by Polly Dugan
After the fire they had to rebuild, and the new building was really nice, not at all like a place where you’d expect a bunch of kids with dead parents to go to try to feel better. It was more like the nicest house that one of your friends had, a place you’d rather hang out at than at home because it was bigger and fancier and the kitchen had all kinds of gadgets yours didn’t. I wished my dad could have seen the place, it was so nice. I wondered if he had; he’d never said anything about it, but he didn’t talk about work much.
The one thing that I liked was that nobody was weird talking about their dead parent, not like how everyone was at school. No one was afraid to say the word “dead” and nobody put on some kind of fake face or attitude. One girl’s mom died in a car accident when she ran out to the grocery store for milk. Another boy who was super quiet and struggling to keep it together had lost his dad, who had been sick with cancer for a really long time. One kid was there because his dad had drowned during a triathlon. Anywhere else, hearing about the deaths that had gotten us there together would have horrified and appalled people, turned them stupid or at least useless with no idea what to do or say. But here, all of us heard each other and didn’t even flinch. Our dead parents brought us together in a way that nothing else could have.
I was grieving, like they said in group—we all were, it was no secret—but Garrett was here now and my mom had enough to worry about. Brian was all fucked up, screaming in the middle of the night like a crazy person, then my mom was up, running in there every time he did. And Andrew had turned into a royal little shit. He’d always been the peacemaker, the happy, kind one. When he was a little kid and he stopped liking a toy, he’d give it to a friend, or start collecting them in a bag for my mom to donate. He was bighearted like that, but not lately. He was getting in trouble at school, and he bit me one night when we both reached for the ketchup and I got it first. I wanted to smack him but I didn’t. Someone had to keep it together.
My dad was a firefighter, and a really good one, but although I never thought he’d die, really die, I knew he had a dangerous job, and sometimes when he left for work he said goodbye to us like he was never going to see us again. Not creepy or sad, just super emo. I really love you. I’m proud of you. I’m lucky to be your dad. Be good to your mom. But it was cool. He wasn’t like that all the time and I never worried about him when he went to work.
I still couldn’t understand how it happened. He was wearing a helmet, which he’d always made us all do, and he ran into a tree and died anyway. It was enough to make you say, Fuck the helmet—if I’m going to die if I crash anyway, right? But we’d always had to wear them, on our bikes, scooters, and skateboards too. He taught us all to ski and we were all pretty good, although Brian was the best.
He made us do fire drills too, as soon as Andrew was good at walking. The smoke detector goes off and what do you do? Dad said. You get low and you stay low and you get out of the house. But if the bedroom door is closed, feel it, and if it’s hot, or you can see that the stairs are blocked and you can’t get out, close your door, get low, shelter in place and wait until the firefighters or mom and I come get you. We’ll get you out.
He tried to make the drills not like a game exactly—he wanted us to take them seriously—but he expected us to do the best we could, like when we learned anything new. Because of his work schedule, he’d told us he might not be home if a fire happened, or he might not be able to get to us, so we had to know what to do and be able to do it ourselves without panicking. Our neighbor’s porch was our meeting place. My dad would time us, and we did the drills until he was happy that our time was fast enough. I was six and Andrew was only two when we first did them, and Andrew would laugh through the whole thing, like it was the best game ever, which maybe it was to him, running as fast as he could on his short little legs to the Thompsons’ porch, but Brian, who was four, cried every time. I knew just talking about the drills worried Brian, even before we did the first one. The idea of a fire was terrifying. None of us wanted to think about it happening, but Brian was the most nervous of all of us. That’s just how he was.
So after we went to Dougy for our one time and after everyone at school stopped acting so weird around me, all I could think about was Mrs. Maguire—Colleen Maguire—my friend Ben’s mom. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about that. Ben and I had always been okay friends, but when I’d started hanging out with him more, it wasn’t because of him. Colleen didn’t seem like a mom type at all—she was beautiful, and sexier than stupid singers who grind against stuff in their music videos. I thought she was prettier than Meredith McCann, who I’d kissed a couple times, who said I was a good kisser. Meredith was always texting me about tests and teachers and what her friends and her were doing on the weekends—LOL, Theresa is craving Jamba Juice so we’re at the mall—but I knew there was more to it.
