The grocery store was full of staring eyes and the hollow sound of my footsteps. But standing in front of Dad’s door with a sack of groceries in one hand and a guitar in the other is scarier. My arms are stretching and pulling out of shape with the weight. The paint on the fake wood door is chipping, and the number 304 hangs crooked and lopsided.
I take a few shaky breaths and try to form my arms into that strong, rounded position that always comes before the kata at karate. But the bag and guitar are too heavy.
I knock. Long and hard. It echoes in my brain. Deep and shaking like the thunder rolling outside. Then I wait.
He doesn’t come. And he doesn’t come. And he doesn’t come.
My whole body is like a bike tire with a tiny hole leaking air. But I’m not leaking air. I’m leaking hope, lots of it, until the knob finally turns and the door opens. Dad stands behind it, staring down at me.
I saw him yesterday. But I guess part of me hoped he’d answer the door and be my old Dad again. Because when his face is still saggy and scruffy, I’m surprised.
“Hi, Dad,” I whisper.
He scratches his cheek and that scraggly beard sounds like soap on the cheese grater when Mom makes laundry detergent. “Katydid.”
I think it’s how he says it that hurts the most. Like it’s a question. Like he’s not sure.
“What are you doing here?”
That hurts second worst.
“I followed you yesterday. I know I shouldn’t have, but I saw you at the store and I couldn’t help it. So I’m here and …” When I hear myself, it doesn’t sound right. But the thunder booms again, and I know I don’t have time to explain. I walk straight in with big steps. Powerful steps. Steps carrying magic.
Dad moves out of the way. “What’s in the bag?”
“Food. And I brought this.” I lean the guitar against the counter, put the bag next to it, and take Grammy’s letter out of my backpack.
“My guitar,” he murmurs. “Why?”
I push the envelope into his hand. “Because I want to help you. I want to make you happy again. And Grammy wrote you this letter. It’s all magic.”
“I don’t …” he mumbles as he rubs his hair. “I told your mom I didn’t want anyone coming by.”
That hurts more than getting kicked in the thigh when I miss my block in karate.
Dad nods his head and walks into what must be the living room. The whole apartment is so small and cramped I can’t tell for sure. There’s a little gray fold-up chair and our card table from back home. I didn’t realize he’d taken it until I see it there. Dad sits down and opens the letter. I figure that means I can cook. So I do.
I pull out pots, fill one with water, and open spaghetti sauce jars. The moving and cooking and following directions pushes the hurt part of my heart out of the way. I’m busy. You can’t feel too sad when you’re busy. Dad needs me to make the most perfect spaghetti, and that’s what I’m doing until I hear his bedroom door close.
“Oh, no,” I whisper. He can’t go back into the bedroom. Not today. Not now.
Something on the card table catches my eye. The letter from Grammy. I walk over to pick up the envelope and the pages underneath.
“No.”
Grammy sent a letter to Dad but forgot the most important part. She sent him five blank pages.
“Oh, Grammy.” I thought the letter would be something to make that magic called forgiveness. But there’s not much magic in just an envelope with Dad’s name on it and plain white computer paper.
The water on the stove isn’t boiling yet, so I turn the heat down on the sauce and pull the guitar out of its case. I know what happens when Dad goes into his bedroom, how he pulls the blankets over himself and doesn’t move. I have to get him the magic before he starts staring too hard at the wall. Before he’s too far down that road, and I can’t bring him back.
I push the door to his room open. It smells funny. There are clothes everywhere and garbage on the floor. It isn’t clean like at our house. But he lies on the bed just the same, looking out the window. When Dad is sick like this, he’s too tired to clean up or get dressed, or do much of anything else.
I march to where Dad’s looking and sit down. So instead of looking at the window, he has to look at me. He has to see me. And because I don’t know what else to say, I prop the guitar up on my lap, curl my left hand around the neck, and start playing.
The thick steel strings cut into my fingers. Almost six months without playing has weakened the skin there. But I keep going, my fingertips brushing each string up, one, two, three, four, in an arpeggio and then back down.
His breathing is slow and steady.
As I finish the intro, I worry that after so many months, my singing voice might be screechy as a blue jay’s. But instead, those first few notes come up my throat and out my mouth soft and smooth. They spread through my chest like ripples in a pond. They fill up the room with something alive and real. With hope.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?
The old moon asked the three.”
Dad rubs his cheek against the pillow.
I sing, and I sing, and I sing. It’s as if I never stopped. Like I’m returning home after a long trip. Even here in this dingy, dirty apartment with stinking piles of clothes all over the floor. Because I’m making music with my dad and that’s where I’m from. This is who I am.
I end the song and close my eyes as the last vibrations fade away. Dad’s voice is dry as paper. “Katydid.”
I’ve waited five months and twenty days to hear Dad say my name again, to say it like he knows me for real and forever, and when he does, it’s like somebody shaking up a root beer and pouring it over ice. All the foam comes spilling out from inside of me. “Daddy, please come home. Please come home. I can make you happy again. Mom will understand. I know you’re sad. But I’m sad too. And Mom’s sad. She needs you. We need you.”
It feels as if I’m finally resolving a chord that’s been dissonant for too long. But my words just bounce off of him. All the fizzy foam sinks down, down, until there’s nothing left.
“Please?” I whisper.
And then just like Grammy, his eyes clear for a moment. He’s walking out of that misty, winding darkness. “Katydid, I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.” I reach for his hand and link my fingers between his. For a moment I think it’s working. The music and the spaghetti and the ice cream—it’s working. But then everything changes.
Dad straightens his fingers and slips his hand away from me. He pulls his blankets up around his shoulders and rolls over to face the wall.
It’s Dad’s way of saying it’s over. He has more important things to do. Like nothing. Like staring at a closet. Like making everyone around him feel invisible.
He’s done.
I have to get out of that room. That room with the stink and the inky invisibility swirling all around me.
I run into the kitchen. The sauce is bubbling. There are red splotches on the stove. The water is boiling. The ice cream is melting into a puddle on the counter.
But I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.
“I’m not cleaning up,” I shout back to the bedroom. “This is your mess. Not mine, not Mom’s, not Grammy’s, yours!”
I shut the stove off, put on my backpack, then grab Grammy’s letter from the card table because Dad doesn’t deserve it.
I leave the guitar, though. I never want to see it again.
On my way out, I slam the door. Loudly. But he probably doesn’t even hear it.
The rain is pounding when I get outside. I run to the bus stop and then ride past the grocery store and the onion fields to the school. Halfway home, next to the orchard, I see Mom’s car. It speeds down the road, stopping on the opposite side with a screech like one of those radio sound effects.
“Where have you been?” Mom jumps out, leaving the door wide open. Without even looking for other cars, she runs across the street to me and grabs my shoulders. Her mascara is smeared under her eyes. “The school said you didn’t come back from lunch. I’ve been looking all over for you. Where were you?”
I can’t think of a single lie. Not one. All I can think about are the white petals squashed into the mud around us and all those almonds that will never grow now. “I found him,” I say. “I found Dad and I tried to make him happy. I tried, but …”
“Oh, honey.”
I don’t say anything else and neither does Mom, because sometimes the only thing you can do is stand on the side of an orchard and cry as the rain washes away the last of your magic.