The Impossible Knife of Memory (25 page)

The second semester started in the middle of all this, looking pretty much like the first semester, except with heavier jackets. They made us memorize and puke up more facts, write more useless essays according to a fascist essay formula and, above all, take tests to prepare for taking even more tests. My conscientious objection to most homework had put my grades in the toilet, but the only class I had outright flunked was precalc. Benedetti finally took pity on me and busted me down to trig.

Then came the night of the phone call.

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I was in the middle of a nightmare in which I’d sat down to a history final and couldn’t remember anything except my name. At first, I thought the ringing noise was the bell at the end of the period. As I crawled to the surface of waking up, I thought it might be Finn, but he hated talking on the phone and never called.

I pushed the button to answer.
“Is this Emily?” asked a woman’s voice. I could barely hear her over the loud music and shouting in the background. “What did he say her name is? Sally?”
A wrong number. I hung up and fluffed my pillow. I had just closed my eyes when the phone rang again.
“Hayley,” the woman said. “Your dad says to ask for Hayley. Is that you?”
“My dad?” I sat up. “Who is this? What’s going on?”
“Here, you talk to her.” The phone was fumbled and dropped. When it was picked up again, it was my father’s voice, but I couldn’t understand a single word he said.
“Daddy, what did you say?” I went into the hall. The lights were all on. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”
The phone was fumbled again, then the background noise faded. The woman spoke. “Your dad is so drunk he can’t remember where he put his truck, which is good because he’s too wasted to drive. He got in a fight and the boss is kicking him out. I checked his pockets; he doesn’t have any money left.”
“Is he hurt?”
“You need to come get him, sweetie. This is a shitty neighborhood after dark. Got a pen?”
“Hang on.” I ran to the kitchen and found what I needed in the junk drawer. “Okay, I’m ready.”
She gave me the address and directions. “How soon till you get here?”
“I don’t know. I have to find a car. Can you keep an eye on him until I get there?”
She shouted, “In a minute!” to someone else, then said, “Hurry.”

There was no time to be embarrassed or angry or ashamed. I called Gracie while I was walking to her house. “Wha . . .” she mumbled.
“I need your mom’s car.” I explained the situation, then
repeated it until she woke up enough to understand what I
was saying.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said. “Just put her
keys on the front seat. I know the code to open the garage.” “Don’t open the garage door!” she said. “Mom always hears it, no matter what. If you try to sneak her car out,
she’ll call the cops, I guarantee it.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Call Finn.”
I stopped in the middle of the empty street. “I don’t
want him to see Dad like this.”
“Do you have a choice?” she asked.

Finn didn’t say anything when he picked me up. We didn’t talk at all as we drove. The fight on the phone—him saying I should let Dad wake up tomorrow morning in his own puke in an alley, me calling him a heartless bastard—had drained us both.

(He’d only gotten in his car when he realized I was headed to the bar on foot.)
He didn’t say anything until he parked in front of The Sideways Inn. “I can’t let you go in there alone.”
“You have to,” I said.
“It’s dangerous.” He pointed at a group of guys hanging out in a doorway down the block. “Look at them. They’re just waiting to pounce.”
“Hardly,” I said. “They’re hoping that we’re stupid enough to leave your car empty so they can break in and steal the radio. This heap is old enough that they could hotwire it. Then we’ll really be stuck here.”
“But,” he said.
I opened the door. “Keep the engine running.” “Get out of here!” the bartender yelled as I walked in. “You’re not old enough.”
The music was so loud that I could feel it in my fillings. The dark room was filled with shadows leaning against the wall, bending over the pool table, and slumped into chairs around battered tables, all of them staring at me. I wanted to turn around and run, but I put my shoulders back and walked straight to the bar. “I’m looking for my dad.”
The bartender scowled. “You got ID?”
“My dad,” I said louder. “A woman called me to come get him.”
An old guy two stools down looked at me with sad eyes. “She’s here for Captain Andy.”
The bartender’s expression changed. “Did you come alone?”
“My boyfriend’s outside in the car.”
He nodded at the old guy. “Go get him, Vince. He’s in the john.”
I kept my eyes on the beer taps. miller. bud. labatt’s. The music hammered at me, chipping off pieces that fell to the sticky floor. Most of the light in the room came from the television sets, all set to different channels. The couple sitting at the end of the bar stared at the hockey game, their mouths hanging open like they didn’t understand what they were seeing.
“Here he is.” The bartender’s growl made me jump.
Dad had a taken a couple punches to the mouth, his lips were swollen and bloodied. Blood stained his shirt, too, along with vomit and beer. His eyes were open, but nobody was home. He had no idea where he was.
“Thanks,” I said. “I got it.”
They stared at me, at us. All of them stared. Not because I was young and female, like when I walked in, but because my father was so wasted his little girl had to fetch him home. Total strangers—drunks, addicts, whores, excons—pitied us. I could smell it coming off of them.
Dad’s bad leg was useless and his good leg wasn’t much better. I put his arm around my shoulder and put my arm around his waist and dragged him through the door, outside to the car. Finn jumped out and helped me get him in the backseat. Dad crawled in and collapsed, his head hanging down in the foot well.
“What about a seat belt?” Finn asked.
“Don’t worry about it.” I slammed the back door. “Just drive.”
We got in and rolled down the windows so we wouldn’t be choked by my father’s stench.
Finn drove faster than I’d ever seen. “How much longer can you keep doing this?”
“This has never happened before,” I said.
“It’s not just tonight,” he said. “It’s everything. You take care of him more than he takes care of you. How much longer?”
I didn’t have an answer.
Michael drove Dad around the next day until he found the pickup truck. The window had been smashed and the radio stolen, but other than that it was fine. We both stayed home for a few days after that, feeling like we were coming down with the flu.

