DARKEST FEAR Read Free

in hand, Mom’s belly swelling with child, both of them scaredand exhilarated realizing that this cookie-cut three-bedroom split-level would be their life vessel, their SS
American Dream.
Now, like it or not, that journey was coming to an end. Forget that “close one door, open another” crap. That For Sale sign marked the end—the end of youth, of middle age, of a family, the universe of two people who’d started here and fought here and raised kids here and worked and carpooled and lived their lives here.
    They walked up the street. Leaves were piled along the curb, the surest sign of suburban autumn, while leaf blowers shattered the still air like helicopters over Saigon. Myron took the inside track so his path would skim the piles’ edges. The dead leaves crackled under his sneakers and he liked that. He wasn’t sure why.
    “Your father spoke to you,” Mom said, half-question. “About what happened to him.”
    Myron felt his stomach tense up. He veered deeper into the leaves, lifting his legs high and crunching louder. “Yes.”
    “What did he say exactly?” Mom asked.
    “That he’d had chest pains while I was in the Caribbean.”
    The Kaufman house had always been yellow, but the new family had painted it white. It looked wrong with the new color, out of place. Some homes had gone the aluminum-siding route, while others had built on additions, bumping out the kitchens and master bedrooms. The young family who’d moved into the Miller home had gotten rid of the Millers’ trademark overflowing flower boxes. The new owners of the Davis place had ripped out those wonderful shrubs Bob Davis had worked on every weekend. It all reminded Myron of an invading army ripping down the flags of the conquered.
    “He didn’t want to tell you,” Mom said. “You know your father. He still feels he has to protect you.”
    Myron nodded, stayed in the leaves.
    Then she said, “It was more than chest pains.”
    Myron stopped.
    “It was a full-blown coronary,” she went on, not meeting his eyes. “He was in intensive care for three days.” She started blinking. “The artery was almost entirely blocked.”
    Myron felt his throat close.
    “It’s changed him. I know how much you love him, but you have to accept that.”
    “Accept what?”
    Her voice was gentle and firm. “That your father is getting older. That I’m getting older.”
    He thought about it. “I’m trying,” he said.
    “But?”
    “But I see that For Sale sign—”
    “Wood and bricks and nails, Myron.”
    “What?”
    She waded through the leaves and took hold of his elbow. “Listen to me. You mope around here like we’re sitting shiva, but that house is not your childhood. It isn’t a part of your family. It doesn’t breathe or think or care. It’s just wood and bricks and nails.”
    “You’ve lived there for almost thirty-five years.”
    “So?”
    He turned away, kept walking.
    “Your father wants to be honest with you,” she said, “but you’re not making it any easier.”
    “Why? What did I do?”
    She shook her head, looked up into the sky as though willing divine inspiration, continued walking. Myron stayed by her side. She snaked her arm under his elbow and leaned against him.
    “You were always a terrific athlete,” she said. “Not like your father. Truth be told, your father was a spaz.”
    “I know this,” Myron said.
    “Right. You know this because your father never pretended to be something he wasn’t. He let you seehim as human—vulnerable even. And it had a strange effect on you. You worshipped him all the more. You turned him into something almost mythical.”
    Myron thought about it, didn’t argue. He shrugged and said, “I love him.”
    “I know, sweetheart. But he’s just a man. A good man. But now he’s getting old and he’s scared. Your father always wanted you to see him as human. But he doesn’t want you to see him scared.”
    Myron kept his head down. There are certain things you cannot picture