Slide - Kyle Beachy [93]
“How long ago? When? I could say six months or I could say twenty years. How much easier it would all be, yes, I want this, I wish I could point and say here. Your father is honest, and he is fair, and kind, and he loves you so much that still to this day he'll tell me, he'll turn to me in bed and say how much he loves you. Like something new he just discovered. We laugh about it. All these years. He is a good man, Potter.”
I kept my eyes closed and let her voice come and go.
“We got through it, we did. Jesus, I remember, we cried all the time, we spent entire nights crying together. Your father grew that awful beard, and we fought and cried. He sang to you all the time, your father. He filled in for me and Freddy. And one night I remember standing there changing you, and we were both perfectly quiet. You were watching me. And I remember your father saying something behind me, and I hadn't known he was in the room. I asked him to repeat it. And he said it again and I started crying and thanked him. He came over and we hugged, and I swear, Potter, you started laughing, you laughed at us there on your back. And a month later we were out of the apartment and into our house, and we were healing, and you were babbling your little sounds.”
“What did he say?”
Somewhere to our right a child was crying.
“That he forgave me,” she said. “But why in the world would he have to say that, Potter? And why ever would I thank him for it?”
We couldn't risk sitting anymore. I stood and she must have understood, because she stood too, and picked up her purse, and smiled a tiny smile and began walking.
She moved quickly. We reached the end of the first floor and took an escalator back up, where we waded through another stream of people traveling in both directions, clutching handled paper bags that hung to their knees. I struggled to remain at her side. Then we were standing outside Brookstone, the store where I'd bought every Father's Day gift I could remember, back where we'd begun.
“I'm going to get that coffee,” she said.
“You should. If you want coffee, then definitely.”
“I think I will.”
She moved forward slowly with the line. Sandwiched between more teenage girls and two large men. Was this how she looked when I didn't see her? This was my mother, Carla Mays who was once Carla Gingerich, just a child herself who'd grown to a mother and wife whose doubt had eventually crystallized into something absolute, something fist-sized and beyond. She was sad. But what could I offer? I was her son. I could surround her with my forearms and callused hands. Her grown son. The physical act of embrace as some base therapy, wordless and meaningful, the absolute least I could give.
But not here. This temple of mass commerce and popular whim. Here, my hug was nothing, would be trivialized, cheapened, end up in some promotional photo on the mall's Web site.
We crossed the bridge and descended to the yellow level. I reversed out of our parking spot and maneuvered slowly and deliberately through the structure, accelerating and braking with extreme prejudice, doing everything within my minimal power to ensure my mother's coffee wouldn't spill.
four
i used my car key to cut through ancient packing tape and then ripped, creating a small cloud of dust and stickless glue residue. Box flaps peeled back to release more dust into the attic's minimal light.
And lo.
I hooked a finger through a ring of big colorful plastic keys and lifted them toward my face. I set the keys down and picked up a bright yellow toy truck, dump truck, yellow Tonka dump truck. I set the truck down and reached back into the box. Little worker men wearing little helmets and overalls. Once everything was out of the box I spoke to my brother.
“This explains why you only appear in the attic. Some paranormal system or like statute of conduct. You, dead brother, are anchored to these toys. Right? My reference points here are mainly literary. Like Dickens.”
Across the room, Freddy stood over the toys I had excavated from another box. He wore an old two-piece swimsuit from