A Symphony of Cicadas (16 page)

Months later, t
he material rema
ined hidden in his pocket
.
H
e rubbed it between two fingers as he sat in solitude at the
empty dinner table, the slam of the front door echoing
over and over
through his head as if it were hitting against the
vortex of
hurts.

Bang.
  Rachel and Joey are gone.

Bang.
  You will never hear her laugh again.

Bang.
  You may even forget what her laugh sounded like.

Bang.
  You are losing your son.

Bang.
  Rachel was the glue that held this all together.

Bang.
  You are a horrible father.

Bang.

John stood up and threw his plate at the wall, another porcelain casualty of a war that couldn’t be won
.
I shrunk down in the corner of the room at the violence in the action, ignoring the nagging thought that I was the cause of it
.
I couldn’t be
.
He was still mourning
.
He’d been suffering without me here
.
Nothing had changed.

The plate was the last thing in the house to be broken that night, if I didn’t count John’s heart
.
He stopped himself at the climax of the action,
his breath heavy
as he stared at the food that stained the wall
,
and the
pieces
of white that were now scattered across the dining room floor
.
For several moments he stood like that, clenchin
g and unclenching his hands,
fighting the urge to grab something else and heave it with a satisfying smash into the wall
.
His breath came out in forced rushes of air as he worked to expel the anger and rage that was clawing to fight its way out of him
.
He wanted to shout, to scream at the unfairness of having to be a father even though his whole world had come crashing down around him and he wasn’t sure how to pick up the pieces.

Six m
onths
after my death
, and I
was
still both his waking breath and sweet suffocation.

We both stayed quiet in that room, his breath slowing to a calm rhythm in the heavy air around us
.
Without a word, he grabbed the broom and began sweeping up the shards of plate
.
Once the floor and sink were free of broken porcelain, the walls without evidence of the earlier actions, and the remaining dinner dishes cleaned and drying in the rack, John sat in a chair in the living room in silence, waiting for Sam to cool down and come home.

Ten

S
am never did come home that night
.
I left John alone in the apartment and
found Sam
huddled in the poor lighting of a
pier a dozen blocks from the apartment
.
He sat at the edge, tossing tiny rocks one by one into the still water below
.
They
lay
gathered in a pile near his crossed legs, collected on his walk towards the bay
.
It was a fascination he had carried with him from his childhood, gathering rocks in moments of his life, one for each experience to hold onto the memory a little longer
.
There were rocks in his room that looked to be just ordinary pebbles to the unknowing eye, but held secrets that on
ly
he knew every time he looked at them
.
He could tell where each rock was from and what he was doing in the moment
,
even years after collecting the insignificant pebble.

He never felt younger than he did as he sat alone on the pier away from his
depressing
home
.
In th
at
moment he was
five
years old, lost and needing some guidance in th
e confusing reality of being
fifteen
.
Trying to let go of the hurts that tore at him, h
e watched as each pebble dropped from his hand
, taking its memory
into the blackness of the water
and disappearing
.
I was surprised to see my face among the images he included in
his
tal
ly
of life’s unfairness
.
But
at
the front of the list was his father, John’s
likeness making numerous appearances as the list grew longer and longer until everything disappeared except for him.

“I don’t even care,” Sam said out loud to no one, trying to convince him
self that this was how he
felt
.
He couldn’t fool himself,
however, and
swiped at
the tears that kept spilling from his eyes
.
He held onto one of the larger rocks and looked behind him to see if his dad was
searching
for him
.
No one was there, and the cell phone in his pocket remained unlit
.
He added that hurt to his rock and dropped it in
.
“He doesn’t care enough to try and find me,” he whispered as the water accepted the small stone
.
He picked up another one and thought about the past couple of months.

He had fended for himself when his dad went under the dark hood of depression
.
At first he kept up the cleaning, trying to help out his dad because John was so sad.

“He didn’t even notice,” he whispered as he dropped in another rock.

He made his own meals and always made sure there were leftovers for his dad to pick at
.
When his dad did eat from the food Sam
prepared
, he never thanked him, didn’t even acknowledge how the food got there.

Another rock fell in.

He had to remind his dad when to go shopping, making lists so they had enough food
.
His schoolwork was
growing in difficulty
, and he was falling behind in several of his classes
.
His birthday came and went, and all John could muster in celebration was a card with
fifty dollars
in it, a gift that was gone before the weekend was over when Sam spent
it on some experim
ental weed instead of the video
game he had been trying to save for
.
The housework was getting to be too
much for him to keep up with
.
S
o he
ceased helping out around the house, testing to see if his father
would notice all Sam had been doing, or even start doing something on his own
.
Neither happened, and the house began to fall apart
.
A few more rocks tumbled from Sam’s shaking hand.

And then my face showed up
.
He tried to push against it, but it became clear that he missed me
.
He wouldn’t say it aloud, but I could hear it as if he were whispering it to me in my ear.

With just a simple thought, I saw the part of Sam he kept hidden from me
.

