25.
Where Tyson Says Hello,
Where Tyson Says Good-bye
I WALK down the hall, following my little sister. It’s the longest walk of my life.
And yet, even though I’m approaching approach the woman who hurt me so in the past, all I can think of is Dom and my future. Funny how that works.
It’s because you’re strong, Bear says.
It’s because you’re brave, Otter says.
It’s because you’re mine, Dom says.
So just keep on walking, it says. Keep on walking right out that door and never look back. Get Dom and head west, young man. Head west until you see the ocean and smell the salt and hear the cries of the birds above and the feel of the sand below. That is how you know you’re home.
Yes. That. All of that.
I try to remember anything about her. All those little good things mixed into the sea of bad. But it’s all gone. Wiped clean. I can’t even think. I can’t focus. My heart is racing and my skin feels cold, and I know Bear thinks I’m strong, and I know Otter thinks I’m brave, and I know I’m Dom’s because we’re inevitable, we’re all so inevitable. But it doesn’t stop my chest from hurting. My lungs from shriveling. My throat from constricting. The ground shifts beneath my feet. Everything’s bright, so very, very bright. I can’t do this, I can’t fucking do this and I—
Hey, Bear says.
Hey, yourself, I say back.
All you need to do is breathe, he says.
Just breathe.
In.
Hold, one, two, three.
Out.
Hold, one, two, three….
She’s in the kitchen, her back to us. Black pants. White shirt. An apron around her waist. I hear the flick of a lighter. An inhalation of breath. A sigh. Smoke drifts up above her head. She opens a window above the sink. Blows smoke out. It’s too fucking bright in here. It feels too real.
She opens the fridge and stares into it. Almost empty. Closes the door. Opens the freezer. Closes it. Opens the cupboard. There’s a bottle of Jack, half-empty, sitting on the shelf. She stares at it. Takes another drag. Blows out smoke. Takes the Jack down and sets it on the counter.
“Izzie!” she calls.
“What?” Izzie says quietly from my side.
She doesn’t turn “Where’s my mug? The one I use. It’s not in the living room.”
“Cleaned it,” she says. “It’s where it always is when I clean it.”
“That mouth,” she says. “Watch it, girlie.”
“Mom—”
“This guy,” she laughs, and I think I might lose my mind, “came into the diner. Drunk off his ass. Made a mess of the table. Sitting there and just hollering about this and that.” She pulls the mug that I just dried minutes before from the cupboard. A couple of ice cubes go into it, just like I knew they would. “And then he tries to flirt with me, and I say I know his type.” A splash of Jack. “I don’t have time for his type.” Maybe a little more than a splash. “But then he says he don’t care. He’s seen me and he wants to know more.” She snorts as she raises the mug to her lips. “Drove a big old truck,” she says and takes a drink. “Lights across the top.” Her throat works. “Eventually got kicked out. Gave me his number, though.” Another drink. A drag on the smoke. “Who knows, kiddo? Maybe I’ll call him. I deserve a break.”
It’s like I’m five, I’m five years old and nothing has changed and nothing will ever change ever again.
Except there’s a queer sensation in my head when she turns, because she doesn’t fit what I have in my head from five years old. It’s still her; of course it is. I know that voice, even if I haven’t heard it in a decade. It’s like it’s imprinted in my head and I can hear her through the storm, and she’s saying things like, Get me my lighter, Kid, and I have a headache, Ty, keep your voice down, and, Bear, take your brother out or something, okay? I can’t watch him today. I’m not feeling well. I don’t care if you have to go to work! Take him to Anna’s! Or to the Thompsons’! Lord knows Alice doesn’t work. Must be nice, having all that money.
And it’s queer, the sensation, because my mind tries to reconcile how I remember her and how she looks now. A smudged xerox copy covers the original, blurring the lines of what’s supposed to be.