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I pedaled until I broke a sweat. Gracie and I had been able to snag exercise bicycles in gym because so many zombies had blown off school the day before Thanksgiving. (I wondered if they were rampaging in downtown Albany, or maybe took a train to join the larger horde, probably in Poughkeepsie.) The substitute gym aide was working on a laptop in the corner. A half-dozen girls were lying on the gym mats, talking about nothing, and laughing too hard. A couple more sat in the bleachers painting their toenails.

I pushed harder until the sweat dripped off my face and splashed on the floor.
“It doesn’t matter how fast you pedal,” Gracie said, handing me a water bottle. “That bike’s not going anywhere.”
I took a long drink. “Now you tell me.”
“You look like crap,” she said.
“I just need some sleep.”
“You need more than that.”
I shook my head.
She cycled slowly, like a little kid turning lazy circles on a tricycle. “What’s wrong with Finn?”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t say a single word first period.”
I shrugged. “Physics is kicking his butt.”
“He didn’t touch you, either. You grabbed his belt loop with your finger once and after a minute, he pushed your hand away.”
“What kind of pervert are you, counting how many times we touch each other?”
“If you want me to shut up, just say it,” she said.
I took another drink. “Don’t shut up.”
“I wasn’t planning on it, but thanks,” she said. “I’m worried. You’re both so weird and incompatible with anyone else, that you’re perfect for each other. When he stops touching you and when you stop teasing him, it screws up the universe, know what I mean?”
I held the water bottle against my forehead. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”
“His sister?”
I set the bottle on the floor. “He’s driving to Boston with his mom tomorrow to have Thanksgiving with Chelsea and his dad.”
“Sounds like hell.”
“I know, right? He was so bummed when he told me and I felt so bad for him that I said I’d go to the mall with him after school. His mom is making him buy a new shirt for the occasion.”
“You hate the mall.”
“He said he was desperate.”
Gracie got a text message. I changed gears and stood up to pedal. Since the night Finn helped me bring Dad home, something had changed. Gracie was right; he wasn’t touching me. I wasn’t touching him, either, because a token beltloop grab didn’t count. We’d stopped teasing each other. He hadn’t broken up with me, but I could smell it coming. He wanted a normal girl with a matched set of unscarred parents. Someone with a “bright future.”
“I need to steal a referee’s whistle.” Gracie stuck her phone in her bra. “The therapist says we have to eat Thanksgiving dinner together, all four of us.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Thanksgiving?” Gracie’s eyes bugged out. “Think about it. Carving knives! Boiling gravy! It’ll be a disaster.” She pedaled faster. “Dad’s got to be sleeping with her.”
“Your mom?”
“The therapist, dummy. Why else would she recommend such a stupid thing?”
“I don’t know, G. Maybe she thinks your parents should stop being idiots and find a way to still be a family even if they are going to split up.”
“No way.” She stopped. “What are you and your dad going to do? Turkey at home or a restaurant?”
Two years before, we’d been on the road to Cheyenne, getting paid extra for driving on the holiday. We drove until midnight and ate turkey sandwiches to celebrate. Last year, we’d been stuck in a motel outside Seattle. It had a minifridge and a microwave, so I’d cooked up a box of stuffing and served canned peaches for dessert.
“How is he doing?” she asked.
“Better,” I lied. “Every day without Trish he gets a little stronger.”
“Come to our house,” she said.
“What?”
“Bring your dad to my house for Thanksgiving.”
“Shouldn’t you ask your parents first?”
“They’ll be overjoyed with the distraction, trust me.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.
“You have to do this.” Gracie reached over and pushed the button on my console to make it harder for me to pedal. “You owe me.”
“For what?”
“I helped you the night you had to bring your dad home.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I talked to you, didn’t I? And I totally would have gotten the car for you if I could have. Besides, it worked out okay in the end, right? Please come to dinner.”
“I don’t know, G.”
“Bring a pie if you want. Pie makes everybody happy. Bring pie and your dad. Maybe it will make them all be on their best behavior. It’s worth a shot, right?”