When I was alive and first began to know Sam, he
did everything he could to push me away
.
I was the intruder to a life he and his dad shared that, to him, didn’t need fixing
.
Sam could come and go as he pleased, and never had to worry about spending too much time behind locked doors
.
He could do what he wanted and was never questioned
.
It didn’t even occur to John to pry a little bit more into Sam’s life
.
That had always been Wendy’s department when they were married
.
But Sam stopped spending as much time at his mom’s house soon after the divorce, limiting his time with her to on
ly
a couple
days
a month and spending the rest of his time in his
real home
with his dad
.
He was angry that she even left, giving up without even a fight
.
But more than that, he knew he had more independence in his dad’s house
than
under the watchful eye of his mother.

When I came into the picture before the body of the broken marriage was even cold, Sam was angry
.
I stood in the way of h
is mom ever coming back home
.
With the anger he held against his mother
,
t
he
conflicting hope for his parents to get back together
confused him
.
But he didn’t argue against it
.
He on
ly
knew he didn’t want me around.

For the next several years
Sam
was wary around Joey and me, keeping himself closed off in the bedroom and ignoring my insistence to get to know him better
.
And then I moved in and wrecked everything all over again
.
I brought with me this other kid who now had to share his bathroom, his food, his space, and his dad’s attention that was already
overwhelmed by me
.
But even when
Sam
was at his most brilliant in teenage defiance, I never wavered.

When I was around, he wasn’t invisible.

Neither one of us could pinpoint the exact moment when the change took place, when Sam accepted the fact that I was there to stay, that even a defiant teenage boy wouldn’t change that
.
It took me longer to realize that Sam actual
ly
didn’t mind
that I was there. However, he still took the time to test me, checking to see if
I, too, would get up and walk away like his mom did. He got away with less
while I was
around, but he stopped
caring
.
In truth
, he appreciated that I cared enough to notice
,
even if it limited his comings and goings.

****

“Where have you been?” I demanded of Sam one evening when he
showed up
long
after
dinner
was over
.
I faced him
in his bedroom, demanding an answer and getting nowhere as he
remained silent, his expression blank
.

Earlier in the evening, Sam’s plate lay untouched as we ate our dinner.
John had shrugged it off, though he called
his son’s cell phone several times to remind him
that dinner was getting cold
.
I was angry that the meal I cooked lay untouched o
n Sam’s plate at the table
.
I announced to John and Joey that someone who couldn’t bother to make it home on time for dinner didn’t deserve to eat, tossing the food down the garbage disposal
.
When the door slammed and heavy footsteps bounded the stairs, I looked at John.

“I’ll talk with him,” John said. I could hear them upstairs, Sam’s voice
loud against
John’s calm reasoning.

“I’m not even hungry!” I heard Sam yell, and the door slammed
.
John came down
soon after
, his face a mixture of fury and frustration.

“I don’t know what to
do,” he said in defeat
.
“If I’
m easy on him, he walks all over me
.
But when I come down hard, he’s impossible
.
There’s no winning with him!”  He helped Joey clear the table, looking at me as if I knew what to say
.
I didn’t
.
Joey hadn’t yet reached an age of rebellion, finding it easier to just go along with the flow rather than fight against it
.
I liked to think that it was because I had raised him a certain way or that he was just a mellower child, but
I
knew it was more
probable
he just hadn’t hit the years of testing boundaries and exercising the ability to go against society.

“I’ll give him a few moments, and then I’ll try my hand with him,” I told him, cooling the urge to knock down his door and give him a piece of my mind in favor of being the
anchor to John’s mounting chagrin
.
John smiled at me in both apology and relief.

“I hate to have you do it
.
He’s my kid, I should know how to handle him.”

“He’s my stepson,” I told him
.
“And this is our fami
ly
.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, but didn’t have to say anything for me to know what he was thinking.

When I had first moved in, I didn’t even know what to say to Sam
.
I was terrified of the kid, sensing his anger over his parents’ divorce and assuming he was placing the bulk of the blame on me for how messed up his world had become
.
I was the stranger in the equation, I was the easy target.

But I didn’t actual
ly
know how Sam felt
.
While the kid would move sideways when we all moved up and down, he
never directed his disdain at me
.
He’d yell at his dad, slam doors, and leave his belongings all over the place
.
But when it came to me,
my newness to his world caused him to tread with careful steps.

It didn’t occur to me
un
til later
that
, in actuality,
I had
—and should have—authority
over him
.
In the newness of the order of command, I gave him way more
leeway
than a then
-
fourteen
year old boy should have
.
As a result, we both ended up moving around each other in an awkward dance of never quite saying what we meant and
of
choosing words
with care
.

I regretted telling John I’d try to get through to him that evening
.
In the moment I felt like anything was possible
.
But as the closed door came into view I realized that I had no idea what I was doing
.
I’d never done this before, and just
the act of knocking on his door felt daunting
.
I raised my hand in hesitation, holding it frozen in front of the door for a few moments as I rehearsed what I was going to say.

You need to call if you’re going to be late.

We thought you were dead when we couldn’t reach you.

Do you have any idea how you’re killing your father?

Why can’t you just stop being difficult and start joining this fami
ly
?

What the hell is wrong with you?

“What’s wrong with you?”  Joey asked as he rounded the corner. I
dropped my hand from the door
, my face reddening as I realized how much weight I was putting into
Sam’s reaction
.
“I don’t get what the big deal is, Mom
.
He’s being an asshole
.
Just knock on the door
.”
And with that he banged on Sam’s door and then slipped past me
, closing
the door of his own room before I could grab him.