The Impossible Knife of Memory Read Free

terrified.
I found the library and a bank and made sure the post office knew that we were back and living in Gramma’s old house. On the third day, a girl named Gracie who lived down the street brought a basket of muffins and a tuna noodle casserole cooked by her mom, from scratch. She said she was glad to see me.
Gracie was so sweet—freakishly kind and non-zombified—that I forgot to be a bitch and I fell into like with her by the time I’d finished the first muffin, and suddenly I had a friend, a real friend for the first time in . . . I couldn’t remember how long. Having a friend made everything else suck less.
When the past spat Dad back out, he ate what was left of the tuna noodle casserole. (The muffins were already gone.) He went up into the attic and brought down a small box that hadn’t been damaged by mice or mold. In the box were faded photographs that he swore were me and his mother, my grandmother. I asked why didn’t Gramma keep any pictures of my mom and he said they’d been chewed up by the mice. By then, I could tell when he was lying.
    So that day after detention, I made it home from school in one piece, pissed and hungry and determined to ignore all my homework. Dad’s pickup was parked in the driveway. I put my hand on the hood: stone cold. I checked the odometer: no extra miles since I left that morning. He hadn’t gone to work again.
    I unlocked the one, two, three, four locks on the front door of our house. ( Our house . Still felt weird to put those two words together.) Opened the door carefully. He hadn’t put the chain on. Probably slept all day. Or he was dead. Or he remembered that I had gone to school and that I was going to come home and that I’d need the chain to be off. That’s what I was hoping for.
    I stepped inside. Closed the door behind me. Locked back up: one, two, three, four. Slid the chain into its slot and hit the light switch. The living room furniture was upright and dusty. The house smelled of dog, cigarette smoke, bacon grease, and the air freshener that Dad sprayed so I wouldn’t know that he smoked weed.
    Down the hall, Spock barked three times behind the door to my father’s bedroom.
“Dad?”
I waited. Dad’s voice rumbled like faraway thunder, talking to the dog. Spock whined, then went quiet. I waited, counting to one hundred, but still . . . nothing.
I walked toward his door and gently knocked. “Dad?”
“Your bus late again?” he asked from the other side.
“Yep.”
I waited. This was where he should ask how my day went or if I had homework or what I wanted for dinner. Or he could tell me what he felt like eating, because I could cook. Or he could just open the door and talk, that would be more than enough.
“Dad?” I asked. “Did you stay home again?”
“It’s been a bad day, princess.”
“What did your boss say?”
Dead. Silence.
“You called him, right?” I asked. “Told him you were sick? Daddy?”
“I left a message on his voice mail.”
Another lie. I leaned my forehead against the door. “Did you even try to get out the door? Did you get dressed? Take a shower?”
“I’ll try harder tomorrow, princess. I promise.”
    Death deals the cards. They whisper across the shaky table. Hernandez sticks a cigar in his mouth. Dumbo tucks his
wife’s letter in his helmet. Loki spits and curses. Roy sips his
coffee. We pull the cards toward us and laugh.
I don’t remember what my wife looked like, but I recognize
Death. She calls for our bets, wearing a red dress, her beautiful
face carved out of stone. My friends laugh and lie, already deep
in the game.
I remember what my little girl looks like. I remember the
smell of her head. The scar on her left knee. Her lisp. Peanut
butter and banana. I don’t think she remembers me. Death rattles bone dice in her mouth, clicking them against
her teeth. She spits them on the table and they roll.
We bet it all, throw everything on the line because the air is
filled with bullets and