Page 32 of Into the Deep Blue

The road is a desaturated blur from my tears or the rain.

Gray.

Gloomy.

This is my forever view, isn’t it? I want to lock myself in my room and never come out.

A million cats are in this car, and their ringleader is hanging around my neck—the necklace.

It feels like an anchor tying me to an impossible dream.

I yank it so hard it snaps free, and I throw it across the car.

Then I cry harder.

I already want to scoop it up and put it on again.

In my mind, I apologize a hundred times, but I don’t know what comes after I’m sorry.

May’s words echo again: Why is it so hard for you to be happy?

When I get home, I sit in the car with the wipers on.

The windows grow foggy and the intermittent thud of the blades lulls me into a state of numbness.

I stare into the void as if waiting for an answer to appear, but when none does, my anger builds, and I rail against the steering wheel, but it’s not enough.

I turn off the car and storm through the downpour into my haunted house.

It’s never felt so empty.

Dad’s at work.

Nick and I are done.

I have no job and no friends.

I’m achingly alone.

Mom’s wall of portraits taunt me.

They have no right to be here when she isn’t.

Why couldn’t she find enough material to photograph in America? If it’s tragedy she was looking for, isn’t there enough of it closer to home? I’ve created an award-winning photographic moment right here, and she’s not even here to capture it.

Dad always said it would be Nick, but he was so wrong.

I do what I was destined to do.

I explode in my empty house.

I go to the portraits. First, the old man with his wrinkled face surrounded by birds in Central Park. I wrestle it from the wall and drop it on the floor. The sound of shattering glass fuels me. Then, I pull down the jazz singer from New Orleans, whose eyes sparkle like the silver beads on her dress. The picture crashes against the floor. I freeze at the last one because it’s five-year-old me. My hair is long and braided, my eyes full and bright. I remember the day she took it at Portland State. It was a shoot for someone else, and I kept running into the frame saying.

“Mommy, take a picture,”

so she did.

I’m a ghost, like the others.

I yank it free and let it smash against the floor.

And this feels too good.

I grab some empty boxes from the garage and throw all her books and pictures inside.

Then I go through the drawers and closets until I’ve emptied Mom from this house.

I dump the boxes in the garage, and feel so guilty for trying to erase the biggest part of me, that I fall to my knees in a heaping mess of tears.

The cold concrete seeps into my bones and an emptiness takes over.

I shift to my feet and spot a box behind the one I just dropped, so I drag it forward and root through the contents—a flutter board, beach shoes, a ball and glove, and a plastic snorkel mask.

Cheap little things we would take to the beach, everything encrusted in sand.

Something hard and plastic grazes my finger on the bottom.

I wrestle it free.

It’s a disposable waterproof camera. A snotty half sob, half laugh escapes me. These cameras. I can’t get rid of them. I dust the sand away. All the photos have been taken. I can’t remember what might be on them, but they’re of us.

So this one, I’ll keep.

I take it back into the house. The hardwood floor is covered in broken glass, and because I’m responsible, I vacuum it up. My well of sadness slowly refills until I sit next to the vacuum and cry.

I sit that way all night.

***

Morning comes, the door opens, and Dad walks in. He drops his keys and bag on the table by the door, and it takes a minute for my redecorating job to set in. His eyes move from the bare walls, to the vacuum, to me.

“You’ve been busy,” he says.

“Yeah.”

He sits on the floor next to me. We lean against the sofa.

“You okay?”

he asks, and I don’t know if he’s ready for the answer. He’s exhausted, and I’m sure the last thing he wants is to have this conversation.

“No, not really.”

A fresh crop of tears well in my eyes.

“I quit the gym. I lost all my private lessons. The parents hate me.”

Dad shakes his head.

“The parents are idiots.”

“You sure about that?”

“, you are the most amazing human I know.”

“But I quit.”

A sob breaks free.

“And I don’t even know if I still want to go to New York for school.”

“Those are problems that can be solved.”

My head falls on his shoulder as I wipe the tears away. Dad and his sayings. I could stop there. I’ve given him enough, but this time, I press on.

“Why do you work nights all the time?”

For a while, we’re quiet. I’m not sure if he’ll ever open up to me, so I do.

“I think I know the answer to that. It’s because you don’t want to sleep in your bed without her, and I get it. I do. But that leaves me here with her stuff, and it’s everywhere. So I lock myself in my room, and tell myself it’s not a part of this house, that it’s somewhere else so I can sleep.”

My voice shakes, and I squeeze my hand, trying to keep the tears at bay.

“Or I stay at Nick’s because I don’t want to be alone when you’re working all night and sleeping all day, and you don’t want to talk about it.”

Dad meets my eyes.

“And I don’t want to talk about it either. I feel like I should be dealing with all this myself, but it’s not working out so well. I’ve been trying so hard to be okay, and I’m not.”

A weight unburdens itself from my chest now that I’ve said the words.

Dad puts an arm around me, pulling me close.

“You’re not alone. You’re never alone. I miss her, too. Something awful. Every time I close my eyes she’s there and then—”

He wipes at the tears forming in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

“What if I’m broken?”

“Look at me.”

He turns my face up to his.

“You’re not broken. I guess I thought if I acted like I was okay, you would be, too. You always seemed like you were on autopilot. Your grades never slipped.”

He lets out a sigh.

“I had no idea, Fi, but that’s a bad excuse because I should have. So maybe we’re both a little broken. But you know what we do when something’s broken? We fix it.”