it might be reduced to seven if he pled down.
Seven years? Seven fucking years? It was a joke. It was a nightmare.
And then that February, as I was leaving Arden Fair Mall where I’d been picking out a new pair of work shoes, I saw him. I recognized him immediately as he cut in front of me, hands shoved into his pockets. I noted the same curly hair, the flabby jowls, and walked faster, looking for the dead, blank expression in his eyes. I was just going to see. I was just going to get a closer look. With each step, I felt a pressure building up in my ears, my head like the volcano Olivia and I had worked on for her sixth-grade science project.
I was even with him when he turned his head, startled at my proximity—and up close, he looked nothing at all like Robert Saenz, who was, of course, locked up awaiting trial. “Sorry,” I mumbled, head down, hurrying past the man.
I sat for a while in the Explorer, my hands shaking on the steering wheel. What was I thinking? Of course it wasn’t him. And what would I have done if it was? I was armed only with my key ring and my rage. Would I have gone after him with my fists, throwing the not insignificant weight of my body on him, kicking him, getting my hands around his neck? I felt sick with the possibilities.
I’d promised to be home by eight, but I was too worked up to face Kathleen and Olivia. Instead, I found a restaurant near the mall, and I made my way straight for the bar. After the first few overpriced drinks, I didn’t even think about them. The display on my cell phone lit up with Kathleen’s number four times, but I didn’t pick up. I rolled the highball glass between my hands, wondering how far I would have gone and how much I would have to drink to forget what I might have done. Was that why my father drank, to forget his daily faults? To dull the pain from the things he had done?
At ten-thirty, the bartender cut me off. I wasn’t used to the hard stuff. Kathleen and I never had more than a bottle of wine in the cabinet above our refrigerator; a single glass at dinner had always been my limit. Now I staggered coming off the bar stool. “Want me to call you a cab?” the bartender asked, not meeting my eye. He was just a kid—or not a kid, but not all that much older than Daniel would have been.
Kathleen picked me up. She was tight-lipped on the way home, her body tense with anger. When she did speak, it was in fuming bursts. “This is what you do? This is your answer to our problems? Do you think drinking worked out well for your father?”
I couldn’t answer; it was taking all my concentration not to vomit. A light rain was falling, and I focused on the slight swishing of the tires on the damp streets.
“Just tell me,” Kathleen said when she pulled into our driveway. “Is this the way it’s going to be?”
“I don’t know how it’s going to be,” I said, not looking at her. It was the most honest I’d been with her in a long time.
I spent most of that night in the bathroom, sleeping on the bath mat, a towel under my head so I could be close to the toilet. In the morning I called for a substitute. Kathleen moved around the house, ignoring me, making coffee, talking cheerfully to Olivia, hurrying her out to the car without saying goodbye.
I stayed in bed for most of the day, long after the effects of the alcohol had worn off. I wouldn’t tell Kathleen what I’d really been thinking, I couldn’t. I’d gone too far on my own. I didn’t want to scare her with the vision of the monster I’d become for those few minutes. Worse, if it had been Saenz in that parking lot, I knew that I would have killed him, one way or another—and I couldn’t find a way to feel bad about that.
At the beginning of spring, when Daniel had been dead for six months, Mom announced that we were going to see a family therapist. She looked desperately tired, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks—which maybe she hadn’t. It must have been exhausting, doing nice things for Dad and me and then having to point out that she’d done them, since we never noticed on our own. I made that Alfredo sauce you love.... I replaced the button on that shirt cuff. We thanked her, and five minutes later we had forgotten all about it and were back to our ungrateful selves.
We let her drag us into the meeting with the family therapist, Dr. Fisher, although we attended only once as an actual family—what was left of it, anyway, now that we were down to only three. Dr. Fisher had a sunny office that overlooked a small courtyard, and although the furniture was basically industrial gray, there were little pops of color everywhere—yellow throw pillows, a vase practically choked with pink and purple hydrangeas, an orange sunset on one wall.
It went just about how I figured it would go: Dr. Fisher asked some questions, and Mom answered them. Dad looked at his hands, and I looked out the window at the courtyard, trying to assess the level of danger present in two gingko trees and a shallow fountain. Dr. Fisher could have been anyone’s grandma; she was pleasantly white-haired, wore a floaty skirt and long cardigan, and had the patience of the world’s best kindergarten teacher.
Mom had commandeered the session, rambling on and on about communication and how she feared we would turn out if we simply couldn’t start talking again.
“And, Curtis? What would you like to say?” Dr. Fisher asked when Mom paused for a breath.
“Well, I—I would have to say that I agree,” Dad blurted, caught off guard. I noticed that his shirttail had come untucked, that there was a small streak of mustard on his pants.
I glanced at Mom and caught her at the end of an eye roll. She gave a forced laugh. “You see, this is what I’m—”
“Yes, but why do you feel there’s a lack of communication, Curtis?” Dr. Fisher probed, and Mom sat back.
It took Dad a very long time to respond. “I couldn’t say, exactly.”
“Olivia,” Dr. Fisher said, turning to me after a beat. “Let’s hear from you.”
I know what I should have said—about my panic attacks, and how much I missed Daniel every time I passed the closed door to his bedroom. I should have said that I was miserable and I was afraid of making my parents miserable—but these were very real things, and too awful to say with my parents staring at me. Mom kept nodding her encouragement, looking so hopeful that I knew whatever I said would absolutely crush her. Dad seemed surprised to realize that I was in the room, too.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
Mom’s laugh this time was painful and sharp, like glass breaking into jagged pieces. “I mean, you read stories about families that break up when a single bad thing happens to them, and you think, that will never be my family. But it’s getting to the point.... Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.” She leaned forward, head in her hands.
Dad and I looked at Dr. Fisher, waiting.
“Well,” she said, smiling at us kindly. I wondered if she ever came right out and said to someone, There’s really no helping you. “This is a very normal reaction for families who have experienced a sudden loss. It can be terribly difficult to express feelings openly. What I’m going to suggest are some one-on-one appointments for the time being, so that I can help each of you articulate your feelings. And then we’ll meet again as a group. In the meantime, I’d like to suggest a few activities that you can do together.”
Mom looked up, brightening. This was just her thing—a to-do list. Give her a thousand tasks, and she would tackle them all.
