Hush

~fiction~


Hush

Dad sat Liam down on the couch for “a talk.” Liam didn’t ask any questions, just sat down and looked up at Dad expectantly.

“Mom wanted me to remind you of the discussion you had with Dr. Thorn yesterday,” Dad said.

He gave Liam a chance to say something, but my brother just sat there with his hands folded between his knees, waiting for Dad to get to the point.

“We know you like to run,” Dad said. “But you can’t run for hours at a time, and you can’t run every day. Not until you put on some weight. You’re wrecking your joints.” Liam stared at Dad blandly. He was taller than Dad, and skinnier than me. His knees looked blocky and fat compared to his legs.

“I know this isn’t anything you haven’t heard before,” Dad said. “But Mom was afraid you’d forget. Just give it a rest, and we’ll talk to Dr. Thorn again next week, okay?”

If Liam nodded, I missed it.

“Okay,” Dad said. He gave Liam a warm pat on the back and went out into the kitchen.

“I’ll be down to make lunch around noon,” Dad said. I heard him open the fridge and rustle through the plastic bags in the crisper. “You in the mood for burgers?”

I was erasing penciled notes in the margins of my eighth grade history textbook at the dining room table, pretending I wasn’t listening.

Dad poured a cup of coffee, then opened and closed the fridge. A spoon chimed in the cup and then clattered in the sink. The refrigerator opened and closed again. The back staircase creaked under Dad’s weight as he climbed to the study, balancing his cup.

Felix came padding across the table and peeked into my water glass. He tested it with his whiskers, and then stuck his whole head into the cup.

“Liam, look—he’s doing it again!” I said. Liam got up from the couch with a yawn and stretched his arms over his head.

“Danielle,” he said. “You think anything is funny.”

“Come on, this could be a circus act,” I said. Felix lapped at the water and the light shivered in the glass.

“Okay, good luck with that,” Liam said and padded out of the room, cracking his knuckles.

“That’s disgusting,” I called after him, but he didn’t say anything back.

Felix lifted his ears out of the glass and prowled closer to me, sticking his nose out to smell my face, stepping over my textbook like it wasn’t even there. I scratched my knuckle under his chin, and he purred and rubbed his ears against my hand. A little cloud of white fur drifted away with my fingers and I shook it onto the carpet.

Liam crossed the threshold behind me, making barely a sound. I picked up Felix and held him softly to my chest. He was perfectly still and trusting for just an instant, and then as usual, he seized up with animal panic and struggled out of my arms.

I went through the hall and found Liam in the mudroom tying his shoes on the bench. He was wearing his mustard yellow track shorts and his maroon cross-country T-shirt with his name across the back.

“Where are you going?” I said, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe, brushing cat hair off my sweater.

“Route 29. I’m making the big loop, coming back up Tumble Falls.”

“Isn’t running supposed to compact your metatarsals or speed up your metabolism or whatever?” I said.

“Danielle, I need at least one person in this house who isn’t ‘concerned’ about me, okay?” Liam double-knotted his laces and stood over me, substantial as a kite.

“I was getting tired of caring about you,” I said.

“Very funny.”

“Have a good run,” I said.

“See you,” he said, and he let the storm door fall shut behind him with a puff of cold air. He started off at a stiff jog up the gravel driveway, picking his way between the long stony ruts filled with ice. He found his rhythm as I watched him disappear beyond the tree line: track shorts swishing, blond bowl cut flapping, elbows pinned to his waist at neat right angles. Brown leaves shook in the oak trees above, and the silent woods along the drive crackled with a frozen tangle of dried-out brush and scattered rocks. I pushed shut the inner door and wondered if Dad would even notice he was gone.

My book was on the coffee table, right where I’d left it the night before. It was a nice fat yellow paperback—one of my mom’s.

I sat cross-legged in the corner of the couch right under the lamp, listening for footsteps or the groan of Dad’s chair rolling back from his desk—some sign of restlessness or suspicion—but there was only the bristling of the clock on the mantle, the hush of the heat coming up through the vents, the sigh of the refrigerator’s motor cutting out in the kitchen. I thumbed an inch of soft, yellowed paper in either hand, and began reading slow; I let myself savor the perfect middle of the book—the brief, sensuous stretch of the story where all the threads have come loose but you can’t exactly predict how it’s all going to unravel.

“Where is your brother?” I looked up from my book. Dad was standing over me with his hands on his hips.

“He went out.”

“Did he take the car?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me he’s running.”

“Yeah, he went for a run,” I said.

Dad sat down next to me on the couch. He looked sideways at the book I was holding in my lap.

“What are you reading?”

“A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I let him tip the book closed over my thumb so he could look at the cover. There was no illustration, just the title spelled out in a bold font.