I didn’t want to hang out at the mall. I hated the mall, but I knew, for reasons I didn’t understand and didn’t want to, the girls liked going there, especially in the winter. Instead, I biked to Grant Park and played ball and hung out with the guys, especially on the nice days during the winter. That’s where Meredith and I kissed the two times, on the bleachers at Grant, when we were hanging out. We’d taken a walk over there and sat down and kissed for a while, before we walked back to everyone else like nothing had happened. That was in January, before my dad, during a really warm week without any rain, and I thought that was cool. I thought Meredith was cool. Till she started to bug me.
I texted her back sometimes but not nearly as much as she texted me. I could be her boyfriend, but I didn’t want her like that. Nothing was going to happen with Colleen, but I thought maybe someday it could. It would be worth the wait.
In fifth grade, our class had the sex talk, and it was disgusting, and it was even worse when I asked my dad that night if he and my mom did it.
“We do, Chris,” he said. “That’s how the three of you got here, buddy. Sorry, I know it’s weird to think about your parents like that. I don’t like to think of mine either.” He laughed.
“It’s not weird,” I said. “It’s disgusting. It’s not something I’m ever going to do.”
“I know you feel that way now.” He sighed. “But one day you’re going to change your mind. And, Chris, that will be weird for me.”
I felt like I should say something back but I didn’t know what.
“Listen,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore right now if you don’t want to, but if you can, I want you to promise me that anytime you want to talk about it again, anytime you have any questions, you’ll let me know. Can you?”
I nodded and let him hug me, then got out of the room as fast as I could. I wanted to forget that sex talk in school and the talk with my dad ever happened.
But now, if I could, maybe I’d make good on the promise. I didn’t think sex was disgusting anymore, not when I thought about Colleen Maguire, which was mostly in the shower. I thought about her washing her own body. Everybody showers. I liked to take my time, but I had to be quiet and hoped no one walked in on me, especially Andrew, who would walk in because he didn’t care what anyone else was doing or if a door was closed because someone wanted a little privacy. That kid. It wasn’t like when my friends and I elbowed each other when we saw women wearing tight jeans tucked into their boots and pushing their kids in strollers. When I thought about Colleen it wasn’t like that at all.
Even though nothing could come of it now, it wouldn’t be that long till it could, only three years. Till then I’d practice. Maybe next year Meredith would still want to be my girlfriend and I’d let her and maybe we’d have sex and maybe I’d have another girlfriend or two after her, and get good enough at sex so I’d know what I was doing, and Colleen would be impressed that I was experienced. Of course she wasn’t the kind of person who would have an affair, so I didn’t know what to do about Mr. Maguire. His name was Paul. I didn’t know him at all, but I’d seen him at church and they were a nice famil
y. But what if he died? I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, not really, but I figured if my dad died, it could happen to anyone. I didn’t want Mr. Maguire to have a disease or suffer and be in pain, but what if he had an aneurysm or was traveling alone and was in a plane crash? I felt bad thinking about that but not as bad as I would have felt if Colleen cheated on her husband with me. Or maybe they’d get divorced before I was eighteen. Maybe Mr. Maguire would be the type of person to have an affair—although I didn’t want that to happen to Colleen and I couldn’t imagine a man cheating on her—and by the time I was old enough, she’d be ready to date again. Maybe by then Ben and I wouldn’t be friends anymore—not enemies, just would have drifted apart—so it wouldn’t seem so weird his mom liked me. We’d both be men by then, almost.
It wouldn’t be long until I was in college and I’d get an apartment off campus. Colleen could come and spend weekends with me and I’d see her when I came home for breaks. It worked for Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, until he turned out to be a total dog. Their whole age thing was a big deal to everyone at first and then it wasn’t, and Demi and Ashton never cared. Since I didn’t even like girls my age now, if Colleen and I were together, there’s no way I’d leave her for someone younger. I’m not that kind of guy.
