by Ed Fasterly
After my dad died, my family seemed to have died as well. I felt this most on Sundays—our family days. Sundays meant hanging out with our parents. We usually went to church, had breakfast out, and then Dad unveiled the plan for the day—rollerblading, biking, a trip to a museum, or a movie. He always cooked an unusual dinner that tasted great.
I had six other days with my friends, so I didn’t think spending a few hours catching up with my mom and dad—and Abbey—too much of a sacrifice. She was two years older. We got along, even though she always called me Scrub. On family days, one of us gravitated towards each parent and not so much to each other.
When Dad died, something changed in Abbey. When she moved to New York for film school, it seemed she had been that far away for a long time; she just hadn’t moved there yet.
We called each other, but we never talked about our dad until my senior year. Abbey was home for her winter break and told me, “We have to hang out somewhere because hanging out in Mom’s house will drive me nuts.”
We planned a day at the Walker Museum of Modern Art. We walked the galleries, occasionally saying, “I like this one.” At some I just shrugged. Abbey still felt miles away, like another visitor to the museum.
Then we saw a long neon light mounted on the wall with a shorter black light atop it. The piece was called, “Untitled.” I started laughing. Pretty soon Abbey was laughing, too. Between laughs I saw that Abbey had stopped laughing and begun to cry. I instinctively hugged her. I’d broken down like this before but never to her—one second laughing; the next second laughter awakening a deep, sleeping pain.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, “I miss him so much,”
“Me, too,” I said, “Let’s go get some coffee.” We went to a nearby café.
“I can’t believe you drink that stuff,” I said, handing her a miniature mug of black liquid. “That’s concentrated ulcer right there.”
“It’s espresso,” she retorted.
“I beg your pardon, darling.”
Abbey laughed. “What are you talking about, Scrub? You’re drinking, what—a Soy Chai Latte?”
I nodded. “You haven’t called me Scrub since before dad died.”
Abbey sipped her espresso. “I was never around.”
“Yeah,” I said, “you took the car and disappeared.”
“I didn’t disappear,” she said, talking slowly. “I was out … with friends … it was too hard to be in the house. It was like Dad held us all together, like when he died so did our family—that glue that held it all together just came apart.”
“I know,” I said. I had felt the same way for years.
“The house started to seem like a shell for our family. I just couldn’t stand having to deal with it all the time.”
“Like three strangers living together with only death in common?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “how could you stand it?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, “I guess I figured that I should stick around in case anyone wanted to start making it into a home again, you know?”
She sipped her espresso. “Do you remember the day we got pulled out of school?”
I was in eighth grade at the time and still at the junior high. Abbey went to the high school down the road, so I got home before she did.
“Yeah,” I said, “Mr. Kent sent me down to the office for a message and one of Mom’s friends drove me home.”
Abbey got a glassy look in her eyes, and looked down into her cup, as if the strength to remember were hidden somewhere at the bottom. “I was at an all-school Mass in the gym—1,600 people all sitting on the gym floor. I was at half court with Megan and Chloe, and we were talking. Brother Michael pointed his finger right at my head and had me stand up—right in the middle of the gym while everyone stared at me. Even the girl doing the reading stared at me. I thought I was in so much trouble.
“I gave this little wave on my way out, and then I saw my counselor, Mrs. Z, and the principal. They told me Mom called and that Mrs. Z would drive me home. Dad was so out of it,” she continued.
“It was like he had Alzheimer’s or something,” I said, “I remember him sitting there in the chair, and we were sitting at his feet and he said…”
“Go get the kids,” said Abbey.
“I don’t really remember much after that,” I said.
“You got up and kissed him on top of his head and went in the other room.”
I remembered.
“Did I ever tell you what Dad said to me after you left?” Abbey asked. “He told me to put out my hand. So I did. Then he made it look like he was holding something invisible and small in his hand; then lowered it into mine. When he opened his hand and nothing was there, I looked up to him and he said ‘You keep that.’”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After five years of utter silence about the biggest event of our lives, Abbey spilled her guts to me. I was in awe.
“I think that’s why I apologized in the museum,” she said.
I protested, “It’s okay. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s okay to cry.”
“No,” she interrupted, “I’m not sorry about crying. I realized when Dad gave that invisible thing to me that he was giving me part of himself. I was gone all the time because it was just too much. I know that I wasn’t there for you or Mom. I think about it a lot. But I think that glue that Dad was—how he held us together—that’s what he gave me, and I haven’t done that. I haven’t even tried.”
She started crying again. I felt almost too overwhelmed to speak.
“I never knew that,” I said. “We never talk about Dad. There’s a part of him here as we talk about him.”
She smiled through her tears. Then she banged her empty cup on the table and said, “Next round’s on you, Scrub.”