In Harmony

He stared at me for a moment and I stared back.

“Don’t get smart with me,” he said in a low voice, like the rumbling of thunder that warns of a storm.

He stared me down for another moment more, then grunted. He found his lighter and began rummaging around the cluttered coffee table for his pack of smokes. Frustration mounting, he scrounged faster, knocking over empty bottles and beer cans. Finally, with a muttered curse, he upended the entire table, sending cigarette butts, ash, bottles and cans across the floor.

“Jesus, Pops.”

I set my bowl aside and grabbed a trash bag from under the sink. I kneeled beside the mess and began to clean up, putting cans and bottles into the bag.

Still sitting on the couch, Pops bent down for an empty beer can and tossed it into the sack. Then he took one of the bottles by the neck and slammed it into the side of my face.

“You don’t get smart with me,” he bellowed, brandishing the bottle.

I stared, my heart crashing against my chest. My breath came fast and I felt the right side of my face start to swell. With every heartbeat, hot pain throbbed on my cheekbone and under my eye. Blood trickled down my cheek.

With a cry of rage, I knocked the bottle out of his hand, grabbed his wrists and pinned them to his chest. I pressed him back against the couch, leaning over him with all my weight, my face inches from his. The blood streamed down my cheek dripping onto his plaid shirt.

“Never again,” I yelled between clenched teeth. “Never fucking again.”

He’d hit me hard, a lifetime working with heavy steel behind the blow. But my guard had been down. I was stronger than him now. He didn’t bother to struggle and a glint of fear touched his eyes.

I gave him a final shove and stood up. I stared down at him for a few more minutes, trying to remember a time when he didn’t look at me with contempt. A time when he and my mother and I were together and happy. I had a photo in my mind of the three of us, but now it showed only my mother and me. The man who’d been my father had faded out of the picture.

I headed toward the bathroom. Behind me, Pops gasped and caught his breath, muttering curses. I shut the bathroom door and looked at my reflection.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

My right cheekbone was swollen and puffy, the skin split by a half-inch gash still streaming blood. An alarming patch of red stained my white T-shirt.

I grabbed the hand towel by the sink, ran cold water over it and cleaned up my cheek. I probably needed stitches, but I wasn’t about to incur a bunch of Urgent Care charges. I had a stockpile of butterfly Band-Aids for just such an occasion. It took me three tries to get one on fast enough before the blood made my skin too slick. I put a second one beside the first and a regular Band-Aid over both.

My whole face throbbed now. The swelling would probably last another couple of days. Another couple of rehearsals where the cast would stare at me with pity, but no one would ask me what happened because they already knew. Marty would pull me aside and tell me, yet again, his door was always open. His hospitality there for the taking.

As I stared at my reflection I wondered why the fuck I just didn’t take it.

When I left the bathroom, I understood why. My father sat on the couch, his hands in his lap, staring at nothing. Sad and lost. Splotches of my blood dried to maroon against the green of his plaid shirt.

He looked up and his eyes went immediately to my wounds. I saw the pain and regret fly across his face before he looked away quickly.

I put my Hamlet script in my backpack, grabbed my car keys, my Winstons and my jacket. I went back to the coffee table to grab the TV remote and he flinched as if I were going to hit him. That hurt almost as badly as my face.

“You want the news?”

He nodded. I turned the TV on and went out.

I walked to the eastern edge of the scrapyard, toward the overturned truck by the chain link fence. I lit a cigarette as I walked and took a deep drag. I let it out slowly, willing my nerves to calm down. I stopped when I heard Benny’s low singsong voice.

“Goddammit, Benny.”

I heard a bonk followed by a curse. Benny came out rubbing his head.

“Damn, you scared the crap out of me.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

He shrugged sheepishly at the ground. “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t want to go.” Now he looked up from his shoes and his eyes widened. “What happened to you?”

“You know what happened to me,” I said. “I want to know what’s happening with you. You can’t not go to school.”