by Hadley Dyer
“Okay . . . ?”
“She told me she tried to call you.”
“When?”
“The day after that cop drove you home from the shack party.”
“Oh. I don’t think I was around.”
“She said you weren’t around the first time she called, but Matthew told her you’d be home at eleven, so she called you back.”
Matty had taken the message before he went to his friend Tim’s. I was out getting milk for the barrel of coffee I’d need after lying awake all night, replaying my conversation in the car with Francis, and Mum and Dad were staying in the city for my cousin Junior-Junior’s birthday party. The phone went off right at eleven. It must have rung a dozen times. It rang again when I got out of the shower, again after lunch, and when I was doing my homework in the late afternoon. Then it stopped, and when I went to school on Monday, Lisa had kept her distance as usual.
“I went out to the farm,” I said. “She didn’t say anything to me, so what did you want me to do? I don’t get why this is on me.”
It was on me because something that had seemed permanently frozen had thawed slightly—and I couldn’t do it, be Lisa’s friend again, not after I’d gotten back together with Francis. I’d never be able to keep it from her. The choice had been made even before I knew it was going to be put to me; it was made when I followed Francis into the woods.
“It’s on all of you, and I’m sick of it,” Bill said. “Man, you’re the worst friends.”
“Buddy, Lisa and I haven’t been friends for a long time.”
“Not to each other, to me! I feel like the only real friend I have left is four thousand miles away.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know, after Sid moved, none of you girls called me to see how I was doing. Lisa barely spoke to me for a week.”
“You know why she was mad at you.”
“Yeah, because I panicked.”
I thought back to when we said good-bye to Sid, how Bill’s throat was working when Sid gave him that shoulder punch boys do instead of a hug, and I realized that you could only blurt out something as stupid as Bill had—that thing about there not being other black kids at school—if what you were feeling was too big to say to a guy in an Eddie Murphy costume.
“I guess we just assumed you were okay because, well, you’re always okay.”
“Then Tracy and I broke up, and where were you guys?”
“I brought you gingerbread,” I said. “And Nat brought you date squares, and Lisa got you that stupid shirt. . . .”
“Sure, I had a little harem going for, like, ten minutes before you all disappeared.”
I shouldn’t have, and I’ll regret it forever, but at the mention of minutes my eyes went to the clock on the wall above his head.
“Unbelievable,” he said.
“I’m sorry—”
“Go on, if you’ve got somewhere to be. I could use a break from you.”
I had a few more minutes, but he wasn’t going to cool down, so I tossed the ball over to him. He let it hit him on his chest and roll away.
“There she goes! Where to, nobody knows!” Bill said to my back. “Just off somewhere being George, doing George things.”
The ball slammed against the gymnasium door after I closed it behind me.
When I got home, Dad was, as usual, asleep in his recliner—head tipped back, openmouthed snoring. Matthew was watching Coronation Street with the volume turned down. “Does it seem like Dad’s been sleeping a lot?” he whispered.
“He doesn’t even wake up when I come home at night,” I said. “He could be back to taking pain meds.”
Matthew gnawed on his knuckle. “His stump shouldn’t hurt that much anymore. Unless it’s that phantom pain.”
We listened to him snore for a minute. Matthew pointed to a box of Benadryl next to Dad’s cigarette pack. “Maybe he’s sleepy from the Benadryl. I got him some for a rash on his leg.”
“I think that’s the box I bought a few days ago.”
“He shouldn’t have gone through the stuff I bought already.”
“I put another in his bedroom too.”
We quietly got up and went upstairs. Another box of Benadryl was on Dad’s bedside table where I’d left it.
We hunted for the third box. Not on the dresser or in the drawers. “Not in the cabinet either,” Matthew said, returning from the bathroom.
There didn’t appear to be anything in the wastebasket beside the bed but tissues and dental floss. Matty turned and gagged as I plunged my hand in. Three empty blister packs were at the bottom.
