His voice is a light tenor in the darkness, competing with the road noise for my attention. “So, because I’m not escaping from anything, it’s all right for me.” November leaves skitter in front of me on the road.
My hands loosen slightly from their grip on the steering wheel, trying to shift so that I’m comfortable in this car. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother. Can you hand something down after you die?
“Because that way I won’t get addicted.” I hear him turn toward me, perhaps seeking confirmation of his justification.
“Okay,” I say. We’re on the highway, going back to the house where I grew up. He pauses a moment in the dark, fumbling for words. He’s always had trouble expressing himself, ever since he could speak. I wait.
My hands rested in my lap like abandoned dolls, my eyes sketching over their outline. I need to cut my fingernails, I thought. Dusk wheedled its way in through the fading curtains.
“So we hope you’re not too upset. We decided to tell you first. Please don’t tell Cam yet.”
Her words did not sound repentant enough for my ears. I looked up and saw her, sitting in the old blue chair we had gotten four years ago. I had never heard of a buy-one-get-one-free sale for furniture, but apparently if you bought two chairs, you got a free ottoman. My mother, although she refused to shop at thrift stores, loved a bargain.
I adored thrift stores. They were like Christmas, except you didn’t have to take all the rough and could just get the diamond. My mother told me that we weren’t poor, so we didn’t have to shop there. I did anyway.
“No, it’s all right.” I forced a smile out between numbed lips. “I sort of expected this.”
She looks relieved. My father stands stoically near the lamp, his face a mask.
I take after my father.
“I found an email the other day,” he continues, changing the subject. I glance at him, seeing the way his hair blends in with the light-studded darkness.
“Oh?” Always smile and nod, my mother says. Boys like that. Although I have no desire to impress my brother, it keeps me from having to speak.
“Yeah.” He pauses, glancing at the clock. “Dammit, it’s 12:30 already?” He exhales, a long gust blown out between his lips. “I have school tomorrow, you know.”
“I know, Dan. Sorry.” My hand skirts the automatic shift and I grab my coffee cup. Sweet hazelnut teases my lips. I swallow.
“Yeah, so the email was about Mr. Harris.” His voice is strained, trying to stay nonchalant and failing.
I feel something in my stomach sink. “Okay.”
Afterwards, I stumbled out to my car with my overnight bag. My mother beckoned Daniel inside. The next victim.
My youngest brother Cameron was running around outside. It was the dying end of August, the last few flames of heat trickling away to make a path for winter’s bite.
“Kerrie, look what I can do!” he yelled, his six year old limbs flying through the air as he leapt off the front porch, spilling onto the hard asphalt of the driveway. I watched him with pursed lips as he landed. “Ow…”
“That wasn’t very bright.”
His face screwed up in anger as he stood, brushing himself off. “Hey!”
I popped open the trunk of the car. “You okay?”
Somewhat mollified by this, he stumbled over to me. “When are you going back to your house?”
Slamming the back shut, I glanced at him, wishing I had some habit like smoking with which I could occupy my hands. “Tonight.”
“Aw, so soon?”
Again he changes the subject, flitting away. Maybe if he gets too close, he’ll ignite. “So what do you think about my testing out this recreational drug use stuff?”
“I think it’s stupid.” Flat, emotionless words.
I feel his eyes on me briefly. “How come?”
“It’s expensive. And illegal.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think that people should try everything at least once?”
This stumps me. I pause. “Honestly? No. No, I don’t.”
He’s silent a long moment. “The email was from Mom to Mr. Harris.”
Here is the fire. I am silent as well.
His voice is thicker than normal. “It was a love letter.”
My father called me back in when they were done talking to Daniel. I abandoned Cameron outside. My mother was nowhere to be found.
He was uncomfortable. I was somewhat glad for this. He started off nervously. “I’m not sure how to ask this, but… would you mind giving me Greta?”
I blinked, then looked away. Greta was my bear that I had been given when I was born. One time when we had gone to the zoo to see the polar bears, I held her up to look. She slipped from my grasp and fell into the area between the cage and the fencing around it. I started crying for my bear. My father had hopped over the fence and rescued her.
I nodded slowly. “Let me go get her.”
The trek to my old room was ages long, each foot climbing the stairs as if weights had been roped around my ankles. I pushed open the door when I had finally reached it.
Daniel had taken over the room when I had left. I picked my way carefully over the blue rug to where some of my stuff was still lingering. I had not brought Greta with me when I moved.
She was tattered and torn by age, seams barely holding together. Her fur was a muted grey color, like how so many people describe the sky over the ocean. Black-brown eyes still peered curiously from her face, unchanging.
I held her a moment tightly in my arms.
“And?” I prompt, because he seems to have stopped.
“And what?” he says back, his voice tinged with annoyance.
“What did it say?”
