I caught up with her as she spied the back door in the smaller kitchen at the other end of the house. My eyes were her eyes, I could see what she saw—escape! Salvation! And somehow I melded with her in a way that either slowed her down or sped me up, flew me to where she was, and then I overtook her and we both fell down, and I got hold of her throat and sat on top of her, but she was like an animal, wriggling, but I felt like the bigger animal, the kind that wins in these fights, and there was a full certainty in me, a total and complete surety, that I would win, this time I would win.

But I was wrong. Suddenly she jerked away and I lost my grip, and then she was on top of me. Screaming at me. Slapping me. Telling me that I had failed her, that I’d abandoned her and she had lost everything, and soon after I’d left she had developed a drug habit, and had lost several jobs, floating from place to place, and it was all my fault, all my fault—and as she screamed at me I noticed that her face had shrunk, and now she was the Krystal I remembered from that last night I had seen her, the Krystal with the fever eyes and bobblehead.

She had me by the collar and kept slapping me, words falling out of her in spit-riddled fits, and though I kept trying to get out from under her, her knees locked me in tight. I could see the sky outside the window above the sink. Her words fell out in a dense rush I could not stop, no matter how I tried to interrupt and take over. I recalled all the times I had made my case to the invisible Krystal, how I, too, would go, go, go, yet try as I did, I could not get one word in. My rage built as I listened. But at some point I started laughing. It seemed so ridiculous, her being there. Out of a television show, even. She looked at me with contempt, and I took this pause in her monologue to throw her off of me and roll beyond her reach. I tensed, waiting for her to come after me, but she stayed crouched on the floor where I had pushed her. Her shoulders sagged. She looked emptied of everything.

“Why?” she asked. “Why do you hate me so much? I loved you? We were family?”

These statements were phrased as uncertainties, which I thought more than answered her questions. Still, I decided to take the bait. “I don’t hate you, Krystal,” I told her. “I love you.” I ran my hand through my hair, my poor Mr. Roper hair. My eyes had returned to brown. “But love don’t mean a thing.” I singsonged it, jerking my shoulders in time with imaginary music.

I stood up but she remained on the floor. Crying, of course. Nothing but weakness. For a moment it looked like we had both exhausted whatever energy we had just expelled, and for a second I even saw her whole body relax. But I had other ideas.