where I can sing aloud
to the song playing in my earbuds,
linger in the kitchen while Mom and Dad argue,
make up, stand close,
the way I remember them doing before Steven
got so big, so strong.
The thought dissolves as I watch Mom
push a wisp of hair off her brow,
gentle my brother into his jacket,
while Dad’s foot taps as if he has somewhere urgent
to be, as if he cannot be delayed,
even for the briefest, coat-zipping space of time.
52
Before seven thirty, I am playing a jazz rendition of
“Adeste Fideles”—
“O Come, All Ye Faithful”—
a song of joining together,
of celebrating the birth of a savior.
I remember baby Steven
coming home from the hospital,
the house growing strangely dim,
voices whispering beyond Mom’s tears.
When she’d been pregnant, Mom and I had read books about caring for a new baby,
talked about how I could help with baths and bottles
and bringing toys.
But when Steven did arrive
no one let me hold him on my lap, give him a bottle.
Two years after the cord prolapse,
the emergency measures surrounding his birth
(though the doctors have told us we can never
truly know cause and effect),
the autism diagnosis became official,
though Mom, I think, always knew
what Steven’s over-open, unfocused infant eyes,
the incessant way he toddler-drove red plastic cars
along the edges of carpets,
the sounds he didn’t make,
were leading us toward.
“O come, let us adore Him!”
my trumpet declares,
while my heart falls, as it always does
when I wonder at the way the life we expected to have,
the family circle Steven was supposed to complete,
got somehow smudged, misdrawn; could never be
perfect, harmonic,
closed.
Were we cheated?
November is going to tumble into December.
Exactly when will our family be dissolved?
Will our holidays be quiet
instead of tentatively still?
Will we go, on Christmas afternoon, to visit my brother
in some highly staffed refuge
like the ones I read about online last night?
Will Steven’s first real holiday gift to us
be his absence from our home,
and is that a present I will ever be able to want?
“O come ye to Bethlehem.”
I try to keep the tears in my eyes, away from the music,
but a sharp sound escapes from my horn.
Cal doesn’t quite stare at me over his bari;
he has to keep glancing down
at the music he’s close to memorizing.
His eyes flitting my way make me look, for some reason,
out the interior window
to see the unmistakable back of Dave’s shaggy head,
the edge of a book.
Is he waiting for me?
And wouldn’t that have made a perfect morning
not so very long,
long ago?
53
Mr. Orson sets down his baton,
like a razor slicing my fifty-five minutes of ragtime bliss
off the top of the day.
The end of the music hurts.
Slowly, slowly,
I slide the mouthpiece from the lead pipe,
rub the cleaning cloth over my brass companion,
set the trumpet into its velvet-lined case,
click the buckles shut.
Through the window, I can see the top half of Dave.
He is doggedly tapping something into his cell phone,
but every minute or so, his head straightens,
he looks toward the band room door.
“Comin’ to homeroom?” Cal asks.
He heaves his bari case up onto the shelf,
reaches for mine.
“Thanks.” I hand it to him.
“Got a lot of art on this thing.” He smiles
at the custom square declaring,
“Up with Jazz; Down with People”
that adorns the case’s center;
my glitter-enhanced black-and-white sticker
of Dizzy Gillespie
blowing into his horn in all his full-cheeked glory.
“It’s cool.”
“Thanks.”
Through the window,
I see Dave glance toward the band room door
one last time.
Watch with something like relief
as he shoves his phone into his pocket
and walks down the hall.
I want and don’t want
to feel his carelessly strong embrace around my ribs,
his lips on my lips.
My heart is so heavy, my eyes too close to tears
to dare try and explain
why I ran from him in the parking lot,
if I even know myself beyond my overdeveloped instinct
to slip from tight grips that, at home, signal only danger.
“Let’s go see what Mrs. Pendleton’s wearing today, Cal.”
54
“It’s yoga tonight, isn’t it?”
