The Last Time We Say Goodbye Part 29

It was a good day. A good memory.

I don't want to be the kind of person who hates my dad.

THAT MORNING I WATCH THE SUN RISE, and then I get in my car and drive. I know the way to Megan's house like I've driven there a hundred times-straight down 27th Street to the south part of town, where the houses are old but expensive and well maintained. Wrought-iron fences and such.

Her house is a small tan-and-green one near the zoo. It has a red door. Christmas lights are still strung along the edge of the roof. A black-and-white cat stares at me from the window.

Dad's a dog person, by the way.

I tuck Ty's collage frame under my arm and make my way carefully up the uneven sidewalk. I climb the steps onto the porch, take a deep breath, and ring the bell.

It's warmer today, I realize. Water drips off the roof. The snow is melting.

Megan answers the door. She is blond and bobbed and dressed in a little navy blue suit dress. When she recognizes me her face becomes the quintessential picture of surprise, her burgundy-lipsticked mouth in a perfect O shape.

Behind her I see Dad, dressed for work, wearing a similar expression.

"Hi," I say, moving past Megan and into the house. "Do you have a minute? We need to talk."

22 March The lie I told Dad: The frame was behind the door.

There's an empty s.p.a.ce in the frame, a picture missing.

By complete coincidence I discovered this photo of Dad and Ty (not in a frame) on the floor behind the door.

Therefore: it must have fallen out of its frame somehow.

Therefore: Ty meant to put that photo of Dad in the collage.

Therefore: Ty didn't leave Dad's picture out on purpose in order to hurt Dad.

Therefore: It's possible that Ty forgives Dad.

I don't know if he actually believed me, but it's a fiction I think we both can live with.

"THAT," DAVE SAYS, "is what we in the business call a 'breakthrough.' Good job."

"It was no big deal." I fiddle with the edge of the rug. "I was only there for ten minutes."

"It's a very big deal, Lex." Dave smiles. "How long has your father been gone?"

"Three years."

"And in all that time, you've never gone to his house?"

"Megan's house," I correct him. "No. I've never been there."

"Why?"

"Because . . ." I don't know how to explain my reasons so that they seem rational. Perhaps they aren't rational.

"Why yesterday, I mean," Dave says. "Why go to Megan's house now?"

I shrug. "I finally had something I wanted to say to him."

"And what was that?"

"I wanted him to know that his picture belonged in Ty's frame. That's all."

"How did he react when you told him?"

He cried. I'd never seen Dad cry before, not even at Ty's funeral, so it shocked me. He didn't make a big show of it; he put his hand to his eyes for a few minutes while his chest heaved and his shoulders shook, and then finally he dropped his hand.

Then he said, "I'm so sorry, Lexie. I know what I did hurt you and your brother, and I am sorry for that."

I wanted to hold on to my anger when he said that. I could have answered that his sorry wasn't good enough. His sorry can't bring Ty back. Which is true.

But my anger was a slippery thing, like a fish I was trying to keep hold of, and it wiggled out of my grasp.

I looked at Dad, and he looked at me with his hazel eyes, Ty's and my eyes, and he said, "I would have stayed. If it could have stopped Tyler from doing this. I would have come back."

I shook my head. It's too confusing, too hard to think about the what-ifs. I have my own personal list of what-ifs, without having to deal with Dad's.

He whispered again that he was sorry, and cried some more, so I laid my hand over his on Megan's kitchen table. He put his other hand over mine and squeezed, and we stayed that way for a few minutes, until I slid my hand away and told him I had to get going to school.

"Thank you for coming," he told me as he walked me down the driveway. "For telling me about the picture. It means a lot."

It didn't matter that almost everything I'd told him about the photo and the collage was a total fabrication on my part.

"You're welcome." I got into the car.

Dad knocked on my window and leaned down to say, "Maybe . . . maybe you could come to dinner here next week. We could talk about MIT."

"Maybe," I said, because MIT was still feeling pretty far away, and I didn't know-I still don't know-if I was ready to make Megan's house a regular thing. "I have to go." I put the Lemon in gear. "Take care, Dad."

"Take care, Lexie," he said.

I could see him in the rearview mirror, standing on the sidewalk in his suit and tie, his hand lifted in a wave as I drove away.

"Alexis, are you still with me?" Dave prompts, because I'm just sitting there, not answering. "Are you all right? Would you like some water?"

I cough. "Sure."

He opens the minifridge under his desk and gets me a Dasani. I drink.

"He said he was sorry," I say when I'm ready to talk again. "For the divorce. For the way it hurt Ty and me."

Dave nods.

"Aren't you going to write that down?" I ask him. "It seems important. A breakthrough, like you said."

He doesn't write it down. "Do you accept his apology?" he asks.

"Sort of. Maybe. Probably not."

