The phone stopped ringing and I felt hurt, like they had heard my thoughts and nodded in agreement: Good idea, please stop existing. I threw the ball and let it roll past me on the way back, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and threw it instead against the scratched white wall of Jenny’s house.
I stood, breathing heavily, the pieces of the phone scattered among the dirt. I could probably put the phone back together; only the battery popped out, the screen a little cracked. I heard a cough and I turned, remembering Adam was next to me. He was finally no longer throwing. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I’m ready for dinner.”
* * *
—
ADAM INSISTED that I sit on the couch while he made dinner. It sounded like he was just banging pots and pans together, opening and closing cabinets at rapid speeds. I let him be, there were no cries or scream for help, no loud “Ow”s! I tried to turn on Jenny’s giant flat-screen, but there were too many remotes and buttons with symbols that made no sense to me, so I just sat quietly on the couch, avoiding the clock and trying not to think about the pieces of my phone that were lying in the dirt out back.
Beyond the screen door, it was black. The blue summer light I had been standing in earlier had been extinguished—the sky wouldn’t let me pretend it wasn’t late. Images of Billy patting Mom’s shoulder with one hand, assuring her it was all going to be okay, his other hand betraying his true feelings, scratching the side of his neck, a tic of nervous frustration. The lines of Mom’s face. She looked every year of her age and more. Her hair already had streaks of gray. She could name all of them after me.
I got off the couch, began pacing the room. I kept my eyes down on my feet in front of me as I paced, like I wanted to make sure they would work. This helped. One foot in front of the other, another task I could accomplish. My breathing started coming out in easy gusts, and when I felt comfortable enough to look up, I took one step, stopped, and found myself facing a wall and a framed photo.
I knew that Jenny was married, that Adam wouldn’t exist without a father, but he lingered in a distant part of my mind, a man-shaped figure whose face and features, the little quirks and details that made him a living, breathing person, unknown. I liked it that way, was relieved that Jenny never talked about him. Seeing his face staring back at me made me realize that, even if I didn’t want to know him, I had been curious.
It was a nice family photo shot in a professional studio with a camera that captured every pore, each eyelash. He stood behind Jenny and Adam, his hands resting on their shoulders like large, napping seals. They were dressed in matching white button-downs and jeans. It wasn’t that Jenny’s husband wasn’t handsome—square jaw, no signs of balding, thick brown hair that parted smoothly to the left, eyes a shade of blue that made you think of warm ocean water, waves that didn’t pound into you, didn’t even crest, just sort of flowed into you and lifted you off the sand for a moment before gently placing you back down—he smiled without showing his teeth.
Jenny and Adam had wide, open-mouth smiles, their faces glowing, like there was nowhere else they’d rather be. Jenny’s husband’s face did not look like that. I stared at his lips, stretched into a halfhearted “u,” like the photographer told him, “Look happy, now!” and that was the best he could muster. I wanted to reach into the photo and pry open his lips, grab the collar of his shirt, shake him, and yell, “Show some damn teeth!” That smile was not the smile of a man who had a son he could play catch with. This man saw his son’s quietness and assumed something was wrong with him, didn’t see that even while his son wasn’t talking, he was watching, listening, trying to understand this world that continually flipped on him. One minute upright and comfortable, the next on his back, aching and confused. This man came home and pecked his eager, waiting wife on the cheek, went to sit in his armchair and lose himself in network television for hours after. In bed at night, he slept on the left side, she on the right, back to back. He should’ve been running through the door and pulling her into his arms, kissing her full-on, a little tongue, until his lungs and heart were ready to burst. When they went to bed, his arms should’ve been wrapped around her, no space between them. With a kid and a wife like that, this man’s face should’ve been in a constant, toothy smile.
* * *
—
I STOOD STARING at the photo until Adam came into the room holding a plate of untoasted bread, cold beef and broccoli, a whole red apple, the sticker still on it, a Twinkie in the wrapper. “Every food group,” he said. He could’ve put anything in front of me and I would’ve been touched.
We sat on the couch and he turned on the TV, using three different remotes, as I took a bite of the apple, poked the soggy broccoli with my finger, tore the bread into little pieces. Jenny’s TV had more channels than I had ever seen and each one he clicked was available, not like in my house, when I clicked a cool-looking channel and a screen popped up saying I too could watch Robot Turtle Race Wars, for just $9.95 extra per month. Adam clicked through each one. We never spent more than a minute on each station.
“Do you have a favorite channel?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said.
He flipped through more channels—a man jumping out of a helicopter, animated penguins singing a song about the importance of flossing, a woman about to either fuck a guy or murder him, Oprah Winfrey Network—and I kept staring back at that photo, looking away again.
“What’s your dad like?” I asked.
Adam’s channel flipping didn’t lose its steam—old ladies racing down Route 66 on Harleys, a killer whale that washed up on the shore in Malibu still breathing, weight-loss frozen yogurt, a channel for either stoners or newborn babies, lots of flying colorful shapes and acoustic guitar–heavy music. “He’s fine.”
I heard his pain. “Fine,” a word you used when you stubbed your toe and people asked you if you were okay and you didn’t want to sound like a little bitch. When your mom gave you Cheerios after you asked for Froot Loops. Something you said to people who asked about your day and you didn’t know them well enough to give them a real answer. Never a word used when talking about anything of value. “Where is he now?”
“At work. He has an office in this big building downtown. There’s a fish tank behind his desk and he let me name every single fish in it.”
“What’re the names of the fish?”
“I can’t remember. I only went to his office once.”
“My dad was an asshole too. He died a little over a year ago.”
Adam put the TV on mute, stopped clicking channels. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. He didn’t die sad. He died stupid.” I grabbed the remote from him, put the volume back on. “An old lady found him by the railroad while she was out walking her Rottweiler. The sun had just come up. He had been dead for hours.” I turned the volume up a little louder. “Finally, he downed more booze than his body could handle. Like, seriously, don’t be sad. It wasn’t a surprise. For as long as I can remember, he was drunk. I don’t think I ever really talked to him truly sober—he’d sit at the breakfast table pouring whiskey into his cornflakes.”