PART 1
“Think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
—Charles Dickens,Great Expectations
August 8, 1984
Eight Years Old
Log 08/08/1984—
Subject “D” within expected parameters.
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Time.”
“Hush, you little runt. I’m talking to my sister.”
I watched as Auntie Jo plucked another cigarette, a Marlboro Red 100, from the pack sitting atop her checkered cloth bag and put it in her mouth, lighting it with a silver Zippo and sending a puff of gray smoke to the heavens.
“You said one hour. That was at five o’clock. It’s six o’clock now. Time is up,” I told her. She had no sense of time. Given the chance, she’d spend the entire day sitting here in the cemetery talking to the stones. Well, talking to Momma’s stone. She didn’t talk to Daddy. She didn’t much like Daddy.
“Knight Rideris on in two hours.”
“You won’t missKnight Rider.”
“Last time I missedKnight Rider,” I reminded her. “We left here at six-thirty, got home at seven, ate dinner, youmade metake a bath, and by the time I sat down to watch, it was half over. You can’t watch a show likeKnight Riderfrom the middle. You gotta start from the beginning.”
Auntie Jo puffed at her cigarette. “You have an uncanny memory for an eight-year-old, you know that?”
“Can we go?”
“Not yet.”
I sighed and reached for the radio.
Auntie Jo had spread out a blanket over my parents’ graves so we wouldn’t have to sit on the wet grass. Rain fell most of the morning, and the sun in Pittsburgh, even in August, did little to dry things up. The ground was still all squishy.
“Four years, Katy,” Auntie Jo said to Momma’s stone. “Four years since that wretch of a man of yours took you from us—from me and your little baby boy, Jack.”
“Daddy didn’t kill Momma.”
“He was driving, wasn’t he?”
“It was an accident.”
“He was drunk.”
“Momma had two glasses of wine, and Daddy was drinking Coke. That’s what the waiter said. It’s in the police report.”
Auntie Jo straightened the flowers in Momma’s vase. Her fingernails were stained yellow. The flowers were daisies. I picked them out myself at Giant Eagle on the way here. There were no flowers in Daddy’s vase. It was filled with stagnant rainwater and weeds. Auntie Jo wouldn’t let me clean it out.
“He was drunk before he left.”
I shook my head. “He was drinking iced tea at home before they dropped me off at your apartment. Momma, too.”
