“Well,” she says, and then repeats it. I wish I could say there was some understanding there, some way I’ve gotten her to change her mind. But I can’t tell what she’s thinking, can’t tell if she’d ever have room for forgiving Zoe, and that’s a damn shame. It’s what Zoe had wanted from me, more than anything, that first day, and I wish I could go back andgive it to her.
“If you knew her,” I say, because it feels like I have to say it, some last thing I can do for Zoe even though I’ve lost her. “You’d see her the way I do. She’s funny as hell and ten times smarter than me on her worst day. She’s loyal and she works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. On herself, on whatever her friends need, on whatever I needed from her.”
She doesn’t say anything, looking down at her hands and then back out to the yard. I don’t have time to stick around for what she may or may not have to say in response. I say a quick goodbye, grab my keys and phone, and head out.
I doubt I’ve convinced her, but I guess itdoesn’t matter.
* * * *
When I get home that night, my dad’s in the pink chair, swiveled to face the flat-screen, one of the few possessions I’d brought back from Colorado, though I haven’t watched it much. Seeing him there brings a fresh sting of pain to my chest, the way he’s so passive. He’s barely acknowledged my coming in. “Hey, Pop,” I say, clapping his shoulder as I pass by him on my way to the kitchen, same as he used to do to me. It’s late, past 11:00 p.m., so I know Mom’s been in bed for at least an hour, and she’s left a container of food for me on the counter, a sticky note stuck to the plastic cover with instructions on how to microwave it, like she’s forgotten that I’m a grown-ass man, living on my own for over a decade. It’s nice, of course, how thoughtful she is, but holy shit, I wish I was alone here. I don’t feel like being taken care of, not right now, and especially not by my mother, not after our tense exchange from this morning.
Still, a man’s got to eat, especially after almost thirteen hours on duty, so I heat up the plate.
I bring it out to the living room, set it on the coffee table in front of me while I lower my aching, sorry ass to the couch. I’ve got the next two days off, a good thing for my body, I suppose, though I don’t relish the thought of negotiating this house with both my parents in it for forty-eight hours, and they’ve said nothing about when they plan to leave. On-screen is some kind of police procedural, a big, broad-shouldered bald guy in a leather jacket and a badge showing on his hip lecturing a room full of rookies about contaminated evidence. My dad looks completely enraptured.
“You like this show?” I say, and he grunts anacknowledgment.
Normally I’d let that go, but something about that noise he makes is so familiar to me. I know it’s because I’ve made the same one a hundred times, clammed up and barely engaged and trying not to let loose all the shit I’m really thinking, and the only person who’s never let me get away with it is Zoe. “What’s it about?” I ask, and shove in another forkful of—fuck, I don’t even know what this is, some kind of hamburger-potato mash that’ll probably keep me up with heartburn. I chew slowly, waitingfor his answer.
I feel my dad look over my way, but I keep my eyes on the plate, not wanting to push him. “This cop’s gone bad,” he says. “Everyone thinks he’s great, but he’s got some kind of situation with a hooker and a bunch ofillegal guns.”
“Nice,” I say, which makes no fucking sense, but at least we’ve had some semblance ofa conversation.
I finish off my food, take a big gulp of water, and sit back, watch with him for a while. I don’t much like this kind of show, but something about it ends up being pretty soothing—the cop’s gone bad in general but in specific he’s about to bust some asshole who beats on his kids, and I guess that’s something. When the credits roll, my dad looks at his watch, taps his finger lightly over a button on the remote, not changing channels or shutting it off, just—contemplating, I guess. “You know, I think he loves that hooker,” he says, out of the blue.
“Probably don’t call her a hooker, Pop. I don’t know if people saythat anymore.”
He shrugs. “I know you think I watch too much TV.”
I look over at him, surprised. This isn’t what we do, me and my dad. We don’t talk about the stuff that there’s good reason not to acknowledge. “I didn’tsay anything.”
