the flashlight, I saw all sorts of things on the walk back: two large eyes of a creature, probably a raccoon, huddling under the pickup truck. A big, spindly stick lying in the middle of the road. Someone had spray-painted Sand Niggers Go Home on a twenty-five mph speed limit sign. Did that word have to be everywhere here? I waved the beam of the flashlight back and forth across the road, then shut it off. Darkness seemed safer.
I thought about my mother. She wouldn’t have wanted to come to the funeral. She would’ve made excuses to get out of it-work, a party, a hair appointment. I used to imagine my mother in crazy places-Antarctica, Morocco, the moon. But lately, I was convinced she was still in New York. She was taking the same subways, seeing the same ridiculous subway ads and traveling around the same weekend trackwork schedules. Maybe she climbed aboard an uptown 2 train as the doors closed, just as I was passing through the turnstile, watching it pull away.
Sometimes I missed her so much I couldn’t sleep. I missed the way the house smelled of cinnamon candles and perfume. I missed how the phone used to ring. I missed how she’d rush into the house with dry cleaning and take-out and shopping bags. But when I tried to think harder about it, I just couldn’t-a buzzing noise in my head took over. For a time, I hung on to the story I’d been telling myself, that my mother was away on a trip and would eventually return, that the chemicals deep inside her would pull her back to us, the very thing Mr Rice told our biology class. That, because of science, whether she liked it or not, she was obligated to return-it was a scientific rule, as unflappable as the laws of thermodynamics and gravity. Mr Rice never wrote back, but I read everything I could about genetics, trying to find evidence for myself. I read about twins who, even when separated, felt pain at the same time. I read about people who had heart transplants and suddenly had a fondness for oysters, something the heart’s old owner loved. Surely this had something to do with DNA, shared or introduced? Our world wasn’t magical, after all-there was always a scientific theory to demystify what at first seemed amazing.
The last time I hung out with Claire Ryan was more than a year and a half after my mother left. When her friends finally arrived at the diner, they started one-upping each other on how much their families were Nazis-something they often did, even though most of their families were fine, intact, usually nothing more than just a little overprotective. I stood up and walked out, not able to handle them that day. Claire followed me to the street and asked what was wrong. I told her to leave me alone. She asked why. I told her I didn’t want to be her friend anymore.
Claire lowered her eyes. For a second, I thought I’d hurt her feelings, which maybe would’ve been for the best. But then I realized she was looking at me with patient sympathy. ‘You have to deal with things some time, Summer,’ she said, touching my arm.
For a moment, standing there on the sidewalk, I flirted with Claire’s advice. I decided to see what dealing would feel like. The world went silent, and the walls inside my head shifted and opened, revealing new passageways. A sob welled up from deep inside of me, as well as a fizzle of something hot and sharp-maybe loss, maybe anger.
I felt both feverish and chilly at the same time, like I’d instantly contracted a disease. I turned away from Claire, saying nothing, and flew home and ran up four flights of stairs, breathing hard. When I flung open the door, there was my father, lying on the couch as usual. His eyebrows lifted when he saw it was me.
‘This is your fault,’ I demanded, out of breath. It had to be his fault-if it wasn’t, it was mine.
His expression wilted. He sat up, the couch pillows tumbling to the floor. ‘What’s my fault?’
‘You drove her away.’ My voice shook nervously-I’d never said anything remotely accusatory to him before. ‘You never went to her Christmas parties. You never bought her jewelry-she had to pick it out herself. She wanted to go on that cruise but you refused. You said you hated boats and organized meal times. You said you didn’t want to eat dinner with other people.’
My father sank into one hip. ‘I didn’t want to go on that cruise because it didn’t include you and Steven.’
‘You did something wrong.’ I pointed at him. ‘You didn’t try hard enough. And now you don’t even care. That’s the worst part-you’re not even looking for her.’
A thin, shaky noise emerged from the back of my father’s throat. I retreated to my bedroom and slammed the door. He was easy to blame because he was there. How could I get angry at my mother? It would be like getting angry at air. I could tear up pictures of her, I could burn the sweaters she’d left behind, but it wouldn’t give me much satisfaction.
But then, a few days later, the snow globe incident happened. So I couldn’t feel angry at him about any of it anymore, obviously. I just couldn’t.
When I returned to my grandmother’s, Samantha was still sitting on the porch. The ashtray next to her brimmed with cigarette butts. ‘Where were you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Just taking a walk.’
‘Were you down at Philip’s house?’
‘Who’s Philip?’
She licked her palm, then stubbed out the cigarette. It sizzled. The butt had blood-colored lipstick marks on it. ‘Just this asshole. He doesn’t talk to people. He thinks he’s too good for everyone. Just hangs out with his family. I hear they’re religious freaks.’ She stretched her long, denim legs out and considered me out of the corner of her eye, as cagey as the Smitty dog. ‘How old are you?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘So am I. I had sex this spring. With two guys. How many guys have you slept with?’
I looked away.
Samantha’s laugh was a bitter, horrid snort. ‘You haven’t slept with anyone, right? My first time was with this guy David. He’s twenty-four. Drives an F-150. We used to fuck in it a lot. A big deer stepped out one time when we were doing it. Stared straight at us. It was awesome.’
Her voice did a little dip on awesome. I watched her face, expecting her expression to crumple, but her smile became even brighter.
She shook another cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and blew a plume of smoke toward the outdoor thermometer. Samantha’s parents used to send us a Christmas card every year. They’d include a letter catching us up on the family’s goings-on-a new car purchase, a minor health scare, a vacation to the Grand Canyon. ‘Who on earth are Leonard, Ginny and Samantha?’ my mother would always say, tossing the letters aside, but I liked reading them. Samantha’s family seemed so normal. They went to church, Mrs Chisholm volunteered for a soup kitchen, and Samantha performed in piano recitals. My father told me that when her parents died in the fire, she was in Disney World for a piano competition. Her teacher told her right after she and a few other pianists got off the Maelstrom ride at Epcot.
‘So you moved here in the winter, right?’ I asked her. ‘After your parents…you know?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘You have a problem with that?’
‘I was just asking.’
‘I heard stuff about you, too.’ Her face was pinched. ‘Your mom left you guys. Probably because your dad’s a basket case, huh? Apparently he has this big reputation here of being, like, mentally unstable, even when he was younger.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said quickly.
‘How do you know?’ She put her feet up on the porch’s railing. ‘That’s pretty despicable. A woman leaving her husband. Her children.’ She said it like she was sitting behind the bench on The People’s Court. ‘Did she leave because your Dad’s nuts?’
‘No!’ I cried.
‘Do you think she was having an affair?’
‘No!’
She smiled. ‘Everyone knows that people only leave marriages when they’ve found something better.’
‘That’s not true.’