All The Things We Didn’t Say

‘He’s not your enemy. It’s a completely different religion.’

I blinked rapidly. ‘What?’

The boy paused, moving his jaw from side to side. ‘Alan sent you, right?’ His tone was more uncertain.

‘Alan?’ My voice was high-pitched, weak. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll go. I’m sorry.’

‘Wait.’ His expression softened. ‘If you’re not with Alan, who are you?’

‘I’m…’ I paused. ‘I’m Summer.’

‘Summer…?’

‘…Davis.’

He shifted his weight to one leg. ‘You don’t know Alan?’

‘No. I’m not from here.’

‘Davis.’ He pointed to my grandmother’s house. ‘You related to those old ladies down there?’

‘Yes. I guess.’

‘The woman that owns the house died.’

‘I know. She had a stroke.’

When he stepped into the light, I realized how good-looking he was. Not in a conventional way, but pleasant to look at. Sort of elfin, with huge eyes. Very messy hair. Perfect teeth. Very nice hands. I wasn’t sure I’d ever noticed this many details in a boy before. ‘Sorry I yelled at you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I answered.

‘I thought you were someone else.’ A mosquito landed on his arm, but he made no gesture to swat it off. ‘They your relatives?’

‘Yes. I said that.’

‘They’re all right. Who’s your dad?’

‘Um, Richard? Davis?’ I wanted to add that he was in a car crash twenty-four years ago, but instantly realized how absurd that would sound.

He thought for a moment. ‘Don’t know him.’

‘Do you know Kay Mulvaney?’

‘Is that your mom?’

The word mom startled me. ‘No. My mom’s not from here. She’s from…Pennsylvania.’

‘This is Pennsylvania.’

‘I mean Philadelphia.’

He was quiet again. ‘Is her name Karen?’

‘No, Meredith.’

‘Meredith.’ He repeated it to himself with such familiarity that suddenly I wondered if he knew what my mother had done. Wasn’t that the thing about small towns? Didn’t everyone know everything about everyone else?

‘She decided not to come,’ I said loudly. It was a lie I hadn’t told in a while. Honestly, I hadn’t explained it much in any way at all.

He looked at me with understanding. ‘She doesn’t like funerals, huh?’

‘Not really.’

The boy nodded, then glanced back at his television, which was still flickering. ‘So, guilty or not guilty?’

At first, I thought he was talking about my mom. Guilty, I decided. And then, not guilty. Then I realized he meant OJ. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Not guilty.’

He smirked. ‘Me too. But you’re the only white person in America who thinks that.’

It was strange that he said you’re, not we’re. He hadn’t included himself. I looked over his pale skin and dark eyebrows and nice, not-too-full but not-too-thin lips.

The boy held a finger up. ‘Hang on.’ He disappeared back inside the house. In seconds, I heard his footsteps again. A light beamed in my face. ‘Take this.’ He passed me a grayhandled flashlight. ‘You’ll need it. It gets dark on this road. Even during the day. All the trees.’

He was right-it was suddenly dark, as if someone had thrown a curtain over the sky. But with the flashlight, I saw all sorts of things on the walk back: two large eyes of a creature, probably a raccoon, huddling under the pickup truck. A big, spindly stick lying in the middle of the road. Someone had spray-painted Sand Niggers Go Home on a twenty-five mph speed limit sign. Did that word have to be everywhere here? I waved the beam of the flashlight back and forth across the road, then shut it off. Darkness seemed safer.

I thought about my mother. She wouldn’t have wanted to come to the funeral. She would’ve made excuses to get out of it-work, a party, a hair appointment. I used to imagine my mother in crazy places-Antarctica, Morocco, the moon. But lately, I was convinced she was still in New York. She was taking the same subways, seeing the same ridiculous subway ads and traveling around the same weekend trackwork schedules. Maybe she climbed aboard an uptown 2 train as the doors closed, just as I was passing through the turnstile, watching it pull away.

Sometimes I missed her so much I couldn’t sleep. I missed the way the house smelled of cinnamon candles and perfume. I missed how the phone used to ring. I missed how she’d rush into the house with dry cleaning and take-out and shopping bags. But when I tried to think harder about it, I just couldn’t-a buzzing noise in my head took over. For a time, I hung on to the story I’d been telling myself, that my mother was away on a trip and would eventually return, that the chemicals deep inside her would pull her back to us, the very thing Mr Rice told our biology class. That, because of science, whether she liked it or not, she was obligated to return-it was a scientific rule, as unflappable as the laws of thermodynamics and gravity. Mr Rice never wrote back, but I read everything I could about genetics, trying to find evidence for myself. I read about twins who, even when separated, felt pain at the same time. I read about people who had heart transplants and suddenly had a fondness for oysters, something the heart’s old owner loved. Surely this had something to do with DNA, shared or introduced? Our world wasn’t magical, after all-there was always a scientific theory to demystify what at first seemed amazing.

The last time I hung out with Claire Ryan was more than a year and a half after my mother left. When her friends finally arrived at the diner, they started one-upping each other on how much their families were Nazis-something they often did, even though most of their families were fine, intact, usually nothing more than just a little overprotective. I stood up and walked out, not able to handle them that day. Claire followed me to the street and asked what was wrong. I told her to leave me alone. She asked why. I told her I didn’t want to be her friend anymore.

Claire lowered her eyes. For a second, I thought I’d hurt her feelings, which maybe would’ve been for the best. But then I realized she was looking at me with patient sympathy. ‘You have to deal with things some time, Summer,’ she said, touching my arm.

For a moment, standing there on the sidewalk, I flirted with Claire’s advice. I decided to see what dealing would feel like. The world went silent, and the walls inside my head shifted and opened, revealing new passageways. A sob welled up from deep inside of me, as well as a fizzle of something hot and sharp-maybe loss, maybe anger.

I felt both feverish and chilly at the same time, like I’d instantly contracted a disease. I turned away from Claire, saying nothing, and flew home and ran up four flights of stairs, breathing hard. When I flung open the door, there was my father, lying on the couch as usual. His eyebrows lifted when he saw it was me.

‘This is your fault,’ I demanded, out of breath. It had to be his fault-if it wasn’t, it was mine.

His expression wilted. He sat up, the couch pillows tumbling to the floor. ‘What’s my fault?’

‘You drove her away.’ My voice shook nervously-I’d never said anything remotely accusatory to him before. ‘You never went to her Christmas parties. You never bought her jewelry-she had to pick it out herself. She wanted to go on that cruise but you refused. You said you hated boats and organized meal times. You said you didn’t want to eat dinner with other people.’

My father sank into one hip. ‘I didn’t want to go on that cruise because it didn’t include you and Steven.’

‘You did something wrong.’ I pointed at him. ‘You didn’t try hard enough. And now you don’t even care. That’s the worst part-you’re not even looking for her.’

A thin, shaky noise emerged from the back of my father’s throat. I retreated to my bedroom and slammed the door. He was easy to blame because he was there. How could I get angry at my mother? It would be like getting angry at air. I could tear up pictures of her, I could burn the sweaters she’d left behind, but it wouldn’t give me much satisfaction.