Damage - A. M. Jenkins [49]
“I’ve been thinking,” you begin. Only when she stops talking do you realize you interrupted her, but now you’ve got the momentum and you’re not going to stop “About your father,” you add.
You can’t tell any reaction. She’s fingering the design on your class ring.
“I’ve been thinking,” you repeat carefully, “that your mom could be wrong about that manipulation stuff. Because it could be that he just didn’t want to lie there for a long time without being found. Maybe that’s why he did it right when your mom was pulling up. So it might not have had anything to do with revenge.”
Heather is silent, leaning against you. “I really don’t want to talk about this,” she finally says.
“I know. But just listen for a second. You said he was bitter. I was thinking that maybe he just didn’t see any point in being alive anymore.”
“No point.” Her voice is muffled against your shirt. “Just me.”
“He probably felt pretty low, pretty unimportant. Like everybody would get over it real quick.”
Heather sits up and moves away a little. “Is this why you woke me up this morning? Well, you can just drop it. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. He was selfish,” she adds, her mouth a tight line. “And a liar.”
“A liar? What did he lie about?”
“Everything. Calling me Pumpkin. The hugs. The kisses. Everything.”
“I don’t think he was lying. I think he cared about you a lot. And selfish—well, maybe he was. But maybe he couldn’t help it. It could be that he didn’t really want to die, he just wanted to stop feeling bad. But he couldn’t any other way—”
“Why are you even bringing this up? You don’t know anything about it. You have no clue.”
No clue? Just a razor waiting for you at home.
“But I do,” you tell her. “Kind of.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Maybe not in some ways, but there’s still some things I see that—”
“Oh, of course you see. You were there, right?”
“No, but—”
“I was. I was there. Hello?—and you weren’t!”
“But—”
“It wasn’t my mom who found him, Austin.”
It takes a moment for her words to sink in, for you catch her meaning. “Oh,” you hear yourself say, and for moment you sound like that guy from the mirror, squeezed.
“You have no clue,” Heather says again, through gritted teeth. “Well, here’s a clue. Here’s several clues. He lying there in his armchair, all laid back with the footrest out. There was this smell, like—when people die,” says, enunciating each word carefully. “Austin, w people die, they lose control of everything. Like, their bowels? And the blood—I’ll bet you didn’t even know blood has a smell. Well it does, when there’s a lot of it. A thick, heavy smell. It was all over everything—the chair, the floor, the wall. And clumps of…his head. My father’s head. So don’t even think you know anything about it.”
In a flash the world shifts and you see yourself from some weird, outside angle where dying is not some healing, endless sleep; where it is not the relief you’ve always thought it would be—like opening a spillway eases the pressure off a dam.
It is an action that will fly completely out of your control.
It is a man sprawled in his own shit and blood.
Here in the truck, it’s very quiet. Heather clears her throat and looks away; you realize you’ve been staring at her. Now you see how pale she is.
“You’re right, I don’t know anything about that,” you tell her quietly. “But I think I know something about why he did it. And—I think I can help you see that it’s not what you think. That it wasn’t anything against you. Because…”
You can feel your left hand tightening, squeezing the steering wheel, trying to crush it into dust. “Because know how he felt. Your dad. Sort of. Because, I guess tend to, you know, sometimes…feel the same way.”
Heather’s voice is high, pinched. “What do you mean? Feel what way?”
“Down, I guess. I don’t know the best word for Maybe…depressed. Like…not being…”
Your heart’s thumping so loud, she must be able hear it.
“Sometimes I want to kill myself.”
There it is. Out on the table. The steering wheel still there, uncrushed, and your left hand is still