The Possibilities: A Novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings Read Free Book Online Page B

willing away emotion.
    “He would have moved out soon,” she says. “He would have gotten it together.”
    I walk back in and over to the stereo and put in a different CD—an old one by someone called Common Sense. I like it. It’s rap, but not so angry this time. There’s a happy beat. He has a charming lisp. They say become a doctor but I don’t have the patience. That’s good. Clever. I take a deep breath, the emotion waning.
    Suzanne goes into the closet. I take another box of books to the door, scanning the titles on the spines: Death of a Grown Grandson: A Survival Guide , Lullabies for Bereaved Grandparents , and Chicken Soup for the Bereaved Soul .
    I have not read a single one of them. The only thing I read was an article I found on the internet the very day of his death. It was an article called “The Golden Hour”: the sixty-minute window a victim has after an accident to get help. It’s an hour of hope and promise, better outcomes and statistics. I was so desperate, so foolish, and I can’t believe I did that kind of research at that time. The day of his death. I must have been so lost.
    We were far beyond the golden hour. Even though I had already seen him on the pass, my dad and I had to go to the hospital to confirm his death with Dr. Braun, whose hair was a fortresslike hedge of frizz. She wore cargo pants, a turtleneck beneath her white coat, and heeled Crocs, which made her untrustworthy. I wanted an old doctor, a white male alcoholic one, the kind I grew up with. Doctors like that could unfreeze him somehow.
    Dr. Braun had said, “The parents of the other boys are on level three if you’d like to see them.”
    My immediate thought was, What other boys? No one else existed for me then.
    I realize this is still my problem. I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to be this way. It isn’t that I value myself more than others. Maybe I just want to protect others from the likes of me, save them from having to draw from their deck of learned expressions and emotions.
    “Good job,” Suzanne says.
    “Yes,” I say. “We’re doing good.”
    We’ve been working efficiently and I wonder if this has something to do with the tension in the room, if she even notices it. I take a look around, the bags of folded large T-shirts, the thirty-four-inch-waist jeans, the one snowboard poster, a remnant of his teenaged self. This is a room that belonged to someone who didn’t intend to live here much longer.
    “You want a glass of wine?” I ask.
    “Of course,” Suzanne says.
    •   •   •
    I GO UPSTAIRS and pour us a glass of chardonnay, the only kind of wine she likes. I think of it as the drink of old ladies. I’m about to go back downstairs, but the sight of my dad and this girl outside together makes me stop and watch. They are both chipping the ice off the front deck in what seems to be a chummy sort of silence. It looks like she’s trying to chop down a tree with a butter knife, but she seems to enjoy it. I would—the repetitive choreography, late sun on my back, the lifting of big chunks of ice. It would be satisfying, like peeling paint or sunburned skin, or doing penance.
    I put the wine down, get cash from the drawer in the kitchen, and walk to the deck door, sliding it open. “You guys okay?”
    “We’re doing well, aren’t we, Miss Kit?”
    My dad heaves his body into his shovel and grunts like he’s bench-pressing. He does more in one dig than she does in five.
    “I should get going soon,” she says.
    “Yes, you’ve got beers to twist open,” my dad says.
    “No,” she says. “Just things to do.”
    I search my dad’s face for disappointment. This is the most active I’ve seen him in a while. “You go sow your wild oats,” he says. “Make a sweater.”
    “My wild oats have been sown,” she says, and looks briefly at me. “I think I’ll just go lie down.”
    “How much do we owe you?” I ask.
    “I’ve got it,” my dad says.
    He takes his wallet from his back