Circle the Soul Softly (14 page)

“You couldn't have been more than three, because Mike was in kindergarten. Anyway, we went to the circus, out at the old Cow Palace. After the show, we were walking through the tent where they keep all the animals. Mike was scared of them, but not you—not a bit! Anyway, there was this baby elephant in one of the open stalls—”

“I remember this!” I interrupt. “I was petting him and you were taking a picture and he grabbed me.”

“Yep. Wrapped his trunk around your arm and started pulling you in.”

“Omigod, yes! I was so scared.”
Crash, bang, I've landed in the
midst of my history.

“Your dad snatched you back. But Mike was completely beside himself. You remember how Daddy used to call you ‘Kates'?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Mike starts jumping all around, screaming at the top of his voice, in the middle of the tent, and even the security guys came running. He's saying ‘Kates-Kates-Kates' and it starts sounding like ‘Skates.'Anyway,we're holding on to you, and this skinny bald-headed police guy keeps trying to calm Mikey by telling him,‘Don't worry, little boy, we'll find those skates.'”

“Omigod.”

“Yeah, it really got us laughing. That, and relief that you didn't get eaten by the elephant. Somehow, it stuck. Your dad and Mikey both started calling you Skates.”

“Wow. That seems like a whole other life.”

“It was.” Mom sighs; this is as close as we've come all week to acknowledging the polar bear. “But this one's turning out okay.”

“I guess it is.”

“Do you like Robert?” she asks.

“I don't know him very well yet, but yeah. I do.” I reach to pick out another big strawberry.

“Katie….” The tone of her voice makes me snap my head over. “I'm sorry.”

“About what?”

“I'm sorry I didn't know what was happening to you. I promise you, if I had—I would have stopped it.”

Heart—go.

“I mean that.”

Brain —open up and take this in.

“I don't understand it. I can't fathom why your father….” She works her face to keep from crying.“Why he'd ever be …inappropriate.” She has to stop a moment; her mouth is clenched tight and won't let the words out. She nods and she reaches her hand out toward me. “I'm sorry I didn't believe you. And I am so very sorry it happened at all.”

As we cry and hold each other, this woman becomes my mother again, and the polar bear tiptoes softly out of the room.

THIRTY-SEVEN

By the time we finish our (cough, Chicken Helper) fettucine Alfredo dinner—which I cooked, thank you very much—I'm beginning to wonder whether Mom and David would even notice if I walked out. He's manipulating her like good-looking boys can with moms, and she's sucking it up. I'm seriously ready to bust him when she excuses herself and heads upstairs. Ten points for the Mother-unit. Twenty if she'd done it earlier.

David smiles and compliments my cooking, I smile and say thanks, but now that we're alone, we don't seem to have much to say to each other. Too bad Real Life can't unfold like scenes in a play, with exciting dialogue, recognizable subtext, and a definite action to play. We fumble our way through clearing the dishes and end up outdoors, walking down the beach. The sun hovers bright orange above the horizon.

“I love this time of night,” David says in a low voice, sounding like a complete stranger.

Yeah. “Beautiful, isn't it?”
My voice is just as forced.
I send a smile in his direction and am jolted by the intensity of his stare. We look away and walk in silence until he asks, “Want to sit for a while?”

We find a spot without kelp and hunker down as the sun starts to sink. He doesn't put his arm around me; he does scoot up close. The air's cooling but the sand is warm from the day. We're shoulder to shoulder as the sun sets …
“like a fat orange
candle….”

Whoa.

Point Reyes—I was with Ginny's family—we were watching the
sunset. I scribbled the poem on the back of the take-out menu we'd
gotten from a tiny restaurant called Lew & Colleen's, where Ginny's
mom was ordering food. Ginny was cuddling with her dad on a rock
near where I perched, and I was jealous. I missed my daddy. He wasn't
around me much these days—he preferred to hang out with Michael.
Wow. Already, I'd folded up the real memories and concealed them from
myself. I missed him; that's all I knew. And that's when I wrote the
poem.

