Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [72]
Dad lifted his hand, ran it through what little hair he had left. “I signed the permission form,” he said, eyes cast down.
Mom tilted her head to the side. “You signed it?”
Dad nodded apologetically, but he still couldn’t meet her eyes.
“How could you sign it after everything that has happened recently? How could you do it without telling me?”
Dad looked up slowly, narrowed his eyes. “I don’t recall you consulting with me all the times you’ve signed Piper’s forms.”
Silence—the kind you feel like a vacuum, sucking everything out of the atmosphere. Mom stepped back like she’d been slapped. She stared at me, then Dad, then me again, her face betraying the realization that we’d somehow joined forces, that from now on she’d be conducting her interrogation alone.
“I see,” she said, her hands unusually still. “I . . . I see.” She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it fall to her side again. “I’m tired now,” she said, her face suddenly implacable, ghostly.
I waited for Dad to say something, but he didn’t, or couldn’t—I wasn’t sure which.
Mom padded away from us and into her bedroom. I expected her to slam the door, practically willed her to, so I’d know she was actually pissed as hell, that her worn-out shell act was just that—an act. But instead the door gently swung closed, and suddenly I was the one standing in the hallway with my hands by my sides and my heart in tatters. Amazing how quickly a family can fall apart.
I turned to Dad, knowing that I needed to acknowledge that he’d covered for me, but he’d gone too. At the end of the hallway I saw the telltale strip of light glowing at the bottom of his office door. I walked over, knocked lightly, and let myself in.
Dad was staring intently at a family photo on the wall, the one taken last Christmas, when Grace was still a tiny baby. The photographer took thirty-eight photos that day, and Grace only stopped wailing for one of them. Mom and Dad chose it without hesitation, even though Finn’s eyes were closed and I looked like I was having a seizure.
“Where’s Grace?” I asked.
“Asleep.”
“Finn?”
“In the basement, I think. Practicing his guitar. Or something. I don’t know.”
Another day, another relaxed, flowing conversation with Dad. I leaned against his desk, took the weight off my unsteady legs. “Thank you for doing that,” I said finally. “You didn’t have to.”
Dad smiled ruefully. “Yes I did. I’ve gotten used to you and me arguing, but seeing you and your mother going at it just kills me.”
I wanted to ask if it hurt him that he and I argued so much, but I couldn’t. What if he said no? “I’m sorry things are like this,” I said.
“Are you really?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I looked away, studied the books stacked in piles on his desk—dictionaries, encyclopedias, journals on obscure topics that most sane people haven’t even heard about. It was the recurring image of industriousness Dad had portrayed my entire life, but nothing seemed to have moved since the last time I’d been there. Did he actually read any of those books? If not, what did he do during those increasingly drawn-out evenings when he disappeared to the sanctuary of his office?
Only one book was open, its bright white pages out of place amid Dad’s predominantly musty, yellowed collection. I leaned over and peered at the photographs of hand and arm gestures. Below each one, a caption translated the sign language into English.
“Whose is that?” I asked, not for a moment considering the most obvious explanation of all.
Dad hurried over and closed the book, and I just had time to catch the title before he placed it under the desk: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Conversational Sign Language.
“Good title, huh?” he asked flatly. “A complete idiot . . . that sounds like me.”
My heart was doing somersaults,