I visited Buck’s Peak the weekend after I submitted my paper. I had
been home for less than an hour when Dad and I got into an argument.
He said I owed him for the car. He really only mentioned it but I
became crazed, hysterical. For the first time in my life I shouted at my
father—not about the car, but about the Weavers. I was so suffocated
by rage, my words didn’t come out as words but as choking, sputtering
sobs. Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did
you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the
monsters in your own house?
Dad gaped at me, astonished. His mouth sagged and his hands hung
limply at his sides, twitching, as if he wanted to raise them, to do
something. I hadn’t seen him look so helpless since he’d crouched next
to our wrecked station wagon, watching Mother’s face bulge and
distend, unable even to touch her because electrified cables were
sending a deadly pulse through the metal.
Out of shame or anger, I fled. I drove without stopping back to BYU.
My father called a few hours later. I didn’t answer. Screaming at him
hadn’t helped; maybe ignoring him would.
When the semester ended, I stayed in Utah. It was the first summer
that I didn’t return to Buck’s Peak. I did not speak to my father, not
even on the phone. This estrangement was not formalized: I just didn’t
feel like seeing him, or hearing his voice, so I didn’t.
—I DECIDED TO EXPERIMENT with normality. For nineteen years I’d lived the
way my father wanted. Now I would try something else.
I moved to a new apartment on the other side of town where no one
knew me. I wanted a new start. At church my first week, my new
bishop greeted me with a warm handshake, then moved on to the next
newcomer. I reveled in his disinterest. If I could just pretend to be
normal for a little while, maybe it would feel like the truth.
It was at church that I met Nick. Nick had square glasses and dark
hair, which he gelled and teased into neat spikes. Dad would have
scoffed at a man wearing hair gel, which is perhaps why I loved it. I
also loved that Nick wouldn’t have known an alternator from a
crankshaft. What he did know were books and video games and
clothing brands. And words. He had an astonishing vocabulary.