he hadn’t been there.
Mom had told us a dozen times:
Whatever you do, stay close to shore
but I decided she only meant Jackson.
I was old enough to look after myself. Until,
that is, the shore slid farther and farther away and
the tide started an argument that it seemed likely to win.
Panic was closing its fingers around my chest when
I heard my name and saw my father,
running toward the water.
Then I knew I was safe.
Two other memories cling to that one.
The way he clasped me to him. And
Mom scolding that I had put us both at risk.
But that was not true. He put himself
at risk. To save me.
Curious Companions
I have begun to think of them as
The Opposites—my new lunch-mates.
Dee, the scattered, frenetic chatterer
and Christine, quiet, serene and steady.
That makes me wonder what invisible forces
are at play, creating friendships that
should not work.
But do.
It’s an idea I never gave much thought
before because I always knew why
I was friends with Morgan
and Angie and
Nina.
Ducky Scott
I’m walking with Scott by the pond in Elmwood Park, when
a mother duck and her parade of fluffy young
waddle past and slip into the pond like
they’re entering on a water slide.
Surrounded by her babies, Mom begins to
quack and Scott insists that she is
bragging about her kids.
He drops to the ground, lying flat,
(on her level, he says) and then
he quacks back at her, all the while,
translating their “conversation” for me.
I join him, flooded with joy, with laughter,
until there is no room for
anything else.
Socorro
You’d think a head doctor would give you some
advice, but all I get are questions. They
sneak up on me, like some kind of
pop-up therapy. Today, he starts off with,
“Can you tell me why you think you’re here?”
“Because my father died?” I say. And even though
I am sure that is the right answer, he waits. Silently.
I am certain that this is something he learned in
Psychology School. It must be one of the ways patients
are tricked into revealing things they would rather
keep to themselves.
“I am not going to talk about my father,” I tell him after I think
he has waited long enough. “Not to a stranger. It’s too personal.”
“That is always your choice,” he tells me.
Sadness Schedule
Ms. Ardena’s arms are crossed over her chest.
“We have been more than patient with you,”
she says. “Now the time has come for you
to get back on track.”
I sound like a derailed train, which might not
be all that far off. I wonder,
but am not foolish enough to ask,
if she is speaking for all of my teachers.
Apparently, there is a limit to how much
slack I can expect to be cut, and that limit
has been reached. By my calculations, the
magic number is seventeen school days.
Food Fight
Jackson has decided
to become a vegetarian and
Mom has decided
that he will eat what she tells him to eat.
“No way am I going to start cooking
separate meals for you, buster,” she says.
“I have enough on my plate as it is.”
(Which, I alone find funny.)
I wonder where this idea came from
or how it is that our own mother seems
oblivious to how stubborn Jackson can be
when he’s pushed.
Finding a Voice
He might deserve some of the
credit so I have decided to tell
Socorro about the idea I got at
our last session. Writing has
always been the one thing that
works for me. It is an outlet, a
sort of blood-letting, only what
I am letting out isn’t blood. Or
maybe it is.
It begins with a poem that finds its way
to the shredder because even when I am
emotional I can recognize melodrama
when I see it. Next there are rambling
thoughts and words and feelings, none
of which anchor themselves to anything.
I am about to give up when, at last, my
words find the form they need.
Letter to Dad.docx
Dear Dad,
How strange is it for me to be writing a letter to you when you are never going to read it? Maybe I really do need to be seeing a psychologist—which I’m actually doing. Can you believe that? To be honest, it’s not as bad as I expected. For one thing, this letter I’m beginning today is because of something he said. He told me I should find a creative outlet—a way to put pain outside of myself where I can look at it later on.
There have been a lot of bad days since you died. Not whole days—I wouldn’t want you to think we’re all falling apart—I know you’d hate that—but moments that sneak in and stop you in your tracks, if you know what I mean. Like yesterday, I was heating up a can of soup and I remembered the time you made me laugh so hard that I spit soup clear across the table. (Kind of poetic justice that it hit your shirt, don’t you think?)
That got me laughing, but then it turned into tears, which happens a lot. I didn’t expect happy memories to make me so sad. Mom says that will change in time. She says that someday we’ll be able to remember the good things without them turning on us.
Right now, the one thing I really want to tell you is this: I miss you every day.
Sinking In
Fooling yourself is pointless—
did you know that?
You start out feeling optimistic about
something and you want to stay that way.
You want it so much that you will
invent all kinds of excuses to keep on
believing.
But let me tell you,
when you run out of lies and hope,
the crash is harder, more bitter
because you have been party
to your own deception.
And, just for the record,
Facebook is right.
I have no friends named
Morgan.
Wrong Numbers
Two hours have
just been spent
thinking of replacements
for the gaps in my
phone contact list.
Even with Christine and Dee added,
the damage Nina did left
a lot of holes.
I can’t believe My Ten
now includes
grandparents.
Passenger
This is not because of the stupid,
anonymous
note in my locker,
but I am
wondering.
I am remembering
the nurse at the hospital
mentioning a passenger.
And, I have realized that Tessa
believed what she was saying,
even though she was wrong when
she said my mother was in the
accident with my father.
That must mean that someone was with
my father when the accident happened.
&nb
sp; A co-worker, perhaps, or someone
who needed a drive.
And whoever it was, she may be able to
tell us about his last day.
Those final details of
his life do not
have to be
lost
to
us.
Conversation with Mom
When I tell Mom that I believe there was
a passenger in the car with Dad that day
she doesn’t look surprised.
She doesn’t look curious.
She doesn’t look at me.
I stand there while the clock
patiently, relentlessly, counts out
seconds and ice forms inside me.
