A Symphony of Cicadas (15 page)

At his desk in his own close-off room, I saw
John wince at
the
sound
.
I tuned into him, taking special efforts to sense everything he wasn’t saying out loud.

He was aware of the irony, a whole apartment of space and this was how they spent their time
.
He was ashamed at how he’d let the apartment go, allowing the two of them to live like dogs in their own filth
.
He couldn’t even remember the last time he had cooked dinner for the two of them, both of them left to fend for themselves when it came to mealtimes
.

At least there was still food,
he
thought to himself
.
At least
I’m
still going to the grocery store to make sure
we have
something to eat
.

It was as if a light went on inside him, and I wondered if it was because I
was standing
next to him with my hand as close as I could get to his body
.
He got up and opened the door to his room and went downstairs, gathering the clothes that lay on the stairs he passed
.
He created several piles in the room, separating the mail and the clothing, and gathering all the dishes into a consolidated mass of dishes and cups
.
Filling the sink with hot water, he worked at the glued
-
on
food of each plate, rinsing them clean and placing them in the rack next to the sink
.
When it was too full to hold any more, he dried them and put them away, then started over on the
diminishing
pile next to him.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked behind him, startling John as he stood immersed in the hot, sudsy water.

“You scared me,” he said, but Sam stood emotionless and unapologetic
.
“I’m tired of the filth
.
I’m just straightening up.”

Sam watched him
without speaking
, his dad’s back to him as he continued to wash dishes. I could see
the wheels turning in his head
, and I was cast into the feelings of a
fifteen
year old boy full of more anger than he knew what to do with
.
For months his dad had acted like he
had died
with me, choosing to be absent as a father even when he was physical
ly
in the apartment
.
This s
udden act of waking up from wherever he had disappeared to confused the hell out of Sam
.
He didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful to have this glimpse of his old dad
.
He wanted to confront him on it, ask him who the hell
his father
thought he was, say everything he wanted to say in the past six months
about
his dad
having
been a vacant vessel
.
But instead, he
grabbed a towel off the counter and began drying the
wet
dishes
John had
placed into the rack.

John turned to him and smiled
at Sam, grateful for the help
.
The two of them finished tackling the dishes together before moving on to the rest of the house and putting it back together
.
The music still blared upstairs, but it served as a beat to move to rather than a force to move against.

Later, they both
sat down at the table
,
eating the first homemade dinner they’d enjoyed since before my death
.
John chewed on the words rolling around in his head, questions he didn’t even know how to ask
.
I could hear Sam’s thoughts as h
is dad figured out the right thing to say in a situation like this
.

Please don’t ask.  Please don’t ask.  Please don’t ask.

“So who is she?” John asked, and Sam slumped in his seat in defeat.

“No one,” he mumbled, pushing at his food with his fork
.
“Just some chick.”

“She seemed more than ‘just some chick,’ Sam
.
Is she your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s her name?” John prompted
.
He took another bite of food and waited, trying to appear casual even as the rest of his questions pushed to be first in line
.
I could sense that one opening in the conversation would cause them all to come spilling out to the floor
, drowning
John and Sam in the confusion of puberty, growing up, and experiences that could change
a
life forever
.
But Sam remained tightlipped, choosing now to remain silent as if the question had never been asked.

“Sam, I asked you a question,” John said, the curiosities about Lacey now evaporating against
the
heat rising up inside of him
.
There was nothing that made him angrier than when Sam shut down like this, losing
any outward displays
of emotion as he ignored whoever was speaking to him
.
It was the game he played whenever John acted as
someone
with more authority
than a roommate who fed Sam and paid all the bills
.
Instead of fighting his father, Sam would
just
keep his mouth shut and react as if no one were speaking to him at all.

****

“I don’t think he can hear you,” I said in bewilderment the first time it had happened
.
Sam remained tightlipped and calm while his father reddened in the face, repeating
several times
what he had said
.
It had been dinnertime then, too, the on
ly
time Sam was ever around us
.
Other than mealtimes, he would lock him
self in his room with his video
games or hang out with his friends until moments before it was time to eat
.
I had been dating John for
just
a couple of months, but I was beginning to see that Sam was fighting against any kind of parental control
.
He wasn’t a bad kid, and as far as I could tell he wasn’t rebelling in any major way
.
He just didn’t like to be told what to do.