"Do you feel like you've started to forgive him?"

"I don't know," I say. "I don't think he should get off that easy. But it was nice to hear him say he's sorry. I didn't think I'd ever hear him say that."

Dave strokes his beard, which is what he does when he's about to say something terribly profound. "Forgiveness is tricky, Alexis, because in the end it's more about you than it is about the person who's being forgiven."

"Like that old saying about how holding a grudge is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die."

"Exactly." Dave sits back, puts his feet up on the coffee table. "I'm proud of you. To go to that house, to face him, to give him that small kindness with the picture, that took courage. It was a step in the right direction."

"The direction to what, though?" I ask. "Where am I headed?"

"Acceptance. Which is the path to healing. Growth. Contentment."

I mull this over. "I will never be happy again," Mom said. She said it like it's her duty now, her motherly obligation, to consider her life ruined because she lost Ty. I don't view things the way Mom does, but it's difficult to imagine being truly happy again.

I don't know what my duty is.

"How did you feel when you were done talking to your father?" Dave asks.

"I felt . . . slightly better," I tell Dave.

This he feels compelled to write down in his yellow legal pad. He underlines the words.

"Slightly better is good," he says.

I agree. Slightly better is good. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do now.

"Lex?" Dave says. "Are you okay?"

"Sometimes I think I see Ty." I don't know where this comes from, this sudden confession, but suddenly it's out there. I glance at Dave quickly. "Sometimes I feel like he's there. In the house. And I feel like he wants something from me."

I brace myself to be sent off to the funny farm.

Dave nods. "That's very common, actually."

I stare at him. "Common?"

"It's common for people to continue to see loved ones who have pa.s.sed. When he was alive, your brother took up a certain s.p.a.ce in your life, a physical s.p.a.ce and an emotional one. Now that he's gone, the brain naturally tries to fill in that empty s.p.a.ce."

"So it doesn't mean I'm going crazy," I venture.

Dave lets out a bark of laughter. "No, Lex. You're certainly not crazy."

And it doesn't mean that Ty is a ghost, either. For some reason this revelation brings on the ache in my chest.

It turns out there's a logical explanation, after all.

So why don't I want to believe it?

SADIE'S RUNNING OUTFIT IS HOT PINK. It's impossible to miss her at the end of my driveway, hopping from foot to foot, warming up. She says the pink makes her feel like an atom bomb: like a nuclear explosion is her exact phrasing, p.r.o.nouncing it "nuke-cue-ler," the way George W. Bush used to say it even though he knew it was wrong, just to p.i.s.s people off.

How Sadie and I are friends, I still don't know.

"Come on," she hollers at me. "Let's get moving already."

We run. Spring seems to have finally arrived, so we've been running. Today is our second attempt this week in the couch-to-5K plan. I'm wearing yoga pants and a MATHLETE T-shirt, and I do not feel anything like a nuclear explosion. I hate running as much as ever. It's a horrible thing to do to yourself. Waterboarding, really, would be kinder.

There's an upside, though. I do like the quiet of the early morning jogs around our neighborhood, the only sound our footfalls on the asphalt and our labored breathing in the spring air. I like the stillness in the air just before the sun rises. I like the colors that gather in the sky. The way everything, for just those few moments, seems fresh and unsullied.

Sadie's watch beeps. "Okay, walk," she says.

We slow to a brisk walk. This is the early part of the jog-before I feel like I am going to die-so I am able to answer Sadie when she asks me if I've seen the ghost.

"I haven't seen him. Not since I told the big whopper to my dad about the collage. How about you?" For some reason I can't bring myself to tell her about what Dave said, that seeing Ty is a common occurrence, my brain filling in the s.p.a.ces my brother used to occupy.

"Me?" She looks over at me quizzically.

"How's Gregory, the spirit guide?"

I grin. She grins back.

"Oh, right. Gregory is fabulous. He's got my life all planned out."

Her watch beeps. "Run!" she orders, and off we go.

"Actually," she says when we're at the next walking interval, "I'm thinking about going to college. Not the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology or anything," she says with proper dramatic flair, "but I've looked into a few community colleges, and then if I liked that I could transfer to UNL."

"Good for you!" I beam at her, as much as I am capable of beaming in this jogging situation. "I told you. You're smart. You should do something with that."

"I'm thinking psychology or counseling. Get paid the big bucks for people to tell me all of their problems."

We pa.s.s by one of our neighbors, old Mrs. Wilson, who is watering her flowers. She looks at us suspiciously. Sadie waves. Mrs. Wilson scowls and goes back in the house.

"What about MIT?" Sadie asks me. "What's going on with that?"

"Not much. I'm supposed to be getting a call from one of the students this week, and next month I'm going to visit the campus."

"You don't sound very excited."

"I am, though."

"You're scared," Sadie teases.