Inward Rotation: A backward take-off with forward rotation where the diver begins with their back to the water and rotates toward the board after take-off.
I DRIVE to the cemetery rehearsing the things I should say when I reach my parents’ graves. Sorry. I miss you. Wish you were here. All of that sounds dumb, like something written on the back of a postcard, which is one reason I never come here. Not that every one of those sentiments isn’t true. It’s just talking to a grave feels weird. Knowing one of those graves is empty, even weirder. Because I know what’s really permanent and not very Hallmark greeting card at all. Death. So how about I start with Hey, sorry I burned the house down and Mom died inside. If it’s any consolation, I think I had one of those fucked-up dreams again. The Adderall isn’t really helping. I can’t nail Mom’s favorite dive. And, oh yeah, do you know if you left any traces behind, because I’m starting to remember stuff again and could use some extra help? I mercifully leave Uncle Phil out of my diatribe because my dad would probably roll over in his grave at the mere mention of his name.
The closer I get to their plots the more I change my mind about stopping. At the last minute I blurt “Sorry” out loud and keep going. It’s an a-hole move, I know. But I’m not ready to stand there between two headstones and bare my guilt.
Instead, I do something I haven’t had the balls to do, return to the last place we were all together. The site of our old house on Eight Moon Hill. Talking to Coach Porter made me want to come back and see if there are any tangible traces that might help me regain another memory.
My grandfather is holding the property in trust for me until I’m twenty-five. Then it’s mine, complete with the ghosts and guilt of most family homes only turned up by a thousand degrees.
GP hasn’t done anything with the place past having it razed. The lot is overgrown with knee-high, dying weeds and patches of bare, muddy dirt. I get out of Bumblebee and stand on the sidewalk, picturing our yellow house as it once was, with its stone chimney and asymmetrical second-story windows that made it easy to sneak in and out with friends.
I step into a patch of gray, ashy earth where our house once stood and kick around at the dirt, looking for something. Anything. The ground is littered with scraps of other people’s lives. Receipts that got blown here on the wind, an empty fountain drink cup, several discarded beer bottles like this lot has become a hangout to throw back a few with friends. I close my eyes and take a deep breath to regroup, then walk farther into the invisible rooms by memory, starting at the stairs where I’d stand silent as a statue and listen to my parents fight. I make my way to the spot that used to be the downstairs bathroom, then turn and head for the kitchen where I step on a purple juice box. It compresses under my foot like an accordion, hissing out a puff of air that steals my breath.
* * *
“Where are my parents?” I tried to dash around Uncle Phil, but he held me back by the arm. “Where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know. They’ll find them.”
“Mom!” I yelled for her but my voice cracked and I coughed up a lung. I tried to jerk out of his grasp. “Let me go! I’ll find her myself. This is all my fault.”
“Do it,” Uncle Phil hissed.
But he never let me go. He wasn’t giving permission to me.
* * *
THE MEMORY stops and I turn my head to look for someone I know, instinctively, was standing behind me on the street the night our house burned down. But it’s not the street view I’m facing. It’s the back of the house, all the way to the tree line of the infamously haunted Blood Woods. For a split second my heart almost explodes because I swear I see my mom looking back at me, as washed out as a watercolor painting and then she’s gone.
“Do what?” I ask out loud.
But the only response I get is the wailing of a police siren, answering a different call, miles and miles away.
Maybe the reason I never stop and talk to my parents’ graves is because I’ve been hiding the truth about how the fire started. Not from Uncle Phil, but from them, and my grandfather who knows everything there is to know about fire. Because it’s one thing to light a match, and another to survive when someone you love died.
I jump back into my truck and rest my head on the steering wheel until my breathing slows. I don’t understand why all the memories from that night are coming back now, choppy and out of order. The argument between my parents after the quarry happened when I was ten, the fire when I was thirteen. I know Uncle Phil said I’d lose pieces of my memory from around that time, but those were three years apart. That’s a huge gap.
I take the back roads to my grandfather’s house, the same house my dad, and for a while Uncle Phil, grew up in together. The shake-shingle saltbox sits at the end of Willow Lane, one of the oldest and longest streets in Ellis Hollow. All the blinds are drawn when I step inside, which is never a good sign. I’m still feeling a little what-the-fuck-ish when I walk in to find GP sitting in his favorite chair with a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the side table.
“The prodigal grandson returns,” he says in his usual gruff way.
“Have you been drinking all day?” I scan the room for evidence of solid food, but don’t see a single dirty dish.
“Why? Were you hoping you’d come home today and find all the B.S. in your life was one long dream?” He slurs the ends of a few words, answering my question by default.
“Not a dream,” I mutter, “but I’m getting tired of this nightmare.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
He coughs a bunch, and I hope he isn’t coming down with something on top of all the drinking.
I pick up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and GP clamps his hand over mine. Up close his dark brown eyes are red-rimmed, like he might have been crying, and it makes me feel like a world-class asshole.
“What do ya think you’re doin’?” he says.
“Cleaning up.” I resist accusing him of anything this time.
“Did you make it over to the cemetery today?”
“Did you?”
“Curtis took me this morning,” he grumbles. “You plant those damn flowers up there? Waste of money if you ask me, flowers. You pick ’em and they die. Every beautiful, full of life thing in this world dies if it’s picked by the wrong hands, kid. Remember that.”