When my mother speaks,
it is only to say, “I am tired, Laren.
And I do not want to have
this conversation.”
Truth
I am not a child.
I know things.
I know about life and betrayal.
Lies and cheating have put down
solid roots, even by my age.
But there are things that are possible
and things that are not possible,
and this is not possible.
Not by my father.
Not to my family.
I pull the impossibility of it to me
wanting it to undo the awfulness that
stares me in the face.
It is a struggle I am terrified I will lose.
Which is what happens when what cannot be
crashes into what is.
Best-Friendless
I want to call my best friend.
I want to talk and listen and
laugh and cry. That is always
how it works, reliable as the
sunrise. We could drink cocoa
with tiny marshmallows and
lie out under the stars and feel
the universe roll over our troubles.
Because that is what you can do
if you are not best-friendless.
Rita
Aunt Rita is one of those people who
knows everybody else’s business. A gossip,
news-bag, rumourmonger. She will chase down
a scandal or dig through
the ruins of someone’s life until she gets hold of
the juiciest bit of news she can scavenge.
I begin to watch her. And because I am paying attention
I see things. I see
that she knows about the mystery
passenger in my father’s car that day. I also see
that she is not sure whether or not
my mother knows. I could
tell her but I am a shadow.
I am eyes and ears with a
breaking heart.
Scott’s Perspective
According to Scott I should forget
about this whole business because
there is nothing I can do anyway.
According to Scott nobody is
perfect and you’ve got to take
the good with the bad.
According to Scott what I need is
to go for a good run around the track.
Apparently, that will clear my head.
Wondering
What was she like—IF (and I am not
one hundred percent convinced)
there really was another woman?
Younger and prettier than my mother?
I hate the thought of that. Worse is the
idea that it could have happened because he was
having a midlife crisis of some sort.
Like a pathetic token in a game of cliché.
I try to think of a reason that’s big enough to
explain it. A reason that isn’t
common and cheap.
Letter to Dad.docx (continued)
There have been some pretty big changes since I started this letter. I almost feel like going back and erasing the first part, but my psychologist said I should keep everything. No matter what.
Anyway, I’ve got some things to say to you. First of all, you can’t even begin to imagine how furious I am. Because I know—I know you were NOT ALONE in the car that day.
And just in case you care, I’m not the only one who knows. Mom does too. Remember Mom? Your wife? The woman you married and promised to love until death do you part? Looks like you blew that one, didn’t you? It makes me sick when I think of the way you used to talk about values and keeping your word. Oh, and honour! What a laugh. What a load of rot. What a liar.
I wonder what excuses you made up. Did you decide you were having some kind of midlife-thing? Was it that pathetic and common? Buying a red convertible would have been better if that’s what it was. At least if you went off and killed yourself driving some super-fast car, people would have less to gossip about.
And it wouldn’t hurt quite as much.
Nina Speaks
There are some things you never say to anyone
no matter what they’ve done
or you think they’ve done.
Nina finds such words today.
They land in my chest with
a weight that I cannot
carry by myself.
And Christine says,
“She is just angry. She did not
really mean it.”
So, I say, “I know.”
As if choosing to believe something
makes it true.
Picture This
laughing even though I knew the punch lines.
Like, when he talks about a friend who said to him,
“Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.”
And Mitch says,
“Every picture of you is when you
were younger.”
I like Mitch’s brand of comedy
(which he took from us for one last high)
but today I’ve been browsing
my picture files and
that particular line has turned
sad and heavy.
All of my photos are
an earlier version of my world.
The faces that are there,
over and over. Pictures of
Morgan and Angie and Nina.
And my father. They’re like the
Before Side of the story of my life.
It strikes me that the
After Side is empty—
there’s not a single picture
of my life now.
I am
emptied of so much.
I try not to think about the losses—
the ones I couldn’t prevent and
the ones I could.
Movie
Scott likes:
war movies
action movies and
comedies, unless
they’re chick flicks.
I can live with that.
So we’re at the theatre,
in the centre of
the back row,
watching car chases
and shootings,
sharing a gigantic
bag of popcorn and
a bucket of root beer,
which I like almost
as much as orange Crush.
The Jackson Assignment
Mom can’t take any more of Jackson’s
foolishness. Or so she says.
Would I please talk to him?
She has tried until she’s blue in the face.
“I am worried sick that if he doesn’t
eat soon, there will be nothing left of him.”
I tell her that vanishing vegetarians are not a
big problem in our society.
And she says, “If you think you are being cute or
helpful, Laren, you are very badly mistaken.”
No problem.
I have been wrong before.
The Jackson Assignment: Part Two
It’s startling to see how
neat Jackson’s room has become. I
don’t mention that when I ask if I can come in.
“I want to know more about this vegetarian thing,” I lie.
His eyes narrow, which tells me he suspects I was
put up to this, but he starts talking anyway.
His face is small and serious and he counts on his
fingers, reciting his reasons.
Pinkie: His friend Brad’s family is now vegetarian.
Ring: The food is healthy, even though he doesn’t like the taste of some of it.
Middle: Brad’s mom says meat is gross.
Index: Brad’s mom says we should not eat other living creatures.
Thumb: Brad’s father’s cholesterol is getting better.
There are no fingers left when he tells me that he tries not to
think about Burger King too much.
Mom corners me the second I emerge.
“Did you talk to Jackson?” she asks, like maybe
I just went in there and took a nap or something.
I open my mouth to tell her about his
reasons, but what I actually say is,
“It’s fine. You should
leave him alone.”
Dee Takes a Breath
Sometimes, Dee’s lunchtime orations
can seem oddly restful.
Like rain on a metal roof, the words just
keep pouring out of her, ratatatatat, pliplipliplip,