“Guess you don’t need me anymore,” I say,
heading for the stairs.
I want to practice, but I feel too tired.
“Thanks for coming with me, Daisy,” Mom says.
Her left forearm is in a cast.
I wonder how she’ll do yoga.
“No problem,” I reply.
They are right.
They are right.
They are right.
We cannot live like this.
We have to let Steven go.
They are right, but I don’t want it to be true.
Where is the normal,
the hope I felt when I woke up this morning?
I text Dave: “Can you come get me?”
“Where do you want to go?” he texts back.
“Anywhere but here.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
117
I wonder if Steven realizes the die he has cast,
whether tomorrow at the breakfast table
I will see in his expression remorse, regret.
And if I do, will it be there or just a lie I want to believe?
I remember when Dad used to tuck me into bed at night.
He’d tell me a list of things he loved about me:
my smile, my laugh,
the music I made, the silly jokes I told,
the way I loved to read stories about animals,
baby bunnies, tiny turtles.
I’d wrap my arms around him, say, “I love you, Daddy,”
never asking what was on the list he made for my brother,
who didn’t smile, didn’t joke, didn’t say “I love you.”
I, too, have started something I cannot stop
by calling Dave, not Justine.
Instead of confiding in my best friend
that the unthinkable has happened again,
I will have to tell Dave
what happened to Mom, what Steven has done.
What lie could I offer instead?
Flakes of snow are falling when the Fiesta pulls up—
the pretty kind that won’t stick
to the not-quite-frozen ground,
just linger for seconds on your hair, your tongue,
melt away without consequence.
“You okay, Daisy?”
“No.”
“Where do you want to go?”
I wish the library were open.
Dave and I could sit hip to hip in the egg chair
in the middle of the fiction section
and just be without a yesterday, without a tomorrow.
“I guess down to the lake.”
“You told me that’s not a real date.”
“This isn’t a date,” I tell him.
“I just need to get away from the house.”
“I get that.”
He drives to the end of my street and turns onto Main.
118
“Looks like we might have a White Thanksgiving
after all,” Dave says.
He has driven us past the parking lot,
down to the boat launch at the lake’s edge,
vacant on this cold November Monday.
“It’s not going to stick.”
“Don’t be so hopeless,” he says,
sliding his fingers between mine.
We sit there, holding hands,
watching innocent snowflakes
dissolve into the dark blue water.
“A little jazz?” he points to the radio.
“The quiet is nice.”
I wonder if we can sit this way forever,
or at least until the car runs out of gas.
Cozy against the worn leather upholstery,
lulled by the friendly rumble of the old engine,
I hold the moment like a fragile glass,
like how my father kissed my mother.
“The other night,” Dave says at last,
“you asked me what I was expecting from you.”
“I thought maybe you didn’t know.”
He gives his hair a familiar nervous rumple.
“I don’t want
to be the odd one out at my dad’s anymore;
I want a place like the sandbox we used to play in,
where you and I were safe,
felt like nothing would ever change.”
He hasn’t asked what he was rescuing me from—
why I needed to get away.
“I’m a person, not a place. And we’ve already changed.
You ditched me when you moved across town.
I made other friends, got good at music, grew boobs!”
My voice is rising to a shout,
the kind that would send Steven into spirals of fury.
Steven . . .
Steven . . .
“Steven broke my mother’s arm!”
Those words come out loudest of all.
Dave wraps his arms around me,
nestles my head beneath his chin.
Trickling teardrops grow to a storm of drenching sobs
until I can no longer see the frosty lake before me
and Dave Miller’s chest is soaked in my snotty anguish.
119
Comfort turns to kissing,
hard and desperate,
although I don’t repeat the mistake of climbing into his lap.
I tell myself it’s okay that I feel more anger than romance.
If HBO is right, I am allowed my lust,
like so many fickle fantasy vixens and powerful mafia men.
I am discovering a new talent
for disappearing into touch, taste,
not unlike losing myself in sound.
Dave wraps his arm around my ribs,
like he did that first time we kissed
in the parking lot of Evergreen High.
This time, I am not frightened
by the tightness of the embrace.
I know it is different from when I am touched by Steven.
Dave isn’t trying to drive some wordless message
into my bones.
He isn’t hurting me.
He is holding on.
120
Dave can’t keep hold of my hand for the drive home.
He grips the wheel against roads that have turned slick.
The grass on the yards we pass is laced in white.
The snow is beginning to stick.
“Want me to walk you in?” he asks
as I open the passenger-side door.
I put one Ked gingerly on the driveway to test for ice.
“No. I’m okay.”
“Is it . . . safe?”
“Safe enough. We’ve been living this way
for a long time.”
Another honest note blows into the air.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I watch the Fiesta ease back down the driveway,
steel myself for what’s behind my front door.
121
Mom is tucked beneath a blanket on the couch,
her busted arm elevated on pillows.
After he hurts her, she’s afraid to sleep upstairs,
close to Steven.
Dad looks up from his recliner.
He makes no comment about my being out past ten
on a school night;
just says grimly,
“It’s all set. There’s an open respite bed at Holland House.
They can take Steven on Wednesday.
I’m taking a couple of days off.
Not a big deal since it’s Thanksgiving on Thur
sday.
It’s a quiet week at the office.
I’ll handle things here.”
I think back to a few mornings ago,
Steven shrinking from my touch, ignoring my question
of whether he understands.
I wonder what pain he must have felt,
to make him lash out at Mom.
But that does not make his actions any less dangerous.
And one word describes the rush of feeling
that courses through my arms and legs,
fingers and toes,
heart and brain.
It is relief.
