Slide - Kyle Beachy [54]
“I've been waiting to hear your voice,” I said.
“It's hard to talk to you because you don't listen to anything I say.”
“But I do. I'm sitting here hanging on every word.”
“Then why didn't you do what I said? It was so easy Potter appreciate Mom and Dad simple appreciate them and let yourself love someone and don't smoke stupid dumb killer cigarettes and you ignored all of it.”
“I'm working on the love part,” I said, and accidentally ran my eyes across his form. “I'm going back over memories like an old film reel. I have all day in that van to review. Stuart was supposed to help, but he's forgotten. But I'll get there. It's either love or it's not.”
“Calling something love saying the word does not make it love because words you know this part you learned at school words come apart they are empty signifiers these words.”
Freddy, glossy and frail and very much deceased, bent down and examined one of the boxes. For the moment he was occupied and I allowed myself a sustained look. When he stood I quickly dropped my eyes.
“Love is motion Potter love is forward movement but you said yourself the memory reel backward it's all backward with you. You are stuck back there because Potter you don't let yourself move forward your eyes get stuck on things and people.”
The bird by the window turned to give me a full profile. My gaze went to the shadows on the attic's floor, which I followed over to the small puddles forming around Freddy's pale feet.
“That's the reason you can't look at me it's your eyes your eyes are like teeth like shark teeth they are starving. Eyes can show love but there is no love in teeth. Your shark eyes make me have to go away.”
“I understand,” I said. “And I think it's an issue of resentment. I think part of me resents you for leaving me alone.”
“I'm here I'm right here.”
“Either I resent you or I resent myself, or maybe I resent Richard and Carla. I'm trying to figure it out.”
“But there's no difference no difference we're the same because Dad is the same and Mom is the same we're all the same thing. This is what it means to be a family to have everyone separate but the same.”
An idea came to me. Such joy did I take in this idea that it left almost no room to be pleased with myself for coming up with it. I knew enough about myself to know it was only a matter of time until I disobeyed and looked at Freddy. As long as I could see, I would look. This could only work if I was somehow made blind. I stood and moved toward the window.
“Where are you going what are you doing?”
“If there's light in here, I'm going to look,” I said. The cardinal cleared off to another corner of the attic. I bent to pick up the fallen box. “I'm a visual learner. It's that simple. Hold on a second. Once it's dark we'll be fine. I won't be tempted to look.”
“Leave my box there don't move it.”
“Cardboard boxes are designed to be moved,” I said, lifting.
I hefted the box on top of the other and shimmied it back against the window, sealing out the streetlight. I turned and faced back into the attic.
“Freddy?”
I struggled to adjust to the modicum of remaining light. After a minute I was able to pick out the shapes of boxes and the trapdoor and ladder downstairs. Freddy, of course, was gone. I laid myself across the box mattress and heard the bird flitter through