She’s in her fifties now. Izzie came late. She’s tired. And old. Just like the photo. Her dark hair is shot with gray. Her skin sags. She looks beat. Smoke curls up around her face. The tips of the fingers on her right hand are yellowed from nicotine.
Those eyes, though. They’re like Bear’s. And mine. Dulled, maybe, but recognizable.
She sees me, and those eyes go wide. Not in understanding, though. No. In fear. The mug shakes in her hand. The cigarette freezes inches from her face. She doesn’t know who I am. She glances at Izzie, who stands by my side. I’m not touching her, but we’re close to each other. I smell the smoke. I almost choke on it.
She gives a little cry. A defenseless animal, caught and cornered. “Izzie,” she says, sounding out of breath and slightly hysterical. “What is this? What’s going on? What have you done?”
Izzie, more and more my sister, rolls her eyes. “What have I done? I didn’t do anything.”
“This isn’t about her,” I say.
“Isabelle, come here! Get away from him!” The mug shakes and spills Jack to the floor. Ash breaks apart from the cigarette and catches a breeze from the open window. It swirls up with the smoke around my mother’s face, like dark snow. It lands on her cheek. Leaves a smudge.
“Oh, geez, Mom! Calm down!” Izzie looks more annoyed than anything else and embarrassed, as if this somehow is her fault. I should have told her to stay in her room. To shut and lock the door and to not come out until I said it was okay, that it was all okay and nothing would ever be wrong again.
“Not helping, Izzie,” I say.
“I’m calling the police!” Julie McKenna cries. The mug clatters to the counter. The cigarette falls to the floor. She goes for the phone hanging on the wall. It’s chipped and cracked. Like everything else in this house. Like her. Like me.
I say, “Mom. Don’t.”
She stops. She doesn’t turn. Her back is rigid.
The air around me is thick.
Izzie sighs.
“What?” my mother says, her voice a croak. “What?”
“Just… don’t.”
She turns. Her pupils are blown out. Her face is white. Her bottom lip quivers. None of this, though, is from sadness, like I expected. I don’t know why I thought it would be. No, this is still from fear. And for a brief moment, even anger. It’s gone as quickly as it came, but I know it was there. I curl my hands into fists to keep from putting them around her throat.
She kneels down and picks the cigarette off the floor. Her gaze never leaves me. The skin of her cheek twitches. She leaves a bit of ash on the floor. Stands up. Brings the cigarette back to her lips. Inhales deeply. Holds it. One. Two. Three. Exhales the smoke through her nose. One. Two. Three.
It’s all breathing. It’s all it ever was. She knows the art of it as much as I do, and I want to scream. I want to scream so bad. Tell her that I am the way I am because of her. That she did this to me. She’s the reason I am who I am.
No, Bear says. Or Otter. Or it, that damnable voice that never seems to leave… I don’t know anymore. You are the way you are in spite of her. She is the reason you are who you are, but not like you think. She left. We broke. But we found the ones to help piece us back together. We’re not the same shape. But we’re stronger because of it.
I want to believe. I do.
“Tyson,” she says, her voice flat. “What a surprise. Look at you, all grown up.”
“Izzie, go to your room,” I say quietly.
“But—” she starts.
“Please,” I say.
“No,” my mother says. “Izzie, you stay here. As a matter of fact, you come here. By me. Now.”
Izzie looks between us, conflicted. “Go,” I tell her quietly. However bad this is for me, I can leave. I can walk out the front door and never look back. Izzie can’t. At least not yet. I don’t want this to be bad for her after I’m gone. I should have thought about that before I came. As usual, I was only thinking about myself. But some part of me thinks my mother knows this, that part of me thinks she’s using Izzie as a buffer. A shield. “It’s okay.”
Izzie nods, her face tightening. As she walks away, she reaches out and touches my hand, our fingers grazing. I’m electrified and heartsore. As we touch, I feel the scrap of paper I’d given her. My number. The Green Monstrosity. Clutched in her hand.
Put it in your pocket, I think. Before she sees. Oh, Izzie. Hide it.
