You Are Here(15)
And so now all Peter could do was stare at him, angry that he’d invoked her name like that, sharply and carelessly, throwing it at Peter like a weapon he’d been storing away. It took him a moment to collect himself enough to respond.
“Then why do you even want me here?” he said eventually, before good sense could step in and give him a chance to turn around, to walk away, to keep his mouth shut. “If you really think that’s how I am, then why do you try so hard to keep me here? Why do you make me feel so guilty about wanting to leave?”
Dad leaned against the desk and gave Peter a wounded look, causing him to falter and fall silent. When he spoke again, his words were quieter, more restrained.
“I’m here now, and we mostly just ignore each other anyway,” Peter said, his face hot with guilt or regret or maybe both. “So what’s the point?”
They stared at each other—each looking surprised to have stumbled into such foreign territory and found the other there too—and Peter thought to say more. But he wasn’t sure what was left, and before he had a chance to do anything else, Dad lowered his head and scratched at the back of his neck and grunted. It was hard to tell if he was hurt or angry or upset, and Peter thought it was probably all of these things and more.
From downstairs they could hear Dad’s buddies laughing loudly over something in the kitchen. Peter took a small step sideways, leaving the doorway clear, and without another word—without even looking at him—Dad walked straight past him and out of the room, moving heavily down the stairs.
As soon as he was gone, Peter sank down on his bed and rubbed his eyes. His back and shoulders ached as if they’d been throwing actual punches, not just verbal ones. He felt drained and exhausted, but also strangely relieved, like he’d been holding his breath for years and could now finally exhale.
Near his foot was a map of Gettysburg, and he looked down at the ridges and grooves running across the land. It wasn’t just the nation that the war had divided; it was families, as well. Everyone had been fighting for what they thought was right, no matter who was on the opposite side of the line, whether it was your father or your brother or your son. It was about issues and causes and ideas, and what more could you ask of a person, Peter thought, than to risk all that they were for all they believed they could be?
Later that night, after the sounds of the poker game had grown quiet in the kitchen—the clinking of chips and shuffling of cards, the rowdy laughter and softer groans of failure when luck started to run out—Peter tiptoed down the stairs. He paused at the bottom and peeked around the corner to see all four men on the couches in the family room, their socked feet propped on the coffee table, an impressive display of empty beer cans arranged before them. From where he stood, Peter could only see the back of Dad’s head, but despite the volume of the baseball game on TV, the others looked to be in various stages of sleep: one snoring, one with his eyes half closed, and the other with his mouth stretched open in an enormous yawn.
Peter slipped past the doorway and through the kitchen, moving silently around the table littered with stray cards and peanut shells and into the small hallway that bridged the kitchen and the garage, where he nudged open the door to his dad’s office.
He could count the number of times he’d been in here: once when he’d been stung by a bee and rushed in without thinking; once when Dad forgot to bring some paperwork into the station and called to ask Peter to find it for him. Another time a rainstorm had caused the window to leak, and the two of them had worked to plug the hole together, keeping the water from ruining the many plaques and certificates that checkered the walls, tokens of appreciation from a town grateful for his dad’s service.
Peter knew that one of the cabinets along the side of the room held two narrow shoeboxes filled with pictures of his mom. When he was little, he used to ask to look at them from time to time, and Dad would walk stiffly into the office while Peter hung back, clinging to the doorframe. He was always amazed at how gingerly Dad cradled the boxes, handling them with utmost care, as if they were important evidence in a criminal case rather than faded old snapshots.
Standing in the office now without permission, Peter felt nearly dizzy, and he moved quickly to the large oak desk in the middle of the room and pulled open the bottom drawer. There was a brown envelope that he’d seen before, the one where Dad dropped the keys each time a new car took up residence in the lot out back. He fished through until he found the set he remembered coming in months ago along with the blue convertible—an ugly blue rabbit’s foot that had been dangling from the ignition that day like something that had curled up and died in the car—and he pulled them out and closed his hand around them.
It wasn’t that he was necessarily going anywhere.
But it was nice to know he could.
Chapter seven
Emma’s life before this—first in North Carolina, then Washington, then New York City—was difficult to bring into focus. There were still the lingering outlines of houses and apartments, vague reminders of wallpaper patterns, a garage with a basketball hoop, a backyard with a swing set. But it was hard to separate what she knew from what she had seen in home videos and photo albums, from stories pried from unwilling memories.
Nobody in her family parted easily with information about the past. There were few tales of birthday parties or summer vacations unless they happened to coincide with a historical event, a book signing, or an academic conference. Her parents always teased Emma for her impatience—that skittish streak that kept her always on edge—but it was they who were hard to pin down. They had minds only for certain intellectual pursuits, and as she grew older, Emma saw that it was just getting worse. In a way it was not unlike a disease. Her dad was being slowly ravaged by poetry. Her mom had very nearly succumbed to the study of burial rites worldwide.