I return to the top picture on the stack. Dad and Ty playing chess. It"s different from the other pictures. It"s smaller, for one thing. It"s obviously been cut down from a six-by-four photo to a three-by-three square. It"s a bit crooked, like he couldn"t cut in a straight line. It has a jagged edge on one side.
Then I know the answer.
I get up. I go back to the house, down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. To Ty"s room.
I get Ty"s collage from behind his door and lay it on the bed. I set the chess picture on the white s.p.a.ce of the part that"s empty.
It"s a perfect fit. Three by three square.
Mom was right. This is where Dad"s photo should have gone. Ty thought about it. He gathered up all these pictures as candidates. He decided on this one, cut it to size, but in the end, he didn"t put it in the frame.
He wouldn"t forgive Dad.
I become aware of the scent of my brother"s cologne. It"s all around me. I close my eyes.
"No," I say, because I"ve accepted this by this point, talking to n.o.body in case there"s somebody actually there. "I won"t do it."
Because I know what Ty would want now.
He"d want me to return the picture to this frame.
He"d want me to tell Dad.
To make it right.
I put the photo in my pocket and return the collage to its place behind the door. I turn the light off.
"No," I whisper to the empty room.
Upstairs, I go to my closet and get out my suitcase. And I start packing.
13 March My dad left our family on a Tuesday morning in July. I was 15 that summer, and Ty was 13. It was 9 months before Ty would go on his little escapade with the 63 Advil and ask Dad to come home, 3 years ago now, although it feels like longer.
I was brushing my teeth when it happened.
Dad appeared in the mirror behind me, and he said, "Hi, Lexie. You and I need to have a talk."
My first thought was that he was going to lecture me about how little brain-work I"d been doing that summer. That"s what he called it-not homework but "brain-work," stuff to keep my brain in shape during the months I was out of school. So I wouldn"t lose anything, he always said. So I would stay sharp.
But it wasn"t about brain-work.
It was about him moving out.
"Why?" I asked him, stunned, but I don"t remember how he answered. I just remember that he said he was going to live at a house in town. With a woman, he said. Who he"d fallen in love with.
I couldn"t get my head around it.
"Everything is going to be okay, Peanut," he said.
That was the last time he ever called me that.
I said, "I love you, Daddy." Like maybe I could talk him out of it.
He said he loved me, too, and he took me by the hand and led me out to the living room, where Mom was sitting on the couch, crying so hard she was having trouble breathing. I sank down beside her.
Ty appeared in the doorway. He"d heard her crying from the bas.e.m.e.nt. He looked scared, like he wanted to run away. Dad took him by the shoulders and walked him out to the back porch. I could see him through the window as Dad told him, his face folding in on itself as he tried to hold back his tears.
Dad brought him inside. Ty sat down on the other side of Mom. He took her hand. She stopped crying long enough to say, "Mark. Don"t do this."
We looked up at Dad.
"I love you all," he said.
Then he turned and walked out the front door. We listened to his truck rumble to life. We listened to it crunch down the gravel driveway. We listened to the sound of his engine getting farther and farther away. And then he was gone.
Somewhere over the next few hours the details came out: Dad had been having an affair with the secretary. Mom had known about it for months.
I could see, in that hindsight-is-20/20 way, that both of my parents had been acting strangely for a while. Dad working late. Coming home smelling of cigarettes. Mom speaking to us more sharply than usual, trying to keep the house perfectly clean and organized, dinner on the table at precisely 6 p.m., running to reapply her lipstick when she heard him coming up the driveway. Like if everything was in place, if our home life was perfect enough, he would stop what he was doing.
There were signs. I was just too caught up in my own thing to catch on.
The only clue I"d noticed that summer was the dog. Our golden retriever, Sunny, had been lying around looking mournful. Whimpering. Not eating.
"What"s wrong with Sunny?" I"d asked about a week before Dad steamrolled us with the news. "I think she"s depressed. Can dogs get depressed?"
"I don"t know," Mom had said. A lie.
"Do you think they make Prozac for dogs?" I"d joked. And she"d laughed. Which was also a lie. Mom knew that Sunny knew. The dog was there after everyone but Mom had gone to sleep. Sunny watched her cry.
At some point during that day, Mom"s best friend, Gayle, showed up and tried to give my mom a pep talk. Gayle"s husband had divorced her a few years earlier, and I remember that she kept saying, over and over, "You"ll get through this, Joan. You"ll be stronger for it."
But Mom just shook her head, wringing the tissue in her hands into smaller and smaller shreds.
We went out for pizza for dinner. Because Dad never let us go out for pizza. Because Dad was a tightwad. While we were eating, Ty, who"d been quiet for nearly the entire time, said, "I"m glad he"s gone."
"Don"t say that, honey," Mom said.
"No. I am. I"m glad," Ty said, his voice cracking on the word glad.
That night, after Mom went to bed, Ty woke me.
"Come on," he said, and I didn"t ask questions; I slipped into some jeans and followed him outside. Under a full moon we walked to the park, to this rocky area behind the baseball field. Ty carried a cloth grocery bag and a metal baseball bat. He handed me the bag. It was full of bottles of Dad"s old cologne.
"Put one right there," Ty directed. I set a bottle of Old Spice on the rocks in front of him.
Ty took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, like he was sending up a prayer or making a wish, then opened them again.
