David didn’t come home until after two a.m. Julie had sat on the couch with the view out the window, and from there she watched him glide the car to the curb, then sit another minute, two minutes, five. It was light in the room and dark outside, and her eyes followed the blue pinprick from the car to the door.
He turned his key quietly, closed the door quietly, paused to remove his shoes. The opposite of the Sophie whirlwind.
“Hey, Davey,” she said.
“Oh, hi! I didn’t think anyone would be awake.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” A little lie. The kind that didn’t matter. “Sit with me a sec?”
He came into the room and settled in the high-backed chair. She studied his face. He didn’t look stressed or aggrieved or anything other than tired.
“How was your day?” A carefully calibrated question. Not prying.
“It was okay.”
She tried another. “Do anything interesting?”
“Not much.”
She had to ask her real questions if she wanted real answers. “Did you notice my car behind yours the other day?”
“Huh? No. Where?”
She named the intersection.
“Oh. I didn’t see you. Guess I was distracted.”
“You were more than distracted, honey. Cars were pulling around you because you sat there for so long.”
“Huh.”
He looked uncomfortable. She knew it would be smarter to stop, but she couldn’t. “What’s going on with you, Davey? Talk to me. No judgment.”
“Nothing. I’m tired. It’s two in the morning.”
“It wasn’t two when I sat behind your car, and it wasn’t two when I saw you sitting in the park. What’s going on? For real.”
“Are you following me?” He frowned and rubbed his head. “None of this is any of your business.”
“It is, sweetie. You’re living in our house, and technically that’s our car you’re driving.” Wrong tack. She knew it. No good ever came of that kind of conversation, and she’d always tried hard to be a chill parent, at least to their faces. She tried to walk it back. “I don’t care about any of that, though. I just want to help. You were so distracted in the park, and the other day when you spilled your coffee . . . Is it your Pilot? Are you having problems since you had it turned off?”
David groaned. “You don’t know anything about my Pilot. You never have.”
Julie opened her mouth, but David kept talking. “And you know what? I don’t need you telling me that I’m living in your house and driving your car. I don’t need your car or your help.”
“Davey—don’t you, though? You’re not working.”
“I’ll be fine. I haven’t been trying. I can get a job tomorrow, or else I can reenlist.”
She froze. Not that; she’d never be able to go through that again. If she didn’t weigh what she said next, that would be the first thing he did in the morning, given how this conversation was going. What could she say that wouldn’t influence the outcome? “You’re right, David. I only want you to do what’s best for you. I’m sorry for prying. Let’s go to sleep and talk about this in the morning. It’s too late to argue. I just wanted to help.”
“Help. Huh. How could any of this help?” He was still upset, but she couldn’t tell which way the upset was directed. “Telling me I’m leeching off you? Telling me something is wrong with me, as if I don’t know that already?”
“I didn’t say you were leeching. I just want to help fix whatever’s bothering you.”
“Tell me how your Pilot feels.”
“What?” That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.
“Tell me what your Pilot feels like.”
“I don’t know. I’m so used to it. That’s like asking me the mechanics of breathing, or reading.” She saw his frustration and fished for something more. “It’s—I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like a particular thing. If I think about what it’s like when it’s cycled down, or if I try to remember what it was like before? It’s exactly the same, just, like, the opposite of morning before I’ve had coffee, or the opposite of hungover or that thing where you have the flu and everything is underwater? It’s the opposite of that. That’s all.”
“No noise?”
The noise again. How many times had he said that, and they’d dismissed it? She’d assumed it had gotten better, because he hadn’t mentioned it in so long. He’d gone to work for BNL and talked about how it had saved him; she thought he’d learned to live with it.
“No noise, Davey, I’m sorry. Is that what this is about?”
“That’s what everything is always about. Nobody ever believes me, and nothing helps, so I don’t know how you expect to help.”
“I can try. I want to help, you have to believe that. I just don’t know what to do. We’ll talk to BNL again.”
“I don’t want to talk with them ever again.”
That was new. “How are you going to get this fixed if you can’t talk to the people who caused it? The VA?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. How about we start over with getting you a new job, then. And maybe someone else can address the noise? A psychologist?”
“Mom. Did you honestly just tell me I need my head checked? You said you want to help, that you want me to talk to you, then you suggest I’m imagining it?”
His face flushed. He was angry, and she didn’t want to be angry back, but she couldn’t help herself. It was late, and she was tired, and he misinterpreted everything she said. “I didn’t say you were imagining it, just that if it’s not the implant it must be something else. In the meantime, you need to deal with it, the same as you always have. Get a job. Maybe staying here has you thinking it’s not a priority? Pull yourself together, so
