Educated

her—would fly about, adjusting chakras and tapping pressure points,
anything to coax his brittle lungs to resume their rattle.
That morning was when Audrey called me.^6 His heart had stopped twice
during the night, she told me. It would probably be his heart that killed him,
assuming his lungs didn’t give out first. Either way, Audrey was sure he’d be
dead by midday.
I called Nick. I told him I had to go to Idaho for a few days, for a family
thing, nothing serious. He knew I wasn’t telling him something—I could hear
the hurt in his voice that I wouldn’t confide in him—but I put him out of my
mind the moment I hung up the phone.
I stood, keys in hand, hand on the doorknob, and hesitated. The strep.
What if I gave it to Dad? I had been taking the penicillin for nearly three
days. The doctor had said that after twenty-four hours I would no longer be
contagious, but then he was a doctor, and I didn’t trust him.
I waited a day. I took several times the prescribed dose of penicillin, then
called Mother and asked what I should do.
“You should come home,” she said, and her voice broke. “I don’t think the
strep will matter tomorrow.”
I don’t recall the scenery from the drive. My eyes barely registered the
patchwork of corn and potato fields, or the dark hills covered in pine. Instead
I saw my father, the way he’d looked the last time I’d seen him, that twisted
expression. I remembered the searing pitch of my voice as I’d screamed at
him.
Like Kylie, I don’t remember what I saw when I first looked at my father. I
know that when Mother had removed the gauze that morning, she’d found
that his ears were so burned, the skin so glutinous, they had fused to the
syrupy tissue behind them. When I walked through the back door, the first
thing I saw was Mother grasping a butter knife, which she was using to pry
my father’s ears from his skull. I can still picture her gripping the knife, her
eyes fixed, focused, but where my father should be, there’s an aperture in my
memory.
The smell in the room was powerful—of charred flesh, and of comfrey,
mullein and plantain. I watched Mother and Audrey change his remaining
bandages. They began with his hands. His fingers were slimy, coated in a
pale ooze that was either melted skin or pus. His arms were not burned and
neither were his shoulders or back, but a thick swath of gauze ran over his
stomach and chest. When they removed it, I was pleased to see large patches