The Possibilities: A Novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings

looks like a small intestine, a Robotic Floor Vac with remote and wall mount, Christmas ornaments that change color at your touch, an embroidery machine. Next to the embroidery machine is an old pillowcase that I assume my father has tried, and failed, to embroider. He almost completed a letter: an S , perhaps, but gave up. The design looks shaky and manic, an art project by a person in some kind of recovery program. All the objects. It crosses my mind that I will inherit them one day. One of the saddest parts about a parent’s death must be feeling burdened by a lot of things they left behind. The thought makes me want to get rid of all my bad underwear.
    He follows my gaze, looks back at the shelf. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I know.”
    “No, it’s okay. We all need different things.” I try to look at him like the children whose father finally made them a sandwich.
    “I’m going to go try this out,” I say, but I don’t leave. I lean against the door frame, feeling the weight of fatigue. I’m down here to show that I’m sorry, but I also need him. This knowledge I have of Cully won’t make sense until I share it with him. I hesitate, but then think that whenever my kids confided in me, I felt soothed and proud, necessary. “Dad?”
    “Yeah, sport.” He starts to unbutton his shirt.
    “Cully was a drug dealer.”
    “Oh?” he says, his hands pausing on a button.
    “Pot. He sold pot.”
    My dad nods and squints as if trying to make a decision.
    “I didn’t know this,” I say. “And maybe there’s more I don’t know. Maybe he was out of control. I failed. I failed to keep him safe. I think that’s what people think. Maybe everyone thought he was a bad kid and I didn’t know this.” I am gripping the knife; the red button comes on and I press it off.
    “I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “I just feel stupid.” I want to slump down to the floor, but I hold myself up. I wait for his judgment.
    My dad stays on his bed with his shirt partly undone. His torso is concave, the hair on his chest a gray black.
    “Well,” he says.
    I wonder if he’s just as ashamed and disappointed. He must be.
    “It’s too late.” He scratches his jaw. “Nothing you can do about it now.”
    I look up at the painting over him, then back down. He’s still pensive, trying to figure this out. I am rooting for him to solve it.
    “Torture yourself if you want,” he says. “But know that even if he were alive, even if he was doing something completely different, you’d still have those thoughts. I’d think all the time how I was messing you up. No mother, no siblings, and I didn’t invest all my money in the resort like some of my friends. Then I’d see other families—they’d do everything right, and you know what? Most of their kids were still idiots. Cully loved you and he felt loved by you. He made both good and bad decisions. He was a happy boy. That’s all. Besides.”
    He gets up and walks to his closet to hang up his shirt, turning his back to me. Sometimes I think he cries when I’m not looking. I’ve always imagined him doing it while hanging up his clothes or putting things away. It would be too indulgent to cry without accomplishing anything else.
    “Besides what?” I ask.
    “Besides, you don’t know what you’ve done. He didn’t have the chance to become himself, or to become a man. We’re very different from the people we were in our twenties. At that age I was a very different person. So were you.”
    I think of that self, on the verge of becoming another self. Then having Cully at twenty-one, right when I wanted nothing to do with motherhood. It was a beautiful mistake. Would his mistakes have one day been beautiful?
    “We’ve got a lot of lives in this lifetime,” he says, and I’m almost certain he’s thinking about his life with and without my mom.
    His back is still to me and I know he’d be more comfortable if I left. That’s the whole deal with being a parent—you have to