Everything Changes

placed erection here, the surprise bald head there, and while your focus is shattered by the freak show that we are, we’ll use the opportunity to bash your head in. Norm revels in our superficial wounds, somehow forgetting the fact that we were fighting for Pete and not for him and that we altogether failed in our mission to get our brother’s money back. As always, Norm is judging success solely on the level of drama generated, rather than the actual result. I guess I really shouldn’t expect anything more from someone for whom the traveling has always been famously better than the arrival.

    Matt and I stand on the curb, licking our wounds as we watch our parents drive away, a view that would have been inconceivable as recently as this morning, even. Norm showed up only a few days ago with plans for instant rapprochement that bordered on delusional, and yet here he is, effortlessly enmeshed in the family dynamic as if he’s never left.
Can it really be that simple?
I wonder. Can you just blow past the hurts and defenses of people, the transgressions of your past, and just steamroll your way into a new situation, one that works better for you? There’s something appealing in the idea, something that makes me stop and consider my own pathetic situation. Maybe a little delusional bullheadedness is what’s called for here. Yesterday I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of it, but today feels different. Today I’m a guy who fights in the streets, who rides cuffed in police cars, who has to have teeth removed from his knuckles by paramedics.
    For now, though, I can’t stop shaking.
    “Listen,” I say to Matt, who has pulled off the Elton John wig and is gingerly rubbing his bruised temple. “Why don’t you take the car back to the city? There’s something I need to do.”
    “Here?” Matt says incredulously.
    “I want to look in on Tamara and Sophie.”
    He takes the car keys from me and presses a button. Lights flash and locks click as the Lexus snaps to attention. “How’s she doing?” he says.
    “Who?”
    “Who are we talking about?”
    “She’s doing fine,” I say.
    He gives me a funny look imbued with understanding. “And how are you doing?”
    “I’ll live,” I say, shaking my sore fist.
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    I meet his gaze, allowing with my eyes what I can’t seem to say out loud. “I know,” I say.
    “When’s Hope due back?”
    “Tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Oh.” His eyes are open and sympathetic, inviting me to bare my soul, and it would be so good to say something out loud, to make everything a little more real, a little more possible, but it’s just not happening.
    “Can I get a lift?” I say instead.
    He holds my look for a moment and then shrugs. “Sure thing.”
    Matt drives the Lexus much too fast for my taste, accelerating on the straightaways, taking the corners at high speed. “Some day, huh?” I say, to fill the vacuum of my unspoken confession as we pull up to Tamara’s house. He looks curiously up the walk as I step out of the car, then nods, offering me a rare full-blown little-brother smile as he throws the car into drive. “It’s not over yet,” he says before tearing away from the curb and disappearing into the gathering twilight.

Chapter 25
    “I have the same dream at least once a week,” Tamara says. “I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night and realize that I forgot to take Sophie out of the bath. When I turn on the light, there she is, lying faceup under the water. She’s been there for hours, and I yank her out and try to wake her up, but the whole time I’m shaking her and giving her mouth-to-mouth, she’s cold and much too heavy, like she’s waterlogged, and I already know she’s dead, and that it’s my fault.”
    We’re sitting on the blue tiled floor of the bathroom while Sophie splashes around in the tub. Tamara has my wrecked hand on her lap and is holding a Ziploc sandwich bag of ice on it. Next to us, Sophie splashes happily in the bathtub, her light hair so much darker plastered to her wet scalp, her chubby cheeks glistening as she sings to herself. “Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, willy nilly silly ole bear.”
    “And the thing of it is,” Tamara continues, “no matter how many times I have the dream, I’m always shocked and horrified, and this little part of me, the part that’s conscious of the dream, wonders how the hell I could have let it happen again, when I already know the