was being real with her. It felt adult. “But I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care if you want to. I’m your father, and I know it’s best for you. You have to get out of the chair and come with me. You’re going to be fine, and so am I, and your mother’s going to get better, and she’s going to come home soon.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Then all the more reason. Honey, think of it like a tooth. If I pull a tooth in my patient’s mouth, the others don’t have to go, too. Every tooth has its own roots. That’s us, you and me. We stay rooted in the gum, even though the others go. We’re our own separate teeth.”
“We’re not teeth, Dad,” Allie said, though she got the analogy. Her mother and Jill were the missing teeth in the Garvey gums. “You’re in denial.”
“It’s not about denial, it’s about survival. Maybe you need to be in a little bit of denial to survive. We have to survive, and you know how we survive? By putting one foot in front of the other.”
“Dad, no.”
“Don’t think. Just do. Now get the fuck up.”
“Did you just curse?” Allie asked, so surprised that she finally looked up at him. His eyes were burning, his lips pursed hard, and his jaw set with determination. He was an orthodontist on a mission, and she felt a pang of guilt, knowing he was trying to help her. She needed help because she didn’t know what to do or how to live anymore. She didn’t want to come out of hiding to go to the store, school, or anywhere. She loved him so much, and maybe he was right. She wanted him to be right.
“I’m not gonna let you sink, like I let your mother sink,” her father said, his eyes newly wet behind his glasses. He held out his hand. “I’m your life preserver.”
Part Two
—TWENTY YEARS LATER—
It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
—DAVID FOSTER WALLACE,
Kenyon Commencement Address, May 21, 2005
The tears I shed yesterday have become rain.
—THICH NHAT HANH, “MESSAGE,”
Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems
CHAPTER 48
Allie Garvey
The morning sun rose in a cloudless blue sky, and Allie walked toward the green Gardens of Peace tent on the gravesite. Fifty mourners clustered underneath, holding red roses with droopy heads. An older priest stood before bouquets of white lilies and red gladiolas, and an enlarged photo of the deceased rested on an easel.
DAVID PAUL HYBRINSKI read the caption, and the photo was a candid of David at a tennis court, showing him from the waist up. He was grinning, resting his hand on the net and dressed the way Allie remembered, in his red bandanna and white polo shirt. He looked in his early twenties, so maybe the photo was taken at college.
Allie’s gut clenched as she approached, and she felt a deep wave of dread. She eyed the photo, and David’s warm brown eyes gazed back at her, telegraphing why she’d fallen for him, twenty years ago. Now she tried to see behind them. He had to have been miserable but hiding it, like she’d been, ever since the night Kyle died. He had to have felt the same guilt, and she sensed it was why he’d committed suicide. His obituary hadn’t specified how he had done it, and she knew that newspapers followed rules about reporting the details. Allie had a guess, because he had killed himself on the twenty-year anniversary of Kyle’s death.
She walked forward, her heels clacking on the asphalt. She’d kept the secret about Kyle because she hadn’t wanted to get caught, back then. Now she didn’t know what she wanted. She knew only that she couldn’t go on this way. She’d never considered suicide, even as low as she got. Her punishment was to live with the shame and to wonder forever. To this day, she didn’t know how the prank had gone so lethally wrong.
She drew closer to the mourners, who were divided into two groups, one on the far side of the casket, facing her, and the other on the near side, their backs turned. Then Allie spotted Sasha and Julian, who were standing together on the far side, and she could see them clearly. Her reaction was visceral; her