It was really too much, all these things I didn’t want to think about but I couldn’t help some days. Colleen in the shower, getting Mr. Maguire out of the picture and being Ben’s mom’s boyfriend. Even if my dad hadn’t died, I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to tell him about any of it. When he asked me for that promise in fifth grade, I bet he’d had no idea I’d ever be thinking about stuff like this.
Brian
Every morning after it happened again, my mom was in my room, leaning over me first thing.
“Sweetie, how are you? Brian, are you all right?”
I mostly wanted to be left alone for a few more minutes before I had to get up. “I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “God. I’m not even awake yet. Can you leave me alone?”
“Of course,” she said. “I know. I just need to make sure you’re okay.”
Andrew, the little shit, had started calling me “screaming meemie,” but I mostly felt bad about waking up everyone else in the middle of the night.
The dream was always the same. It scared me so much, I wanted to die. In it, we’re all at home, and it’s my birthday, and there’s cake and presents and everyone’s happy but my dad is missing. Not like missing, he’s not dead, he just isn’t there, and no one thinks anything of it. My mom and my brothers are singing to me. Everyone’s having a great time but I can tell I’m the only one who knows something bad is about to happen. And when the bad thing happens, everything changes, just like that. Something dangerous is loose in the house, wanting to hurt us, and the party is over, and my mom and brothers are afraid and everyone has run from the table to find somewhere safe to hide. That’s what I want to do too, run and hide. But what makes the dream so bad is that I can’t find any of my family—even though I look everywhere, fast, in closets and under beds—and when I can’t find them I realize I’m the one who is supposed to save us from the bad thing happening, the loose thing in the house, which is after me now, since everyone else is hiding and safe. And I can’t find anywhere to hide—no place I can think of is good. It doesn’t even look like a person, or look like anything really, the dangerous thing, it’s just a terrible force I can feel, but it’s after me, and I think if I can just get far enough ahead of it, I can find a place to hide, and lose it, and protect my family at the same time since it’s chased me, and if it doesn’t get any of us it will just go away, but it’s always right behind me, gaining, and I can’t get any distance from it, so I start to scream as loud and hard as I can, and wake up. Every time I woke up, my mom was there trying to hold me and keep me still. It was hard because I’d push her away and try to run from my own room. Sometimes I crawled on the floor, sweating, scrambling away from my bed when she came in, and I would keep crawling, even after she was there, trying to grab me and convince me I’d had a dream. Now that Garrett was here, he came in with her once or twice too, when it was really bad, and I’d managed to get away from my mom, when I was still freaked out beyond reason.
Like Chris, I’d told my mom I’d go to the Dougy Center one time and if I changed my mind about going more, I’d tell her. It was such a weird thing that the building where we went had replaced the one where my dad had fought a fire. I didn’t say anything to anybody, but it was almost like he was there, kind of. We were in the same place where my dad had done his job the best he could. All those firefighters hadn’t been able to save the building after all.
What I hadn’t expected were the murals, which decorated the rooms on the first floor. It was such great work that I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of the artist, and that she wasn’t an artist for her job. When I asked the people there they told me her career was something else, in real estate or something financial. I would have gone there every day if I could have just stared at all those scenes on the walls instead of sitting around waiting for my turn to talk.
One of the things we talked about the time I went was if we thought we could have done something to prevent the death. Even if it was a totally unrealistic thing, we could say anything we wanted to—like for the one girl, never running out of milk, like not ever. Or the other guy, what was he supposed to do, tell his dad he shouldn’t compete in a triathlon when everyone else his dad knew was so excited about it? But I bet that kid wouldn’t ever compete in a triathlon himself, and maybe if he heard about someone else training for one, he’d tell them to do a marathon instead, and why.
