sung with my friends in the chamber choir. I must have fallen asleep, I
thought. Too much wine. Too much Christmas turkey.
Having decided I was dreaming, I did what one does in dreams: I tried to
understand and use the rules of this queer reality. I reasoned with the strange
shadows impersonating my family, and when reasoning failed, I lied. The
impostors had bent reality. Now it was my turn. I told Shawn I hadn’t said
anything to Dad. I said things like “I don’t know how Dad got that idea” and
“Dad must have misheard me,” hoping that if I rejected their percipience,
they would simply dissipate. An hour later, when the four of us were still
seated on the sofas, I finally came to terms with their physical persistence.
They were here, and so was I.
The blood on my hands had dried. The knife lay on the carpet, forgotten by
everyone except me. I tried not to stare at it. Whose was the blood? I studied
my brother. He had not cut himself.
Dad had begun a new lecture, and this time I was present enough to hear it.
He explained that little girls need to be instructed in how to behave
appropriately around men, so as not to be too inviting. He’d noticed indecent
habits in my sister’s daughters, the oldest of whom was six. Shawn was calm.
He had been worn down by the sheer duration of Dad’s droning. More than
that, he felt protected, justified, so that when the lecture finally ended he said
to me, “I don’t know what you said to Dad tonight, but I can tell just by
looking at you that I’ve hurt you. And I’m sorry.”
We hugged. We laughed like we always did after a fight. I smiled at him
like I’d always done, like she would have. But she wasn’t there, and the smile
was a fake.
I went to my room and shut the door, quietly sliding the bolt, and called
Drew. I was nearly incoherent with panic but eventually he understood. He
said I should leave, right now, and he’d meet me halfway. I can’t, I said. At
this moment things are calm. If I try to run off in the middle of the night, I
don’t know what will happen.
I went to bed but not to sleep. I waited until six in the morning, then I
found Mother in the kitchen. I’d borrowed the car I was driving from Drew,
so I told Mother something had come up unexpectedly, that Drew needed his
car in Salt Lake. I said I’d be back in a day or two.
A few minutes later I was driving down the hill. The highway was in sight
when I saw something and stopped. It was the trailer where Shawn lived with