“I’m really sorry,” Mother said. I could tell by her voice that she really was. I told her again that it was OK, and she seemed relieved. She took off her seat belt, and I took off mine. “Come on, birthday boy,” she said.
We got out of the car and walked into the Crystal. You might find this hard to believe, but I wasn’t thinking of it as the place I’d been in the day before. I wasn’t thinking of it as the place where Mr. D. had asked me if my parents knew I was skipping school. It wasn’t the place where Mr. D. had told me that he’d tell Mother if he saw me in there again. It was my birthday. It was the place I always went on my birthday. That’s how I was thinking of it.
We sat at a table opposite the bar, near the door. Mother sat with her back to the kitchen. I sat facing it. A waitress brought us menus. Mother thanked her for the menus. The waitress asked if we would like something to drink. Mother said she’d have a Saranac, which is a beer. I said I’d have strawberry milk. That’s what I drank on my birthday and only on my birthday. My dad, if he’d been there, would have had red wine. It’s the only time he ever drank that, too. The waitress left to get our drinks. Mother seemed happy. I was, too. Everyone is always happy when they’re doing the thing they do only once a year. Mother picked up her menu and started reading it. I didn’t. She noticed and said, “I think I know what you’re having.”
“A BLT,” I said. Because that’s what I always ate on my birthday. On my fifth birthday, Mr. D. had even stuck a lit candle in it. My dad or Mother must have told him it was my birthday. Mr. D. didn’t sing or anything. I was glad about that. He just brought me the sandwich and put it in front of me and I blew out the candle. He didn’t ask if I’d made a wish. I was glad about that, too. Because no one ever remembers to make a wish, and when someone asks if you made a wish, you have to lie and say yes, or tell the truth and say no. Either way, you feel stupid. Anyway, Mr. D. had done the same thing on the four birthdays between that one and this one. I could picture him, standing over my table with a pleased look on his face, just as he’d stood over me the day before and asked “Miller, your parents know you aren’t in school right now?” with a displeased look on his face.
That’s when I remembered. When I did, I actually stood up. The waitress came back with our drinks right when I did. She saw the look on my face and must have thought she recognized it, because she said, “The bathroom is downstairs.” I knew where the bathroom was; I had been there many times before. And so I knew it was just a closet with a toilet and a sink in it. There was no window I could climb out of. That’s the way I was thinking, already. I sat back down again. The waitress gave me a funny look; she put down our drinks and then said she’d give us a few more minutes without us even having to ask for them.
The beer came in a glass and not a bottle or a can. Mother drank from it but kept looking at me over the top of the glass. That’s probably why some of it ended up on her chin. She wiped it off with the little square napkin that came with the drink, and asked, “Are you OK?”
I didn’t say anything. I was scared. Too scared to talk. Too scared to even drink my strawberry milk. I was scared to look at the kitchen, but I was more scared not to. Faces flashed by the window in the doors leading to the kitchen. Then the doors opened. Another waitress — not ours — walked out. But before the doors shut, I saw Mr. D. standing behind a metal counter, looking at a piece of paper. Then the doors closed again before he looked up and out into the restaurant. My legs started bouncing and swaying, hitting the table legs on either side of me. Because I knew Mr. D. would come out of the kitchen eventually. He always liked to ask people how their meals were. If he knew them personally, he’d ask something more personal. He knew me, obviously. But more importantly, he knew Mother. He didn’t know her as well as he knew my dad. But he knew her well enough to tell her about what happened yesterday. About me being at the Crystal instead of at school. About me asking questions about Exley. My legs hit the table legs again, and some of the milk spilled out of my glass. “What is wrong with you?” Mother said. Her face looked worried, but her voice sounded mad.
“I miss my dad,” I said. It was the first thing I thought of, and it was the right thing to say.
“Miller, come on,” Mother said. Her voice softened a little bit. She put her hand over mine on the table. “Don’t think about that. It’s your birthday dinner.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. I started to cry a little, for real. I wasn’t pretending. “He should be here.” And then when I said that, I thought, But he can’t be, because he’s in the hospital. And so we should be with him. But we can’t because you won’t even admit he’s in the hospital, just like you won’t admit he went to Iraq. And I don’t understand why not, just like I don’t understand why my dad went to Iraq in the first place. I really don’t. The only thing I understand is that Exley is the only person who can help my dad, which was why I was in the Crystal yesterday, looking for him, and which is why today I shot Petey, twice, and killed him. And when I remembered that, I started crying a little harder.
“You’re really worked up about this, aren’t you?” she said. I looked toward the kitchen and saw Mr. D.’s face filling up one of the windows in the doors. I could imagine his hands on the doors, too, imagine them pushing the doors open, imagine him walking out of the kitchen, toward us. I really was worked up. Mother was right.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I said. Before she could say anything else, I jumped up from the table and ran out the front door. And then I just kept running and running. It was snowing even harder and the snow was sticking to the sidewalk, and so I had to watch where I was running so I didn’t slip. After a while, my nose started running. I stopped to wipe it with my sleeve. Then I looked up. I was in front of the VA hospital. It was completely dark. I mean, there wasn’t a light on in the place: not in the lobby, not even in any of the rooms. It was the darkest, spookiest thing I had ever seen. Much spookier than the New Parrot. It was like the building itself was asleep or dead. It was the kind of building you wouldn’t want to go in, no matter how much you loved the person inside it. I put my head down and started running again. I didn’t stop until I got to my house. I don’t think I’ve described my house yet. It’s red, and the roof has too many peaks: it looks like a house in the Alps that Heidi might live in. Especially when it’s snowing and there’s snow on the roof. I knew that when the snow got too heavy, it would slide down the roof with a roar and then make a sudden, soft thump when it hit the ground. I loved that sound. I wished it would happen now. Once, I was in the living room with my parents, and I said, to no one in particular, “I wish the snow would slide off the roof right now.”
“Why?” my dad wanted to know.
“Because I love the way it sounds.”
“If you knew it was going to happen,” my dad said, “it wouldn’t sound as good.”
I thought Mother was going to say something like, That’s a pretty lame excuse for not getting up on the roof and shoveling the snow off yourself. But she didn’t. “Your dad’s right,” she told me. “It wouldn’t sound the same.”
I remembered all that as I stood there, trying to catch my breath after running home from the Crystal. My bike was still in the driveway, and it was covered with snow. The lights were on in the house. I mean, all of them were on, and for a second I thought I saw someone in the living room, looking out at me. I got my hopes way up, thinking that somehow, some way, my dad was home from the hospital. But then I looked closer and thought harder and knew that all that wasn’t true. I’d probably just forgotten to turn the lights off earlier. And I probably hadn’t seen anyone at all, even though, for a second, I was certain — certain and, indeed, most certain — that someone had been in the living room. I wanted someone to be in the living room; I wanted it to be my dad. I wanted that so badly. I closed my eyes and imagined my dad inside the house, waiting for me. Even with my eyes closed, the house was so bright it looked alive.