Justine meets me at the lockers,
bumps her shoulder against mine.
“Yeah,” I breathe.
“Wanna meet up after orchestra tomorrow, then?
We could check out that new jewelry store downtown.”
“I’ve got a music lesson,” I say.
I want to tell her that pretty soon,
I won’t have to race home anymore,
that we can shop any day after school,
have sleepovers, go to dances like normal friends.
But I am afraid.
Afraid she’ll be sorry.
Afraid she’ll be glad.
Afraid she’ll feel all the things I feel
but say them out loud, like Justine always can.
Though, usually, Justine’s bravery
makes me feel stronger, I am afraid
that, right now, her words
will be nails digging into my scabbed-over heart,
making me bleed.
55
I can’t bring myself to go home at three o’clock.
Instead, I find Dave
sitting on the bleachers behind the school,
a lighter in one hand, burning tiny bits of paper,
watching smoke rise toward the clouds.
I ignore the tick-ticking of my watch
counting down the minutes to yoga.
I bury the humiliation I still feel from our last parting
beneath the horror of last night.
I reach for the lighter.
He lets go, surprised but not unyielding.
Watches as I take from my backpack
the sheet music to “Adeste Fideles”
and set it ablaze.
The pages are dry, curling quickly to brown ash.
I squeal, drop the burning sheaves
onto the gravel at our feet,
desperately try to stomp out the forest fire
I see in my imagination.
He laughs
.
“Don’t laugh!” My back is to him, feet still stamping.
“Why’re you burning stuff you might need?”
He’s taken the lighter back now,
flicking again and again, small, harmless flames,
no longer touching them to paper.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
I can’t decide whether I’m staying or going, so I lean
against the dented silver metal of the bleacher bench,
feel a ridge of cool press into my backside,
try to look righteously angry.
“You’re something, Daisy Meehan.” He chuckles.
“Something else.”
“And you’re not?”
(Sometimes I say the absolutely dumbest things.)
“I dunno.
You didn’t seem to think much of me the other day.”
“That wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
I feel my face burning,
bend away from the cool bench, reach down
to pick up a wayward chunk of scorched sheet music.
“You going to The Movie House tonight?”
Dave flicks the lighter even faster,
little flames like hopes being lit and dashed
in fractions of seconds.
“Nah,” he says. Nothing more. Just flames.
My mind turns white.
I cannot figure out why I am standing here before Dave;
I just know I am angry
and it feels like Dave, with his leather and tousle,
his carelessness and fire,
is someone I could be angry with, HBO-style.
The phone in the back pocket of my jeans starts to buzz:
a “hurry up” text from Mom
that makes me want to linger.
“Remember when we were in kindergarten, Dave?”
I point past the bleachers,
past the fence to the park swings just beyond.
“We used to play space explorers over on those swings.”
“You always had to be ship captain.”
He grins. “Still do, I guess.”
I am overwhelmed with longing to touch him,
to tell him what’s going on in my house,
to ask him why we stopped being friends and when, exactly,
those seams came undone,
to ask him about his dad and his little half-sisters,
for the details of the things I have heard about his life
from the small-town grapevine
that twists around us.
“I wish we were little again.”
I turn my shoulder,
don’t want him to see my eyes grow wet.
“Sometimes . . . ,” he says. “Sometimes I do, too.”
“But we’re not.
And I’ve gotta go home and watch my brother.”
56
“Deadlines Amuse Me,”
says a yellow handmade ceramic tile
relaxing on an embellished wire plate stand
on the kitchen counter.
“You’re late.” Mom is pacing before the fridge,
the carefree quotation at her back,
her soft pastel yoga clothes
belied by the frown lines around her mouth,
the creases by her eyes,
the way she attacks the dishes in the sink.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
I turn to Steven, who’s already got Blokus open,
nothing left of his cookies but crumbs.
“Want to play, Steven?”