“Got to be overdoing it,” I said. “Have you seen this rash? Is it that bad?”
“Nope.”
I looked around the bedroom at the cluttered surfaces—ashtrays overflowing, stacks of crosswords and Reader’s Digests lying around. “He could be using it to put himself to sleep.”
Dad’s voice from downstairs: “George! Get my cigarettes.”
“They’re on the table next to you!”
“There’s only five left!”
Did I want to get into this thing with the Benadryl before I left? No, I did not. Francis and I were driving to the city in a few hours. We were spending two whole days together and sleeping in the same bed and when I woke up in the morning, he’d be there. We’d get to see if we’d run out of conversation. If we were sure no one we knew was around, we might even hold hands in public.
“I’m going to a movie with Bill tonight,” I said, handing Dad a fresh pack. “We’ll get a bite at the Grunt.”
“You’ll have to cancel. I’ve decided that we’re having a sit-down family supper when your mother gets home.” He rose inelegantly from his chair.
“I promised Bill—”
“Call him.”
Did he know? He knew. But how could he? I’d hidden my bag in Abe’s trunk before anyone else was up that morning, had been careful to buy a new toothbrush and toiletries so nothing went missing from the bathroom. So why the sudden desperation to have a sit-down dinner?
We followed Dad into the kitchen and watched him moving awkwardly around with his walker, opening cupboards, tossing things onto the counter.
Because he had something to prove, is why. Maybe he’d heard us talking upstairs.
“What are you making?” Matthew asked.
“Stew.”
“Doesn’t stew have to cook for a long time?”
“Soup.”
Dad stifled a yawn as he piled vegetables around the cutting board. The man had tranquilized himself at horse level.
“You’re holding the squash wrong, Dad,” I said. His fingers were splayed across the butternut squash, perilously close to the knife blade. Francis had taught me how to do it properly. “You’re supposed to put your fingertips in, knuckles out.”
“I don’t need your advice, thank you.”
Matthew gripped the back of a chair, as though steeling himself. He was going in. “Dad? We noticed you’re taking a lot of Benadryl.”
“I have a rash.”
“Can I see it?”
“You want to see my . . .” Dad frowned. “No,” he said. “No, you may not see my rash.”
“We’re wondering if you might want to talk to the doctor or something.”
“You focus on keeping your grades up, not on me.”
“But, Dad—”
“Mind your own damn business!” Dad shouted.
Matthew’s lip was trembling. He was trembling all over.
“You don’t want to admit you’ve got ghost pain or whatever they call it, fine,” I said. “Don’t take it out on Matty.”
Dad turned to glare at me. “Let me clarify a few things for you. We are not discussing my private medical condition. We are not inspecting my rash. We are not rifling through my garbage. We are not going out tonight. We are having a sit-down family supper, and we are staying right here!”
He slammed the knife for emphasis, his eyes meeting the cutting board j
ust as the blade made contact. Then he looked back at me, and his expression changed from one of fury to a mild On second thought . . .
Matthew screamed. Not a horror movie screech, like an alarm going off—“Aaagh! Aaagh! Aaagh! Aaagh!”—before he crumpled to the floor, while Dad and I stared at the river of blood streaming onto the board and down the counter from the space between the top of his index finger and the rest of my father’s left hand.
Twenty-Nine
I don’t know why I took my shirt off, given that there was a pile of freshly laundered dish towels on the counter. Once I’d set myself in motion, it all happened so quickly: pulling my long-sleeved T-shirt over my head as I crossed the room so that I was wearing only an obscenely small tank top that I’d shrunk in the wash, accordioning the body of the shirt and pressing it onto Dad’s hand, tying the sleeves tight around it. Then I looped his other arm over my shoulders and we staggered over to a chair at the kitchen table. His breathing was rapid and shallow as I lowered him into the seat. What if he was about to go into shock, and what the hell was I supposed to do if he did?
“George—”
“I know exactly what to do, Dad. We covered this in health class.”
