My parents were always happiest in the mornings.
In the hour or so between waking and when my dad had to leave for work you could almost see why they got together in the first place, how my father softened my mother, how, in turn, she created hard limits for him, stimulating and spurring him forward — preventing him from becoming too soft.
At least in that moment. At least in their imaginations.
But just because they were happiest in the mornings didn’t mean they were always happy in the mornings. Sometimes, especially after a fight the night before, I would pad downstairs only to find that they weren’t speaking at all. Mom would be banging the pots around unnecessarily, or standing in the corner with her coffee, arms crossed, and Dad would be sitting silently, with a wounded expression on his face, pretending to read the paper. Or else he’d be gone already, not even touching the coffee Mom had poured out for him as soon as they woke up.
I’d ask whatever stupid question popped into my head first, just to disturb the silence. Something like “Where’s the cereal?” or “Are we reallllly out of peanut butter?” Those questions always got the responses they deserved, indifference or anger.
But often the night worked its magic on them. My parents, kind to each other. My dad telling a corny joke and my mother laughing. Her bending down to kiss him on the forehead before he left for work. Sometimes even after a fight.
It was like utopia, just as unreal and hazy and far away.
It was like my parents chose to ignore all of the issues heaped up between them, like all that mattered of that history were their years of proximity, nothing else. Like closing your eyes and trusting the other person not to murder you in your sleep was all it took to reconcile. I couldn’t imagine them actually talking about their problems, mainly because their fights were always the same thing, over and over, as regular as a metronome.
I thought they might have gone on like that forever, if they’d had a chance to.
It was kind of heartbreaking to see my dad come home after the good mornings, the really good mornings, already with a defeated look on his face from his hours at work. Or for me to come home from school and know, just from a sound Mom made upstairs, that she was in a bad mood.
Once I tried to cheer Dad up by asking about when he met Mom — maybe not the best question, in retrospect — and he told me the story of when I was born instead.
I’d heard it before.
“You were so little, Sarah. Like a loaf of bread. Just the tiniest little thing. I remember thinking — there’s a whole human here. This person might grow up to be taller than me. There’s a whole life here, a whole little life. It was the first time I’d ever held a baby. Your mother thought you had gas — she said you’d been cranky all morning. But when I picked you up, you got quiet. So quiet. It was like wind going through trees. I looked over at your mom, and she was smiling, and of course I was smiling, too, and in that instant I could see all of us, together, a little family …”
We were sitting in the den. There was a TV show on but I don’t remember what. Dad had the latest issue of Renaissance folded over in his lap.
“That’s not what I asked you,” I said.
He had a faraway look in his eye, which I knew meant the conversation was over.
“Hm?” he said.
“I asked you about meeting Mom.”
Dad ruffled my hair, and it kind of seemed like he was looking right through me, so I didn’t bother asking the question again.
* * *
The night I got in I had another dream. It was about the house, which in my dream was difficult to reconcile with the house that I was in: it was unfinished, unlit, dark, cracks in the wall seeping fog and light. Like in a standard horror movie, an abandoned house, raw camera footage heavily saturated with blue. I was lost, or maybe I wasn’t lost, but paralyzed, even though I was moving constantly through the rooms.
Perhaps it was a kind of awe.
The house looked different, but I knew it, intimately.
Somewhere a phone was ringing and I managed to pick it up. It took me a long time to get to the receiver, and then a voice spoke clearly in my ear — a woman’s voice — first a series of numbers, over and over, the same four numbers, 1313 or 3131, 3131 or 1313, or just three or just one, but somehow the same number, like it could be both at once, then it was speaking about the future or the past, the year in which everything happened or everything would converge, “like an arrow” — or like arrows? — the dream we were living or the life that we’d dreamed. None of it made any sense.
“What?” I said, but the line was quiet, not like it had gone dead, but like there was someone there who had decided to hold their breath. “What?” I said, with a feeling suddenly that there was no one on the other end but that I had been speaking to something else and that they were still there.
The house. A gust of wind. My dad.
Outside I saw a pair of headlights, far away, doing circles among the trees, trees that weren’t there in reality, but were there in my dream, trees that I could only see thanks to the halo of light from the motorcycle’s headlights, a motorcycle with an intent rider whose face I could not make out. Doing circles forever like it was the job of the motorcyclist to do circles. Like that was their purpose. It was like the motorcycle was being piloted by an intelligence that only understood circles — only circles, first one and then another, almost a figure eight, but not quite.
There was a bunch of other stuff in the dream, but all that I remember clearly is the phone call and the motorcyclist. And the house, of course, though it wasn’t the house and I couldn’t recall what it looked like, aside from the waste and the emptiness and the shifting light.
In the dream I watched the motorcycle, for a long time, until the limited intelligence of the rider (or maybe I should say focused intelligence) began to freak me out, like my vision was turning inside out, somehow moving slowly closer to a consciousness that I didn’t want to touch.
Like if I touched it the headlights would turn toward me and ride down my throat. Like whoever was riding the motorcycle would open their mouth and swallow me in one gulp.
I wanted to stop looking out the window, but I was afraid to, frozen stuck. Everything in me was fighting this fear, kicking and striking out. Trying to scream, but hearing no sound.
That’s how I woke up, struggling with my sheets, screaming — first choked off, sputtering, forcing out the sound, then full and high, long and terrified, over and over again. Like a warning klaxon sounding far away, outside my control. After I calmed down, panting and sitting up, I heard a chirp, hesitant and questioning, from the floor.
