13.
Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up
WELL, SORT of.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” I ask Corey, sure I’m close to a complete freak-out. I’m pretty sure my voice is so high-pitched that I sound like a mosquito. “Seriously. Let’s do this later. Like tomorrow. Or never.”
“Or you could do it now because you told me you wanted to.”
“How do you even know this is his house? This could be the wrong address and I could end up interrupting some kind of séance where an elderly woman is trying to communicate with her husband who died suddenly and without warning. I would feel so terrible about that.” And I really would too. Unless her husband turned out to be an evil ghost. Then I would feel like I saved the world. It’s a precarious line to walk.
“It’s good to know that even when you’re on the verge of panicking, you sound so completely sane.”
“It could happen! How do you even know this is where he lives?” I know where he lives, but Corey shouldn’t. Unless he’s stalking Dom.
“I have my ways.”
I scowl at him. “You don’t have ways. I changed my mind. Home, James. Take me far from here.”
“No,” he says as he puts the Jeep in park. “You’re going up there, you’re knocking on the door, and you’re going to stop being a whiny little bitch. Grow a pair, Tyson.”
“You know, this tough-love thing you’ve got going on is really annoying,” I tell him as I stare up at the unassuming brick house set back from the roadway. There’s an old Ford Bronco sitting in the driveway. It fits him, somehow. This whole place does. There’s a small yard in the front, the grass green and well maintained. There’s a bird feeder hanging from the eaves of the house near the front door, catching the late afternoon sun. The garage door is open, and I can see a bike hanging from the ceiling, and I remember (whether I want to or not) a time that he told me he never really could ride a bike, that they were always too small. That he looked ridiculous trying to ride one. I spent the next four weeks scouring the Internet until I found an old used bike on eBay. I gave Bear the money I’d saved, and he bought it for me. I was only ten. Dominic was sixteen. The look on his face when I rolled it out to him knocked the breath from my chest. You would have thought it was the grandest gift to have ever been given.
We rode around that summer. Everywhere. For hours. We didn’t have a single care in the world. Sure, my mom had abandoned me. Sure, his dad had murdered his mother. Sure, we’d just lost Mrs. P. Sure, we were still recovering from loss and death and sacrifice, but those hours spent riding along the boardwalk, birds crying out overhead, the crash of the surf off somewhere to our right, those hours when it was just me and him were spent without a care. All the worries would still be there when we got back. All the hurt. All the sadness. That would all still be there.
He was my therapy then. He was the reason I understood the art of breathing.
“Ty?” I hear Corey ask.
“Yeah.” My voice is rough. I clear my throat, but I can’t take my eyes off the bike hanging in the garage. It’s not the same one (of course it’s not—that old bike had eventually thrown its chain and the spokes had cracked and splintered, and years later, I don’t remember where it eventually ended up), but it doesn’t matter. There’s a smaller bike hanging next to it. It’s blue. It’s tiny. Training wheels attached to the sides. A kid’s bike. For Ben.
His son.
“Ty,” Corey says again.
“What?” I tear my eyes away and stare down the road.
“You don’t have to do this,” he tells me gently. He puts his hand on my arm and plays his fingers along the back of my hand. It’s only then that I realize both of my hands are curled into fists. “I can be pushy. But if you’re not ready for this, then we drive away now and you’ll never hear about it from me again. I only want what’s best for you, but no matter what I want, what keeps you safe is always better. This isn’t worth it if it hurts you. Nothing is.”
Somehow, I’m able to crack a smile. “That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I tell him. I turn my hand over and start tugging on his fingers. It won’t be until much later that I’ll realize I used to do the same thing to Bear when I was a kid. I don’t know when I started doing it to Corey. I know why, though. Somehow, it grounds me, keeps my mind focused. I don’t know why. I don’t know that it matters.
“I’m fickle,” he says with a small laugh.
“It’s got to happen sooner or later,” I say and look back up at the garage.
Corey says nothing. Just waits.
“I think….” I stop. Think hard. So many things are running through my head, like I’m being assaulted by memories, and he’s always there. Even when I know he wasn’t, I can still remember him. That hulking presence. That broken voice. That laugh that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, all rocks and rust. “Did I ever tell you how we met?”
“No.”