We had not covered this in health class.
“Just let me get my keys and I’ll get you out to the car.”
Matthew shouted, “Ice!”
He had woken up, dragged himself through the blood on the floor, and was now sitting with his back against the cupboards, holding the fingertip up like it was the Olympic torch. “Put it down, Matty!” I said.
“We need to—put this—on ice!” He was fighting so hard to stay conscious. “And wrap it—”
“That’s correct,” Dad said, closing his eyes. “Wrap it in something so you don’t damage the skin. . . .”
“Neither one of you is allowed to pass out,” I said.
I grabbed a paper towel from the stand on the counter, nearly going arse-over-teakettle sliding in the blood. I held the towel open and Matty dropped in the fingertip, cut just below the nail bed, then I rolled it up like a corn dog and went hunting for a container to put it in.
I’ll say this for my mother: She didn’t skip a beat when she came home to find me half-naked and lugging Dad into the snowy night with a bloody shirt on his hand. Perhaps because she’d seen more than her share of injuries working at the meatpacking plant before she got married. “I’ll take him in my car,” she said after I’d bleated an explanation at her. “Call the hospital—the city hospital—and tell them we’re on our way.”
Maybe it was the smallness of the Honda, the fact that he had Matthew’s old Batman thermos on his lap, the fingertip packed on ice inside, or my own shock, but watching Dad staring down at the thermos as Mum backed out of the driveway, I could have sworn he’d shrunk.
Mum rolled down her window. “For goodness’ sakes, George,” she said. “Put on a sweater.”
My mother always stocked the garage with years’ worth of supplies, as though she were preparing for a bunker-worthy event, and I must have used half of the paper towels sopping up blood and washing the cupboards and floors with Lysol. My gut told me that if I waited, if I hesitated at all, I wouldn’t be able to face it.
What to do about Francis? It might seem suspicious to Rupert if I called the farm as Francis was getting ready to go, and I couldn’t take off without knowing what was happening with my dad. What if something went wrong? What if he’d lost too much blood?
Suddenly freezing, I went upstairs and changed into clean jeans and a sweater before checking on Matthew, who was curled up in Dad’s recliner.
“How did you do that?” he said.
“Do what?”
“Stay so calm. Maybe you should be a paramedic.”
The Forest Primeval: A Journey Through the Valley, Dad’s favorite book, was on the table beside the recliner, underneath a cigarette lighter. I still hadn’t read it, but knew from Dad that it had a whole chapter about how the original sawmill in our village blew up back in 1919, killing six people. Whenever I saw the new mill, I wondered about the first responders that day: the firemen, the policemen, the closest neighbors. How did you make yourself go, knowing what you would find? My dad had seen some bad stuff, like the time he went out to a farmhouse after a guy killed his ex-wife with a hunting rifle. Was it that it didn’t get to him or that he knew how to swallow it? And if this was swallowing it, the numb feeling that I had, did that mean I would turn out like Dad in other ways too?
“Mum was pretty cool about it,” I said, sitting on the sofa and willing myself not to look at the clock on the VCR. “I hope I get it from her.”
The phone rang and I pounced on it. “He’s going into surgery,” Mum said, “but just to repair the rest of the finger.”
It was his choice. Reattaching the tip would have meant a longer surgery, days in the hospital, and a good chance the repaired finger wouldn’t work as well as a healthy stump.
“You did everything right,” she said. “The doctors told me to tell you that. It’s one of those things.”
I repeated what she said to Matthew, who started to cry.
“Tell your brother that his father’s proud of him. You too.”
“I will. How’s he doing?”
“Oh, you know. He said this was the best his foot had felt in weeks.”
“Bizarre.”
“If all goes well, he could be home Sunday.”
When I hung up, Matthew had his head buried in his arm, like a kid who thinks you can’t see him if he can’t see you.
“Dad says he’s proud of you.”
“Mmhmh.”
“It’s kind of funny if you think about it.”
