Page 26 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

I am not an astronaut, nothing even close, but in the distorted slice of reality Gil and I currently share, I can be. No one dreams of somebody they love tattooing for a living, even if it’s good, honest work that pays for the silicone in my chest and the veneers in my mouth. They want doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, firefighters, teachers, lawyers. Astronauts. In another life, undera different set of circumstances, I like to think I could have been one of those things. I wish someone else cared about me enough to rue my lost potential.

“Of course I am.” I clasp my fingers together in my lap. “But I worry one day she’ll do something horrible and … she’ll ruin her life, and maybe the life of someone close to her.”

“Parents have had that worry for eons. Somehow the kids survive their own stupidity and somehow we still love them in spite of it.”

“Blood is thicker than water.”

Triumph at last. Gil holds up the corner piece. “That’s not how the saying goes. The real expression is the opposite.The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

CHAPTER

9

August 12th

10:03AM

THE PRAIRIE OUThere is endless like the ocean, nothing but knee-high brown grass as far as the eye can see. Perfect place to dump a body.

I’d expected a lower turnout for this search, the locals’ interest in my mother flagging with each passing hour, but the people of Annesville have proven me wrong yet again. Half the town is here on this scalding summer morning, and they’ve brought an uncharacteristically neighborly spirit with them. The Nelson boys distribute water bottles from the coolers in their trucks while Eileen Capito hands out umbrellas (who has this many umbrellas?) to the women to shield us from the sun. Davy Hernandez, owner of the barbershop, leads us in prayer before the deputies unleash us on the desiccated prairie. I might not be the praying type, but I’m still moved by the gesture. When his voice cracks on my mother’s name,Elissa, a lump gathers in my throat.

And that lump turns to stone when familiar baritone belts across the prairie. “You’re a good man, Davy Hernandez. God bless you.”

“Your whole family is in our prayers, Tom.”

My father is a raincloud blotting out the sun, the ocean receding from the shore to portend a tsunami. Always a harbinger of doom. He is without my sisters, Grace presumably in school and Harmony presumably three sheets to the wind at the pool hall. In the sunlight, his crow’s feet run deeper and the wattle of his liver-spotted neck hangs looser. He parts the crowd like Moses at the Red Sea, gesturing for us to form a circle around him.

We do. He thanks us profusely for showing up to the search, then thanks God for giving him such generous, selfless neighbors. His eyes never once meet mine.

Credit where it’s due: he’s delivering the performance of a lifetime. To the unsuspecting observer, the tears in his eyes might seem genuine. You might be tricked into thinking that this man—flawed though he may be, despite all the nasty rumors that eddy around him like horseflies swarming roadkill— misses his wife and just wants her to come home to him safely. Deep down, Tom Byrd is a good man, or at least, he wants to be.

He’s trying, can’t you tell? And isn’t it the trying that matters?

Every time he says my mother’s name, the taste of gin blights my mouth, memories of the drunken good-night kisses she left on my forehead when she thought I was asleep.

Beside me, Zoe materializes from thin air. She stands close enough for our forearms to brush. Her blonde hair is coiled into milkmaid braids that should make her look matronly, but because she’s Zoe and even the sun seems to dim in her presence, she is undeniably radiant. The sleeves of her pink flannelshirt are cuffed at the elbows, exposing the tender white flesh of the forearms I once kissed.

The lustful memories stir to life unexpectedly, and the frothing sensation between my legs is as delicious as it is traitorous.

I am here for my mother. I play my chastisement on a loop in my mind.I am here for my mother. I will not be distracted by a pretty girl.

“… and I’m sure some of you have noticed that my eldest daughter is here with us today.” Finally, I become the focus of my father’s attention. He feigns a hitch in his voice when next he speaks. “And I’ll tell you something, it means the damn world to me to have Providence here. She’s put the past in the past. We all have. What really matters is all of us showing up for Elissa, right here, right now.”

The stares of old neighbors scourge my cheeks. A few of them gawk now that my father has pointed me out, having been unable to recognize me beneath the layers of plastic surgery and tattoos. I will doubtless be the subject of dinner table gossip this evening. Lips like a blowfish. Fakest tits I’ve ever seen. And, my God, was that a tattoo on herface?

My father approaches me. Opens his arms. Hugs me. A play in three sinister acts. His stubble scrapes my reconstructed cheek as he clenches me against his chest, so tight that I cannot see the sky above me or smell anything but the vinegary odor of his body. His hand cups the back of my head tightly enough to puncture holes in my skull.

How long does it last? A second? A minute? A day? A lifetime?

When he finally releases me, the world spins like a record. As the deputy begins dividing us into groups, I stammer out an excuse about leaving something in my car, promise I’ll be right back, and then I hurry to the flattened brush where everyone has parked, even though it feels like the earth is crumbling beneath my feet with every step, feels like my skin has calcified into anexoskeleton too small for my body. I am unclean. No, worse—dirty. My father has held my body against his and left behind hideous stains only I can see.

I grab the hand sanitizer from my car and start rubbing it on my hands, my wrists, my neck, any strip of flesh that might have grazed his own. I’m dabbing it behind my ears like perfume when Zoe approaches. The silver necklace she’s worn since we were in middle school bounces against her collarbone with each step, theZpendant sparkling iridescent in the sunlight.

“Are you okay, Providence?”

“Peachy keen.” I make a show of tossing the hand sanitizer back in my car.

“You’ve always been a bad liar,” she says.

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