“Because then I’d have to admit that I admired this trait in him.”
I felt it clearly now. My son was everything I was not. He was an alpha animal, a strong, muscular being who took what he wanted. He fought with everything in him on the football team, wrestling, at the gym. He battled for primacy in all aspects of his life. When I’d witnessed him exerting dominion in small, cruel ways, I saw him as one would a panther, beautiful and powerful and fierce, taking what was his.
I’d been envious of him. And strangely grateful. The relief of it! Seeing some small portion of my own violence expressed through my son.
I’m not sure what I said after that or if I even spoke, but I remember the room felt alive with all that had been released.
58
Day of My Death
It’s been a week since that blade slit Daniel’s throat. Now it’s three fifteen on this last morning of my life.
I’m not scared. I died once already. When we buried Dad, I became a ghost floating. Then Red appeared in that late-summer park and performed a resurrection. Those eyes of hers, they dove into me and saw out through mine. They gave me back my life.
But Daniel took that life. And I took his. And now I keep thinking about the gun. The one Dad used. The SIG Sauer P226.
“Navy SEALs carry these puppies.” Dad was always saying that, proud, like he’d been one.
After Dad blew his brains out, Mom wrapped that gun in a worn blue towel, the same one she’d used to wipe up after Brody when he couldn’t make it out in time. She tucked that SIG in her nightstand with a fifteen-round magazine. You’d think it would be a reminder, but I guess it made her feel safe. Some people judge, a loaded gun in a house with kids. But that gun saved us all. Nells made me see that.
A few months after Dad died, I asked her if she thought it was weird, Mom keeping the SIG like that. She turned on me, superior and disdainful. Not quite thirteen and she thought she had it all figured out. “Holy shit, you’re actually buying that liberal crap Mr. Balch spews, like how guns go offing people all on their own.”
“But if he hadn’t had that gun, maybe—”
“Dad was batshit crazy. Bat. Shit. Crazy.”
“Exactly. So if he hadn’t—”
“No! What difference does it make which gun? He’d have found one.” Her face twisted up, nasty, full of rabid hate. “If that gun did kill him,” she said, “I’m glad it did.”
I almost said, You don’t mean that, but I knew she did. Nells had reason to hate him, more than the rest of us even. It wasn’t his fault, though, what he put us through. His mind was messed up. It had to have been, right? She said it herself: you don’t do shit like that unless you’re crazy.
“Anyway, Mom needs the gun,” Nells said, switching to fake disinterest, acting bored. She was always practicing her attitudes. “Those people that call here? The ones trying to get money out of us? One left a message last week telling Mom she’d better remember to lock her doors and windows at night. It’s just intimidation crap, but Mom doesn’t know that.”
She was tough, Nells was. Maybe that’s why Red touched me so much. They had that same ferocious spark in their eyes. But Nells had only two stances: coiled up, ready to strike, or looking flat dead like roadkill. Red, whatever she’d been through, wasn’t completely chewed up. Sure, she’d hunkered down inside herself, hiding behind all kinds of protective bullshit, but she was there all right, peering out, seeing you clean through.
My little sister was plenty screwed up. But she was still young. She had a shot at making it out of this mess. Maybe if no more crap happened. Maybe if I made sure it didn’t.
* * *
—
YESTERDAY I CHECKED MOM’S NIGHTSTAND DRAWER. The old blue towel was there. The faded stains from Brody never came out, no matter how many times Mom washed it. That towel got me. More than the gun even. Brody was always so embarrassed when he couldn’t get outside in time. He’d drop his head and keep shooting looks at his butt like he couldn’t believe what it’d just done, all confused and alarmed.
I lost it then. Started sobbing like a little kid. I missed him so much. Stupid. Stupid. Everything there was to cry about, and thinking of my old dog made me blubber. I remember Mom saying, “That dog can love anybody to happiness.” And maybe he could. The last time I saw my father happy, or at least not sad or pissed, was when he was kneeling on the floor petting Brody’s head after one of his accidents, whispering, “Don’t worry about it, old man. It’ll happen to all of us at some point or other.” Brody braved eye contact with Dad, like he was thanking him, and laid his head on his lap. My father kept stroking that gray muzzle, and something like peace came over his face.
If Dad had lived, we probably would’ve gotten a new dog by now. He loved dogs. He became someone else with them. Sometimes I think it was losing Brody that bent his mind to that last violence.
After Mom went back to school, Nells wanted to ask her for a puppy. I wanted one too, but I talked her out of it. Dogs take time and money, and Mom had neither. Nells pouted, but Mom looked so sad and stressed that even Nells understood and let it go.
Mom would be home soon, and I needed to stop crying. I unwrapped the gun and held it. That helped. Guns often do. And this one was a beaut, black and angular, calming in the way anything that’s designed exactly for its purpose can be. A gun like that, it felt like a blessing. You wouldn’t think that after everything, but it was true. All that power right there. Once the metal reached skin temp, you were one with it, you became your own kind of god. Boom. Like that.
When I heard the kitchen door open and Nells sling her backpack on the kitchen table, I was in shooting stance, my arms locked in front, hands braced, the barrel sighted on the picture of my father on the dresser. I uncocked the weapon, threw the towel around it, and stashed it back in the drawer. Slipping down the hall to my room, I heard Nells scrounging in the fridge, muttering, “Why is there never anything decent to eat around here?”
* * *
—
That was yesterday. The day I finally knew what needed to be done.
59
After Isaac found her on the boat, Evangeline made no further effort to escape, and he didn’t speak of it again. He wasn’t the sort of man who thought talk solved all that much. Instead, he brought home paint chips of pale blues and lavenders and soft yellows and asked if any of them pleased her. He found an old armoire at a secondhand store—“an antique,” he said—and suggested they convert the large walk-in closet into a nursery for the baby. Only then did Evangeline understand he intended her to stay after the birth. Together they painted her room a creamy lemon, Isaac insisting she wear a face mask though he’d bought the low-VOC paint.
In late April, Evangeline woke to a note from Isaac saying he’d left early for school and wishing her luck on her chemistry test. The past week had been gloomy with nonstop drizzle. But this morning, the sky glowed blue and gold and pink, alive, changing each time she glanced outside. The kitchen too vibrated with its stained laminate counters and chipped cabinets, the dirty bowl set by the sink, the gentle rattle of the heat vent and that note—a note a father would leave a daughter—Good luck on the chemistry test!