“I was following ants. I was fascinated by them for some reason. I don’t know. Just how my mind worked. One day I was following the ants and he was just there, watching me, on the other side of the road. I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know why. I thought he was weird at first. Maybe a little scary. But then I saw he’d drawn little stars on his shoes, and I thought that was so cool. I thought that was just so adult.”
“It is pretty cool,” Corey agrees quietly.
“It’s strange. I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t there. It’s all jumbled in my head. You know me, Corey. You probably know me better than almost anyone. But I don’t think you understand how my thoughts go. How they work. There’s a million of them. All at once. There are times I can barely focus on any one, much less all of them. It hurts sometimes. My head. Sometimes I get headaches. Sometimes there are earthquakes and I can’t breathe. It’s like my brain shuts down and my lungs collapse and my throat constricts, and even though I want to breathe, even though I want that more than anything in the world, I can’t. I can’t focus. I can’t focus on the one thing that I know will work. The one thing I know will take it all away. If I could just breathe, then all the rest would be fine.”
He tightens his hand in mine to let me know he hears me.
So touching, it mocks. So sweet and touching and blah, blah, blah. The reason you can’t breathe is because you’re broken, Kid. You’re broken and you won’t ever be fixed.
It’s probably right, that voice.
“I know he wasn’t there. All the time. Before. But I sometimes pretend he was because it makes things easier. It makes the hard things go away. Dominic was there and I knew how to breathe. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But he kept most of the earthquakes away. He kept most of the bad thoughts away. That little voice that tells me I’m not good enough. That I’m too smart for my own good, and that I will never be healed. I will never be rid of this.”
I look down at our joined hands. “I didn’t just love him,” I say. “I think part of me needed him. For a while. And I hate that, now. I resent that now, I think. I don’t want to need anyone. I want to be able to stand on my own two feet without feeling the ground shaking underneath me, without having to worry if today is going to be the day another panic attack hits. I’m not right. Up here.” I tap the side of my head. “I don’t know if I ever will be. Not completely. I just want to be okay. I just want to one day be okay.”
“And it’ll happen,” Corey says, squeezing my hand. “And even if it doesn’t, I promise I’ll be there right by your side, and we can be fucking crazy and stupid together. If you forget how to breathe, I’ll help remind you.”
“This is getting really saccharine,” I mutter.
“Ah, there’s the Tyson I know and love,” he says with a laugh. “Opens up just a little bit and then takes a giant step back.”
“Can’t have it being too easy.”
“No. Can’t have that.”
“I want to leave,” I tell him.
He waits. He knows me better than that.
“But if I do, I’m going to kick my own ass for it later, aren’t I?”
“If not you, then I will,” he reassures me. “Enough is enough. It’s time to put on your big-boy pants and get this done and over with.”
I look back up at the house. “Yeah.”
“You want me to wait out here?”
I really do. Chances are I’m going to chicken out and will need a getaway vehicle waiting for me. Or Dominic will open the door, see it’s me, and slam it in my face. Or I’ll have misunderstood everything and Stacey will answer the door and call for her husband and smile at me and say, “Welcome to our loving home, where we love each other and live in loving matrimony filled with large amounts of love.” Or (and this one is by far the worst) Dominic will open the door, invite me in, and I will have to go inside with him, and it’ll just be me and him, and he’ll sit across from me, staring at me and waiting until I speak, and I won’t be able to think of a single goddamn thing to say. I won’t be able to think of anything at all, because what do you say to someone like him? What do you say to the person who hurt you like no other (even if he didn’t know it was happening)? What do you say to the person who, aside from your brother, has had the most influence on your life?
Without Bear, I would not be alive. This, I know.
But without Dominic, I have not been whole. This I’ve known for a very long time, whether I’ve wanted to realize it or not.
“No,” I say to Corey. “It’ll be fine.”
“I almost believed you there.”
“It will.”
“I’m convinced.” He doesn’t sound convinced.
“I promise.”
“I could go talk to him before you,” he says. “Take him down a few pegs.”
“I’m pretty sure he could squash you. With one hand.”
“Yeah, can we talk about that for a minute? I didn’t know you were into the muscles. That brings a whole new dimension to you. We’ve all got our kinks, I suppose.”
“What? I’m not!”
He stares at me.
“A little,” I admit. “So he’s a big guy. Big deal.”
Corey rolls his eyes. “That’s an understatement. He’s a fucking giant. God, what I would give to just bite into one of his biceps.”
“Corey!”
“What!”
