I slide out of my seat and sit down next to him on the floor. I am still holding the dog tags, my hands in my lap. “I guess I didn’t know my dad that well because I was so young when he left, but I do remember thinking he was the bomb. He was so much fun. My brothers were actually pretty sweet back then—they used to stick up for me. All three of them watched over me and kept me in line. My dad used to play games with Ricky and Evan and me, and my mom was so freggin’ happy all the time. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t really that way, but I just remember it being so great when I was little. And I remember the day he came back. My mom was so incredible. She made it this really big deal. She made everything special for my dad. And for my brothers and me. That picture of me and her next to my bed, that was taken at a family reunion a few months after my dad came home. He was a hero, you know? I always felt like everybody looked at me like I was special because he was my dad. Because my dad did this amazing thing. Because he came home, and he fit himself right back into life. And my mom, you know, she made it so that he could do that. Without a single glitch. He slid right back into place.”
I look up at David, and he is staring at the dog tags in my hand. I think that he must want to know why they are cut into pieces. And why Michael had them.
“So, life was great. But then, when I was six, my dad got sick. Really sick. He had the stomach flu and then a few days later, he had trouble breathing, and he had this pinched feeling in his chest. My mom took him to the clinic, and the doctor said that he thought my dad had an infection in his heart, something called myocarditis. It’s caused by some kind of a viral infection, and the only way to diagnose it is through a heart biopsy. They came home from the clinic with some steroids, even though the clinic doctor suggested they go straight to the hospital for more tests. My dad said the biopsy was too invasive, and the steroids would fix it. And my mom, she didn’t make him go. She put on her rose-colored-glasses and said that he would be fine. A day later his heart failed and that was it. My dad was gone and everything changed.”
“Emma,” he says, “Jesus. That is horrible.”
“My mom met Michael at some stupid church thing a year later, and before anyone could argue, they got married, but I never understood why. Michael was never nice to her. Or me. I mean, she needed his money—she had three kids to raise. And I guess she figured that if she married him, none of us would ever want for anything. But it was more than that. She thought she didn’t deserve anything better.”
I’m staring at the pieces of metal in my hand, thinking about how different life would be if my mother had taken my father to the hospital.
“My brothers took to Michael immediately,” I continue, “because he let them do whatever the hell they wanted. I watched that man twist my mother and brothers into people they never would have become if my dad was still here. Michael had his thumb pressed down on all three of them right from the start, and I’m the only one that saw it. I’m the only one that stood up for myself and refused to let him take me over. And it pissed him off. He wanted to control me just like he controlled them, but there was no way in hell I was gonna let that happen. I fought back. I always fought back. And the only sort of control he had over me was that he forced me to spend my life walking on eggshells, always wondering what he would do next. At first I thought he didn’t like me because I was in his way, because I was some sort of obstacle to my mother. For a long time I thought he saw me as his competition because I was so young and I still needed her so much. But as I got older, I realized that he was, in fact, manipulating me, just in a different way. He did have control over me. A sick kind of control. And I played right into it.” I look down at the dog tags and sigh. “And, apparently, I still am.”
My eye sockets hurt, and I want to cry. I put the dog tags down on to the floor and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. And then I growl. Not because I am sad, but because the anger is coming back. David wraps his arm around my shoulder. He kisses my cheek. I am sure it is out of pity.
“For five years I wore my dad’s dog tags every day. I wore them everywhere I went. When I was little, I used to pretend they were some kind of shield against Michael and against what my brothers were becoming. I used to pretend they were protecting me from something worse than what was already happening. I would kiss them at night before I went to sleep. Then, when I was twelve, my brother Evan ratted me out. He told Michael that he saw me smoking a joint with a bunch of boys one Saturday night when I was supposed to be at a friend’s sleepover. It was true. I was smoking a joint with a bunch of guys, and Michael freaked out and punished me, because that’s what he does. I was pissed as hell about the punishment, and so I smashed my mother’s perfume bottles all over the kitchen floor. He ripped the dog tags from around my neck and cut them up with a pair of tin snips right in front of me. My mom watched him do it and never said a word. He told me he was going to flush them down the toilet because I was an ungrateful brat, and so I always assumed that they were gone. But he must not have done it, because here they are.”