It hadn’t been a big deal to me. I knew we couldn’t go skiing on my birthday, that we needed a new fridge, even though my mom was always saying, The way you boys eat, food doesn’t have a chance to go bad in this house. But she liked things taken care of, and the fridge did suck. And that morning after it broke, all the food stank, then it stank up the whole kitchen while my mom divvied it between the compost and the garbage until my dad came downstairs and said he’d take care of it. I hadn’t thought about it until they asked us in our group, and even after that, I didn’t think there was anything I could have done. If I were a totally different person and I’d thrown a huge fit about my life being ruined because we weren’t going to ski on my birthday, it’s not like my family would have done things differently. Oh, Brian’s having a fit, forget the fridge, we better go skiing. I wasn’t like that and my family wasn’t like that. Nobody caved about something important because someone was having a fit or not getting their way. The fridge was important. We needed it, and so we went the next week. That’s just what happened.
And even after he died, when I thought about the fridge drama, I still thought it had been funny. My dad blow-drying the freezer trying to make the thing last, those weeks before it tanked, that had cracked me up. So I sketched him doing it—I had a lot of chances—which annoyed him the first few times he was working, lying there on his side waiting for the ice to thaw, pointing my mom’s blow-dryer at it like a gun, but when he finally saw what I was working on, it cracked him up too and it became this big joke between us, like he was a superhero whose power was The Blow-Dryer. So all the times he tackled the defroster after he saw my drawing, he’d geek out, hamming it up, all stealth and unstoppable, which was totally corny and he knew it, but because he was so aggravated, I thought he had to do something so he wouldn’t blow a gasket. My mom didn’t think it was funny at all when he strutted around with his sunglasses on, creeping up on the fridge. She would shake her head and exhale really loudly, she was so pissed, and leave the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to see it. Then my dad would swagger away after he was finished, with his sunglasses pushed up on his head and blowing the tip of my mom’s dryer the way sharpshooters always do with their pistols after they’ve saved the town or killed the villain.
Anyway, my drawing was pretty good, and what I’d liked about it the best was that what I’d drawn
had turned not a terrible situation, but a frustrating one, into something that made my dad laugh, something he’d made into a kind of game. We had egged each other on. My mom was annoyed and Chris and Andrew didn’t care. When I finished the drawing, I gave it to him and he took it to work and I hadn’t seen it since. I wanted it back, but I didn’t want to remind my mom of anything about the old fridge and my dad’s goofiness and my birthday and the day my dad died, and I didn’t know who else to ask about the drawing. Maybe I’d ask Garrett to help me get it back. But what I was afraid of was that all my dad’s stuff was already cleaned out from the fire station and some firefighter who had no idea what it was had thrown it away instead of giving it back to my mom with all his other stuff.
It was only later, after the one time I went to Dougy, after we’d talked in group about what we thought we could have done to prevent the death, when I hadn’t said anything and neither had Chris, that the idea crept into my head that maybe if I hadn’t made the drawing in the first place, if it hadn’t temporarily made my dad goof off and delay the solution, if instead, without my drawing, he’d dealt with it the way he should have, like the guy he was who took care of things, maybe we would have gotten a new fridge earlier, or at least the freezer might have been repaired by someone who knew what they were doing, long before it broke down completely, preventing what happened later. Without my drawing and all the goofiness it had started, maybe the fridge problem would have been solved and my dad would still be alive.
Garrett
They were all so damaged, and I had no idea what I could do except finish what Leo had started. Now that I was alone with them, I realized I didn’t know any of them as well as I had assumed I did, even Audrey, and that sense of estrangement made me regret the distance Leo and I had lived from each other for so long. Without him as the bridge between his family and me, I felt like an interloper, my usefulness limited to helping Audrey buy his suit and what I’d done the day of the funeral. Refusing Audrey’s initial wishes that I not stay made me feel like a bully, and now that I was here to do what I’d said I would, I knew I wasn’t being entirely altruistic—I was also staying for me. I would never again be able to spend an hour or a day with Leo, and I couldn’t make up for lost time with his family, but I could create new time. It was later than I wished, and under circumstances that I would have changed if I could.