Free Thy Neighbor by Norah Vincent Page A

crime of omission, I think—I give her the token ring or piece of gold or silver. I put it in her palm and say, “I forgive you,” and then she chops off my head.
    Except that my head is still like that boulder I read about. Rolling down. I’ve always got to pick it up again.
    â€œTell me about your Dad,” she says, and smiles gently.
    â€œI hated him and I wanted to be him,” I say. “Pretty tired stuff.”
    â€œMaybe, but tell me anyway.”
    â€œWhat do you want to know that I haven’t told you already?”
    â€œI don’t know. Something surprising. Something that no one else knows.”
    She is sitting up now on her elbow looking down at me intently.
    â€œYou’re no different than anyone else, you know,” I say a little angrily. “Everyone wants to know why he did it.”
    â€œBut I don’t mean that. I mean the opposite.”
    â€œThe opposite of what?”
    â€œOf the devil.”
    â€œHe wasn’t the devil. That’s my whole point.”
    â€œI know, but you haven’t said that.”
    â€œThat’s
all
I’ve been trying to say.”
    â€œYes, but you keep circling back to the same place.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? What place?”
    â€œI don’t know. Hardness, I guess. His demands. His expectations. Your differences.”
    â€œWell, that’s the way I remember it.”
    â€œThat’s the way you let yourself remember it. But there’s more.”
    â€œOh, really? And what makes you so sure about that?”
    â€œBecause if there weren’t, you’d stop trying. Case closed. But you keep going back because there’s something else still there and you need it?”
    â€œSo now you’re a shrink. Is that it?”
    â€œDon’t make this about me.”
    â€œDon’t make it about
me
, you poser.”
    â€œPoser? I’ve never said I was anything other than what I am. You’re the one who’s posing. You can’t even be honest with yourself. You don’t know how.”
    She flops down on her back and sighs loudly.
    We lie in silence like this for a while, both staring up at the ceiling, both hurt, but both working inside ourselves, waiting for the conflict to ease. We can’t part this way and we know it. We’re both too desperate and, despite whatever I say, we are both way too much in need of the therapy we came for.
    After a long time, she says:
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    She waits longer, then tries again for a way back in.
    â€œHe had soft eyes, you said.”
    To this I manage a strangled:
    â€œYes.”
    We are in the most fragile place we ever go to now. One false word and the quiet will flail beyond salvaging.
    â€œThere,” she says. Carefully, leadingly, placing her finger above the wound, but not touching it.
    Still more silence. Then, finally, I say:
    â€œRaspberries.”
    I almost want to laugh at this, and if I weren’t so fucking maimed and terrified, I probably would.
    But she gives no sign of anything. She just waits.
    Clever girl.
    â€œHe loved raspberries.”
    She nods very, very slowly, but says nothing.
    So I go on.
    â€œI remember being very young. We were sitting on the couch side by side watching TV one night after dinner, and we were eating bowls of raspberries with grenadine.”
    I stop again. I’m going to make her sit for this. See if she can improv and get it right. Squeeze out the confession.
    But she’s better at this than I am. Not even challenged.
    She’s so still. Electrically still, like a sound that’s too low or too high for me to hear but that registers anyway, somewhere, on my skin or on hers, or between, and she knows she can linger, balanced palpably this way, encouraging, for as long as it will take.
    And that’s the right word.
    Encourage, to make brave.
    Why is this little, little thing so hard to say? So hard to remember?
    We were eating raspberries.