Reunion at Red Paint Bay - By George Harrar Page 0,67
Amy closed herself in their bathroom for a long soak in the tub, carrying a stack of Psychology Todays with her. She’d be an hour at least. He went to Davey’s bedroom, where she had banished their son for the night on the premise that at the very least, he was on site when Kenny knifed himself. Guilt by proximity. The boy was lying on his bed, staring upward, with Casper curled on his chest. Simon turned his head up to see what was so interesting on the ceiling. Nothing. To be eleven, lying on your bed, a cat on your chest, staring at nothing. Was this to be envied or not?
“It isn’t fair,” the boy said, his gaze fixed upward. “Mom grounded me for not doing anything.” He glanced over at Simon with his sad brown eyes and their incredibly long eyelashes. “Can’t you talk to her, Dad?”
“You did do something, remember? You were playing with knives yesterday with Kenny.”
“She doesn’t know that. She shouldn’t punish me for something she doesn’t know I did.”
“She knows, Davey, believe me. She just doesn’t know she knows.”
“What?”
“Never mind. When we made our pact, you didn’t tell me Kenny got hurt with the knife and his mother had to take him to the hospital.”
Davey grasped Casper and then rolled over, pinning the cat on her back. “You didn’t ask, Dad, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Mom asked if you were playing with the knife, and you lied to her.”
The boy held the back of Casper’s neck with one hand and rubbed his belly with the other, a hard massage. “That’s because I didn’t want to get her all upset, you know, because she wouldn’t understand.”
The old cat twisted from side to side, trying to free herself. “Don’t hold Casper that way,” Simon said.
“She likes it. I do it all the time.”
“You don’t know she likes it, so let her go.”
Davey released his grip, and Casper jumped off him and bolted toward the door.
“Why wouldn’t Mom understand?” Simon said.
“She’s a girl. Girls don’t play with knives.”
Girls don’t play with knives, girls don’t shoot off guns in the street, girls don’t rape, girls don’t murder. It seemed like a simple life to Simon, being female. He almost wished he could try it for a while. “You still shouldn’t lie to her.”
Davey leaned back on the bed again, his hands behind his head. “You lied to her.”
It took a moment for Simon to process the full meaning of the words—You, my father, the one who is supposed to teach me to be honest, lied to her. “What do you mean?”
“When you came home all wet. You didn’t really spill a soda on yourself because you’d never get that wet. You don’t know how to lie, Dad. You try to sound like you’re really really telling the truth. If you want people to believe you, you got to act like you don’t care if they do.”
“Seems like you’ve thought this out.”
Davey nodded. “Yeah, lying takes some thinking ahead of time. Then you just do it.”
“You sure you want to be telling me this? I am your father.”
“That’s okay because you lie, too. You didn’t want Mom to know how you really got wet, right?”
“I didn’t want her to know because—”
“It doesn’t matter why, Dad,” Davey said. “You lied, just like me.”
It was true. He was a liar, the same as his son, and worse because his own lies were about life and death. “Listen to me, Davey, lying doesn’t solve things. It just makes them worse.”
“Not if they don’t catch you.”
“It’s not about being caught. It’s what people believe. Mom doesn’t believe me. She knows I lied to her.”
“You lied to me, too, right?”
“Yes.”
“How come, Dad? I don’t care if you did something wrong.”
Simon sat on the bed, his hand inches from his son’s. He felt like picking it up, stroking the palm as he had done when Davey was a baby, loving the way the small fist closed over his index finger as if it would never let go. I don’t care if you did something wrong. Not forgiveness for whatever was done, just unquestioned acceptance no matter what. One liar to another.
“You’re right,” Simon said, “I shouldn’t have lied to you or Mom. I’m going to change that starting right now, no more lying.”
Davey shifted on his side and propped his head up with one arm. “So how’d you get wet?”
“There’s a man, his name is Paul, he’s been sending me postcards for the last