122
In the morning, it is Dad bustling at the sink
while Mom sits at the island
holding a cup of tea in her uncast hand.
Like the past times when Steven’s violence exploded
out of control,
this next morning feels extraordinarily . . . ordinary.
He is tired from the meds,
his hands twist more slowly than usual,
evenly cut waffle bites sit untouched
on the plate before him.
It is hard to bear the glimmer of hope in Mom’s eyes
as she watches Steven be still,
as if she has already begun the process of pretending
yesterday never was.
Maybe that’s the most painful thing of all.
“Mind if I stay over at Justine’s tonight?” I ask.
Dad’s “Are you afraid?”
and Mom’s “Don’t you want to spend time with Steven?”
tumble over each other, both easily answered
with a single syllable: “No.”
Stomach growling, sleepover gear in hand, I skip cereal
and go straight out the front door to the Subaru.
The “eventually” of Steven’s departure
is now twenty-four hours away.
The gas indicator is down to two bars,
but I still run the engine in the Evergreen High
parking lot, blast the heat until I can’t bear it
any more than I can bear waiting at home with my parents for tomorrow to arrive.
Ten minutes before the bell, I turn off the ignition,
creep through the school halls
like the spy I sometimes pretend to be.
I miss the Christmas tunes, the joy,
the sound of the program getting better as we get closer
and closer to concert dates,
the full, round tones of the Evergreen High Jazz Band, complete with baritone sax.
Dave comes up behind me.
“Why aren’t you in there playing?”
“I just haven’t felt like it.”
“If I were as good at something
as you are at trumpet,
I don’t think that excuse would be enough.”
“You sound like Ned Hoffman. Parental,” I sneer.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugs.
“With all the shit going on at your house,
I’d think you’d love to just go make some music.”
I’ve gone a long time trying to love
a brother whose only way of touching me is pain.
A long time escaping into music.
Practice, lessons, rehearsals that protect me
from the hurting parts of life.
I’ve been winning awards, applause,
acclaim for my trumpet skills since I was in grade school.
But love?
The word catches in my throat.
Do I love anything?
Have I forgotten how?
123
“Daisy!” Justine calls.
She tugs Ned along by the hand,
gives Dave and me an appraising glance.
“I’m so psyched you’re sleeping over tonight!”
Her voice is party-light, her words innocent,
but I see the sharp compassion in her eyes,
searching for what I need, what hurts.
“What’ll it be, Scrabble tournament
or reality TV marathon?” she asks.
“I’ve had my fill of reality,” I say
in what I hope is both witty
and a nothing-ever-really-troubles-me-or-if-it-does-
I’m-not-telling-boys tone.
“Let’s make up words.”
124
I do not go home
to say good-bye to Steven on Wednesday morning.
There was a plan,
a story to tell Steven
about the fun of going back to that nice place,
to piney-smelling, soft-edged Holland House,
and how we would come “soon” to see him.
I am afraid he’ll read the confusion in my face.
I know none of us will try to hug him good-bye.
I can imagine the ordeal of tying his shoes,
getting him into Dad’s car.
I do not need to bear witness.
I do not go to jazz band either.
Justine and I sit at her kitchen table
eating bowls of banned-at-my-house Cap’n Crunch
while Shirley chatters about feeling bad
that Mom plans to go to all the trouble
of cooking Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow,
what with her broken arm and . . . everything.
To me, it is a perfect irony.
Thanksgiving is loaded with falsehoods,
from the candy-apple way they teach kindergartners
that the pilgrims met the Native Americans
to the stage-play that is barely speaking families
gathering to pretend
they are thankful for the gift of their genetic connections,
even if they hate the hell out of each other.
At school, Dave tells me
he has to spend Thanksgiving weekend
at Andy Bouchard’s farm outside of town
with his mom.
He doesn’t say he hates her. I don’t think he does.
But there’s no contesting she was the catalyst
for the destruction of the Miller family—
the old one,
before his father’s new wife,
the twin baby girls Dave never wants to care for.
I imagine his dad, nearing fifty,
staring at the two diapered toddlers
like my own father watches Steven, his eternal child,
the thief of his retirement fund,
his chances at ever claiming a reward
for the years of hard work;
dashed by a mind that cannot love back,
that will never grow to own similar hopes,
or fulfill his father’s.
What is a family anyway?
Do we all have to live in one house?
I think of Justine and her mom,
who have bravely come to our house for Thanksgiving
every year since Shirley’s divorce,
the same year my grandparents begged off joining us
for the holiday,
claiming they caused Steven too much distress,
even if the only pain I ever saw was in their eyes
when they looked at me and Dad and Mom.
So, are Justine and Shirley my family?
The people who gather round our table,
who actually dare to love us despite everything?
125
The house is empty when I get home after school.
I pour myself a bowl of cereal
and head to the family room.
HBO is offering a steamy blend
of high crime and hookers
that would normally be my ideal type of evening fare,
though with accents is preferable.
But tonight, I flip to a cartoon,
study the bright colors, stylized animation,
realize I can turn the volume up if I want to.
But I don’t.
It has happened and the only stand I took
was not to stop them
but to stop the music in myself.
I hate them for not noticing,
until I hear the front door open,
the shuddering sobs of my mother,
the falsely reassuring, “It’s going to be okay, Alice.
We’re going to be okay,” from my father.
I run to the basement like a programmed robot,
and it’s not until my second time through “Hallelujah”
that I realize I could have played the song upstairs.
The song about the imperfection of love,
the way it can hurt you, break you, terrify you;
the way it can fall apart; and yet,
the title is a hymn, a word of praise.
I wonder if my mother has retreated to the shower,
The Sound of Letting Go Page 17