Free The Girl From Home by Adam Mitzner

hands, she allows the coffee’s warmth to enter her.
    Jackie knows that right now, clad in her flannel pajamas, taking in the view of the serene lake from the comfort of her home, she looks like an actress in a commercial depicting the idyllic suburban life. But her existence is far from a fantasy. As she does most mornings when she finds herself in this position, she wishes she were dead.
    *  *  *
    Jonathan doesn’t feel the same sense of dread when entering Lakeview for the second time. He walks through the hallways and says hello to the African American nurse from yesterday. Today he notices she’s wearing a name tag that says Yorlene Goff .
    â€œI’m Jonathan Caine,” he says. “How’s my dad doing today?”
    â€œI remember you, Mr. Caine,” Yorlene says with a warm smile. “He’s good, but why don’t you go on in and ask him yourself?”
    As if he was expecting his son’s visit today, William Caine is sitting up in bed, watching television, when Jonathan enters his room. That it’s figure skating and not playoff football is enough for Jonathan to surmise that one of the nurses selected it.
    â€œHi, Dad. How are you feeling today?”
    â€œJohnny!” his father says rather brightly, as if he hasn’t seen him for months.
    â€œI was here yesterday, don’t you remember?”
    His father looks lost for a moment. “You were?”
    â€œYeah. I told you that I’d be back today because I was going to be staying at the house.”
    There’s no sign of recognition from his father, but he accepts the truth of Jonathan’s statement without further inquiry, and a silence falls between them as thick as any wall. Jonathan wishes his father would say something—anything—if only to prove that he’s still connected to the world. But by the way he stares at the television, Jonathan knows that, at least for the moment, there’s nothing for William Caine except figure skating.
    Jonathan takes a seat in the recliner under the window. A Russian skater is performing to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
    â€œDo you like figure skating now, Dad?” Jonathan asks.
    â€œI like the costumes. They’re pretty. Especially the ones with lots of colors. I don’t like the ones that are either all black or all white as much.”
    Jonathan always found his father to be a weak man. Part of that was because for as long as Jonathan was sentient, he knew that his mother called the shots. But Jonathan pinpoints the exact moment when he lost all respect for his father to be during a Fourth of July barbecue when he was fourteen. It was a small gathering at their home. The guest list was limited to his one living grandmother, his aunts and uncles on both sides, and their kids, as well as his mother’s childhood friend Joan Samuelson, her husband, Barry, and his father’s closest friend, Phillip Levinson, and his wife, Gayle.
    At some point, Jonathan went inside—he can never remember why—and went upstairs to his bedroom. At the top of the steps, he heard something from his parents’ room, and when he found the door open, he entered.
    From behind the closed door to the master bathroom, he heard the unmistakable sound of his mother groaning. Even at fourteen, Jonathan knew why.
    He ran downstairs, and then outside to the yard with the other guests, his stomach in knots. The first person he saw was his father, who was busy manning the grill, a stupid-ass grin on his face.
    Jonathan figured out who was with his mother by a process of elimination, but he nevertheless kept a careful eye on the door. Not more than five minutes later, his mother returned to the backyard. A minute after that, Dad’s buddy Phillip Levinson exited the house.
    Burned into Jonathan’s brain to this very day is the self-satisfied look on Levinson’s face. Like he’d just won a medal for valor or