“Katie?”

I look toward David and stare blankly for a few seconds.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”
Take a breath. Be here, BE HERE.

“Sure? You're looking a little spacey.”

“No, I'm good
.” I am. I'm here. I've remembered a poem.

“I'm sorry I was such an asshole,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“At Prom. I was an asshole.”

“Oh.” I have to struggle a bit to catch up. “David, it wasn't just you.”

“Uh, yeah. It kinda was.”

“No.”

“Are you going to let me say my speech or what?”

He sounds almost petulant. I nod and wait.

“Okay, this is what I think. I think when two people have a relationship, sometimes they understand each other, and sometimes they don't. Especially when it comes down to male or female. Make sense?”

“Uh, no.”

“Okay, say like there's a ‘male' role and a ‘female' role—basic biology, you know—procreation and all that shit.”

“The sex thing.”

“Exactly. The sex thing. That's what happened! I wanted you and then you were naked and I wanted you more, but all of a sudden you got freaky and I …I knew I should have stopped, but I didn't, and I was an asshole.”

I start to speak but he puts up his hand.

“No. Listen. I knew something was wrong and I pretended I didn't. Then I got pissed at myself and you and everything got messed up and nothing came out the way I meant. I don't know what I meant. I just know I love you and I would never hurt you. And I am really sorry I did.”

I'm here, 100 percent, I understand what he's saying to me—and I
think I just may let him take the blame, at least for now.
“I love you, too, David.”

“No shit?” He looks like a little boy who got forgiven for breaking Grandma's favorite lamp. I pull his head in to kiss him, and two big-footed Lab puppies choose that exact moment to land smack dab between us. We burst out laughing.

“Oh dear,” this anorexic redhead in a workout suit hollers, “I am so sorry.” She jogs toward us, dyed hair flying, leashes in hand—Stacey in thirty years. The puppies tumble all over, nipping ears and tails, licking whatever skin they find. We're in hysterics, the stomachache and tears kind, until a seagull flies low and the puppies are off again, chasing it down the beach as their owner chases them.

“You are a dog person,” David announces as soon as we're able to calm down.

“Oh yes. Definitely, no two ways about it.”

“You'd have to be, wouldn't you? Because I am.”

“It's
a soul thing.”

“Exactly.” This time the kiss happens and we cuddle after. “So, are we okay?” he asks.

“I don't know. Are we?”

“Uh …yeah, I think we are.”

“Then, cool.”

“But you do need to tell me what my mom said about my dad.”

“Okay.”

“Not now, but soon. ”
Way to go, Katie. Polar bears, begone.

THIRTY-EIGHT

My brother gathers huge rounded stones from the cliffs to the north of us and makes a circle with them in the sand, ten feet or so from the high tide line. In the center he piles dried kelp and the bits of driftwood he's picked up.

“Michael, are you sure it's okay to light fires here? Because I saw a sign that—”

“Shhh.” He goes back to his job. “I know what I'm doing, Skates. I was a Boy Scout, remember?”

“You were not.”

“Well, I wanted to be. And that's almost as good.” He grins his stupid-brother smile. “Besides, didn't you say you were cold?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Okay. Hello? I'm fixing that. Can we shut up a minute and let me do it?”

When the fire finally gets going—and yes, he uses matches and not the old rub-a-stick scout trick—I have to admit it's pretty much the perfect ending to an awesome Sunday. Casey and David have just left. Mom and Robert are upstairs. And me and the Bro, here, are in sync.

“It's all set,” he tells me. “I'm going home the week they get back from Cabo. I told Mom and everything.”

“Is she pissed?”

“Not a bit.” He grins. “I think she's kinda relieved.”

“Who can blame her?”

“Hey—are you implying I'm hard to live with?”

“No, I'm saying straight out you're still a butthead.”

“That's better.”

“And I'm gonna miss you, a lot.”