She doesn’t.
But Mom (Julie, I think. She’s not my mother—she’s only Julie, Julie, Julie) doesn’t see it, and as soon as Isabelle is within reach, she grabs her and pulls her close… but not at her side. Or behind her. She puts her in front of her, her arm around Izzie’s chest. Her daughter is now between us. She takes a final drag on the cigarette, then flicks it in the sink.
Things might have changed, Izzie had told me, but it’s nowhere near where it should be.
She’s never going to be what you need.
The kite! my mother had once said. Ty, look how high the kite is!
“I don’t have money,” Julie says. Her voice is still flat.
I laugh—I can’t help it. It comes out as harsh as I’ve ever heard it. It grates in my ears. “I don’t need money,” I say. “Especially from you. You think I came here for the twenty bucks you probably still keep in the flour tin in the back of the pantry?”
Recognition flickers across her face. “Old habits die hard.”
That much is obvious. “Anything left?” I ask.
“What?”
“The money you got for trying to break up my family.”
Careful, I warn myself. Careful.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
“Okay, Julie.”
“What do you want, Kid?”
Kid. Kid. Kid.
I shrug, trying to keep my anger in check. “You know, I thought I knew. I really did.”
“But?”
“There’s nothing here.”
“Not for you,” she says.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why everything? Why did it happen the way it did?”
“Ask your brother.”
I see red. “I’m asking you.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I tell her. “Because it’s in my head and it won’t leave.”
“Then you’ll leave?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it’d be better,” she says. “For you. For Derrick.” I know this. I’ve heard this.
Leave, leave, leave.
But I don’t. “You thought it’d be better for you,” I say.
She nods. “That too.”
“Was it?”
Behind the façade, I see the first shimmer in her eyes. “For a time.”
“And after?”
“I thought about you both. A lot.”
Leave, leave, leave.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you think about?”
“If you were doing okay. If you grew up to be what I thought you’d grow up to be.”
“And what was that?”
She laughs wetly. “I don’t know. Doctor. Astronaut. Bug scientist. All those things you said you wanted to be.”
“He doesn’t like bugs,” Izzie says.
“He used to,” Julie says, and it’s the most surreal moment of my life. “He used to play with the little sand crabs on the beach for hours. He’d cry every time we had to leave.”
“Crabs aren’t bugs,” Izzie and I say at the same time. She smiles at me, but it fades too quickly.
Julie says nothing.
“I didn’t become any of those things,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Why?” I don’t know if there’s any real interest. It doesn’t matter.
“Because I thought I was broken. Lost and broken. For the longest time.”
“Are you?”
“Maybe I was. But not anymore. I think I’ve found my way back.”
“I know—” she starts but then stops. She turns her head and looks out the window. It’s a perfectly lovely day, not too hot. There’s a pretty tree outside the window, and the leaves dance in the wind. “I think I’ve been there.” And I think she’s still there. I don’t think she’s ever known anything else.
“You could have stayed,” I say sadly. Any anger I may have felt is gone now. I just feel pity. For her. For what could have been.
“I don’t think I could have,” she says, her voice cracking. “You don’t know what it was like.”
“I did. I do. I was there.”
She shakes her head. “Not that. You don’t know what it was like. In my head. There were times when I thought everything was closing in on me. When it was easier to just stay in bed instead of getting up. I stayed there, sometimes, for days.” She looks back at me, then averts her eyes. “It was just easier.”
“You couldn’t breathe,” I say, thunderstruck. I expected to feel anger when I came here. I expected confusion. I never expected understanding.
She nods. “Those were the worst days. Like I didn’t have lungs anymore.”
“And so you ran.” Oh, Dom.
“Yeah.”
“Running doesn’t help.”
“It gets you farther away. For a time.”
“But it always comes back.”
“I know,” she says. “I know that every day.”
“Where’s Frank? Or Joe? Or whoever?”