“I remember this being a little racy,” he said.

“The characters are my age,” I said, a little too defensively.

“Well,” he said. “It’s probably about time you found out what’s on the mind of every boy your age.”

“What, baseball?” I said, feeling my face go hot.

“Yeah, right,” he snorted, and gave me a queasy smile. He got up and went out to the mudroom. I settled back into my book.

“Okay, Danielle,” Dad said, coming back into the living room with his coat on. “We’re going to find Liam. Get in the car.”

“What?” I said. “No.”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” he said a little quizzically, buttoning up his coat. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Why should I?”

“If you want to see your friends tonight, get in the car.” There was an edge to his voice.

“I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“Liam needs to understand that we are his family and we care about him.”

“He already knows I care about him.”

“Get in the car.”

I stomped past him, grabbing my coat and gloves on the way out. I sat in the backseat. Let him be my chauffeur, I thought. I zipped up my coat. I regretted leaving my book inside. I couldn’t go back and get it though, or it would seem like I wasn’t resigned to the total, stultifying boredom of a car ride with Dad.

Mom had the good car, since she worked on Saturdays, and we were stuck with the red Nissan—the bad car with the cracked bumper and the taped-up taillight. The backseat was a mess: crumpled napkins and crusty plastic cups from the smoothie place. Mom’s gym clothes. Mom’s cassette tapes. Spare change and straw wrappers. There was a scarf on the floor that you could tell she dropped in the driveway—there were crumbled bits of brown leaf clinging all over it.

I was just as messy as she was, but I expected more from an adult. I picked up a quarter off the seat and put it in my coat pocket.

Dad came tramping out a minute later in his huge coat and his knit cap with the brim. He started the car and we crawled up the driveway with excruciating caution.

I could have told him we would find Liam on 29, but I didn’t say anything. I crossed my arms against the cold and tilted my head back to look at the sky through the back window. It was faintly blue, covered by thin woolly clouds, like pulled apart cotton. Bare branches whisked by overhead like the roof of a tunnel, black and grasping.

We wasted half an hour winding our way through the back roads of Kingwood Township. Finally, Dad turned off Byram Road and we caught up to Liam a little way up Route 29. I spotted his shorts at a distance.

Dad slowed the car down and drove alongside him.

“Liam, get in the car,” he said.

Liam skept running at a steady pace along the edge of the road as if he didn’t notice we were following him.

“I thought we had an understanding,” Dad said.

“Dad, this is stupid, he’s not getting in the car,” I said.

“He’s coming home with us,” Dad said.

He sped up and jerked the car over to the side of the road, about a hundred yards ahead. He climbed out and stood there on the shoulder, breathing clouds, waiting for Liam to run by.

He said, “Liam,” and lunged out to grab him by the arm, but Liam made a sharp dodge to the left and sprinted past with no effort at all. Dad was left pitching forward, grasping at the air, his face burning a dark, rich pink.

Dad heaved himself back into the driver’s seat, taking hard sniffing breaths like a horse. He tugged the door shut and peeled out into the left lane to give Liam a wide berth as we sped past him. A car came toward us from the opposite direction and Dad swerved back to the right side of the road. We flew home. Stomach-dropping hills fell under us, and I coughed to cover up the sound I made buckling my seatbelt.

Dad plowed down our driveway, spraying gravel—deepening the ruts he was always lecturing Mom and Liam about, perpetually battling by hand with a shovel and a bucket. He rocked us to a sudden stop and cranked the emergency break. He flung his hat to the floor and stormed out of the car with a hard clap. I just sat for a minute, riding the wake of his departure.

I considered keeping vigil in the driveway until Liam got back from his run. But it was cold now that the heat was rising out of the car. And I didn’t want Liam to think I went along with Dad by choice.

I’ll wait for Liam in his bedroom, I thought.

No, I’ll wait in my bedroom, and listen for him. And when he gets back, I’ll just go in and say Hi.

No, I’ll wait until after he takes a shower and changes into clean clothes. And then I’ll go in.

I’ll knock, and then I’ll go in. I’ll just knock, and say Hi, and go in. He’ll know Dad didn’t send me. He’ll know I just want to be near him, and he’ll let me come in and look through his record collection. And he’ll make fun of me for wanting to listen to the Brian Eno album again for the twentieth time(“Here Come the Warm Jets, again,” he’ll say), but he’ll let me play it. He probably will.

I took off one of my gloves and traced my name in the fog on the window with my fingertip. I looked around the car. Somebody should pick up Mom’s trash back here, I thought. Mom should do it, really. I brushed a wad of napkins onto the floor and found another quarter. I put it in my pocket and went inside to wait.