If These Wings Could Fly - Kyrie McCauley Page 0,47
this, not to get complacent.
“Deal,” I say. “Just no Monopoly.”
Even happy families break over Monopoly.
When dinner is finished, he offers to go get some dessert for us to eat while we play. We spend a few minutes weighing the pros and cons of ice cream versus candy, and then he reaches for the top of the fridge. Wallet, keys, gun.
Only he hesitates.
“Where’s my wallet?” he asks.
“What’s wrong?” Mom says from the table, where she and Juniper are stacking board games.
“Where’s my fucking wallet?” he says, louder. “I put it right here, like I always do.”
“I’m sure it’s here,” Mom says, getting up from the table. I watch as she squeezes Juniper’s hand before she leaves her. “Maybe it fell behind the fridge.”
But they pull it away from the wall, and his wallet isn’t there, either.
“Let’s go check the truck,” she suggests. His jaw clenches tight, but he nods.
Campbell and I check the rest of the house, digging into the sofa and searching the entertainment center. My eyes do that thing they always do now, which is to slip past the part of the wall that isn’t broken anymore.
There’s a picture frame on the floor already, and I lift it back to its nail. Stay, I beg it silently.
We don’t find the wallet, and a moment later, the door slams.
He comes into the house angry, kicking his boots off so that they hit against the back door.
He finds us in the living room, elbow-deep in the sofa as we check it again.
“Anything?”
“We’re still looking,” I tell him, but he’s already so far gone.
“I found it!” Juniper says from the doorway to the room, and we all turn at once.
She’s holding his wallet in her outstretched hand.
“It was just near the front door,” she says. “It must have fallen out of your jacket.”
He moves across the room and grabs the wallet.
“Fucking ridiculous,” he says, putting it on top of the fridge.
We return to the table, dessert forgotten, and quickly settle on Apples to Apples. Juniper is next to me, and I realize that her hair and clothes are damp. I didn’t realize she went out to search the truck with them.
A green card is flipped: “colorful.”
Campbell throws down an opportune choice of “rainbow” and easily wins the first round.
We settle into the game, but that feeling of hope I had earlier is gone. Now it feels like we are on one of those rickety little bridges with the wooden planks in all the action movies, crossing over a deep ravine. As we cross it, the planks start to fall off behind us, so we are forced to run if we want to make it to the other side.
Don’t look down. Just keep moving.
When it’s his turn to judge, he doesn’t grab a card right away.
“Sorry,” he says.
We all fall silent.
“The wallet had cash in it from the job this weekend. I just couldn’t afford to lose it.”
“We know,” Mom says. The girls and I stay quiet. It’s not like his apologies are rare. He actually says sorry to us almost every time. It’s just usually a day or two later. It takes that long for him to come back together.
Maybe his quick remorse—and the fact that he stopped at all—is a good sign.
“Let’s just enjoy game night,” Mom says, sliding him a card. He glances at her, and he must find whatever he’s looking for, because he smiles and nods and takes the card she offers. Sometimes I think they only see some past version of each other. Like she loves who he used to be. I wonder if it feels like loving a ghost. I wonder if it feels like mourning.
We start the next round of the game, and my parents miss the way Juniper never fully settles back into her chair. She’s ready to bolt upstairs if things escalate again. They miss the way Campbell grips the cards in her hands so tight they are bending, the fierce flat line of her mouth, the way her eyes stay on the cards no matter what.
My father reaches for a card. There are circles of lighter skin on his forearm. They’ve been there forever, but it took me years to put it all together.
He says his father was even more strict than him, but it’s code. He means his father was meaner. The circles are cigarette burns.
There are other scars, too. And Mom has hinted enough for me to know that my grandfather didn’t just scream and threaten like Dad does. He