She snorts. “It’s just me and Izzie. They left. Everyone leaves.”
“Oh how unfair.” I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
Julie laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I suppose it’s what I deserve.”
“I suppose there’s always that rough guy at the diner, huh?”
“It is what it is. I’ve accepted that.”
“Have you?”
“It’s who I am.”
“How fatalistic of you.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s not what family does,” I say slowly. “They don’t leave when things get hard.” The words are hard to get out because I know how hypocritical they sound coming from me.
The defiant look comes back. “I know.”
“Do you?” Do I?
“I was never meant to be a mother.”
“Buy condoms next time.”
“Are you done?” she asks, eyes flashing. “You come here, into my house, and—”
“I did the same thing,” I tell her. “I ran.”
She stops. Stares. Rubs her mouth with her free hand. Wipes her eyes. “From Bear?”
“Not physically. But yes. From him. From Otter.”
“They still together?”
“Do you care?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond.
“Yes,” I say. “They are. They’ve been married for a long time. Legally married. They’re going to have kids.”
“Wicked,” Izzie says.
A weird look comes over Julie’s face. “I’m going to be a grandm—”
“No,” I cut in. “You’re not. You don’t get to say that.”
She glares at me.
“I ran,” I tell my mother who is not my mom. “I ran because things got tough. Life got hard. I ran because it was easier than facing it head-on. And I almost lost….” I shake my head. It’s none of her business. Not about Dom. None of it. “I almost lost everything. And I thought it was all because of you. I thought I couldn’t breathe because of you. I thought it was all on you. But it’s not. This is about me. And despite you—maybe even because of you—I’m going to find my way back.” I think of Dom. And Otter. Most of all, I think of my brother. I owe him everything. “And I think I might have already started.”
“Good for you,” she says bitterly. “Anything else? Or do you want to throw more back in my face?”
“That’s how you see it?”
“That’s how it is.”
“You’re not my mother.”
“I gave birth to you.”
“You did,” I agree. “And there were times I can even remember being happy with you. Do you remember the kite?”
She starts to shake her head but then stops. I think she’s going to ignore it, but then she whispers, “It flew so high,” and a tear slides down her cheek. Just one.
“It did,” I say. “But you’re not my mother. My mother died when I was nine years old, and I let her go into the ocean because that’s what she wanted. That’s what she asked of me, and for her, I would have done anything. And she taught me… well. She taught me that family’s not always defined by blood. It’s those who make us whole. Those who make us who we are.”
“Who was she?” Izzie asks.
I smile at my little sister. “A kick-ass old lady named Mrs. Paquinn, who thought Bigfoot was real, drove an oversized Caddy the color of shit, and loved us all with everything she had.”
“She sounds epic,” Izzie says.
“The most epic there ever was.” I look back at my mother. “She’s smart,” I say, nodding at Isabelle.
“Reminds me of you.”
“Thought so. Why?”
She knows what I’m asking. “I had nothing left that was mine,” she says. She holds Izzie tighter. “She’s all that’s left.”
“Would you let her see me again? Us?”
The fear returns. “You can’t have her!”
“And I’m not going to take her. She deserves to know where she comes from. You owe her that.”
“Get out,” Julie says.
“She’s—”
“Get out!”
“It’s okay, Tyson,” Izzie says. “I’ve got your address and—”
Ah, kid. You should’ve kept your mouth shut.
She holds up the scrap of paper. Julie takes it from her. Looks down at it. Lets Izzie go. Tears the paper. It falls to the floor. “If you ever try to contact my daughter,” she says, voice low, “I will make sure the police know you broke into my house and tried to take her from me. You came here when I wasn’t home. For all I know, you touched her in a way no little girl should be touched.”
“Mom!” Izzie cries, sounding shocked. “That’s not—”
“Not now, Isabelle. Go to your room. Now.”
She looks at me. I shake my head as I struggle to keep my rage in check.
“Now!”
