Everything's Fine

"Maybe less begging, more regular talking." He drags the covers up over us both. "We didn't give Andrew what he needed cause we didn't know what it was. I like to think if he talked to us we'd have listened."

"It's not the same. He was the kid."

"I know," he whispers, "but you gotta start somewhere."

I squeeze my phone to turn the backlight off. The shapes in the room grow fuzzy as my eyes adjust. The ceiling stars keep glowing.

*

The house is the same as when I left it, which makes things worse somehow. Like I've gone back in time.

It's a ranch style house, brick with decorative siding around the windows and pumpkins on the porch. Londra's car is in the driveway beside the old SUV my dad bought when we were in high school. Another car - new, but with front-end damage - is probably my mom's. While we're walking up the front steps I wonder if she's still on the pills, if that accident involved any body bags, but I know it's ridiculous. She's got so many DUIs she'd be in prison if she even breathed near the scene of a crash that killed somebody.

My father's the one who greets us at the door, looking ambivalent. There are handshakes and how-you-been and I've-got-that and really-it's-no-trouble and if-you-insist and then we're all seated, in the room where we ate a thousand quiet dinners and said a few loud goodbyes. Even the centerpiece is the same, leftover from my parents' wedding, a lifetime ago.

My mom looks okay - less tailored than she had in previous years, but also less tired around the eyes, less bedraggled. Everyone's talking. Londra is mostly sober, and I get the feeling sitting here that she and Mom have been getting together without me. My dad is alive and animated and interested, and he and my mother look like two people who like each other's company. I stare at them all while we eat like they might disappear, like I might be dreaming.

"I'm going to the bathroom," I hear myself say.

Kurt's squeezes my hand under the table and doesn't let go right away, a worried frown on his face. Conversation pauses for a moment and everyone looks at me like they're expecting me to make a speech.

"I'll be right back, everyone." A laugh escapes me. "It's just down the hall."

There's reluctance in the loosening of his grip, but eventually I can slide my hand out and turn my back on them. I pass one bathroom and go into the one at the back of the house, the one attached to a bedroom that used to be mine. I lock the bathroom door on the hallway side before going through.

It's not like I haven't been back to the house or anything. I've visited quite a few times some years - Christmas, his birthday, mine. Came to help build a storage shed one summer. To clear the driveway the year my he threw his back out. To buff the wood floors. To paint. And we talked. Or...we said words to each other, at least. So I've been back. But I've never come home.

"Messy, I know," he says from the doorway. "Haven't moved much, though."

He's wearing a plaid shirt, long-sleeved, tucked in at the waist, khaki pants. Still has his hair, mostly gray now, but full, cut in the same style he's had since I can remember. Looking at him, I can see myself - in the corner of his eyes, his hands. His ears. Before, I would avoid looking to closely at him, like I could avoid ending up like him if I didn't see the resemblance. But no. Here I am, like him, in big and small ways.

"Yeah." There's an old textbook on top of the book case and I reach up and grab it so I'll have something in my hands. It's American history. Middle school. "Should have cleaned up a little before I left, huh?"

He closes the door behind him; there's a familiar click and then he's right next to me. "You used to do this a lot, you know. When you were small."

"What?"

"Leave in the middle of dinner, or a TV show." He chuckles. "Always said you had to go to the bathroom, always found you in here, usually asleep."

"I was never really in the bathroom?"

"Not once," he says. "Not once."

I have to laugh. I forgot about that, and I can't exactly remember it now, but I can feel the truth in his words. It's always shocking to me, to realize that someone's been paying attention, that other people see me even when I'm not trying to show them anything.

"Guess we better get back then." I turn toward the door, book still in my hands. "Don't want to fall asleep in here."

"You trust him?"

I freeze.

"I'm not going to do this," I say slowly.

"I asked you a question - "

"Yes." My voice is cold. "Yes."

He sighs. "Don't know how."

"I know you don't, you - "

"He just up and left right in the middle of it."

"He - " I take a deep breath. "I don't have to do this with you, I don't need - "

"You never want to look at a thing like it is, do you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You act like everybody's crazy for saying it, for pointing out that that man abandoned you after he made that mess - "

"It wasn't him - "

"Your mother used to pull that crap too, remember." His tone is dark and flat. He's not looking at me. "Had all kinds of bullshit excuses. It was a nightmare, trying to figure out what to tell you kids about her little disappearing acts. I don't even think she was on drugs back then, she - "

"Well you're back with her." I try to keep my voice even. "Even after all that. You're back together. So why can't I be back with Kurt?"

"I just want you to know what you're in for. It's not easy, going back after all that. It's work. Now from what Kurt tells me, he's done some of that work on his own, but you - "

"From what Kurt tells you?" My voice is raised. "When did Kurt ever tell you goddamn thing?"

"I saw him at the practice, he came in for his back."

"You - "

"Goddamn right I did." He snorts. "I told him to leave you the fuck alone, that you'd already been through enough, that you couldn't take anymore fucking heartbreak."

"You had no right." My eyes are full of tears. "You had no right - "

"I don't care." He puts his hand in the crook of my elbow, squeezing. "I don't give a damn."

"It's fine..." I inhale and hold it for a long time, holding the book too tight. "I'm fine."

"Nothing's fine, none of us are fine," he says. "Not me, not your Mom, not Londra, not Kurt, and definitely not you. But they can be fine. If we all work at it."

I wipe my cheeks and nod vigorously, shaking it off. "Yeah," I hear myself say. "Yeah, okay."

He opens the door to the room, heading out, but then he turns to look at me, a dozen expressions on his face. He's apologizing. I can't imagine the words in his head but I can feel it across the room, wafting at me like incense smoke. I breathe in as much as I can before it's gone.

He leaves the door cracked a little, so I can hear the bouncing conversation they're having at the table about boats and fishing in the ocean. There's a brief quiet, and then Kurt says is everything okay and my dad says not on your life and I hear Kurt stand, hear his chair scrape the floor and then my dad says I wouldn't, let him be, he just needs a minute. Let him be.