The Good Father. Diane Chamberlain

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      “I think it’s wrong for me to let you do this.”

      “‘Let me’?” I walked away from his arm and sat down on the sofa. It was uncomfortably firm, nothing like the big, cushy sofa we had at home. “What are you? My father?”

      “When are you going back to work?”

      “If you ask me that question one more time …” I shook my head in frustration. I’d tried going back to work. I’d lasted half a day. I made a mistake with a medication that could have cost a person his life and I took off my white coat, turned the order over to the other pharmacist, and walked out of the building without looking back.

      “You’re going to sit here in this—” he waved an arm through the air to take in the combined living room/dining room/kitchen “—this place and ruminate. And that scares me, Erin.” He looked at me head-on then and I saw the worry in his eyes. I had to look away. I stared down at my hands where they rested flat on my thighs.

      “I’ll be fine,” I said.

      “You need to stop going over every detail of it the way you do,” he said, as though he was telling me something he hadn’t already said twenty times. “You have to stop asking yourself all the what-ifs. It happened. You need to start accepting it.”

      I stood up. “Time for you to go,” I said, walking to the door. I’d moved into this apartment, in part, to get away from exactly this. “Thank you so much for helping. I know it was hard for you.”

      He gave me one last frustrated look before walking to the door. I followed him, opening the door for him, and he leaned over to hug me.

      “Do you hate me?” he whispered into my hair.

      “Of course not,” I whispered back, even though there were moments when I did. I could honestly say he was the only man I’d ever loved and if anyone had told me we would one day fall apart the way we had, I would have said they just didn’t know us very well. But here we were, as fallen apart as we could be.

      I opened the door and he walked into the hallway.

      “Bye,” I said. I started to close the door behind him, but felt a sudden rush of panic and pulled it open again. “Don’t touch her room!” I called after him.

      He didn’t turn around. Just waved a hand through the air to let me know he’d heard me. I knew he was in pain—maybe tremendous pain. But I also knew how he would deal with it. He’d invent some new video game or work on a repair project. He’d lose himself in activity. He certainly wouldn’t ruminate. He didn’t even know how. I had it down to an art. It wasn’t deliberate. It just happened. My mind would start one place—making a grocery list, for example—and before I knew it, I’d be going over every detail of what happened as if I were describing it to someone. Who was I telling it to inside my head? I needed to relive the details of that night the way an obsessive-compulsive person had to wash her hands over and over again. Sometimes I felt crazy and I’d make myself think of something else, but the minute I let my guard down, I’d be at it again. This was why I loved the Harley’s Dad and Friends group I’d found on the internet. It had been started by the father of eight-year-old Harley, a little girl who was killed in a bicycling accident. The group was full of bereaved parents I’d never met face-to-face but felt as though I knew better than I knew anyone. Better than I knew Michael. They understood my need to go over and over what had happened. They understood me. I spent hours with them every day, reading about their struggles and sharing my own. I actually felt love for some of those people I’d never met. I didn’t even know what most of them looked like, but I was coming to think of them as my best friends.

      So, now I was safe. I was creating my own world, in a new neighborhood, with new friends in the Harley’s Dad group and a new apartment. I turned around to take in the living room, thinking my escape. But instead of the bland furniture and the small room, I saw a sky the color of black velvet and the long, illuminated ribbon of the Stardust Pier, and I knew that no matter how far from home I ran, that horrible night would always, always be with me.

       5 Travis

      BELLA RAN AHEAD OF ME ON THE BEACH AND I watched the sandy soles of her feet flashing in the sunshine. Labor Day had passed and we nearly had the beach to ourselves. Bella’s brown hair flew behind her like a flag and her pink purse slapped against her side as she ran. She looked so free. I wished she could always feel the way she felt right this second. Free and happy. That’s why I brought her out on the beach today, so she could run and just act like a kid. My wrecked house was only a couple of blocks from the beach, and I usually brought her out here nearly every day, but we hadn’t been once in the week since the fire and she’d become this totally serious and confused little girl. Sort of like her totally serious and confused dad. Our lives had turned to shit overnight. I didn’t want her to know that. I didn’t want her to feel scared, ever. But she was no dummy. She knew everything had changed.

      We were staying with one of my mom’s church friends, Franny, but it wasn’t good. She had a slew of grandkids running in and out of the house and a bunch of cats I thought Bella might be allergic to, and you could tell she was letting us stay there because it was the Christian thing to do but that we were in the way. Bella and I shared the sagging mattress of a pull-out sofa and I thought we were getting flea bites in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t like I could say anything about it. We didn’t have a lot of other offers and about three times a day, Franny asked me if I’d found a place we could move into yet. I had—a shithole of a trailer that sat in a row of other trailers along the main road. It was nothing but a one-room tin can, and a good nor’easter would probably send it flying down the street, but it was going to have to do. There was a double bed I’d let Bella sleep in and a futon that would work for me. I thought it was okay for little kids to sleep with their parents, but the books I’d read said it wasn’t cool once they were three or so. Bella was really good at sleeping in her own room at home. At Franny’s, though, we didn’t have much choice and anyway, Bella needed me close. I needed her close to me just as much.

      If she asked me one more time when Nana was coming back, I didn’t know what I’d do. I told her Nana was in heaven and had to stay there and then she worried someone was keeping her in a locked room or something. So I explained about God and how heaven was a good place, but I got scared maybe I was giving her the message that dying was a good thing and I didn’t want her to start thinking she should die. Then she started asking me if I’d go to heaven and leave her. Franny told me I was overthinking the whole situation and making it too complicated. She said to Bella, “Your nana’s gone to sleep in heaven with Jesus and when you’re a very old lady, you’ll get to see her there again,” which seemed to satisfy Bella, or so I thought, until about an hour later when she asked me, “Can we go see Nana in heaven today?”

      Man, I wished we could.

      Mom hadn’t been perfect. She’d smoked and had diabetes and was overweight and didn’t take care of herself at all, but she’d loved Bella and she’d been happy to watch her while I worked. It turned out the fire was caused by some malfunction in the wiring behind the stove, so it wasn’t anything I could blame on my mother and I was relieved by that. I didn’t want to be angry with her now. I didn’t want that to be the last feeling I had toward her. Instead, I felt grateful. She gave her life for Bella. I couldn’t wrap my head around that—my fat, wheezy mom running into the burning house to save her. “God was working through her,” the minister said at her funeral, and even though God and I had never been on the best terms, I liked that thought. I was holding on to it.

      I never СКАЧАТЬ