“I don’t know!”
“Then why are we yelling!”
“That’s not what this is about,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Goddamn stress sweat. This makes me think of that deodorant commercial and I laugh quietly, but it comes out high-pitched, like I’m trying to sing an aria while gargling mayonnaise. Sweat drips down into my eye and it burns like crazy, and oh my fucking God, why did I think I could do this? Why on earth did I think this was a good idea? Drive! I want to scream at Corey. Drive, you motherfucker! Get me the fuck out of here!
“Then what is this about?” he asks me, ignoring my operatic-condiment laugh and the gallons of sweat leaking from my body.
I have no fucking clue what this is about. “Just… not that.”
“Well, it’s good to know you’ve totally got this planned out. This is going to go well, I’m sure.”
“Not helping.”
“I’ll kill him,” Corey says suddenly, his eyes flashing. “If he does anything to hurt you, I swear to God I’ll kill him. They won’t find enough of him left to bury.”
“That was intimidating,” I say, unable to keep the awe out of my voice. “Seriously.” These men in my life who threaten someone four times their size are fucking nuts. Awesome, but nuts.
He cracks a grim smile. “Good. Because I will.”
“I can do this?” I ask/tell him and myself.
He knows. “You can. You remember to breathe, Ty. You know how to breathe.”
I do. I do. I know how to breathe because I’ve been taught how to breathe. Even if my mind sometimes forgets, my body knows how, and I can do this. I can push through anything. Earthquakes are nothing. The ocean is nothing. I don’t need a fucking bathtub. I’m nineteen years old. I’m a certified genius. I’m not some Kid anymore. I am more than it wants me to be. It will not break me.
“I’ll call you,” I say and open the door without waiting for a reply.
My strides are solid and sure. Well, at least for the first four steps. Those four steps are full of I can do this! I am the motherfucking man!
The next three steps are a little less sure. These steps are Well, I think I can do this. I am the motherfucking man, but even motherfucking men can have doubts.
The next four steps feel like my feet are stuck in cement. These are the steps where I think Okay, so this was probably a mistake. I can do this, obviously, but the real question is if I want to do this.
The next two steps (yes, yes, he has the longest path up to his house in the history of the world) and all I can hear is me screaming at myself (complete with a ridiculous Southern accent) Dead man walkin’! Folks, we’ve got ourselves a dead man walkin’ here!
The last five steps are up a step or two to the front door, and I’ve got stress sweat like you wouldn’t believe. I’m pretty sure this is the worst idea in a long history of bad ideas. It doesn’t matter what I want. It doesn’t matter that he’s inside. What matters is that I must be out of my fucking mind to think I could ever face him after all the shit I’ve pulled, that I could even think I could be in the same town as him, much less show up unannounced at his house. And for what? What am I doing here? To beg for forgiveness? To ask if we could be friends again? How trivial is that? How fucking trite?
Knock on the door, I tell myself.
No, I reply quite forcefully.
Don’t be a bitch, I say.
Yeah, I’m okay with being a bitch.
Knock. On. The. Door.
Go fuck yourself!
I knock on the door. Well, not really knock. I really just scrape my fingers against the wood. It makes no discernible sound whatsoever, but that’s good enough for me, because obviously no one’s home. I’ll have to come back another time. Another day. Probably never, but that’s okay. I’m going to walk back down the longest path in the history of the world and get back into the Jeep and get the holy hell outta here and never look back and—
I knock again. Louder this time.
I wait.
No response.
I tried, I think. I really did. Time to go.
Except for some reason, my legs don’t seem to get the message my brain is firing off, the traitorous bastards. Instead of turning and running away with my tail between my legs, I apparently decide to go the creepy route and walk along the stone path as it curves around the side of the house to the rear. I hear the Jeep idling behind me, but it might as well be a million miles away for all that it matters.
As I near the gate that leads to the backyard, I hear the voice of a child, and he’s laughing in that strange tone and saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” and I almost can’t take another step. It’s not even that I give fleeting thought to my own father, whoever and wherever he may be—Julie McKenna could never say exactly who he was. He was a trucker, my mother would tell me when I asked. Came, got what he wanted from me, then put us in his rearview mirror. It’s how men are.
