Home Again

“Let’s leave them here. That way a part of us will always exist under this old tree. When we’re old, we can come back here with our grandchildren.”

Ah, he could still remember it, the overwhelming love he’d felt for her in that moment.

They wrapped the cheap red earrings in one of Madelaine’s expensive, monogrammed handkerchiefs and buried their treasure at the base of the tree.

Afterward, she looked at him, her eyes moist with tears. “I’ve got to get home now,” she whispered.

The next time he saw her, she was sitting on his mother’s ratty old couch, telling him about the baby.

He knew he said the wrong things then, but he didn’t know what to say. He was so damned scared. For a week afterward, he called her house and hung up when her father answered. Finally he rode to her house and saw the iron bars that had been fixed across her bedroom window, and he knew what had happened. Alex had found out about the baby.

He wanted to turn tail and run and run and run. He almost did it, then he saw something—a shadow pass across the bright light in her bedroom—and he thought of that moment on the Ferris wheel. I love you, Angel.

The memory gave him the courage to park his bike. Flipping his collar, up against the pouring rain, he walked up the pathway to the double front doors and knocked hard.

There was a rustling of feet, a click of metal on metal, then the door opened.

And God stood in the doorway, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and holding a martini glass. Angel had never seen a man so big and overpowering, so intimidating; he had a voice that boomed into the darkness like a bullhorn. So you’re the little wop who screwed my daughter.

The rest of the meeting melted as it always did into a blur of shame and regret. Instead of the actual sequence of events, he remembered bits and pieces of their conversation; words that drove through the heart and soul like razors.

Who do you think you are to come to my house, to knock on my door as if you belong here? You’re nothing. Nothing.

With each word, delivered like a blow, Angel felt himself growing smaller and smaller, until, in the end, there was nothing left of him at all.

What’ll it take, kid, to get you the hell out of her life? One thousand dollars, five thousand, ten thousand? How about if I fire that drunk mother of yours? You didn’t think I knew she worked in my mill, I see. The world’s full of surprises, isn’t it?

It took a minute for the words to register, but finally Angel understood: Alex was offering him a way out.

Ten thousand, kid. Think about it….

He didn’t want to think about it, tried not to, but the offer seduced him.

You’re no hero, kid. Take the money.

Angel closed his eyes, hearing, seeing, feeling it all over again, the moment that had forever defined him. He shouldn’t have followed Alex into the house, but he had; he shouldn’t have gone into that dark, shadowed office, but he had. He remembered it all suddenly—the sound of the desk drawer sliding open, the ripping hiss of the check as Alex eased it from his book.

Angel thought now of the moments, the seconds, he could have said no. Up until the last heartbeat, when he’d held the check in his hand and seen all those zeroes.

Alex had sensed Angel’s uncertainty, smelled it, and gone in for the kill with a hunter’s precision.

What’ll you give Madelaine? Life in some sleazy trailer, a beer with your TV dinner after work? And how about you—you going to spend the rest of your life tossing toilet paper like your mother? Or are you going to take what I’m offering and get the hell out of this town?

Angel thought of his parents—thirty years spent toiling on the paper line, only to come home and get drunk and knock the shit out of their son. His father, dead of alcohol poisoning before his fortieth birthday.

Alex went on relentlessly, waving the check at Angel. I’ve seen a million guys like you in my life. You’re nothing, going nowhere. You’re not good enough to lick her shit-covered shoes.

Angel tried. God help him, he gathered his shredded courage and tried. I could be a good father. But he knew, even as he said it, he knew it was a lie, and Alex knew it, too.

The old man laughed. To what? She’s having an abortion tomorrow. You didn’t think she’d really have a child of yours, did you? She’s a Hillyard, for Christ’s sake.

Angel was relieved. Even now it sickened him to remember how relieved he’d been by the words.

Take the money, kid. It’s all there is for you.

And Angel did it. He turned and ran, the check clutched in his sweaty fingers. All the way out, he told himself it didn’t matter, that he could cash the check and spend the money and still come back for Madelaine.

But by the time he reached his bike, he knew the truth, and it ripped through him, twisting his insides until he thought he might vomit in the street. He was leaving her because he wanted to leave her, because he wasn’t strong enough to stay and take a job in some crummy factory and be a father to his unborn baby.