The Forgotten Hours by Schumann Katrin

Author:Schumann, Katrin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542040037
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2019-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

22

Whenever the phone rings, Katie jumps. It is never, ever for her. Her father hangs on it like a teenager, pacing, skin coated with sweat, snapping the cord impatiently. Her parents live on the phone. They talk and talk and talk, and Katie shuts it all out. Once, when they are both out of the house, Katie dials Lulu’s phone number.

The phone trills in the distance until Katie remembers about caller ID and slams the handset back on the cradle. She knows she’s not supposed to contact her, but she also knows that no one understands what’s happening to her: she hates Lulu, but she also doesn’t. It’s impossible to just switch feelings off. She wants desperately to know what Lulu is thinking, to understand her, but what Katie wants doesn’t matter.

School happens around her and to her—SATs, college applications. In many ways, from the outside everything is almost exactly as it was before. Except for the once languid, childish months at the lake during summertime; those are over. For the first time in Katie’s living memory, the Gregorys spend the summer in West Mills. Only once do they fight about this.

“Why?” Katie yells at her parents as the two of them sit eating a cobbled-together dinner at the kitchen counter. “Why can’t we go back? I don’t understand!”

There are fumbled explanations; her mother flushes, her green eyes cloudy. But there is no real answer, other than the answer they all know deep down inside but cannot bring themselves to say. Eagle Lake is Chernobyl; it is fear and confusion and poison. It is Lulu and her fucked-up family and her lies.

Life cants at a strange angle but still moves forward. Nothing will stop time but death, and even then that’s not certain. The West Mills house goes on the market, but it doesn’t sell. Grumpy delays a planned move back to London. Sometimes he and Katie drive into the city to catch a show or to stop at the cliffside picnic spots on the Palisades Parkway to kill time (he does not come for dinner to the house anymore). They eat cheese-and-pickle sandwiches on Wonder Bread folded into wax paper that he grabs from her and crunches in his enormous fist until it shrinks into a damp ball. He tells her about England when he was a little boy. They find safe topics. She tries to dwell on happy, ordinary memories like these rather than wonder why Grumpy wants to leave them to return to England. This leaving, running away, seems like an act of cowardice to her. Gram died years ago; why does Grumpy want to leave now, when their world is imploding? Does he even know what’s going on? He is so stoic, his back so straight inside his corduroy blazer, his neck crisscrossed with wrinkles. But they can’t talk about what’s happening.

Her mother takes a job at a local flower shop and is no longer at home when the kids come back from school. She works weekends, special occasions.

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