He keeps laying out game pieces as if I haven’t spoken,
neat, even lines of plastic, getting ready.
But there’s an edge to his order,
his rhythm just slightly faster than it should be.
If it were an ordinary day, I’d be on eggshells already,
waiting for the explosion.
Now, I almost want the dam to burst.
“When are you going to tell him?” I ask Mom.
“How are you going to explain . . . ?”
She hangs her apron on the hook by the pantry door,
smooths her T-shirt over her flat stomach.
I count the rises and falls
of her pronounced collarbones.
“Careful,” she says.
We both look at Steven.
The game is ready. Now he waits.
“I’ll play,” I say to no one in particular.
“Dad is working late. He’ll be home in time to put—”
“I know.”
I nudge the first blue piece toward Steven’s hand,
hear the door close softly behind our mother.
57
I fumble to answer the ten thirty ring of my cell.
“You will not believe this!”
Justine’s shriek practically explodes the phone.
in her just-mom-and-me household.
“Won’t believe what?”
“Ned Hoffman just asked me on a date for tomorrow night.
He said a date, like we were in the 1950s.”
“I haven’t gotten that far in A-PUSH.
Is that what they called the antiquated
one-boy-one-girl-one-meal evening?”
“Better than attack-kissing against a Ford Fiesta, right?”
She can joke because I didn’t—couldn’t—
really tell Justine how it felt,
how much I can’t stop thinking about that afternoon.
I just told her Dave owed me dinner first.
“You’re gonna kiss Ned Hoffman,” I singsong.
“I might,” Justine says. “He’s . . . well, kind of earnest,
but he’s cute enough.”
“And we know he’ll be a gentleman,” I tease back.
“I want a boyfriend.
The Black-and-White Dance isn’t far away.”
“This is preparation for the school formal?”
My giggling shriek almost matches Justine’s.
“Maybe you could ask Dave,” Justine says.
Mom taps at my door,
enters without waiting for permission.
“Daisy, it’s getting a little too loud,” she says.
“Don’t wake up Steven.”
“I’m sorry.”
I watch Mom’s skeleton fingers
slide around the doorknob,
imagine them on Steven’s shoulders,
guiding his guileless form away
from our front door, our home,
forever.
I tune down my voice to a whisper.
“I gotta go, Justine.”
“But we haven’t even talked about what I should wear!
Come over after your trumpet lesson tomorrow
afternoon and help me choose.”
“I will.” My voice, still soft, as deceptively ordinary
as this night.
58
“Daisy.” Mom sets a glass of juice beside my cereal bowl
at breakfast.
“Your dad and I were wondering . . .
well, you haven’t said how you feel
about our plan for Steven.”
I look at the tumbler, not her face.
It’s safely acrylic, with a tasteful dimpled pattern
that mimics cut crystal. And tinted blue,
which makes the orange juice inside look faintly green.
I slide my hand around to the cup.
The ticking of the watch on my wrist
reaches into
my ears, persistent, wiry,
so loud I wonder if Mom can hear it, too.
“I guess I haven’t,” I say, drawing my lip to the rim,
gulping the liquid to prevent more words
from spilling out.
Should I care
that Mom never offers to toast me a waffle
like she does for Steven every day?
We’re a house of three parents, one child.
I think Mom and Dad have seen it this way
for a long time. Me too, I guess.
But right now, I wish someone would tie my shoes,
cut my food,
not ask for my consent
to this enormous, terrifying choice they have made.
I have no idea
if I should build them some bridge to acquiescence,
offer some way for this to be right.
Like I carry my parents’ history,
I carry this future plan—
a crippling weight
that seems to have slowed the beat of my heart.
I am walking eternally through a kitchen of quicksand
littered with brochures
for Alternatives Academy, Regis House
photo-illustrated with the scrubbed-clean faces,
brushed-back hair
of oversize, well-kept, eternal children
setting a table, folding clothes,
glancing up from a small bed of garden soil.