The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

I remembered my childhood kitchens all in perfect detail. The linoleum floors that were so worn that the patterns were hard to make out, the cabinets hanging off their hinges, the grime caked on the top of the stove.

It didn’t matter which apartment we were in, they all looked like variations of the same space.

All hideous.

All filthy.

Anytime I wanted a snack—if one was available that day or week—I would make my way into the kitchen, and reach up into the cabinet, steeling myself. Because I knew what was going to happen. Roaches were going to fall out when I pulled open the door.

I remembered once when I was six or seven, one of the cockroaches falling down into my shirt.

I remembered shrieking and crying.

I remembered my father cursing as he dragged himself off the couch full of cigarette burn holes.

I remembered him coming toward me.

I remembered thinking he would help me, get the bug out, kill it, tell me it was okay.

Why I thought that was beyond me, because nothing about my father ever suggested he would offer me comforting words.

But, I guess, kids were forgiving no matter how fucked up their parents were, how often they let them down.

He didn’t get the bug out.

No.

He backhanded me across the kitchen, screamed at me for yelling, telling me he had a splitting headache. My father always had a splitting headache. He was almost always angry. And he often hit me.

Why this one memory stuck out more than the other times was beyond me. Maybe because of the bug. The double trauma of it all.

My lip had split open, and I remembered tasting the copper penny taste as I shook the roach out of my shirt, stomped on it with my shoe, cleaned up the body, and went to cry silently in bed, belly empty, soul just as bare.

It wasn’t until I was about ten or eleven that I understood why my father spent so much of his time throwing up, rocking on the couch, drenched in sweat, moaning, cursing, screaming at me if I dared be anywhere near him.

I saw the pattern first.

Every Friday night, he never came home from work. I often didn’t see him again until Sunday evening, bringing home something in a bag to throw at me to eat, maybe helping me with some homework, or even obsessively cleaning.

But come Monday evening, it was all over.

And came the downward spiral.

I understood that on Friday, he had money. And all weekend, he was gone, spending it. On what, it took me an almost embarrassingly long time to figure out.

That my father was an addict.

That he spent that money on drugs.

By the time I was thirteen, I understood it was heroin.

And by then, he was in a really downward spiral. Barely keeping any jobs. Constantly getting us evicted. Losing weight.

It all really came to a head when I was sixteen and he got pulled in on a possession charge, getting eight months. Which meant I got to do some time in the system.

I’d heard all the horror stories about foster care growing up. Hell, my father used to threaten me with it, telling me how much worse it was than being with him.

In reality, though, I was at least fed. The government checks made sure I knew there was a roof over my head. And I was hit a hell of a lot less.

But then he was out.

He was ‘clean.’

And they were sending me back.

I was jaded enough about life not to be surprised. Or overly disappointed.

I was just biding my time until I could move out, until I could maybe hit the local community college, make a better life for myself. Get the hell away from my father.

Everything seemed halfway better for a few weeks.

He somehow conned his boss into giving him his old job back. He brought his paychecks home, filled the fridge, even got me some new clothes, and a school bag that wasn’t held together with duct tape I’d ‘borrowed’ from the super.

There was no easing into it, no slow descent. One day, things were looking up.

The next, he was rolling in on the downside of a bender, eyes small, retching in the bathroom.

I’d like to say that I was so used to it that my stomach didn’t drop.

But it dropped.

Maybe a part of me saw that this was different, that things were getting worse.

I was on eggshells.

Something was coming.

I didn’t know what or when.

I couldn’t have anticipated the reality, though.

As awful as my father had been, for the most part, he had been more destructive to himself than me. I got bumped and bruised and didn’t exactly ever feel safe or stable, but I was sure he’d damaged himself more than he’d hurt me.

It all changed that afternoon.

It was a Wednesday after a Friday when he’d lost his job again. Which meant there would be no money. Which meant he would be deep in a detox hole.