Here Lies a Father. Mckenzie Cassidy

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER 3

      CATHERINE WATCHED AS NEIL AND I carefully pushed the orange hatchback into a parking space facing the high school’s main entrance. She sighed and shifted her weight from one hip to the other, crossing her arms and then dropping them to her sides. Neil and I ripped off the extra hunks of rubber from the wheel well, revealing the car’s skeletal metallic undercarriage. Using a rather small jack we attached the donut tire to keep the car as level as possible. In the meantime it would sit alone in the lot, which neither of us were too worried about in a small town like New Brimfield. Once the car situation was settled, we followed Uncle Neil.

      He drove a Cadillac. Right on the cusp of being considered an antique, the Cadillac was aged but didn’t possess the hip vintage style so beloved by car enthusiasts. He shuffled us over and unlocked the front door with a long silver key. The car had no power locks and he awkwardly bent over the passenger seat and pulled up the lock knob, breathing heavily and grunting with each movement. The Cadillac was dark purple with a white rubber top—although it wasn’t a convertible—and the rims were twisted shiny spokes like a brand-new bicycle. I wanted to improve Catherine’s mood so I gave her the front seat, yanking the lever near the floor and pushing the seat forward so I could squeeze myself into the back. Catherine sat down and immediately pulled the seat belt across her chest and clicked it into the buckle. I struggled to find the belts in the back. There were no shoulder straps and the buckles had slipped down the cushion cracks long ago.

      Once Uncle Neil climbed into the driver’s seat, the Cadillac dropped about a foot and released a metallic groan. He breathed a sigh of relief also, one he’d been holding inside to rally his robust midsection around the steering wheel. The car smelled stale too, like cigarette smoke. I glanced at the dashboard, at the ashtray more specifically, and saw that the small plastic container with a reflective facade of stainless steel was clean and untouched. Smoking in the car didn’t bother me much. There wasn’t a time I rode in the car when my parents didn’t have cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. The reek of smoke stuck to everything we owned, from the clothes on our backs to the bags we carried to school, and our walls always turned yellow from the burning nicotine.

      Uncle Neil drove through the side of town Catherine and I hadn’t seen when we first arrived. The nicer houses were near the center of New Brimfield. The neighborhoods reminded me of a cul-de-sac on which my family had once lived. A cul-de-sac was a fancy way of saying dead end. Most of our neighbors were doctors and lawyers—professionals—and I’m certain we were the only ones on the block who didn’t own our house. None of them knew that, of course. Mom kept the house up, planted fresh flowers under the windowsills and mowed our well-fertilized, emerald-green yard. During the holidays, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, Mom sent Catherine and me out with boxes of fudge for the neighbors, or miniature American flags to stick in their front yards. No one had any idea we didn’t belong in that neighborhood, and they certainly didn’t know we barely scrounged up enough money each month to pay rent and utilities. Everything was an act, but for a time, it worked.

      Mom said she had no interest in owning a home because she didn’t want to be held down in one place for too long. Her only valued possessions were pictures. She was compelled to always document the good times. Our walls were covered in picture frames of all shapes and sizes, easy to swap out or strike down, based on her mood or fancy. Sometimes she even hung a frame with the stock photo to further an aesthetic only she had in mind. There were pictures she only put out when certain people visited, like her mother, and others she replaced periodically to conceal outdated hairstyles or months when she had put on unexpected weight. For her, the placement of pictures was an art of personal expression, and they each told a story, her story. As the years passed I noticed fewer pictures with Dad. I didn’t know why he had been excluded, but a simple answer would’ve been that he wasn’t around as much.

      Uncle Neil drove under two flashing red lights on Main Street and took a sharp right onto a dirt road. Thick forests surrounded the car on both sides. Only the occasional gravel driveway leading to cabins and camping pavilions indicated that anyone else lived in the area. I pushed open the backseat window about six inches, as far as it would go, and breathed in the fresh country air. I caught a whiff of saturated soil, pungent pine needles. We sat quietly and I grew queasy, either from stress or the bumpy road. I took a series of deep breaths, which seemed to help. An uncle I’d just met was driving me to the home of an aunt I never knew existed, to meet an estranged family who was likely as uninterested in me as my sister Catherine was in them. I was journeying into uncharted territory and Catherine was a tether to the only reality I’d ever known. The next two days would be daunting for sure, but something about the situation felt right.

      When Neil slowed the Cadillac and began turning into a driveway, I sat up and pressed myself against the glass to take a good look. Marie’s house was long and narrow, a manufactured home—not a trailer, exactly—painted a drab shade of gray. The front patio was a later addition, supported by a pile of cinder blocks and covered with a makeshift roof of corrugated tin. The windows were smaller than in typical houses and overlooked patches of dead grass. If not for the white smoke that seeped from the stovepipe chimney and a car parked out front, I would’ve thought it abandoned. We stepped across a muddy driveway and our shoes sank into the bog. I’d have to take mine off to avoid tracking mud across Marie’s house, but my socks felt wet so I’d have to change them too. That’s when I suddenly realized that Catherine and I had no change of clothes, СКАЧАТЬ