Authors: Bill Loehfelm
Fresh Kills (8 page)
Five years ago, after she first moved to Boston for grad school, Julia used to call me with her psychobabble bullshit. Usually, it was right after she’d been to see her therapist, when she was just brimming with insight and hundred-dollar-an-hour wisdom. My father was afraid of his family, she said. And the fear he didn’t even know possessed him tore its way out of him masked as anger. This is what my sister told me, that my father kicked the shit out of my mother and me because he was afraid of us. Whatever.
I indulged my sister her theories. I made noncommittal noises into the phone as she talked, wondering who she was really trying to convince of their veracity, me or herself. I didn’t much care what she believed or whether it was true or not. It didn’t change anything, and if it brought her some comfort, I felt she was welcome to it. I had no right to disabuse her of her illusions. But I didn’t believe a word of what she said. I was the one who got hit, who saw his eyes, blind and blank with rage, like the doll-eyes of a shark. I had all the
real
evidence writ in black and blue all over my body, and it all added up to one clear, simple fact. My father was mad as hell.
real
evidence writ in black and blue all over my body, and it all added up to one clear, simple fact. My father was mad as hell.
There weren’t any hidden emotions, any identity crises, behind it. There was no mystery. My father was flat-out, full-on pissed off, at the world and everything and everyone in it. For all I knew he was born that way. Or maybe it started when the stadium lights went dark and he was left with nothing but real life. Maybe, in his eyes, he was an improvement over his own father—a hard man from the Irish coast who, drowning in bad debts, a cinder block in his embrace, stepped off a Staten Island pier a dozen years before I was born. That was one thing about my father—for better or worse he was always there.
What I did know was that when he hit the boiling point, when he realized the world wasn’t going to crumple at his feet like a second-string running back, my father lashed out at whatever was closest. Sometimes it was Mom, sometimes it was me. He couldn’t hit his boss, he couldn’t hit all the people crushed up against him on the train, couldn’t hit the bank, or the car, or the government. So he hit us. And he kept hitting us. Because, no matter how many bruises I had across my back, the boss kept nagging, the train stayed crowded, and the bills kept coming. Despite all the bone-crushing tackles he’d handed out, despite all the plates he could stack onto the barbell, even into his fifties, my father couldn’t bury the dirty little secret that he wasn’t tough enough for the life of a middle-class husband and father of two.
That’s the way I saw it in high school, when I was with Molly. I still see it that way. I didn’t think this way when I was a kid. Kids need reasons for things, the simpler the better. Kids live in the present, not the past. As a kid, I knew he hit me because I had done something wrong. Why else was I being punished? Most times I couldn’t tell you, for the life of me, what I had done, but I must’ve done something. Parents don’t punish their kids, don’t smack them in the face then punch them in the back when they duck when they’re eight years old. Not unless that kid has done something very wrong.
In the dark, I’d sit on the edge of my bed, trying to stifle my sobs, my T-shirt pulled up to the bridge of my nose. I sure as hell didn’t want anything to cry about. I’d squint my eyes and clench my little fists, maybe do a little hitting on myself, and try to remember every moment of that day. What had I done? There must have been something. If I could find it, I could not do it again. There are lots of things you can find at eight. Did I come right when he called? Were all my shoes in the closet? Had I left my books on the kitchen table? Did he know my teacher took my baseball cards away during the math test? Was I stupid? Ugly? If I could find it, I could fix it.
I never found it, though, because whatever it was, I kept doing it. I must have kept doing it. I kept getting hit. All that deep thinking ever got me was another handful of broken crayons, another pile of shredded baseball cards, to hide in the bottom of the wastebasket.
Then, when I was ten and Julia was six, things clarified for me. We were all in the kitchen, the whole happy family. Julia was drying the dishes that Mom was washing. It was Julia’s favorite thing to do with Mom, the dishes. To this day, she does the dishes when she’s depressed. Even if they aren’t dirty. She’ll pull them out of the cabinet and wash them for the hell of it. It still works, she says. And my sister tells me I have coping problems.
That day, Julia dropped a glass and it shattered at her feet. My father erupted from his chair at the kitchen table, spilling his coffee and whiskey, and belted my sister across the kitchen, splitting her lip in two places. It was the first and last time he ever hit her. Faster than I had ever seen even my father move, my mother had her nails at his eyes. One of the scratches on his cheek left a scar. And the screaming. She screamed at him over and over, “Not my baby doll, not my baby doll.” I crawled out from under the table and dragged Julia back under it with me, hiding her as best I could, her lip bleeding deep into my shirt.
My father dragged my mother into the den by her hair, as if he could hide from us what he was going to do. They had a bad accident, and a few more things got broken. I thought it was the end of the world. It was only later that night, as I lay in bed, that my mother’s words meant anything to me. I doubt I thought the words, but I had the realization that my mother had given up on me. She had surrendered me to my father’s rage. Not your baby doll, sure. I didn’t want that bastard kicking the crap out of Julia, either. But where, over the years, had been the words
not my son
? Why had she never unsheathed those claws for me? That night in bed I discovered the reason. It was the only one, and as clear as the full moon outside my window. I was that bad a kid. Had to be. One parent hated me and the other had given up on me. Parents didn’t do things like that unless you gave them a reason. All the time I had spent looking for the things I had done wrong was wasted.
I
was wrong. Whatever a good kid was supposed to be, I wasn’t it.
not my son
? Why had she never unsheathed those claws for me? That night in bed I discovered the reason. It was the only one, and as clear as the full moon outside my window. I was that bad a kid. Had to be. One parent hated me and the other had given up on me. Parents didn’t do things like that unless you gave them a reason. All the time I had spent looking for the things I had done wrong was wasted.
I
was wrong. Whatever a good kid was supposed to be, I wasn’t it.
