“Not all of us can be successful like you,” she finishes up, as she always does. While I love her, she does try to play the guilt card often. As though it’s my fault that I took college seriously and she didn’t.
“Jacks, you are successful,” I tell her, like I do at least twice a month. “You’re a CPA. You take care of people’s money. If that’s not responsible and successful, I don’t know what is.” Never mind the fact that she finished college only last year, and so she’s really just starting her career. Better late than never.
“You know, last year at this time, we were in Cabo together,” she points out ruefully. I glance at the wall, at the photo that proves it. Me, Jude, Jackie and Teddy are all standing on the beach, our arms wrapped around each other. The sun was on our shoulders and it had been a good day, one filled with the beach, margaritas, churros and hope.
Teddy and Jude had taken us away from reality to avoid this time of year. God, I wish we could do it again now.
“That was awesome,” I tell her honestly. “I haven’t had that much fun in forever. And when you lost your passport and gave us all a heart attack, it was so hilarious.”
I’m facetious and she chuckles. “That’s why having a doctor for a sister is an advantage. You can give everyone CPR.”
“Or you could just stop losing your passport,” I suggest. Honestly, she’s lost her passport on every trip she’s ever been on.
“I found it,” she defends herself. “In plenty of time to get on the plane.”
“You were lucky.” I take another sip of coffee and find that it’s getting cold. There’s nothing worse than that, so I get up to microwave it.
“Do you want to go with me to see Dad this weekend?”
Her question is hesitant, and I don’t know why because she knows what I’m going to say. It’s the same thing I always say. She should know—she’s asked every week for the past seventeen years.
“No.”
“Co, please. He wants to see you.”
“I don’t want to see him,” I say as respectfully as I can. “Marion is a three-hour drive from here. I can’t spare three hours, and also, I just don’t want to. That hasn’t changed.”
“He’s your father,” she reminds me. “That hasn’t changed, either.”
“He’s a felon,” I answer, and the whole conversation makes me tired. “I don’t want to visit him in prison. I don’t want to remember what he did. I’m sorry that you choose to, but I choose not to.”
“Mom would want you to,” she points out.
“I know that, but Mom’s dead. Therefore, she doesn’t get an opinion.”
God, dealing with life and death every day makes me cold sometimes. I backtrack.
“I’m sorry, Jacks. I just... I can’t. You don’t know what it was like. I was the one in that house. I was the one he left in the house with dead people. I have to cut myself off from that part of my life. I have to so that I can deal with it. If you were smart, you’d do the same.”
“He’s our dad. I can’t.”
“As our dad, he should want peace for us. Instead, he constantly tries to guilt us into doing more for him, into trying to appeal, into correcting his decisions. We can’t do that. He did what he did. We can’t change it. He’s guilty. He killed people, Jacks.”
“I know that.” Her answer is steady and solid. “But you know he wasn’t in his right mind. That’s not who he really is.”
I think about my father...the father I knew growing up. That father’s eyes always twinkled and that father had mints in his pocket. Yet that same father is a murderer.
It bends my mind, and I’m silent.
“If you change your mind,” Jackie tells me gently, “I’m going on Saturday. I can meet you and we can ride together.”
“I’m not going to change my mind,” I assure her. “Drive safe.”
“I love you, you know,” she answers. “Do you love me?”
“Always.”
It’s what our mother used to always say to us, and Jacqueline and I have kept the tradition alive.
Tradition is soothing and comfortable. We can all use more of that in our lives.
For now, though, I need some air and some exercise. I grab a sweater and Artie, and we go for a walk.
Our neighborhood is quiet, shrouded in trees and forestry, and Artie’s nails click on the sidewalk. “We’ve got to get you a pedicure, girl.”
She moves slower than she used to, though, and the clicks slow down by the minute.
I breathe in the fresh fall air, and my boots crunch through the dead leaves. It’s ironic that fall is so beautiful. It’s beautiful only because everything is dying. I watch the withered leaves tumble from the trees, every breeze carrying yet another one to the ground.
The light is unique this time of year. The sunlight seems as crisp as the air, but yet at the same time, it’s muted. It’s almost as though it knows its days are numbered before winter. I soak it up while I can, ignoring the niggling thoughts in my brain.
It seems like it did that day.
The autumn light.
It’s the same.
It’s weird how random little things can trigger memories.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I almost ignore it, but can’t. I have to be responsible.
“Lucy,” I greet my friend, after I see her name. “What’s up? Do not tell me you need me to come in early.”
“No.” She laughs. “Not this time. I’m coming over to do your nails before work. I saw them yesterday, and they look like something that should be scooping fish out of the lake for food.”
“As in bird talons?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Is there any use arguing?” I ask doubtfully, because I already know the answer.
“No.”
“Fine. You know the gate code.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
It’s just long enough for me to finish my walk.
I’ve also made a pot of hot water for tea and turned the fireplace on by the time the doorbell rings, and Artie is so tired that she doesn’t bother getting up.
“Hey, Luce.” I open the door. “Come on in.”
She’s lugging a caddy full of nail paint, and what looks like a tool belt, although it’s hard to tell with her baggy sweater. She always dresses like she’s wearing flour sacks, and they hang from her body in waves.
“You aren’t going to need industrial equipment,” I mention. “They aren’t that bad.”
“Ha. I brought an electric sander just in case.”
“Whatever.”
After getting tea, we seat ourselves in front of the fire, and Lucy grabs my hand, filing down my nails. I will admit, they’re a bit ragged from constant washing, but hardly talons.
“I’ve got to have some music,” Lucy tells me after a few minutes. “I’ve gotta wake up before my shift. Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead.” I wave toward the sound system. “You know how to work it already.”
Lucy and I have known each other for a year, but it feels like ten. That’s how it is when you work with someone day in and day out. They become like family. She’s good to me, oftentimes bringing me coffee at home on her way to the hospital. Her heart is as big as Lake Michigan.
She flips the power switch and fiddles with it as I pick out a nail color. First Bob Marley, then ’80s rock. She sifts through the channels. For a minute, the frame is in slow motion. Artie wags her tail once. A bird chirps outside the window. The clouds move. I pick up a bottle. The label says “Do or Die Red.”
But then Lucy settles on a station, and the music...when it comes on...freezes my hand, my fingers curled around the curve of the bottle.
Lyrics to the old song “American Pie” fill the air, swirling around me in a flurry of words.
A sudden rush of unexplainable terror wells up in me, illogical and too much to bear. The words, the music, all of it... It pounds in my head, and the memories cave in on me, and I’ve been here before, yet I haven’t.
A sense of familiarity, of déjà vu, of something I can’t place, overwhelms me, and a word whispers over and over in my head, husky and urgent and low, and I’m rooted in place.
Cunt.
The word is in my head, as loud as if someone had whispered it. It echoes, and the music and the voice... I know it. But I can’t place it.