Close Your Eyes. Amanda Eyre Ward

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      Over the years, I refined my fake story to effectively erase my father from the picture. My parents were killed in a plane crash, I told friends. Throughout boarding school and into my freshman year of college, I checked my mail infrequently and tossed any letters from my father into the trash.

      Alex, who wrote to Izaan regularly, even visiting once when Morton agreed to accompany him to New York, told me he had asked our father to keep copies of all the letters he sent to me. ‘Mark my words,’ he said (Alex was prone to such professorial statements; he had a doctor’s authority before he even graduated from high school), ‘you’re going to want to read them someday.’

      It was during my senior year at UT when I finally reached the end of my rope with Alex. He had arrived with some Harvard buddies during a Tri Delt mixer, charming all my friends with his blather and homegrown weed. After spending the night with the daughter of a Dallas judge, Alex took me out for pancakes and suggested we spend spring break in New York. We could go to some awesome parties, he argued, and then ‘hoof it upstate.’

      Something broke in me. ‘He killed her,’ I said, startling the waitress, who slid our plates to the table quickly and did not return even after we emptied our coffee mugs. ‘He’s not . . . a good person.’

      ‘He didn’t do it,’ said Alex.

      Sadness curdled into fury, and I put down my fork and knife. They were coated with syrup from cutting my pancakes into shreds. ‘I can’t even look at you,’ I said. ‘You’re so stupid. You know as well as I do what happened, you stupid fuck.’

      ‘I was there,’ said Alex.

      ‘But you didn’t see anything!’

      ‘No, I didn’t. Did you?’

      I bit my lip. ‘I don’t remember . . .’ I said. I had not even told Alex about my dream, about swimming into my parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night.

      ‘Lauren, I know him. I’m telling you, he didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it,’ said Alex.

      ‘Oh, really?’ I said, sounding a bit unhinged even to myself. ‘You know what an asshole he could be! He was angry about those fucking shoes from Dr. Schwickrath, I bet.’ I held my breath, having finally voiced my theory, which I had never mentioned to anyone before.

      ‘He isn’t capable of it,’ said Alex, sounding rehearsed. He seemed not to have heard my idea, or perhaps he had chosen to ignore it. ‘I know it, Lauren. I know him.’

      ‘Then who killed her?’ I asked.

      Alex didn’t answer, just looked at me pleadingly. ‘Who the hell did it?’ I said, too loud. A football player was sitting at the next table with his parents, all of them staring, and I was both enraged and humiliated. I bent close to my brother and whispered, ‘I never want to see you again.’ Then I left the International House of Pancakes, crying all the way back to my room at the sorority, telling my roommate I was hung over to explain why I spent the rest of the day in bed.

      Alex graduated from Harvard and sent blank postcards as he traveled from Europe to India to Africa. We did not speak for three months.

      Remembering the sadness of the time without him, the move to Houston with the wrong boyfriend, the small room on West Campus – I had been so forlorn I finally bought a turtle just to have something to say good night to – I put my hand on my brother’s shoulder.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

      Alex set his jaw and looked at the road. I sighed. He didn’t want to believe it, but the facts told the truth: our father had hit our mother in the head with a glass decanter, cracking her skull. He had left her to die on the bedroom floor. It was a crime (the prosecution said) of passion. It was what could happen if you were a certain type of person, and you fell too much in love.

       Chapter 3

      Gramma was disappearing. Pops, my grandfather, had been gone for seven years, and it was as if Gramma just wasn’t interested in a world without him. She was with us bodily, but she often wore a preoccupied expression, as if she were listening to terribly important things happening just outside our range of hearing. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but it seemed to me like Gramma was living in a better time, a time when she was a young mother with her life ahead of her. To live there fully, I guess, Gramma had to abandon the present day. She was leaving us slowly, maybe to make up for my mother’s abrupt departure. I missed her.

      After the three-hour drive, Alex parked at Cypress Grove Retirement Village. When I climbed out of the car, the heat flattened me immediately. In Houston, the humidity made summer an absolute hell. If you could help it, you didn’t go outside at all. The beach would to be sweltering and miserable. Worse, oil residue in the water turned into tar balls that stuck to your skin after swimming. Most hotels had tar-removal wipes next to the little shampoos and lotions, and I’d known girls in high school who took two bathing suits to the beach: one for swimming and a clean one for sunbathing.

      That aside, I did love the Shrimp Shack. We had been to Galveston a handful of times during our childhood, and Alex and I had always begged for dinner at the Shrimp Shack, followed by ice cream cones on the beach.

      Alex was searching around in the trunk of the car. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. I was agitated – though I loved Gramma, it was so hard when she didn’t recognize me or – worse – thought I was my mother. I looked nothing like Mom, nothing at all.

      ‘Here it is,’ said Alex. He stood, holding a dented Whitman’s sampler. ‘She loves chocolate.’

      I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought to bring something for Gramma, too. ‘You’re so nice,’ I said.

      Alex shoved my shoulder. ‘Move along,’ he said.

      Gramma was in her room, a generous single with windows overlooking the man-made water feature that partially blocked the view of a Best Buy next door. Alex knocked and called, ‘Where’s my beautiful grandmother?’

      She looked up from her Cosmopolitan magazine, her face growing animated. ‘Hello!’ she said brightly.

      ‘We brought you some chocolates,’ said Alex, handing her the box. I stood in the doorway, trying not to look as ill at ease as I felt. My grandmother’s white hair had been recently set, and she wore a pink dress I had always admired. I remembered her arriving at my choir concert in the dress, a dozen years ago.

      ‘Well, how lovely!’ said Gramma. She opened the box and selected a truffle.

      ‘Are you having a nice day?’ I said, too loudly.

      ‘We have got to water the azaleas,’ she said, taking a dainty bite of her truffle. ‘I told your father.’

      My mouth was dry, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.

      ‘Do you mind if we sit and visit for a bit?’ said Alex. He acted so normal, relaxing into a chair, smiling at Gramma.

      ‘Not for too long,’ said Gramma. ‘But that’s fine, young man.’ She touched a gold circle pin on her dress.

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