Read Online You Can Say You Knew Me When by K. M. Soehnlein - Free Book Online Page B

was more ferocious than usual, the situation more desperate. I was leaving the next day, and who could say when I’d be back? She wanted to know why I wasn’t staying longer, why I hadn’t done what she’d asked me to do, why I was dredging up ancient history when there was so much going on right now. She complained that I’d taken no interest in AJ; I replied that she’d taken no interest in anything in my life. Deirdre: “You have no concept of what it takes to raise a child.” Me: “You have no concept of anything else.” Dee: “You’re the most judgmental person I know.” Me: “You’re turning old before your time.”
    We amped each other up and wore each other down until we were both crying. That is, she was crying, wiping fat tears as they spilled, and I was struggling with dry mouth, a tightened-up throat, eyes burning at the tear ducts—as close as I get to crying in front of anyone else.
    Over and over she said, “I can’t think. I can’t think. I can’t think.”
    I stared into the fireplace, which hadn’t been used in years, though it was always roaring when we were kids. It was our mother’s domain; she was the only one who could really get it going, and after she died, it sat cold. Its square black mouth seemed, in this moment, to be the very medium through which she’d been sucked away from us; and him, too. The long corridor to the underworld.
    I moved nearer to Deirdre, and I said I was sorry. I’m not exactly sure what I was sorry for. Not for my accusations, which I felt, at their core, were true. More for upsetting her—for just being me, I guess, insensitive, defensive, emotionally retarded me.
    Deirdre slumped toward me, and I let my arm fall tentatively around her. Having just fought, this physical nearness was unnerving. I smoothed her hair, which at the roots was a nondescript, mousy brown, so plain compared to the fiery red of mine. Slowly she emerged from her tears. Soon enough we were telling old stories, and laughing a little, remembering funny things about Dad and his bearing in the world, like the way he used to insist he was six feet tall, though he fell short even in shoes, or the way he shined those shoes every Sunday night, lecturing me on the importance of starting the week with your best foot forward. She told me how the dementia, before it got terrible, actually made him docile, even sweet, in his dependence. We talked about how much he loved our mother, how she had protected him from the world, how he had never gotten over her.
    “Since he’s died,” Deidre said, “I’ve missed her all over again.”
    “I can’t let myself,” I said. “I sometimes forget I ever had a mother.”
    She looked at me with puzzlement, then blew her nose one last time and threw a damp, crumpled tissue onto the coffee table, where it bounced against the crumpled tissues already there. I walked her to the front door, and we said good-bye awkwardly, like strangers on a descending airplane who’d spoken too intimately and would never meet again.
    “I do wish you could stay longer,” she said.
    “I’ll make a point of coming back soon, to help out with Nana and the house.” I doubted either of us believed this.
    Standing alone in the hallway, listening to her minivan move down the street, I felt myself very far away from all of them—physically far away, even from Nana, asleep upstairs. I phoned Woody, but got only voice mail; I phoned Brady, Ian, Colleen—my closest San Francisco pals. I left messages for them all: “Get the margaritas ready. I’m coming home.”
    Back in the sewing room, I lit a cigarette and blew smoke out the window while I packed my bags. It didn’t take long; I hadn’t brought much with me, and the only thing I was adding to my load was the knife set. And, of course, that shoebox.
    I shuffled through the box one more time, mesmerized by the photos. Rusty and Danny, in front of that Chevy: my father, pale skinned and broad chested, pulled in close by