AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Nothing Like the Beav
EMILY
When I was a little girl, my mom watched reruns of this show calledLeave it to Beaver.(When I was eight, I understood nothing about the potential innuendo such a title might carry. But now I was willing to put good money on there being several adult films made off the back of that singular name.)
Anyway, Mom said she liked watching it because it let her live vicariously through someone else’s perfect childhood, seeing how her own hadn’t been ideal.
“That’s why your dad and I will do everything in our power to make sure you and your brother grow up in the happiest way possible.” She’d said it all the time. I didn’t have any context for this statement, nothing to compare it against. But looking back now, I think Mom meant that she always did her best for us. She and my dad worked hard to make sure our lives were great.
And they had been great. We were happy. For a lot of years.
My brother was a star student, got an engineering degree at UCLA, and went on to become a pilot.
I followed him to college and started my writing career soon after graduation. Less illustrious, sure—Dad didn’t have a sweatshirt that proclaimed he was a proud writer dad the way he had one for the navy. But whatever. They were proud all the same. Of both of us. And that had felt good.
Even once we were adults, there had been family dinners, group texts, and weekend trips when we could, when Jake was around...we were still happy. Hell, we were perfect. Just like Beaver and his family.
Until we weren’t.
The last memory I have of us being that picture-perfect family was right before Jake died. We had dinner at a restaurant in San Diego just before his squadron deployed on the boat. I had crab legs.
Now just the mention of crab turns my stomach.
“You’re coming for dinner, right?” My mother’s voice over the phone now sounded urgent, pressurized.
“I always come for dinner on Sundays, Mom.”
She sighed on the other end of the line. With relief? Frustration? It was hard to tell.
Sometimes I felt like she lived for these dinners together because it was the only time all week that she got to share some of the stress of being in my father’s presence. I understood how bearing it alone would be exhausting.
Dad had become something of a shadow in my life. Less stressful a figure than he was in Mom’s, but no less upsetting. Where there had once been the hearty laugh and legitimateinterest in my latest assignment or book idea, now there was the stern silent man with haunted eyes that looked past me. He wore a vacant grimace most of the time, as if he preferred to live the news of my brother’s death over and over in his head to interacting with those of us still living and breathing around him.
The accident wasn’t easy for any of us to accept, and we were each still working through our demons, in our own ways. I tried to comfort myself by reminding my grieving heart that Jake had known the risks when he’d taken orders and accepted his assignment to fly jets. He’d always said that nothing in life was without risk, anyway. It could as easily have been a freak accident that killed me. Or Mom.
But it wasn’t.
And now the golden boy was gone, and Dad—more than any of us—was struggling.
The worst nights were the ones when he came back to life like someone had suddenly plugged him into the outlet, and the vitriol and hate spewed from him, fresh as the days after the accident had occurred. A “mishap,” the navy called it, a word that felt purposeful in its minimalization of reality. A crash was what it had really been. A horrible accident. Two multi-million-dollar jets destroyed, and a young life lost in the process.
The San Diego sunshine was exuberant as I drove from my apartment in Mission Bay to Mom and Dad’s place in Encinitas. They lived near the coast, the home I’d loved growing up, perched on a hill that afforded a partial view of the sweeping Pacific Ocean beyond. As I pulled into the driveway, I stoppedfor a moment out front to face that wide expanse of bottomless dark blue and take a deep breath.
It was gorgeous. And I was lucky to get to be here, to breathe the salt-tinged air and see this vista whenever I wanted to.
“There she is,” Mom called from just inside the front screen. “Gabe, Emily’s here.”
I turned and headed inside, leaving the glow of late afternoon for the perpetual gloom of my parents’ living room. It faced the wrong side of the house, which kept it dark in the afternoons anyway, but it was also the spot where Dad kept vigil, and it seemed he couldn’t achieve just the right level of self-pity and anger if we kept too many lights on.
As I stepped in, letting my eyes adjust, Dad rose from the leather armchair where he could usually be found, a newspaper in his lap and a pencil tucked behind his ear.
“Hey Dad, Mom.”
My mother gave me a quick hug and then headed off into the kitchen. Dad rose, waiting for me to cross the room so he could give me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Honey.”