He looked up. “Funny?”
“Matty, he amputated his own fingertip. He’s just lopping off parts of himself.”
“Life’s a bad writer.”
“Exactly.”
Matthew took a tissue out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Dad wasn’t always a jerk.”
“I know. He used to be fun. Doesn’t make it any easier to live with him.”
“You’re not living with him. You’re hardly ever here. I’ve had to pick up all the slack while you’re off working and partying—”
“I’m not partying—”
“You got arrested at a party!”
So he’d heard about that. I had to give it to him for keeping it to himself.
“Not arrested. Constable McAdams drove a bunch of us home because some people had been drinking. No one’s stopping you from going to parties, by the way.”
“Easy for you to say. You get to check out, and Mum has checked out. No one cares about all the shit I’ve been putting up with.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have made things tough for Matty. Or to tell him what a good job he was doing taking care of Dad, as much as anyone could take care of him. And I was honestly about to apologize when he added: “Do you know I have to help him take baths now? As in, he’s naked. As in, things float. And when he does that throat-clearing thing in the morning? You’ve never seen anything grosser.”
I mean, if you have to make it a competition.
“No, I have,” I said. “Remember when we were little and had the flu at Christmas and we needed the bucket at the same time? You got there first, but I had to go. Oh man, all those cinnamon buns and sausages and hot chocolate. Remember how it got into your hair and your ears? It slid right into your head. And it’s still there, isn’t it? Because once you go that deep into the ear canal, there’s no getting it all out. You don’t have great hearing, buddy, and you know it.”
It took a good ten seconds before he broke and grinned. “I hate you.”
“I know. I’m sorry I’ve made things hard for you. Thanks for picking up the slack.”
The time on the VCR read 7:50 p.m. If I left now, I could catch Francis and at least explain.
“I put my clothes, the bloody ones, down by the washing machine,” Matthew said as I pulled myself
to my feet. “Could you do them? Or should we toss them?”
“I’m going out for a bit. I’ll take care of it when I come back.” I gave his head a little rub. “That’s probably enough exposured for one night.”
Mum called again just as I was leaving to remind us to eat, and so I had to drive faster than I should have to the Dempseys, given the snow coming down, but managed to pull into their driveway by 8:20. Francis wasn’t there. I prayed the roads had slowed him down.
While I waited, I stewed—or souped. Worry bumping up against anger getting stirred up with fear. Of course Dad had found a way to ruin our weekend, but he couldn’t just, you know, catch us. No, sir, not when he could drag Mum and Matty and an innocent kitchen floor into it. Then I remembered how he’d closed his eyes, how small he’d looked in the car. Because he’d slammed the knife into himself while soused on Benadryl! What kind of job could he do with a prosthetic foot and a messed-up hand? What if Mum decided she couldn’t take it anymore? I thought maybe I would go to the city, get a break from him, and then the worry circled around again.
Francis was very late, and it was getting chilly inside the car. I turned the engine back on, waited for the interior to get warm. Turned it off again. Turned it on. The snow was accumulating on the hood faster than Abe could melt it off. I stopped bothering with the wipers, and the windshield was soon covered and it was very dark.
Nearly two hours passed before I gave up.
On the way home, the streets were so empty and quiet. The house was quiet too. It was far too late to call the farm, and besides, Francis wouldn’t have turned around and gone home. He would have had to carry on to the city alone, and I didn’t have the phone number of the apartment where we were going to stay.
I sank into the chair by the phone in the kitchen, unsure of what to do. The air was heavy with cleaner fumes. For years afterward, I thought of Lysol as the official scent of disaster.
Thirty
Saturday was the longest day there ever was. I hovered near the phone for updates from Mum and maybe, maybe a call from Francis, if he felt like taking a chance. Had I any idea where the apartment was, I’m sure I would have gotten in my car and gone after him, but there was nothing to do but pace my room and wait for the sun to take a thousand hours to move around the house.