It was true that the drinks made it easier. Each sip from his sweating glass let the words slip out more smoothly. And what she wanted were words, a story composed by a loosened tongue. A symphony of memory.

Because it had always been nice for her. A big side yard with marigolds and rose bushes pushing out of the soil. They were planted by her mother’s hands, well-worked hands. Fingers that counted vitamins and palms that checked foreheads for fevers.

And there was always a dog barking in the background. Always her father throwing together dinners after work, four seats filled at the dining room table and jazz on the stereo. Questions.

“How was your day? Did you finish your homework? What did you do after school?”

But the ones she invited in were different. She coaxed it out of them, their strange and sad histories. She sat now, legs crossed and her back against the wall of her apartment. Her chin on her hand, leaning forward, waiting. And finally he spoke.

“He wasn’t around a lot, really. I never felt as if he was my father. He worked in a factory, long hours. Addicted to every drug in the book. Uppers for breakfast, downers for dinner. Heroin, eventually. All those needles in the medicine cabinet, what the fuck did I know. What do you know then. My mother buried herself in the Bible. My father injected all our money till she threw him out. And then he showed up one night, leaning against the doorframe. Talking about what was his, ownership and all that shit. All his hard work. Smashed out of his mind. So you see? How he wasn’t real to me. How he couldn’t be.”

She liked the way he lit his cigarette. Head tilted to the side, the flame illuminated his face for just a second, like lightening. She traced the floral patterns on the wallpaper with her fingers and waited.

“Then I left. Slept on friends’ couches for a while. Finished high school and got my own place. I don’t think about him. It wasn’t the drugs that made him so nasty, I know it. He just didn’t care. I don’t know if he cared about anything.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Maybe that’s why he took those drugs. To care about something.” When she opened them, she saw that he was gripping the glass so hard the tips of his fingers were white. They were always angry afterwards, as if she had torn out their stitches. And so she crawled over to where he sat, placing her palms at the nape of his neck so that his head fell forward onto her collarbone. And she pressed her fingers into the groove between his shoulders and he said nothing more. There were only the sounds of their breathing, and a fan humming in the living room and the muffled sounds of a radio they had left on. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a lone dog barking furiously under the glowing August moon.

Mary Sarsfield is a senior English major and a Literary writer for Generation.