The Banjo They Said I Could Forgive

In the entryway I set the ruined banjo on the hall table. Beside it sat a wooden bowl of keys. My parents’. My sister’s. Roy’s, the fob stamped with the four rings of an Audi RS7. Through the window I could see the car itself, black and freshly washed, parked near the boat ramp. For a few seconds I watched my family laughing in the next room like nothing had happened. Then I reached into the bowl and closed my hand around the key.

I put it in my pocket and walked back out to the porch, and I said nothing for the rest of the day. That evening we had the planned barbecue anyway. My father grilled steaks like he’d promised. My mother set the table with her good dishes. Beau ran around the yard with a water gun as if he hadn’t destroyed nine thousand dollars of someone else’s property that morning. Dana kept calling him her “sweet, energetic boy” every time he did anything at all.

Roy caught me alone at the porch rail, trying to sound like a reasonable man managing an unreasonable situation. “I can write you a check,” he said. “Twelve thousand. More than the banjo cost.” I didn’t look at him. “You can’t fix this with money,” I said. He exhaled hard through his nose. “I’m trying.” “Some things can’t be fixed with money,” I told him, and he had nothing to say back to that.

Dinner went on beneath the string lights, forced cheer sitting between us like an extra course nobody had ordered. My father looked across the table. “You’re being childish about this,” he said. I set my fork down. “Am I,” I said. My mother used the voice she saves for making a person feel guilty without ever using the word. “We’re family. Let it go.” I kept my voice level. “You’re right. Family should forgive each other.” Dana visibly relaxed and actually smiled at me. “Thank you. That’s mature of you.” I ate the rest of my dinner in silence, counting down the hours until I could leave.

They all thought I’d accepted it. My calm should have worried them a great deal more than it did.

At six fifteen the next morning, the cabin was still asleep. The river sat pale and glassy, mist rising off it in slow sheets. I picked Roy’s keys up off the hall table where he’d left them the night before and walked out into the cool morning air. I won’t pretend I was confused about what I was doing. I won’t pretend it was an accident. I made a choice. Not a good one, maybe. A costly one, certainly. But in that moment it felt less like revenge and more like translation. They had taught me the language the day before. I was simply handing it back to them.

A short while later the sound carried across the water. A splash, then silence, then a slow, steady rise of bubbles off the ramp.

Roy walked out onto the deck in his pajamas, coffee mug in hand, and found me standing near the water. He saw the ramp. He saw the empty gravel where his Audi had been parked. The mug slipped out of his fingers and shattered on the boards, coffee running between the planks. Then he started screaming, and the whole cabin woke up around us.

Roy ran down toward the water, though there was nothing left to save. “What did you do,” he shouted. I stayed calm. “Physics did the rest,” I said. “My car,” he said, his voice cracking apart. “It’s just a car, Roy,” I told him, in his own dismissive tone. “You can buy another one.”