JOSH

 

For the rest of the day I’d felt rotten for the way it had turned out with Sarah. I really hadn’t meant to upset her and I hadn’t wanted to quarrel. All I’d really wanted was a friend, someone to share things with, who wouldn’t judge. I felt that that could be her. I felt some kind of secret, unspoken alliance between us, and, even though we’d clashed, there was something else, some unseen force that drew us together.

It’s not like I had anyone else. My friends on the outside were only friends when I was buying the drinks and splashing the coke. As for everyone at the Peaks, I avoided them unless I was forced to mix, as in group therapy, workshops and in the canteen. I found their company oppressive. All they did was talk about their withdrawal, their habit, their therapy and when they were getting out. It was a mundane merry-go-round of the same whining tones and I found it all really depressing to listen to their scratched-record conversations and buzzing-fridge voices. I spent all the time I could in my room, usually reading or watching television.

The day after Sarah’s visit, I awoke early, around six, but lay in bed until they called us to breakfast at nine. I felt no desire even then to leave my bed and it was a great effort to do so when I finally did. Listlessly, I made my way to the canteen and ate my breakfast in a daze, my head constantly racing with thoughts, never able to stick to one for more than a few seconds, the thought disappearing into the murky shadows of my mind before I could even grasp at it. It was like my head was full of spiders racing around, clambering over each other, filling me with bales of silky web that stuffed me up and stopped me from thinking clearly. A few people sat close to me as I munched my toast and cereal. They’d say a few words and I’d answer in grunting monosyllables. Then they’d shrug and instead converse with someone else, ignoring me after that.

Having eaten breakfast, I returned to my room until ten when I had group therapy. Like normal, I stayed pretty silent during the whole thing, offering only vague, short answers when asked for input. I watched the others as they broke out into arguments, jeering each other on. One or two of them kept trying to provoke and taunt the shrink, seeing themselves as agents provocateurs or rebels, placing themselves against the system. In truth they were neither; they were trapped in the same cycle as everyone else and, as the privileged children of the wealthy, it was safe to say they were the system. The first few times I had come to the Peaks I had joined in with this type of behavior, but now it bored me like everything else in that place. It was all so clichéd, from the shrink’s prying questions to the jeers of the patients.

After the session, I went back to my room and continued lying in bed, gazing at the wall. It was while doing this that a knock echoed from the other side of the door.

“Come in,” I called out, sitting up in bed as I did.

Turning to the door, I jumped as I saw my father enter.

Without saying a word, he came and took up a position standing at the end of the bed, so that he towered over me, a typical tactic of his. He was wearing a long black mack, a black suit with white shirt, black tie, and black leather gloves on his hands. His stern face wore the usual resolute look that was always his hallmark, his perfect black hair combed to the side, a scowling impression given off by his dull, gray eyes that resembled marbles stuck in the sockets.

“You on your way to a funeral?” I joked.

He let out a sigh that sounded like a low-pitched hiss and merely walked to the corner of the room where he retrieved a chair. Bringing it opposite me, he took a seat so that we were face to face.

“You’re still in bed,” he remarked.

“It would appear so.”

“Don’t they make sure you’re up?”

“They don't mind, so long as you attend what you’re supposed to.”

“It’s like a holiday camp here. No wonder you keep coming back. I should just send you to the military.”

Finding it all tedious already, I asked, “What do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet your father?”

“Okay, what do you want, Dad?”

This piece of petulance brought his mouth out in the rash of a twisted smile. He always appeared to enjoy my insolence; made me tougher in his eyes. He even enjoyed some of my antics, saying that at least it proved that I was a man in some respects. However, since I’d been kicked out of my second college and reached my mid-twenties, his cool had broken and he was much more disdainful toward me these days. In reality he wanted to take me into the business, groom me as his future successor. But while I was still gallivanting around, he felt he couldn't trust me with the keys to a car, let alone the keys to his multibillion-dollar business empire.

“I came to see you is all,” he said, after grinning at me for some time.

“Really!? Not to tell me that this is my last chance and that you’re going to chuck me out on my ass with only my shirt?”

“Good old Holman. I knew he’d warn you. It’s why I discussed it with him.”

“So it was just another idle threat then?”

