He bent down and picked up the sledge, and then leaned it against a tree. ‘I’m thirsty. Do you want more water? Or another tomato, maybe? It’s good with just a little salt and basil. I think I’m going to get one for myself.’ He started for the door.
I glared at his receding back. He was always like this; he hated discussing things that had died, adults or children, even animals and trees. He couldn’t watch nature programs because they always involved something strong killing something weak. By the time he came back outside, the other housemates had returned from the movies, bumping around the house noisily, saying Austin Powers catchphrases like ‘Yeah, baby!’ and ‘Danger is my middle name’ in swaggering British accents. The conversation quickly veered somewhere else.
On my way home, pressed against the window on the Metro North train, I felt unsettled, as if I’d left something behind. I started planning the next time my father and I would talk. It would be better. I would be better. I would ask him about gardening and tennis. What was bothering me, anyway? Didn’t I want a father who played tennis and gardened and interacted with society? Didn’t I want him to be well?
At work, I watched patients in the waiting room. There were pregnant women with fretful looks on their faces, pale couples trying desperately to conceive, mothers who already had a child die from leukemia and were mining their chromosomes to see if something inside of them had caused it.
Was I missing out on something, living this way? Where would I be now, if I’d have taken the fellowship in Ireland? What would I be studying, how would I fill my days? There were so many times I wanted to correct the counselors here for mispronouncing easy scientific terms, dumbing down processes until they were basically incorrect, mixing up easy genetic markers for certain ailments. And yet I couldn’t say a word-I was simply an assistant with no rights. A cruel thought occurred to me: Perhaps this was what my mother felt like, before she left us. Stifled like this, compromised, angry that she wasn’t living her life according to exactly what she wanted. But, as soon as I thought it, I felt so guilty and small. So I wasn’t doing earth-shattering research. I could be doing a lot worse.
The dogs followed me as I walked through the apartment I grew up in, sifting through my father’s big leather box of receipts and tickets and take-out menus and Post-its and packing slips. I read a few again. Today, there are only two pigeons sitting on the ledge across the street. What did they do to the other one?
What had my father alluded to in the hospital, during that bad ECT treatment? I’ve hidden something from you, he’d said-or something like that, anyway. Would it unlock why this had happened to him, who he was-or was it ridiculous to think that way? I wandered into his closet and stared at the button-down shirts and blazers he’d left behind. Some of them were moth-eaten or out of style; he’d have to buy new things, if he was considering going back to work. Some of my mother’s clothes were still in there, too, relics of the late Eighties and Nineties: three black dresses from Ann Taylor. A suit from Brooks Brothers with shoulder pads. Some pink blouses, a light gray cashmere sweater. I pressed in the rivets of a pair of pale blue jeans. I’d never thought to look through my mother’s pockets before-I hadn’t thought she was the type to leave things in there. But I found a faded receipt stuffed into the fifth pocket, the purple ink still crisp and legible, for a dozen donuts from the bakery down the street. My mother used to have to go to the bakery and buy them for my father because he had an inexplicable fear of standing in the bakery line.
And there was a business card in the next pocket for Karen Keyes, MSW. I’d never heard my mother mention anyone named Karen Keyes. The items appeared staged, like someone had snuck in and filled my mother’s pockets, planting the seeds, waiting for me to uncurl the mystery.
I didn’t know how much later it was that the phone rang. I let it go to the answering machine, expecting to hear Alex’s voice again-he’d already called several times, but I hadn’t had the energy to talk. Instead, my father’s voice floated out. ‘Summer? Are you there?’
I leapt up and ran across the bedroom to grab the extension. ‘Dad?’ I gasped it out, like he was a ghost I’d just encountered around a corner. ‘Why are you calling me?’
‘No reason,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to call. To talk.’
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry about our last visit.’
‘…Why?’
‘I don’t know. I just felt like it was…weird.’
Silence followed. ‘It was fine,’ he said.
I stared out the window blankly, my heart beating so fast it felt it might rip out of my body. A tugboat skidded down the East River; cars zoomed up the FDR.
‘You want me to be happy, right?’ my father asked, sounding almost afraid.
I cupped my hand over the head of one of the dogs. ‘Of course I want you to be happy. That’s a silly question. Why would you ask that?’