“Sylvie”—Dad’s patience lubricated the words—“you can’t keep it a secret forever.”
“They could at least let us adjust before we have to listen to everyone else commiserating.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Carla Petriano is the biggest gossip in town.”
“She’s the mother of Daniel’s best friend. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”
“Why should he have to be treated differently by strangers?”
“Be fair. Carla’s hardly a stranger.”
Something indistinguishable followed, punctuated by the sound of my father’s hand slapping the wall. “Damn it, Sylvie. This affects all of us, not just you.”
“Don’t you think I know that, Red? Look at Joe. He stays away. And Nick. He’s so focused on not talking about it, he’s stopped talking altogether.”
“Unless it’s related to soccer.” Only my father laughs, weak and short-lived.
Mom leaps in. “It’s just as well. He’s too young to understand how serious this is.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think he understands too well.” Dad’s dead serious now. “Nick sees Daniel wasting away. He sees the middle-of-the-night trips to the head. The endless laundry. Daniel couldn’t even swim all the way around the boat yesterday without resting on the mooring line. He used to be able to swim across the river, for God’s sake.” Dad’s anger came across loud and clear.
Mom interrupted. “You think Nick should be talking to a counselor?”
“Probably.”
“But we can’t afford that and Mexico. We agreed, Daniel first. That’s why Judy’s interference is so irritating.”
“She’s only trying to be supportive. She’s well-meaning.”
“If I had a dollar for every well-meaning word from these people.”
“‘These people’? These people were your friends five weeks ago.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t understand what this is like. With their platitudes and their casseroles and pound cake. What medical books do they read?”
“You wouldn’t wish this on their children.”
There was a silence and I found myself sitting up to listen, as if the solution to world peace would be forthcoming.
My mother’s voice was slower, less sure, as if she were losing steam, the debate a kind of verbal enema that had cleaned her out. “I do. Oh, God, Red, I do wish this was someone else’s child. In a heartbeat. I’d be the first one baking brownies.”
“This isn’t part of some grand master plan to punish the Landons. It’s like drawing the queen of spades in crazy eights. It just happens to be us this time. Some other boy in some other town will be the next one. Diseases like leukemia just happen.”
“I don’t believe that. It can’t be totally random. There are biological reasons, medical things that happen to certain people and not to other people.”
More mumbling, their voices flatter, exhausted, winding down into defeat. Dad opened the door, his rubber-soled shoes squeaked along the deck. “Sylvie, you have to let that go. You can’t help the boys deal with this if you’re angry all the time. It’s not your fault that Daniel is sick.”
“He’s not just sick. I wish he was just sick. He’s dying.” She choked on her own words and I missed his answer. She continued. “If it is random, if there’s no medical explanation, then how can there be a cure?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. You’re taking what I said out of context. I meant you have to stop blaming yourself for something that’s out of your control.”
Her words were whispers. I couldn’t hear them and neither could he because he stopped talking and walked back down the deck to where she must have been standing, still inside their cabin. And then the words that have come back to me over and over since that day: first thing in the morning, on rainy afternoons, in the middle of the night. In a flat tone—no anger, no despair, no frustration—Mom hung the words in the air one by one like the heaviest Christmas tree ornaments, the kind that drag down the other branches.
“But I gave him those genes.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Friday night’s supposed to be a full moon. Pure luck. On the phone Mack assures me he has confirmed the time and place with Juliann and Meredith. My backpack is stuffed with tortilla chips and red licorice. The salsa jar weighs down the bag. Dad’s back from his turnaround Chicago trip and agrees to drop me off at Mack’s on his way to the AA meeting in Warsaw.
I probably should have mentioned this sooner. In my father’s case Alcoholics Anonymous is a misnomer. His drug of choice is—was—marijuana; at least that’s what he’s told us. But apparently there are not enough recovering drug addicts in Essex County to justify a separate Narcotics Anonymous group. He still goes to the meetings once or twice a month, though he’s been drug-free for almost sixteen years, my whole life. One day when I was little and didn’t know it was a problem for him, I asked him why he didn’t drink beer like the other kids’ fathers. Even with the dumbed-down explanation, I could see it was really important to him.
Usually he makes light of things about himself. Not AA. Although he may not talk about it much, he never jokes about it. His promise to stay clean—a pretty hefty promise if you’re talking about not doing something ever again—was made in the delivery room the night I was born.
Not too long after the beer-and-AA conversation when he told me about the delivery room, but still years ago, my parents had an argument where Mom accused him of making the promise to me, not to her. That made me feel lousy at first, but after I got to thinking about it, I felt kind of good, too. When I’m really ticked at him about something, I remind myself about the promise and it helps.
The other truly significant thing about having a father who goes to AA is that drugs have no attraction for me. Zilch. Mack says he’s tried marijuana. Like every other kid in Essex County tries it because it’s such a nothing-ever-happens place otherwise. You can’t say stuff like that around Joe. When anyone uses boredom as an excuse, he gets really steamed. He says that’s a cop-out. Out of the blue he quoted some famous writer who basically said embrace a thing because you choose to embrace it, for positive reasons. Sounds hokey, but I can see Joe’s point. He’s the smartest person I know.
Plus he says girls dig guys who are enthusiastic and have ideas, not dopeheads. He should know: he’s had a hundred girlfriends. More than Mack, who’s only had the one, and then only for a night. But not for lack of trying.
From everything Mack says he doesn’t smoke much. His version, though I’m not sure he’s being straight. He said it makes him giggly, which has to be truly embarrassing for a guy. And he almost got arrested. Coming home from a party where they were smoking, he crashed his bike into a telephone pole, just as Officer Brewer, the fat dude who works for the town, cruised down the street. Part of the nightly drill for the Essex County blues before they roll up the streets. Mack said Brewer sniffed around a lot while he helped bend the bike wheel back so Mack could ride home.
I tend to stay away from parties where the potheads will be. Out of respect for Dad and all. Being arrested would be too much of a mess with parents like mine who are already so antiestablishment. For all I know they’re hiding out in this backwater to avoid being identified from the FBI’s photos of war protesters, Weathermen or worse. Dad has said more than once that everyone’s parents have secrets.
AA is like a religion to him. If he hears TV reporters allege stuff about a celebrity with a drug or alcohol problem, Dad snaps his head around and goes off on the right to privacy and how they ought to leave people alone who are trying to beat that kind of thing, what do they know about it, all that kind of emotional spewing that shows it’s still a soft spot for him. I wonder sometimes if Mom takes his rejection of that part of their early life together as a personal rejection. She gave it up too, but still, I know how I’d feel if Mack started telling everyone he thought Apocalypse Now was a lame movie. It would feel like a personal slur.