“No, it was real. I meant every word. You’ll either buckle down and join the company—and that will only happen when I am sure you're ready—or you’ll try your luck among the proletariat. And let me tell you” —he bent forward so that I could smell the mint on his breath, his hard eyes piercing into me—“it’s not safe out there among the sheep, especially when there are wolves like me around.”

He drew back and I continued to gaze at him, trying to throw his look back in his face. But my father never registered anything except his own effect. You could spit in his eye and he would merely walk away, letting you think that you’d won. That is until you were awoken one night by some of his thugs around your bed who’d come to place you in intensive care. Or worse: a coffin.

“Well, I’m gonna be better,” I stated after almost a minute of staring him down.

“Wow!” he exclaimed with a smirk. “Either you have a short memory or you’re being funny, because that’s what you said all the other times I’ve sat in one of these shoebox rooms talking to you like this.”

He said all this very calmly, as though he were a doctor giving his diagnosis on a patient’s illness.

“I mean it for real this time,” I stated. “I’m different, I can feel it.”

“Well, the circumstances have changed, I can tell that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your little act of heroism on the freeway.”

“Oh! You noticed?” I said sardonically.

“Yes,” he replied as if he’d taken me at my word. “For what it’s worth, I’m actually proud of you. There, I said it.”

This last part sounded rushed and nonchalant, and I wasn’t filled with joy at hearing it come so dryly from his mouth.

“You don’t sound amazingly happy,” I put to him.

“Heroism is to be admired, but that doesn't stop me thinking that deep down it was an act of stupidity. I feel that it was more the actions of a desperate man than those of a genuine hero. I believe that you wanted to risk injury or death to yourself; you were thrilled by it all, the danger. You’re a gambler, Josh. You were gambling then with the only thing worth gambling with: your life.”

“It’s always got to be simplified down into some form of individualism to you,” I retorted with a scowl. “You can’t see that maybe I wanted to help those people, because, after all, it was the right thing to do.”

“Whatever you say, son,” he said with a knowing smile that made me want to hit him the moment it flashed upon his thin lips.

“Whatever I say!?” I burst out, the scorching flames of anger licking away at me. “Fuck you, Dad. Why do you demean everything you come into contact with, huh? Even this. For once in my life I didn't run away from something. When I was called upon, I went into the flames and I did what was not only right but was my duty as a human being. How many times have you acted on the impulse to help people instead of burying it deep inside so you could carry on making worthless piles of money?”

My father remained impassive, his eyes fixed on me. Not a sign of emotion flickered on his features. Finally, he spoke:

“It’s worthless piles of money that mean that you don’t get into real trouble. It’s worthless piles of money that kept you out of trouble before, remember? Where would you be without my cash bailing you out?” At this he leaned forward and stated coldly, “Rotting in prison is where, Josh.”

I went cold at the mention of this. He always knew exactly what to say, knew all the answers to my questions, all the rebukes to my arguments.

“Plus,” he went on, “I saw your accounts for the last four months. You’ve spent over a hundred thousand dollars on God knows what. Most of the money came out in cash, so I can only assume that the city’s drug dealers, card sharpers, whorehouses and bars are celebrating their latest financial successes.”

“That’s all over now,” I said, a solemn look on my face. “All of it.”

“I hope so, I really do.”

After that he appeared to get bored and said his goodbyes, giving the room one last contemptuous look before disappearing through the door. And when he did, I let out a great sigh of relief.

Sitting in my room after he left, his visit leaving a lingering taste of bitterness in me like cheap gin, I realized—although I’d always known it subconsciously—that my father was already dead. Not in body, but in soul. He had stepped over too many lines in his life, too many moral boundaries, and I sensed that he could never go back. With every line crossed, he had left behind a part of himself, shedding his layers of humanity until there was nothing left except his immutable, unstoppable will. I’ve never seen the light of joy cast itself across my father’s face. Not genuinely anyway—sure, he smiles at functions, but this is nothing more than a conceited mask. Whenever his lips do sincerely screw themselves up into something bearing the characteristics of a smile, there’s always something mocking in his expression. He never smiles with a sudden burst of happiness. It is always schadenfreude, the sneering contempt for another's misfortune. Do you think I want to end up like him?