him.
“This is different,” he says but without conviction.
I shake my head. “Secrets will kill you. They’re like a…” I search for a metaphor he might understand. “They’re like a black hole. They’ll suck you up and spit you out.”
His breathing goes ragged, and his eyes fill with tears.
“Tell me,” I say gently. Fog slides across the road in front of us while I wait for his answer.
But he wipes the tears away fiercely. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I just can’t.”
• • •
It’s nearly 1:00 a.m. when I get home.
Shoving my suitcase against the wall, I look around for Simone and remember she’s still with Daisy or some weird psycho might try to kill her. I sort through the mail, which isn’t much: a few bills I forgot to put on auto pay, the newest issue of The Economist (though I haven’t read the last one yet). Nothing from Stanford.
Putting the mail down, I’m about to head to bed, when my phone rings with Eli’s number. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey.”
“What’s going on?” I can tell something’s wrong by the tone of his “hey.”
“Nothing. We broke up. I’m on my way home.”
“Why? What happened?”
I hear a whistle in the background and realize he’s on a train. “It’s the Colorado thing. He never asked me to come with him.”
I pause. “Do you want to go to Colorado?”
“That’s not the point,” he whines.
“Right. Okay,” I say, realizing this is not the best moment to logically assess that. “Anyway, I came home early too.”
“You did?” The whistle sounds again. “Why?”
“Long story. But we didn’t break up. We’re just… I don’t know what we are. I’m going to bed. Call me tomorrow, okay?”
“Love ya,” he says, which he hasn’t said in a while.
“Love ya too.” We hang up, and I get ready for bed, then lie down. My body is dead-tired, but my brain has other plans. I turn over in the bed, check on my Beretta, and close my eyes again, but my mind keeps spinning through the same questions.
Why didn’t he tell me about his brother?
Why won’t his father talk abo
ut Ramona?
Finally, I sit up and grab my phone. Plugging Robert Gardner and Maine into the search box, I get some immediate hits. It’s mostly high school stuff: he was on the track team, he played violin in a semiprofessional group, he was the president of the French Club. These accomplishments seem to speed sadly into his death announcement, which provides directions about flowers and the funeral hours, the next of kin. But no why, no how.
Next, I Google Ramona Gardner. But I’m stymied.
I sit up straighter in bed. The only person I can dig up is a middle-age African American woman. So, I shoot through some social media sites, everywhere I can think of: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. For a second, I consider calling James for help searching, but then I realize that I can’t. I am trying all the places and search engines I can think of. Ramona Gardner, Ramona Gardner Maine, Ramona Gardner Forest High School, Ramona Gardner Cornell University.
Finally, I put the phone down and settle myself back to bed. I have to get some sleep; the secrets will have to wait.
Because I’m starting to realize that maybe there is no Ramona Gardner.
Chapter Seventy
Dahlia
The day after Christmas, the place is like a ghost town.
Still, it’s almost a relief to be back at work. Sylvia is tapping on the keyboard with hot-pink nails, while I finish Tabitha’s scaffolding case.
Time to talk? It’s Eli.
I haven’t taken lunch yet, so I decide to take a break. 5 min, I text back.
After grabbing some Cheetos and a Dr Pepper from the vending machine, I sit down at a table and call him. “What’s up?” I ask.