Depressing thought, but I didn’t leave the flowers. I don’t even know what flowers he means since I never made it to their headstones.
“It wasn’t me,” I tell him.
“Guess that sonofabitch can’t leave well enough alone,” he mutters into his whiskey tumbler.
“Who?” I ask. “Curtis?”
It’s a legit assumption on my part and his. I’ve heard him call the guy who’s been his friend for as long as I can remember an SOB right to his face.
“No, not Curtis. Jesus H. Christ, kid. Ain’t you paying attention?”
“Oh. You mean Uncle Phil.” I should have figured that out when he said flowers. The guy does have a penchant for them, and he did have a shovel this morning, so two plus two.
GP’s mouth wrings in disgust. “For the last time, he ain’t your goddamn uncle. Didn’t I make my feelings clear?”
I raise my hands in surrender before he goes off on a tangent. “Crystal.” I’m gonna make myself a sandwich. You want one?”
He coughs, grunting something I think counts as a yes, so two ham and cheese coming up. A snack for me, dinner for him. If he bothers to eat it this time.
I take the whisky bottle with me. I’m thinking about downing what’s left when a knock at the front door interrupts me.
“Go away!” GP yells. “We don’t want any.”
I look through the peephole before opening the door for Curtis Jacobs. He’s standing on the stoop dressed in firehouse blues, holding a brown paper bag in one hand and two extra-large coffees in the other.
“Heya, kid! I brought over some food from the station. You hungry?”
“Starving. But I’m heading over to the Langfords’ for pizza night.”
“Sure. I get it. Maybe next time.”
Thankfully, there’s always a next time with Curtis. I couldn’t do this on my own.
“Thanks for taking him to the cemetery today,” I say.
“Least I could do. He was in no condition to drive. Did you get a chance to go over there yourself, ’cause I’m happy to go with you, too, if you want.”
“I just got back.” I bite the inside of my cheek even though it’s only a half-lie.
“What is it?” Curtis asks. “And don’t lie, halfway or whole. I investigate liars for a living.”
“I thought you fight fires?”
“Other guys fight them. I look into who started them. And those guys are always liars.”
True enough.
I lower my voice. “I know today would be bad timing, but I need to ask GP some questions for a family history project at school and I’m not sure how to bring it up.”
Curtis chuckles. “Carefully, kid. Your grandfather decided to put the past behind closed doors a long time ago.”
“My only other option is to go to Uncle Phil and we both know how GP feels about me talking to him.”
“He’s not your uncle,” Curtis says evenly. “So I’d tread carefully there, too, if I were you.”
Curtis always has my grandfather’s back, but my fucked-up dream has me wondering if he means behind doors literally or figuratively.
When I moved in with my grandfather, one of the first things I discovered was the door to my dad’s childhood bedroom was locked. And stayed that way. The first time I saw GP slip behind the door he mumbled he was going into his office. Didn’t matter that my grandfather’s been retired for three years. When I asked about it he told me there were things I needed to know and things I didn’t, and that a man sometimes needs a private place to think. None of that stopped Chip and me from picking the lock a couple of weeks later. We didn’t think there was much more to see than stacks of papers and a row of empty Jack Daniel’s bottles on his heavy desk. Until we opened the top drawer and saw his gun. That’s when I knew for sure his drinking and his grief were worse than I thought. Maybe worse than my own guilt if the gun meant he was contemplating the value of his own life. I left him to his man cave after that, too scared to mention it or go inside again.
“Who you talking to in there?” GP yells.
“Your one and only friend, you old cranky bastard,” Curtis yells back. “I brought you dinner, but if you don’t quit barking at everybody like a junkyard dog I’m gonna chain you up and make you watch me eat every bite myself.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Curtis pats my shoulder. “Go on, kid. Get out of here. Your grandfather and me have some talking to do that may put a stop to his drinking for a while. Probably better if you’re not around for that.”
Curtis to the rescue.
“Thanks, Curtis. I owe you one. Let him know I’ll be back by ten.”
GP stumbles into the small kitchen and leans against the oak-cased doorway as I’m grabbing my keys. He used to have a huge presence, even when sloshed, but last year has wrecked him. He’s been balding and losing weight like crazy. Probably because he never eats.
“Where the hell you running off to?”
“The Langfords’.”
“The Langfords’.” GP swipes a hand over his mouth. “You better hope the Langfords are willing to take you in if things go south. Even if they ain’t your family, you treat ’em good. Better than good. You hear me? Don’t ever bite a hand that feeds you.”
“Unless it’s mine,” Curtis says. “Isn’t that right, Bruce?”
GP waves his hand dismissively.
“And here I was thinking he’d name me as your guardian or something of the like,” Curtis says.
“You want him? Take him. You’ve always been a glutton for punishment.”
I sigh and shove my hands inside my jacket pockets with my keys. “I can stay.”
“Nah. He doesn’t mean it, kid.” Curtis pushes GP back toward the living room. “That’s just the booze talking.”
“What the hell you whispering for? My drinkin’ ain’t some big secret in this house.”
“You heard that?” Curtis asks. “I thought you lost your hearing when you gave up on common sense.”
“Lucky for you all my senses ain’t fried, yet.”
“Good. You’re gonna need ’em.”
Curtis jerks his head at the door and I take my cue to leave, fully aware of what the big secret is in our house.