“I’m okay, Carl,” I said.
Moments later he was up on the bed, nuzzling me, and I lay back down and pulled him close to my chest.
* * *
There was a huge fight the day Dad rode off for good.
I was fifteen. Mom decided she was fed up with the grass outside and went to cut it herself. It had grown little feathery heads full of seeds that twinkled with the morning dew. They were beautiful. I was working in my room and I watched her from my window. She overprimed the lawn mower — she was apoplectic with rage — and when she pulled the rip cord it blew out a huge black cloud of exhaust.
It was the weekend. Dad was out riding his motorcycle and I’d quietly shut the door to my room when I realized what she was going to do. I thought it was likely that at any moment she would storm inside and order me to take over. Even over the throaty call of the mower I could hear Mom curse and swear as she navigated over willow branches and other obstacles. For some reason she was wearing short-shorts and ballerina flats and her legs were coated in grass clippings.
I leaned back in bed and thought about Evie — Evie confident, galloping through the forest on the back of Excalibur. Focused and clear, marching through light flowing radiant in husky waves through breaks in the canopy.
Sometimes I think back to that moment, when I miss her, think back to how free and clear and definite she was once in my mind.
I didn’t look out the window again until I heard Dad’s motorcycle pull up in the driveway. When he realized what was happening he stood moping in the driveway with all of his riding gear on. Looking almost like a sad astronaut. Who had maybe just touched down on the wrong planet. A planet that had already been colonized. An astronaut embarrassed about having to radio control and explain what had happened. A moment later he came out again, without his helmet and gloves, and offered to take the lawn mower from Mom and finish the job.
“No,” she shouted. “It’s too late. It’s getting done now. I’m doing it.”
He told her that he was sorry. “Be reasonable,” he said. “Let me do it.” I was surprised I could hear him over the motor from the second floor. I guess he was shouting, too.
Mom just kept pushing. Dad went back inside. I could hear him moving around, slamming doors, rattling dishes. That was unlike him. He was restless and looking for something to do, but he was mad, too, and he wasn’t afraid to be. I guess nothing seemed right. Finally he went outside again. Mom had moved to the backyard. I watched them from the office. He asked her again to let him finish, and she ignored him. It made sense to me — she was almost done. She’d done it so quickly. Why should he take credit for something that wasn’t his at all? I wanted him to take out a rake or something and gather up all of the clippings, which were lined up like sown hay in little rows marking the path of the lawn mower. Instead he tried to take the machine away from Mom — stupid and dangerous — and managed only to shut it off as they were wrestling for control.
I couldn’t understand him at all. Usually he just waited things out. Apologized later. Let her tell him how he was wrong.
Mom pushed the lawn mower away, knocking it on its side. The blade was still spinning, though slowly now. And slower.
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
“Let me finish it, Linz.”
“I don’t fucking think you will!”
“Just let me fucking do it!”
They left the lawn mower overturned in the backyard and continued fighting inside. I hurried out of the office and back into my bedroom, where I took out a textbook and lay down on the bed. Obviously I couldn’t focus on the words on the pages in front of me.
Only it was better to be facing the door, should it open.
It was better to be reading something that was unequivocally for school.
After a while I heard a loud crash. Then Mom apologizing, in a tone of voice I’d never heard before. Maybe I’d never even heard her apologize, not really.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Silence. I heard footsteps. Keys jangling. My mother, again.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The front door opened and closed. I heard an engine roar to life. The motorcycle. I ran to my window and looked outside. Mom was standing on the driveway.
“I’m sorry!” she said, more frantic now. “I’m sorry! ”
Dad just kept revving the engine over and over again, drowning out her words. Looking out across the street. Not moving, but threatening to. I noticed he wasn’t wearing his helmet. It must have been still inside. I opened my window and leaned out over the sill.
“Don’t go, Dad,” I called. “Please don’t go.”
I don’t know why, but I had tears in my eyes.
Like I could see the future.
He looked back at me. For a minute — not even that — it looked like he wouldn’t go. Then Mom tried to take the keys out of the ignition and he pushed her away. He revved the engine again.
“Fuck you!” he shouted.
Mom started crying.
“Fuck you!” my dad said again.
Then he put his bike in gear and roared out of the driveway.
* * *
When I was really little and my parents fought, I used to go down to the basement afterward, when my parents were exasperated or teary or spent, but mostly calm, and draw out cards for them on coloured papers with my battered and nubby Crayolas.
I always felt so sad descending the stairs, quiet and afraid and small, too, like at any moment I might get caught up in the web of another fight. Twisted and tangled and hung upside down from the ceiling while a hurricane ripped apart the house.
But there was something in the silence and the stillness following a fight that felt good, too, or almost good. Not good, exactly, because I was always too afraid for that. I was still recovering. I guess it was a kind of determination, or the feeling that I was going to knit them together with my goodwill.
I drew hearts all over the front of the cards and on the inside I wrote that I loved them. And I made sure to say that they loved each other, too, and that they should stop fighting.
Kind of heartbreaking.
I was thinking about that after my dad drove off. It had been a long time since a fight of theirs had made me feel so helpless. So long that I had forgotten what it was like. But instead of quietly writing out cards for them after he drove away I lay in my bed with my textbook open beside me and thought about nothing, even though I wanted to think about something, anything, lay like this for what must have been hours, panicked and unthinking, until the phone rang and Mom came into my room and told me what had happened.