He adjusts the pocket on his pants, although it’s lying flat against his thigh. “Well, what else do love letters say?”
I am silent again, mulling this over. “Did you tell her you read it?”
“Yeah. ‘Course.”
Braver than I give him credit for. Or more honest. “I see. And what did she say?”
“Um, we talked about it a bit.” He shrugs, ever his non-communicative self. “Not much.”
“I see.”
My silk blouse slid around my shoulders, hugging them gently as I lifted up my beaten bear to my father. He accepted it with tears in his eyes, their color a mirror to my own. He pulled me to him and embraced me.
“It’s silk,” I whispered, my voice choked into a staccato alto.
He held me tighter.
At the family dinner after my grandmother’s funeral, my father had commented how much he loved and silk and how good the black silk shirt I had bought looked on me. Ever an enthusiast of praise, I went out to the local Goodwill and bought more, each for about a dollar. And that day I had opted to wear one.
“Because I know you like silk,” I continued, my tone strange to my ears. Tears were not a part of my life. Crying in public was something I could not allow myself to do.
I pulled away, gave him a half smile, then slowly and calmly moved to the bathroom and locked myself in.
The bump of the wheels over the empty darkened road is drowning me, suffocating me in senseless, soundless rhythm. My throat feels as if it is in a vise, squeezing tighter and tighter, and dewy pearl-drop headlights are coming into view on the other side of the road. I hug the white line.
“Have you seen him recently, Kerrie? Mr. Harris, I mean?” he asks. He is remarkably still, as if I am sitting next to a mannequin with a larynx. Even his breathing is soft.
“Yeah.” My tongue is fat cotton. “At church when I was still there.”
“Yeah, I guess Mom goes for those religious guys,” he jokes, trying to lighten the weighted atmosphere. It fails. I do not reply.
The bathroom was graced with sailboats, trickling over the walls, skating around the small room. My eyes were wet and my vision was starting to blur shapes.
Slow deep breaths. In. Out. In.
Out.
I had left Cameron outside alone.
I washed my face with the hand towel, calming myself down. From the bathroom it was only a few more steps to outside, and to the back yard.
“She won’t talk to Dad anymore, huh?” I offer after a moment of resounding silence.
“Nah.” He seems to have adopted my affinity for a lack of speech.
“Nah as in she won’t talk to him or nah as in she does?”
“She won’t talk to him.”
I push a tape into the player, but keep the sound low. “How are you with all this?” I notice vaguely that I never mention what “this” specifically is. Maybe I think if I never say it, it won’t be real.
“Okay, I guess. A little depressed.” He shrugs slightly, the movement almost smooth on his tall frame. “I guess I always knew they weren’t really happy, but I didn’t think Mr. Harris’d be the one to cause all this.”
“Yeah, who’da thunk?” My tone is overtly bitter.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t like Mr. Harris.
“And who’d have thought she’d divorce your dad because of it?” My voice is starting to take on hysterical qualities. I clench my fist and my jaw, forcing calm into my demeanor. “Well, whatever, I don’t have to live there any more.”
“She didn’t say she was divorcing him because of Mr. Harris,” he says, dark eyes reflecting green from the clock as he glances at me.
“Because Dad abused her, right?” I say, tasting cold sarcasm.
“She didn’t actually give a reason.”
“Kerrie?”
“Yeah, Cam?”
Cameron was silent a moment, sitting in my arms as we were swinging slightly back and forth. Dad had made this swing-set years ago, when Daniel and I had been Cameron’s age. The middle swing had broken, as that had been made afterwards, when Cameron had been born, to accommodate all of us. I pushed further with my feet. “You like living so far away from me?”
“Sometimes I do.”
He was silent a moment. I started pushing a little faster with my feet, then actually to swing. “Don’t you miss me?” He sounded plaintive. I swung faster.
“Yeah, a lot of times I do.” My words were rushed past his ear as we swung backwards. I continued pumping with my legs, leaning into the swing. He was clinging to me, his face nervous.
The swing-set started to shake, as it always did when I went high enough, and he started to clutch to me tighter, arms and legs wrapped around my waist in terror. “Too high, Kerrie!” he yelled, frightened. “You’re going too high!!”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.” I take the exit off the highway, wary of cops.
He nods, accepting without words.
“Someone told me once love isn’t wrong, no matter what.” Surreptitiously, I glance at him. “Do you believe that?”
“I guess.” He sounds unconvinced. “Well, maybe it depends. What do you think?”
“I don’t believe in love,” I say, trying to make it sound as if this does not bother me. “Not romantic love anyway. It’s a farce, a practical joke we play on ourselves. It’s all a lie.”
He’s silent next to me again. I glance to the dashboard and see the clock tick to 1:07. Another minute of my life gone.
“How much longer till we get there?”
“Not much longer,” I say. “We’re almost there.”