Page 42 of The Art of Drowning

My feet were glued to the floor of my childhood bedroom. I was supposed to leave soon, but I hadn’t wanted to go without doing a proper walkthrough of the place. There were so many memories tied up in this house, both good and bad. I hadn’t wanted to come upstairs at first, but I got the strange feeling like maybe I should. Because what if I never came back here?

It seemed unreal to think about. But in a lot of ways it felt like I’d lost my family all those years ago too. Like Sam had not only taken Damien from me, but he’d also driven a wedge between me and our parents. They still wanted me to come home for holidays and stuff, and they were always happy to see me, but there was a distance there too. Like they didn’t want to get too close.

Even now with Sam gone, they were being… off. They’d asked about the envelope with trembling voices. They’d tried to play it cool, but the relief was palpable when I said I didn’t open the envelope and wasn’t sure that I wanted to. And being here, in this house, it felt strange now. It had felt strange then too. All the years I came home for holidays and visits that got shorter and shorter, I felt less and less like this was home.

Mom was still asleep when I crept downstairs again, but Dad was awake and in the kitchen. He stood at the window with a coffee in hand and stared blankly outside. He didn’t move a muscle. It was as if living took too much of his energy now, and he was trying to conserve what little he had.

“Having a pool seems stupid now,” Dad said as he continued staring out into the dim morning light. “Thought we’d have a pack of grandkids coming over to use it by now.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you. But I’m still super gay.”

Dad turned to face me, worry and horror etched into his face. “Is that… that’s not… I didn’t mean.” He paused and took a breath. “You’re not a disappointment.”

He looked like he might want to say something else, but he clamped his mouth shut and turned back to the window.

I helped myself to a cup of coffee, stirred in a couple sugars, and joined him in looking out into the back yard. Though I bet my memories of the space were different than his. His were family barbeques and the occasional party. Mine were stolen kisses, secret swimming lessons, and the summer I fell in love.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Dad said. The cup in his hand shook and he set it on the counter, then braced himself against it.

“I know, Dad. I’ll miss him too.” I wasn’t sure I did. Or that I ever would. But it was the appropriate thing to say.

Dad’s gaze finally left the back yard, and he focused on me. “He was awful to you. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop it.”

“It’s fine. Sam was… Sam was Sam. There was little you could’ve done.” Sam was horrible, but I’d chosen to stay away. I’d let him manipulate me for years. And so had they. They must have known that something happened between us, but they acted oblivious to it. Like everything was normal, and fine, and not at all fucked up that one of their kids barely came home.

“I could’ve⁠—”

“I was hoping you were still here.”

I turned as Mom shuffled into the room. She was in pajamas and had a housecoat on over top. She looked smaller and more frail than I’d ever seen her, and my heart clenched as she came closer.

“I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, Mom.”

She patted my arm like she was making sure I was real. “You’ve done it before.”

Yes, I had. Because sometimes being around Sam was insufferable. He made everything into a fight. It was like one day he woke up and decided that I was his enemy and he’d give me no quarter. He’d show me no mercy. No reprieve. And as long as I was in the house, I was behind enemy lines.

“Not this time, Mom.” I shot her a look I hoped leaned more toward sympathy and less toward the exasperation that swelled up in me. She and Dad had watched the dynamic between Sam and me devolve over the years, and they’d done nothing. They said nothing. They stood idly by and turned a blind eye to it. Sometimes they reined him in, but only when he clearly went too far. Only when they couldn’t get away with not saying anything.

“You’ll come and visit again, right, sweetheart? Won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” I told her, not sure it was the truth, but I wasn’t interested in breaking the heart of a fragile old woman.

“Maybe you could bring your partner next time,” Mom said, her voice shaky. She went and stood next to Dad, who put his arm around her. She sagged against him like he was the only thing holding her together.

“Maybe, if there is a partner next time.” I’d never been comfortable bringing any of my past boyfriends home because I refused to subject any of them to Sam and his toxic bullshit. Although now he was gone, it felt like that ship had sailed. Even if I did have a boyfriend, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t want to bring him here to meet my sad, worn parents who did little to fight to make me comfortable before Sam’s death. It was almost ironic that now they seemed to remember they had another kid.

My hand clenched around the coffee mug in my hand, and I put it in the sink before I did something stupid like throw it against a wall.

“I should go.” I just wanted to get home. I wanted out of this house and as wrong as it should have been to admit to myself, away from my parents. I wanted to go home and call Damien and make sure I hadn’t dreamed everything that happened between us.

“I’ll give you a ride to the airport,” Dad offered, kissing Mom on the top of the head.

“I’ll get a cab or something. You should stay with Mom.” They were forty-five minutes from the airport, and I had no interest in sitting in a vehicle alone with either of them for that long. The silence would be too big, too heavy and awkward to stand, but I didn’t want to have to fill it either. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I wanted to say to them. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted them to say to me.

Did I want them to prostrate themselves at my feet? Did I want them to beg for my forgiveness, or at least explain what had shifted between us that made me not worth as much to them as Sam clearly had been. Was it because I was gay? Was it something else?

I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to any of my questions.