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“Why didn’t your mom call the police?” I asked, trying to keep up with Finn.

“There’s no way to prove it was Chelsea,” he said, grimfaced.
“Actually, there is.” I broke into an awkward half jog. “They have this new thing called ‘fingerprints.’ Since she was arrested before, they’ll be on file someplace.”
“Please don’t be a bitch,” he said. “Not right now.”
He opened the glass door of the red entrance of the mall and walked in without waiting to see if I was still with him. While we were at school, someone had broken into his mom’s condo and stolen her emergency credit card (chiseled out of its hiding place in a block of frozen ice at the back of the freezer) and a pound of sliced ham. Obviously, it was Chelsea and it should have been the end of the trip to Boston and his parents’ misguided plans for Thanksgiving, but his mother was still acting like everything was fine.
Finn plowed ahead into the crowd of pre-pre-Black Friday shoppers. (His mom said he had to buy a new dress shirt because he had outgrown his old ones. His family always dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner. Utter insanity.) He didn’t realize I wasn’t with him until he was ten stores in. He turned in a full circle, looking for me.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. Approximately two billion people were inside, all hollering so they could be heard over the irritating holiday (buy-our-stuff) music. I fought my way through the swarm until I reached him, standing next to one of those fake mini-booths that sell bad cell phone plans.
“It’s too crowded,” I said. “Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“We’re leaving at six in the morning,” he pointed out. “It won’t take long.”
I followed him into a small, crowded store that was so dark no one could read the price tags. He picked out a half-dozen shirts and we squeezed our way back to the dressing rooms. He went in and closed the door behind him. I called Dad, just to check on him, to tell him I was running late, and I’d be home soon. Also, I needed to hear how he sounded.
He didn’t answer the phone.
I counted to sixty and called again. Still no answer.
“Does it fit?” I asked.
“Not the first one.”
Five minutes of silence later, I knocked again. “Any luck?”
“Not really.”
“Why is this taking so long?”
“What’s your problem?”
Where should I start?
“Just hurry up.”
Someone turned up the store’s music so loud it made the floor shake. A new crowd of people pushed their way into the dressing room area, even though there was nowhere for them to stand. It suddenly felt like I was standing in front of the stage at a huge concert and sixty thousand people decided to make the place into a mosh pit. I swallowed hard and looked up, above their heads, looking for air and trying not to panic. I called Dad again. The phone rang.
I pounded on the dressing-room door. “Seriously, Finn, it’s just a shirt. I need to get home.”
He flung a heap of white shirts over the dressing room door. “Can you put those back?”
I tensed as a couple of college-aged guys squeezed past me, waiting to feel their hands on parts of me they weren’t allowed to touch. They kept their hands to themselves, which was good because I could feel it, the gray closing in on me like a toxic fog, filling my lungs with poison.
“Miss Blue?” Finn asked. “You still there?”
“None of them fit?”
“They itched.”
“They’re cotton.” The phone at my house kept ringing. “Stop being such a baby.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
No answer. No answer. No answer.
The music got even louder. I was sweating. Out of breath, too, because there was not enough air and too many people.
No answer.