Izzie looks like she’s going to say something, anything, but then a look of such defeat comes over her that I almost can’t stand it. Her shoulders slump and tears fill her eyes, angry tears. She wipes at them furiously and walks toward me. She walks toward me and then stops at my side. Tugs on my hand. Gently. Playing with my fingers, really. Just like… like….
Before Julie can say anything, I scoop Izzie up and hug her tight. Her little arms go up and her little hands go into my hair and her face is in my neck. She’s breathing heavily, and I know she’s trying not to lose control in front of her mother. In front of me. Julie looks like she’s about to speak, but the look I shoot her makes her subside. For once.
“It’ll be okay,” I tell Izzie quietly. “One day.”
“You promise?” she whispers, her voice muffled.
My heart breaks. “I promise, kid.”
“It hurts,” she says. “Can’t breathe.”
“With me, okay?”
She nods, her hands digging into my back.
“In. Okay? Breathe in. Just breathe.”
She does.
“Good. Hold.”
She does.
“One,” I whisper to her. “Two. Three. Exhale.”
She does.
“Hold. One. Two. Three.”
She takes another breath, and it’s easier this time. “It’s a secret,” I tell her. “This art of breathing. It’s yours now. Keep it safe.”
“Don’t forget me, okay?” she asks, voice breaking. “Don’t forget me.”
My eyes burn. “Never. Never in your life.”
She nods against me. We stay that way. For a time. Eventually, it can go no further.
I set her down. And then she’s gone. I hear the door slam down the hall.
I’m still looking after her when I say, “Any harm comes to her, I’ll know. Anything happens to her, I’ll know. And I can promise you that you’ll never see her again.”
“I’ve never touched her,” my mother says, sounding horrified. “I would never do that!”
I turn back to her. “There’s more than one way to hurt a kid,” I say, my voice hard. “Abuse doesn’t have to be physical. You have a chance, here. A real chance.”
“It’s none of your business.”
I smile, but it takes all I have. “You’re wrong about that. Remember what I said. You can still make a difference. It’s too late for us. I know that now. But not for her. Remember that before she’s gone too. Good-bye, Julie.”
And I leave my mother there, standing in that kitchen: The smell of smoke untouched by the breeze from the window. The faded linoleum. The mug of Jack, ice cubes melted. I leave it all behind. The photos of faraway places along the wall. This place. I leave it all behind.
But not Izzie. Never Izzie.
I close the front door behind me.
I breathe in. Hold for three. Out. Hold for three. It works. It works. I know it works.
I take a step and the ground shakes beneath me. All my strength is leaving. I need to get out of here before it breaks.
But still I stop. When I reach the fence, I stop. One last look back.
My mother’s at the window. She watches me. Our eyes lock and there we stay. I don’t know how long. Eventually, she backs away slowly until I can’t see her anymore.
I turn to leave as I struggle to breathe.
It should be over.
What is this?
I’ve done what I came to do.
Why is the ground shaking?
Why can’t I breathe?
I need….
This is over. This should all be over.
I need—
“Fuck,” I croak as I bend over. “Ah, God. Ah shit.”
I need you, I think. I need you with me. I need you here. I need you so bad.
And then I think I must be magic, I must be so much magic, because big hands wrap themselves around me and pull me close. I hear a rumble that sounds like thunder from above, but I know that sound as it says my name. I know that broken voice.
“Tyson,” he says.
“How?” I gasp. The panic in my head and chest rises, clawing me, pulling me down. It hurts. Everything hurts.
“Cab,” Dom says. “I couldn’t let you be here alone.”
“I c-c-can’t b-breathe—”
“Hush,” he says. “Listen.”
I hush. I listen.
“Breathe.”
I shake my head. Doesn’t he understand?
“You can.”
I can’t.
“You can,” he says. “Just breathe.”
My throat closes off.
“For me,” he says. “Breathe for me.”
For him. Breathe. For him?
Everything I do is for you, I think.
I close my eyes.
And breathe.