On this particular occasion John was mere
ly
asking him what his plans were for the weekend
.
We all sat in silence as we waited for his answer, and I thought I saw just the hint of a smirk as he got up to put his plate in the sink
.
Beside me Joey ate his dinner as if nothing were amiss, though he watched
in silent curiosity
to see how things would unfold.

“Sam, your father is asking you what you are up to this weekend,” I said to him
.
Sam looked at me
with
a
calm
demeanor
, as if I were a child who didn’t understand the way things worked.

“I heard him,” he said.

“Then why aren’t you answering him?” I asked
.
“Are you mad at him?”

“No, I just don’t feel like talking,” he said, and he
turned to walk out of
the room before anyone could say anything else.

****

“Sam, don’t start this shit again,” John said, setting his fork on the table and looking at his
fifteen year
old son as they sat alone at the table we had once shared as a mixed up fami
ly
.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam mumbled
.
“I’m not doing anything.”

“Then why aren’t you speaking when I talk to you?”  I could feel
the heat of
John’s infuriation
simmer
inside of him, threatening to explode as
he
did his best to keep things under control.

“I don’t have to talk just because you spoke to me, Dad. I can talk when I want,” Sam said, sitting up
out of his slouch
and looking his dad
straight
in the eye.

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Sam
.
If you don’t want to talk about something, I’ll give you that
.
But tell me that
.
Tell me you’d rather not talk about her, or whatever it is you’re feeling
.
But to blatant
ly
disregard me is rude
.
And if we go down this road again, I’m just going to give you much of the same and forget to feed you or drive you wherever it is you need to go
.”
John sat back in his chair and folded his arms in front of him, confident his last word would sink in with Sam
.
But Sam looked at him with blazing eyes, standing up and glaring down at John.

“What the fuck do you think has been going on the past couple of months?” he shouted
.
“Have you been feeding me, driving me anywhere, or even talking to me?  You’ve been ignoring me ever since Rachel died
.
So don’t tell me how to act around you when you can’t even do the same shit for me!”  With that he picked up his plate with food still on it and threw it into the sink with enough force that it split into three separate pieces
.
He started to go back up the stairs to his room, but realized that was expected
of
him
.
In a split
-
second decision he opened the front door to the apartment and slammed it behind him as he left.

John sat in silence at the table, numb as a flurry of emotions
shot through him in a passionate fight to be
center stage
.
Sam was right
.
He’d been absent as a father as he mourned the dead and forgot about the living
.
I danced in his swirling thoughts as he remembered that first week I was gone and how I was everywhere
.
I was in the smell of my hair that still lingered on my pillow
.
I was in the photographs that beamed out at him from every corner of the house
.
I was in the books stacked upon my dresser waiting to be read, whose resolutions I would never know.

He had spent that first week finding everything that reminded him of me and hiding it in Joey’s room, shutting the door on the past several years that made up the best parts of his life
.
But he’d paused when he came to my wedding dress, hidden within an opaque garment bag
.
I peered into his memory as he unzipped the bag
with halting fingers
, letting the creamy silk spill out onto my side of the bed as he looked at the dress he’d never see me wear for him
.
He took
in the way it ruffled at my imaginary waist, hugging my curves and flowing into a subtle bell where my feet would be
.
One of my stray hairs remained on the dress, and he lifted it off
with care
, touching the fabric with his calloused hands and remembering the softness of my skin
.
I sat
in silence
in the corner of this memory as he lifted the dress to his face and sobbed into it with muffled cries
.
I stood next to John at the dinner table as
he relived this very first cry
.
It was
the one that opened the floodgates
, leading
to weeks of staying in his room and sobbing in secret
.
So ashamed of this weakness that possessed him, he left Sam to fend
for himself
, a temporary solution that soon became a habitual practice
.
And I was everywhere, haunting the apartment in his memories despite the fact that every part of me was locked up tight in Joey’s room.

In time,
John
tore
himself away from the
wedding
dress, hanging
it in
Joey’s closet after maneuvering around the piles of boxes that took up every inch of space
.
Seeing it hang there, shining its
promise
within
the darkened room, he was stuck between closing the door on it forever and the fear of forgetting me once he abandoned the dress to the room of memories
.
The idea was still formulating in his mind when he walked back to his room and grabbed the pair of shears that sat up straight in the cup of pens on his desk
.
He hesitated for on
ly
a moment before he began cutting into the fabric, taking a square piece of material and putting it in his pocket before closing the door of the room for the last time.