“Yeah, I'm gonna miss you, too.” He stirs the fire with a stick. “It's kinda funny, huh, just when we finally start getting to know each other.”

“Yeah.”

We have a Nice Sibling Moment here—which is actually not so rare these days. I find myself wondering what we were to each other in our past lives. If it's true souls travel together, we must have had at least three or four lifetimes together.

“Why did you tell me that time that our father liked me best?”
Okay, where did that come from?

“Left turn at Idaho,” Michael says with a little chuckle. “Didn't we have this conversation already?”

“You got someplace you have to be?”

He tosses a log on the fire and makes a face at me. “You could just see it in him, Skates; he watched you all the time. He took you places, he played ball with you—or at least he tried to—you were basically hopeless. Sports challenged. You couldn't catch it when he handed to you.”

“Yeah, but he did the same stuff with you.”

“Not because he wanted to. More like he had to, like Mom said or something.”

I don't like the tone of his voice. “Michael . . .”

“Don't worry, it only really sucked the year I was getting punched out by Kyle and Paul. Third grade. I didn't know what to do, and Dad didn't seem to have time to tell me, even though he was laid off then. Remember that? How moody he got? Anyway, he sure made time to hang out with you.”

The hair on the back of my neck starts to prickle.

Michael's mouth tightens. “It pissed me off.”

“He went in my room?”

“You don't remember?”

“Did he shut the door?”

“Yeah, of course, that was the worst. He shoulda been in my room, hearing about my life, even if he was depressed. No offense, Skates, but you had Mom.”

“Wait a minute—did you hear me talking to him?”

“Not a bit. I stuck my headphones on and pretended I didn't care. And then he got sick, and it didn't matter anyway.”

I am so fully alert right now I hear butterflies.
“Michael, he didn't get sick until I was in seventh grade.”

“Nope. I was in fourth—you were in second.”

“No, no. I remember the conversation Mom had with us—we were in the living room and she told us he had cancer. I was in seventh grade.”

“I know exactly the time you're talking about, Skates, but that wasn't the conversation. She was telling us he might not make it; that the chemo didn't work.”

“I am so confused.”

“You really don't remember this?”

“No.”

“By then he'd been doing chemo for years.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He was diagnosed and went for a second opinion. He had his lung removed, got radiation and chemo, and then he was okay for a while. But it showed up again. It all went on for years, Skates. I can't believe you didn't know this.”

“I can't believe you didn't know what he did in my room.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Later. So, what else?”

“Well, okay, he had a couple of remissions, and we kept thinking it was going to be all right. But cancer cells kept showing up other places. Finally he just gave up.”

“What do you mean—he gave up?”

Michael's mouth is twisted. “Just what I said. He gave up. This doctor had a whole new kind of drug he wanted to try, but Dad wouldn't do it.”

“You sound mad, Michael.”

“He could've tried it. It could have worked. We might not even be here now. But, oh well, huh. It was his choice and he couldn't handle it. So he quit.”

“You
are
mad.”

“That would be dumb, wouldn't it? He's dead.”

“You still get to have feelings about him.”

“Okay. Hold on. Stop. You are sounding way too much like a shrink. I'm really not into this conversation anyway, so let's either, you know, change the subject, or you go talk to Mom or David. Somebody who likes this kind of shit.”

We bump sort of awkwardly around the house for the next few days. I feel like an actor who memorized the wrong script and didn't figure it out till the middle of act two. There I am, onstage, blustering through my lines, playing my actions, when suddenly I discover the back story isn't at all what I believed it to be. I don't recognize the other characters. I barely recognize myself.

Did Michael know why Dad was really in my room? Has he buried the memory like I did? Questions and more questions—like who are you if you're not what you remember? If what you believed happened in your life wasn't true? Does that mean what I perceive now isn't
real either?

I consider telling David everything. I also consider going back and confronting my brother—what did you really know? Why were you angry with me? And why are you running away now?