He mutes the TV, clears his throat. “Guess you probably don’t see it so much, but I watch less than I used to. I like this show and another one, one your mother’s got me into about a lady park ranger.”
“Pop,” I say, shaking my head, the first real smile I’ve felt in days twitching at my mouth. I’d pay good money, all my fucking money, to see Zoe’s face when my pop said “lady park ranger.”
To see her face at all, I guess, if I’m being honest.
“I’m doing a lot better than I was, you know,” he says, and he reaches up, wipes his eyes.Fuck,he’s crying again, and I drop my eyes back to the now-empty plate.“I go to those meetings sometimes, the ones your mother likes. And I got someone I see down there in Florida, someone who helps me with things. Take a lot of walks with your mother.”
“That’s good.” I swallow twice, then clear my throat. That choking feeling again, and I push the plate even farther away from me, wishingI hadn’t eaten.
“All different ways people get over things,” he says, pushing up out of his chair and tossing the remote at me. It lands with a slap on my chest, then falls to my lap. “You’d better figure out yours.”
He looks down at me for a second, one brief nod of his chin—a poor substitute for affection, but I’ll take it. I watch him walk toward the front door, unlocking and locking the deadbolt, then leaning his shoulder against the door until it makes this littleclickof approval. I watch him move down the hall, hear him do the same at the back door. The routine completed, he heads back to bed, his footfalls quieton the carpet.
For what feels like a long time, I don’t even move. I stare right at that muted television, not registering anything that’s on the screen. I’d thought I was getting over it, I guess, or maybe I thought there was no getting over it, and so I hadn’t really tried. The camp wasn’t trying, not really—the camp was just me running, running to something else so I wouldn’t have to stop and look around me, to really catalog everything I’d lost. And so look what I’d done, look how I’d fucked everything up, the very same thing Zoe had warned me about all those weeks ago, driving back from the campground after the first weekend I’d been with her, been inside of her. She’d told me it was easy to make mistakes. She’d told meabout her own.
She’d tried, so far as I would let her, to stop me.
There’s that pain in my middle again, breath-stealing. I’d done wrong by her, not just because I brought her in on this mess with the camp, a mess she’d agreed to for her own reasons. I’d done wrong because ofthismess, the mess that’s inside of me ever since I got that call, the last call for Aaron. The call I’d known was coming, somewhere deep down inside me. I’d known it was coming years before it actually came. I’ve been fucked up and grieving, too scared to face it, too willing to let her take the lead in getting me outof my own head.
I shut off the TV, set the remote next to my abandoned plate, and stand, my eyes running over every piece of furniture, every lamp, the old carpet, the curtains my mother made back when Aiden and I werein ninth grade.
It’s like being in a museum.
I walk out of the living room, down the hall to where I had my office set up, where I’ve blown up an inflatable mattress so my parents can sleep in my—their—room. I stare down at it, this sad-as-fuck bed, twin size, basically a life raft, smaller and less comfortable than my camp bunk. I hear my dad moving around in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. When he’s done, he does this little cough, and it sounds so much like Aaron that I bend down, yank the edge of the mattress, sheets and all, toward me. At first I’m just trying to cover the noise, but pretty soon it’s clear to me what I mean to do with this air bed, and I don’t even care that my dad sees me pull it out into the hallway, his brow barely wrinkling before he gives me another nod of acknowledgment and turns toward his room, closing the door behind him.
It’s awkward, doing this—I’ll have to go back for the pillows, and the fitted sheet pops off, bunching everything else with it. But I drag it across the hall, reaching out behind me with one hand to open the door to Aaron’s room, pulling it all the way in until I can lay it right down there in the center. It’s sad in here; that’s all there is to it. On the walls you can see faint outlines from where pictures used to hang. If I open the closet door, I’ll see a badly drawn Yakko from Aaron’s probably too-longAnimaniacsphase. If I close my eyes, I think I can still catch the smell of him—not his deodorant or cologne or the cigarette smoke that used to cling to him there at the end, buthim, skin I knew as well as my own, skin thatwasmy own.