"He"s a cheater," he said, and brought the bat down hard. The bottle shattered, and the smell of the cologne washed over us, so strong I felt nauseated.
"Now you." Ty handed me the bat.
I got out another bottle. Polo. My favorite on Dad. I"d given it to him for Father"s Day one year.
"He"s a liar," I said, and swung as hard as I could.
There was a certain relief in the breaking of the gla.s.s-the shattering of something other than our pathetic little family.
We went on breaking bottles. "He"s a cheapskate."
"He"s a phony."
"He"s an a.s.shole." Even then, though, I couldn"t say the swear word with any conviction.
"He"s a fraud."
"He"s an adulterer."
We paused at this.
"I will never forgive him," Ty said, staring down at the reeking shards at our feet.
"I will never forgive him," I repeated, and it was as if we were making a vow.
In a way it felt like Dad had died. The man I knew, the quiet, gentle man who read Harry Potter out loud to me when I was 10, who helped me study for the 5th-grade spelling bee, who laughed over the funnies in the Sunday newspaper, that man was gone. All that was left was the cheater. The liar. The fraud.
In that moment, I knew it was true.
I will never forgive him. Not ever.
"Come on," Ty said, slinging the bat over his shoulder. He put his arm around me. The man of the house now. "Let"s go home."
WHEN MOM WAKES UP, I"M WAITING FOR HER.
"What"s this?" she says as she comes into the kitchen and sees me standing at the stove in her blue gingham ap.r.o.n, sc.r.a.ping an only marginally burned portion of scrambled eggs onto a plate.
"Breakfast." She watches as I set both of our plates on the table. I take off the ap.r.o.n and put it back on its hook, pour us some juice, and sit down. "Bon appet.i.t."
She glances at the oven clock. "This is wonderful, honey, but aren"t you going to be late for school?"
"I"m not going to school today."
She stares at me. I never miss school. I have a perfect attendance record, as a matter of fact, because Ty died during Christmas break.
"We"re going to take a trip," I announce.
"A trip?"
"You have three days off." I point to the work calendar she has posted to the refrigerator with magnets. "I will miss only one day of school."
She notices the far wall of the kitchen, where I"ve stacked everything we"ll need: pillows and clean pillowcases and blankets to snuggle with in the car, anything resembling a snack that I could find in the pantry, a six-pack of Mom"s lethal Diet c.o.ke (which should get us through the drive there, at the very least), and finally our suitcases, both fully packed, which goes to show just how Valium-and/or-alcohol-induced my mother"s sleep was last night, that I could move around her room opening and closing all her dresser drawers without her waking up.
"I have it all planned out," I say.
She sits down across from me. "You want to go on some kind of road trip?"
"Yes. A road trip."
"Where?"
"You"ll see." On the table there"s a stack of papers I"ve been reviewing-a hotel reservation and directions and other research-which I pull out of her reach. "Just say yes, Mom."
She pushes a clump of eggs with her fork. If she doesn"t agree to this, what will come next is that she"ll eat a bite or two, to placate me at least that much, and then she"ll go back to bed.
"Please, Mom," I beg. "I need us to do this. I can"t go back to school today, not with how people are going to be after Patrick. I can"t do it."
Her lips purse for a few seconds, then relax. "All right," she says resignedly. "A road trip."
That"s the spirit.
"Just you and me," I say. "Dave would call it quality mother-daughter bonding."
She laughs weakly, not her real laugh, but as good as I"m going to get. "Well, we have to do what Dave wants, don"t we?"
"Hey, you hired him, Mom."
She smiles at me, a small but tender smile, and says, "All right. I think it will do us both good to get out of the house." Like the whole expedition was her idea.
It"s raining in Memphis. We"ve had a long day"s drive and a night in a cheap-but-fairly-clean Super 8 Motel on the edge of town, and now we"ve finally arrived at our final destination. The sky is a hard gray, an icy drizzle fracturing on the windshield as we pull into the parking lot. For a minute we sit in the car with the heater blowing in our faces and look up at the sign.
GRACELAND.
My mom"s always been an Elvis fan. He died on August 16, 1977, which just happened to be my mother"s eighth birthday. She still remembered hearing the news about his death on the radio right after she blew out her birthday candles. From that point on she grew up feeling a connection between herself and the King of Rock and Roll. So Tyler and I grew up with Elvis, too. We heard "All Shook Up" when she was trying to make us laugh and "Blue Suede Shoes" when she was feeling sa.s.sy, and sometimes, on their anniversary or Valentine"s Day, we"d catch her dancing to "Love Me Tender" with Dad. The week after Dad left, I kept hearing Elvis"s mournful croon m.u.f.fled from behind her bedroom door as she played that song again and again.
Elvis was the soundtrack to her life and, by extension, mine.
"I"ve always wanted to come here," she says.
I know.
I put my hand on her shoulder. "Let"s go in."
When we get inside, we"re both shocked at the prices for the tour. There are three options: the basic mansion tour, which is thirty-three dollars; the "platinum" tour, where you can see Elvis"s airplanes and cars and a few extra exhibits for thirty-seven dollars; and the Graceland Elvis Entourage VIP Tour, which is everything from the first two tours with an extra private tour, front-of-the-line access, an all-day pa.s.s to the grounds and mansion, and a special keepsake backstage pa.s.s.
Clearly we"ve got to do the VIP tour. We"ve come all this way.
It is seventy dollars.
Per person.