I remember looking at my classmates in the days following that night, studying Purvis and all the other ones who had seemed the most like me. Whatever secrets they had, they weren’t revealing them to me. I watched my sister, but I couldn’t see the difference between her and me. Our grades were the same. We kept our rooms just as neat. For all I knew, though I never looked, she could’ve had broken toys under her bed.
All I learned was that I was, for reasons beyond my obviously limited capacities, different. Less than. My classmates knew it, my parents knew it, and my teachers knew it. My sister had to know it, though she never gave it away. I was the last to know. It was proof of how stupid I was.
After that night in the kitchen, things were never the same between my sister and me. She grew wide-eyed and wary around me. She watched me like I was a sickly stray dog that maybe carried a dangerous contagion. I half-believed she was right, and wondered if I’d infect her. I was tempted to bite her. The difference hung, like gauze, between us. I hated myself for pulling her under the table, and hated myself over again for even thinking that way. I hated myself most of all for not getting her under the table before she got hit. Maybe that was why she treated me different, because I’d been too slow. I vowed not to make that mistake again.
I sat up on the edge of the couch, my head down between my knees. The room wouldn’t stop spinning. My thoughts spun even more wildly. I wondered if Julia and I could still fit under the kitchen table. I wondered if, that night long ago, we could’ve fit my mother under there with us. Why hadn’t I reached for her, too, that night? My gut boiled. I hadn’t been sick from drink in a long time, years. I did remember it well enough to know it wasn’t a sure thing just yet. I still had a choice. I could stagger down the hallway to the bathroom and get it over with, or I could fight it. I wasn’t in the mood to move, so I dug in for the fight, taking deep breaths and trying to focus on the floor.
The first time I drank myself sick I was at a Halloween party my senior year. At Jimmy’s house. Molly’d left me by then, so she wasn’t in the car, thank God. She’d brought a date to that party, in fact, a contributing factor to my going overboard. My father had come to pick me up early, just to fuck with my good time. Jimmy’d already switched me to ice water, but my father’s early arrival had totally thrown off my recovery timing. Before we were halfway home, I got sick all over the side of the Cadillac.
My father laughed at me, called me names, lurching the car all over the road while cheap vodka and Orange Julius lurched out of me. He didn’t say shit about the car. He’d probably been half loaded himself. If I hadn’t locked myself in the bathroom when we got home, he’d have probably knocked me around for breaking my mother’s rule about drinking at parties.
Now, perched on the edge of the couch, I could hear him mocking me again, calling me a lightweight, a momma’s boy, a faggot, and a fool. No wonder Molly had thrown me over for a college boy, he said.
I decided I’d puke in my lap before I’d lock myself in the bathroom. I told myself I had nothing to hide from anymore. I gagged, tasting vodka though there was only whiskey and beer in my belly. God, how old are you now? I asked myself. Get over it. Just refuse it. Beat it back. I started sweating, realized I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. I told myself I wouldn’t feel as bad tomorrow if I let it go tonight. But I didn’t get up. At least I figured I hadn’t when I woke up in the morning on the floor beside the couch.
FOUR
JULIA COVERED HER MOUTH, TRYING NOT TO LAUGH, WHEN I bumped my head on the coffee table. I just glared at her and rubbed my head. She wore pressed jeans and a snug sweater, her face and hair already done up for the day. She sat on the coffee table. I hauled my wounded self up onto the couch.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she said.
I nodded. It hurt.
“I made coffee for you,” she said. “It’s still hot.”
She’d made coffee. I loved her so much at that moment I thought I’d cry.
She stood. “But you gotta get it yourself.” She walked into the kitchen.
I didn’t know if I could stand. I willed myself to forget everything I felt, to focus on only the thirty seconds it would take me to swallow that first sip. If I could just block everything out for half a minute, the railroad spike through my head, the molten iron in my stomach, the Brillo pad I’d been chewing in my sleep, if I could forget those things for only a few moments, I could make it. I thought of those people who walk on hot coals, who lift cars off their children. If they could do that, I could get to the coffeepot. I almost collapsed against the kitchen counter, but I made it. When the first mouthful of coffee hit me, I felt like the leper who’d touched Jesus’ robe. Halfway through my first cup, I thought I might enjoy a cigarette. I told my sister such.
“Chemically dependent much?” she asked. “Jimmy McGrath called again this morning. You should call him back.” She started whisking pancake batter in a big glass bowl.
I decided I wasn’t ready to watch that just yet. I waddled into the living room and found my cigarettes. I returned to the kitchen table and lit up. My chest burned and I coughed. I felt light-headed. I took another drag and then I felt perfectly normal.
“So Saint Jimmy’s coming down from on high for little ol’ John Jr.,” I said.
“Don’t be like that,” Julia said. “You have his number?”
“Back at the apartment,” I said.
She handed me a Post-it note with a phone number on it. “I thought that might be your excuse. He really wants you to call him. Have you talked to him since you and Virginia broke up?”
I slapped the note back on the wall beside the phone and held up my hand. “Later. He’s at work now anyway.”
Julia set the mixing bowl down, turning to continue the lecture. Something in her eyes went soft when she looked at me. “God, you look like death.” Her mouth tightened when she realized what she’d said.
I waved away the faux pas. “Thanks for taking the message. I’ve felt better. I went out last night.” I waited for her to ask where. She didn’t. “Down to Joyce’s.”
She turned away to pour the batter into a frying pan. “I went to the store this morning,” she said. “The fridge is stocked for the week.” She refilled my coffee cup while the pancakes sizzled in the pan. My stomach kicked but my mouth watered at the smell of them. “I didn’t get a paper. For obvious reasons.”
“Joyce extends his condolences,” I said. “He and I talked for a while last night.”
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