“Well, it’s good to know you’
ve totally got this planned out. This is going to go well, I’m sure.”
“Not helping.”
“I’ll kill him,” Corey says suddenly, his eyes flashing. “If he does anything to hurt you, I swear to God I’ll kill him. They won’t find enough of him left to bury.”
“That was intimidating,” I say, unable to keep the awe out of my voice. “Seriously.” These men in my life who threaten someone four times their size are fucking nuts. Awesome, but nuts.
He cracks a grim smile. “Good. Because I will.”
“I can do this?” I ask/tell him and myself.
He knows. “You can. You remember to breathe, Ty. You know how to breathe.”
I do. I do. I know how to breathe because I’ve been taught how to breathe. Even if my mind sometimes forgets, my body knows how, and I can do this. I can push through anything. Earthquakes are nothing. The ocean is nothing. I don’t need a fucking bathtub. I’m nineteen years old. I’m a certified genius. I’m not some Kid anymore. I am more than it wants me to be. It will not break me.
“I’ll call you,” I say and open the door without waiting for a reply.
My strides are solid and sure. Well, at least for the first four steps. Those four steps are full of I can do this! I am the motherfucking man!
The next three steps are a little less sure. These steps are Well, I think I can do this. I am the motherfucking man, but even motherfucking men can have doubts.
The next four steps feel like my feet are stuck in cement. These are the steps where I think Okay, so this was probably a mistake. I can do this, obviously, but the real question is if I want to do this.
The next two steps (yes, yes, he has the longest path up to his house in the history of the world) and all I can hear is me screaming at myself (complete with a ridiculous Southern accent) Dead man walkin’! Folks, we’ve got ourselves a dead man walkin’ here!
The last five steps are up a step or two to the front door, and I’ve got stress sweat like you wouldn’t believe. I’m pretty sure this is the worst idea in a long history of bad ideas. It doesn’t matter what I want. It doesn’t matter that he’s inside. What matters is that I must be out of my fucking mind to think I could ever face him after all the shit I’ve pulled, that I could even think I could be in the same town as him, much less show up unannounced at his house. And for what? What am I doing here? To beg for forgiveness? To ask if we could be friends again? How trivial is that? How fucking trite?
Knock on the door, I tell myself.
No, I reply quite forcefully.
Don’t be a bitch, I say.
Yeah, I’m okay with being a bitch.
Knock. On. The. Door.
Go fuck yourself!
I knock on the door. Well, not really knock. I really just scrape my fingers against the wood. It makes no discernible sound whatsoever, but that’s good enough for me, because obviously no one’s home. I’ll have to come back another time. Another day. Probably never, but that’s okay. I’m going to walk back down the longest path in the history of the world and get back into the Jeep and get the holy hell outta here and never look back and—
I knock again. Louder this time.
I wait.
No response.
I tried, I think. I really did. Time to go.
Except for some reason, my legs don’t seem to get the message my brain is firing off, the traitorous bastards. Instead of turning and running away with my tail between my legs, I apparently decide to go the creepy route and walk along the stone path as it curves around the side of the house to the rear. I hear the Jeep idling behind me, but it might as well be a million miles away for all that it matters.
As I near the gate that leads to the backyard, I hear the voice of a child, and he’s laughing in that strange tone and saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” and I almost can’t take another step. It’s not even that I give fleeting thought to my own father, whoever and wherever he may be—Julie McKenna could never say exactly who he was. He was a trucker, my mother would tell me when I asked. Came, got what he wanted from me, then put us in his rearview mirror. It’s how men are.
He was in the military, she’d tell me when I brought it up again. Every time I asked I got a different answer, as if the real answer was so awful that the only way she could look at me was to make up stories about where I’d come from. He was famous, she’d say. Or He was married or He worked for the government because he was so smart, just like you. When she was already deep into the drink, she’d say, He never wanted you, can’t you see that? If he wanted any part of you, he would have been here all along, and you wouldn’t be asking me these silly questions. No more, Kid. I mean it. Now go get me a couple of ice cubes like a good son. You know I like my whiskey cold. And where’s my lighter? Not the green one. That one’s empty. Just throw it away, Kid. Find me the blue one and get me the ice cubes. I don’t have all night.
I’d get her the lighter. And the ice cubes. I always did. And then I’d sit on the ratty couch in the living room and stare out the window, watching the sun as it started to set, hoping Bear would get home soon because when she drank, she scared me. When she got this drunk, she scared me so bad, and it was getting to the point where I was scared all the time, and what was I going to do when Bear went away to college? What was I going to do when it was just me and my mother alone in this shitty apartment where I’d always get her the ice cubes and would always find her a working lighter so she could smoke her cigarettes one after another? Bear would just be a voice on the phone then. A faraway voice, and I knew, I just knew, that once he escaped, once he saw how life could be away from this hole of a world we lived in, he would never, ever come home. He would never, ever look back.