He was in the military, she’d tell me when I brought it up again. Every time I asked I got a different answer, as if the real answer was so awful that the only way she could look at me was to make up stories about where I’d come from. He was famous, she’d say. Or He was married or He worked for the government because he was so smart, just like you. When she was already deep into the drink, she’d say, He never wanted you, can’t you see that? If he wanted any part of you, he would have been here all along, and you wouldn’t be asking me these silly questions. No more, Kid. I mean it. Now go get me a couple of ice cubes like a good son. You know I like my whiskey cold. And where’s my lighter? Not the green one. That one’s empty. Just throw it away, Kid. Find me the blue one and get me the ice cubes. I don’t have all night.
I’d get her the lighter. And the ice cubes. I always did. And then I’d sit on the ratty couch in the living room and stare out the window, watching the sun as it started to set, hoping Bear would get home soon because when she drank, she scared me. When she got this drunk, she scared me so bad, and it was getting to the point where I was scared all the time, and what was I going to do when Bear went away to college? What was I going to do when it was just me and my mother alone in this shitty apartment where I’d always get her the ice cubes and would always find her a working lighter so she could smoke her cigarettes one after another? Bear would just be a voice on the phone then. A faraway voice, and I knew, I just knew, that once he escaped, once he saw how life could be away from this hole of a world we lived in, he would never, ever come home. He would never, ever look back.
But, of course, that’s not what happened. By design or by blood, she left and my brother did not.
I need to remember that. Above all things, I need to remember that.
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.
There’s laughter then, rusty and broken. I recognize it immediately, and I wonder when I heard it last. I rack my brain, trying to think of any moment in the days before I left that Dominic (Dom, it whispers, his name is Dom) laughed. I remember hearing it so many times, but not the last time. I can’t think of it, no matter how hard I try.
But here it is, now, and here he is, now, with his son, who laughs along with him, bright and high-pitched in a way that complements his father’s low tones. If I’d heard that without knowing who they were, I’d still think they were the same, that they came from the same blood.
I could walk away. Now. Leave them to their laughter. Leave them happy and free because that’s what it sounds like they are. I could.
I open the gate. Walk around the side of the house.
I hear the Jeep pull away from the curb and roll down the street.
I turn the corner of the house, and Ben is a few feet away, wearing board shorts and a plain white shirt. No shoes on his little feet, his toes and knees covered in flecks of grass. His arms are over his head, and he’s opening and closing his tiny fists. Opening and closing. The smile on his face is wide and toothy.
The backyard is small, and as Ben calls, “Here, here, here,” I see Dom (always Dom) bending over, picking up a foam football up off the ground. He’s dressed like his son. Board shorts. Plain white shirt, stretched tightly over the arms and the back. No shoes. For some reason, I notice the flecks of grass on his knees. On his feet. Just like Ben.
“Good throw,” he says, and I can hear the laughter in his voice. “That was a good throw.”
“Big, huh?” Ben says. “Big throw.”
“Yeah. Big throw.”
“Football!” Ben says.
Dominic stands upright and smiles, and fuck remembering how to breathe. Fuck remembering how to do anything. Fuck it all because it hurts my heart. It hurts like I’ve been stabbed in the chest, and all I can think is four years? Somehow, I let this go on for four years?
He doesn’t see me.
Ben does, though.
“Hi, Ty!” he says and jogs toward me, pumping his little legs. There’s a moment I think he’s going to fall, but he catches himself in that way that only children seem to do. I can do nothing but open my arms as he hurtles himself at me from three feet away. There’s the moment of impact when his body strikes mine, and he wraps his arms around my neck and shoves his hands into my hair and pulls gleefully, and he just babbles, he just talks and talks and talks, and I can only make out bits and pieces like “Daddy” and “football” and “Ty, Ty, Ty.” The rest is lost to the rush of his voice. That’s okay. That’s fine. I hear what I’m supposed to. There’s such a weight to him, such a presence, that all I can do is look him in the eye and nod. That seems to suit him just fine, and on and on he goes.
Eventually, he cranes his neck around to look behind him. “Daddy,” he says. “Look who I found!” He tugs on my hair.
I almost can’t look across the yard. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. It takes all I have, but I look away from the kid in my arms and raise my head toward his father.
Dominic stands watching us both. The expression on his face is unreadable. His eyes lock on mine, and I think in the voice of my brother, Breathe. Just breathe. In. Hold for three seconds. Out. Hold for three seconds. You are bigger than this. You are more than this.
“Look who you found,” Dominic says finally.