Free Canary by Duane Swierczynski Page A

leading to a little promenade where you could watch the seals laze about in a little sandy cove. The creatures were adorable but they also reeked, as promised. It was beautiful and gag-inducing, like so many things in life.
It’s also the last happy “normal” memory I have of us as a family.
Because four weeks later, at the pre-Thanksgiving table, I ask you for your social. You don’t hear me. You’re darting between oven and counter and fridge and stovetop like a hummingbird, feverishly trying to get dinner together. I repeat the question, Mom, what’s your social, and I know I sound irritated, which is what probably catches your attention. The look in your eyes startles me. Halfway through dinner you excuse herself. You almost make it to the first-floor bathroom, but then you don’t. I don’t understand until after dinner, when you and Dad tell me to wait a minute, you have something you need to tell me. And the floor of the world drops out from beneath my feet.
Don’t tell Marty, you say. So I don’t.
Twelve months later, I’m the one darting around the kitchen, with Marty at the table on his iPod. The thing’s practically glued to his hands these days, just as you predicted. Dad’s out in the backyard, even though it’s freezing, because he has this idea about grilling the small turkey I picked up two days ago. I don’t eat meat, but Dad jokes that I might change my mind once he gets this sucker grilling. I tell Dad I doubt it.
This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I was the one who should have been flying home from California this morning. If I’d been in California, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be a snitch, facing jail unless I do something I know I can never do.
Fuck, the most I should be worrying about right now is how I’m going to finish Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
in time to make it down to Venice Beach with my friends. Or grappling with the tough Friday night decision of hanging out in Westwood vs. driving over to Los Feliz to go to that cool indie bookstore you and I found last year. (Do you remember that place, Mom? Skylight? Remember me promising you that, yes, we’d always go back whenever you visited?)
I stare at Dad’s back thinking I should tell him. Not everything, but enough. There’s a version I’ve worked up in my mind. A version that doesn’t implicate D., because that would be as bad as narking him out to Wildey. You know Dad. Dad would hit poor D. with the double-barreled shotgun blast of “You so much as look at my daughter again and I’ll rip out your heart” (concerned father) and “Hey, buddy, I’m going to help you beat this thing” (concerned drug and alcohol counselor).
So maybe I tell him I’m doing extra credit by volunteering with the police department. Observing for a paper, maybe? No, that won’t fly. I’m not taking any criminal justice classes and Dad knows it. None of my freshman triple classes (The Beats, The Greek Way) fit, either.
So … no. I can’t bring it up. I can’t even hint at it. Talking to you like this is one thing; talking to Dad is another. Dad is still uncannily sharp about these things, despite the events of the past year. For the past four years our relationship feels like that of an ex-con and parole officer, where the P.O. is basically a decent guy who genuinely wants the best for you. But he’s still going to crack down hard on your ass if you so much as think about stepping out of line.
Now Dad has the turkey in a disposable aluminum pan. He picks it up and turns with an excited look on his face.
—Want to get the back door for me?
—You’re really going to do this?
—I told you, unless it snows, I’m grilling this sucker.
—You’re hard-core, Old Man.
—Right on, Sarie Canary.
In the days immediately following Mom’s death, Dad and I tried to keep up the old routine. The banter, the puns. You always said I had inherited Dad’s weird sense of humor. But we quickly noticed that without you,