Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 47

Michael



I wouldn’t have made Dylan come clean up this mess, but he asked to. And as it turns out, I’m grateful for his presence, because it keeps me focused on the task at hand by forcing me to keep up a front.

Alone, it would be hard not to react to the chore of sweeping up broken glass, removing photos from their splintered frames. Picking up the pieces of a ceramic ashtray Jewel made in art class. Her own daughter’s lopsided ashtray. She probably didn’t even see it.

We did take pictures of this first. My dad’s lawyer recommended it.

“Dad? What do we do with the TV?”

I shrug. “Guess we’ll haul it to the curb before we go pick up the girls.”

Dylan seems to have matured three years in the last three days. If anything good will come of this, maybe my boy will learn to think things through. To not be so easily led.

Except by me. I’d like it if he still did what I told him to.

After I came back sans Casey last night, they all gave me a wide berth. I ate warmed-up lasagna, and my dad and I zoned out in front of football. Everyone went to bed early. Though I enjoyed the peace and stability, and I sighed with gratitude that all my children were under my roof and my ex-wife was nowhere near us, sleep didn’t come.

I lay awake, my mind flipping like a switch between Casey and Mallory.

Casey: Is she thinking about me? Will she come back to me, ever? Is she lying awake, too? Is she drinking right now?

Mallory: Do I have to send the kids to her next week? Will that police report hurt her plans to take the children back, or will it indict me, too? What did she mean about her “situation changing”?

Will I have to hand over my kids to a mentally unstable woman who doesn’t have enough sense to stop Jewel from jumping with a jawbreaker in her mouth, who doesn’t have the presence of mind to save her own daughter from choking to death? Who could pass out in a daze if she takes too many pills and die right there in front of them?

I bathed in acidic regret for hours, but I kept coming back to my marriage to her and coming out with the same answer: I couldn’t have left her to care for Angel by herself, she wasn’t up to it.

But then we had Dylan, during a time of relative peace, which now seems like a bad idea, but how can I regret my kids? I could have gotten myself a vasectomy, but I never did. Maybe part of me wanted another shot at fatherhood. With someone normal.

I don’t believe Jewel isn’t mine. We look too much alike. She looks, in fact, very much like photographs of my mother at this age. This is what I’ll keep telling myself.

I look at my son carefully sweeping the hardwood floor, the echo of my sharp chin in his face, and in my mind I hear his sax, soulful and melodic, and of course, I can’t regret him.

“Hey, Dylan.”

“Yeah?”

He pauses in his sweeping, leaning on the broom.

“Why did you take off?”

He looks at his feet. At the wall, at the broken computer. I continue, “It wasn’t just a girl, was it?”

“I hate my school.” He tosses his head a little. His bangs are getting long, hanging in his eyes.

His grades at the new school are phenomenal. So I say that.

He scoffs. “That school is ridiculous. Everyone has awesome grades there. I hate that there’s no band. It’s not enough to play by myself. I want to be part of something.”

“But your grades at the old school . . . And that gun.”

“I’ll study harder. Every night. Get me a tutor. But don’t make me go back to that stupid charter school. I don’t care if my old school has problems. It’s not like I feared for my life. I know how to stay away from trouble. I was happy there, Dad.”

I should say no. I should refuse to reward his running away by doing what he wants. Make him tough it out. The new place is supposed to be terrific. Innovative, that’s what the experts say.

I start to ask why he didn’t just come out and ask me to transfer him, but I’ve answered my own question before I open my mouth. Same reason Casey didn’t tell me who she really was.

“Okay,” I say. “First thing Monday I’ll call your old school.”

Now it’s his turn to be startled. “In the middle of the semester?”

“You shouldn’t have to wait to be content.”

Now he looks younger again, his face glowing with that kind of childish joy little kids have when they go to the park, or, when I last saw it on Dylan’s face, when we bought him his first saxophone.

We both turn toward a knocking on the door, and my stomach knots with dread. Knocking, ringing phones, one disaster after another, for days.

I pull open the heavy door, holding my breath.

It’s Casey, hands in her pockets, eyes down on the faded welcome mat, inscrutable.