“Almost Empty”
by Weston J. Turner, age 12
I was seven-years-old when my dad left us. That morning, he showered, shaved, and dressed in a suit and tie, same as always. Drank his coffee at the kitchen counter while we ate breakfast, same as always. He kissed Ma on the cheek, told my sisters and me to be good, and drove off in his Nissan Altima. Same as always.
At school, in Mr. Fitzsimmons’ math class, I got a funny feeling in my stomach. By noon, my stomach churned, and my skin was hot. I barely made it to the big gray trash can at the end of the row of tables in the cafeteria before puking my guts out.
The lunch supervisor sent me to the nurse, and the nurse called Dad, but he wasn’t at his office. Ma had to come and get me, grousing the whole time that she’d had to take a bus from work—Dad drove our only car.
Ma and I got off the 9 bus and walked down the street toward our house. We lived in Woburn, a little north of the city, in a shabby little house with blue siding and a white roof at the end of a cul-de-sac. On the street, with two huge suitcases in hand, was my father. He was stuffing one into the trunk of his car and the other was at his feet. He froze when he saw us.
Ma started walking fast, then running, demanding to know what my father was up to, louder and louder. She let go of my hand because I could hardly keep up, and left me on the curb while she rushed to him. They talked but I couldn’t hear what they said through the fever that stuffed my head like cotton.
Ma looked more scared than I’d ever seen her. She started crying, then screaming. Dad talked in a low voice, then threw up his hand and slammed the trunk of the car. In my delirium, the sound was huge. A bomb going off. A meteor smashing us out of our home, destroying everything, leaving behind a huge crater. A hole blasted in the center of each of us.
Dad tore out of my mother’s slapping, grasping hands, and climbed into the front seat to start the car. Ma screamed and screamed that he was no kind of man, and then collapsed to her knees, sobbing and telling him to go and never come back.
Dad drove the car off the curb and around the cul-de-sac. He slowed in front of me and waved once from behind his closed window. Guilt had turned his features into someone unrecognizable.
I shook my head no, and kicked the passenger door.
He kept going. I slammed my hand on the trunk. No!
He didn’t stop.
For a second, I stood with my pulse rushing in my ears and my face on fire, watching the car roll away. Then I ran. I ran after him as fast as I could. I shouted at him as loud as I could, hot tears streaking down my burning skin.
Did he see me in his rearview? He must have; a seven-year-old boy screaming for his dad to come back, while running as fast as his legs could carry him. Not fast enough.
He sped up, turned the corner, and was gone.
The ground tilted out from under me. I stumbled to the asphalt, scraping my knees and palms, my breath wheezing through hard sobs.
We later found out he’d quit his job weeks ago and hadn’t paid the mortgage on the house in three months. Instead, he kept the money for his escape.
Did he wonder what we’d do with only Ma’s pay from cutting hair? Did he care that we’d lose our little house in Woburn? In the months to come, did he ever wonder if we cried for him? Did he consider my sisters and I blamed ourselves, because of course we did. If we were good enough, he would’ve stayed.
Or taken us with him.
Instead, he took his clothes and the stuff from his bathroom. Dad scraped out his closet and drawers, taking everything…except for one dress sock. Black with gold-colored thread at the toe.
I looked at that lone sock in the drawer and pictured the other one in his luggage, now traveling with him—wherever he was going. He couldn’t be bothered to grab the other one.
Like us, it wasn’t worth going back for.
His children were left behind, like a sock in a drawer that was almost empty, and that was a million times worse than if there was nothing left at all.
The bank took the house. Ma started drinking a lot of beer at night and had to ask Uncle Phil for money to get us into an apartment in Southie.
I burnt the sock.
I was only seven but the anger in me felt so much bigger. Hotter. Like a fever that would never go away. I had to watch the sock turn to ash. That way, if Dad came back looking for it, I could tell him, “It’s gone. I burnt it. There is nothing left for you here.”
He’d say he was sorry, and I’d say it was too late, and I’d make him go. I’d be in charge, and when his car drove away, I wouldn’t run after it.
But that was five years ago. He isn’t coming back.
“You only got this shirt so keep it clean. You hear me?”
Ma cinched the maroon-and-gold striped tie up to my throat hard enough to make me wince. “You come home messed up, there’s nothing I can do for you. You want to look like a poor bastard from Southie?”
“I am a poor bastard from Southie,” I said, earning another jerk on my tie from Ma.
She wagged her finger in my face, last night’s beers still lingering on her breath. “Watch your language or you’ll get kicked out before you even start.”
Holy irony, Batman.
My language was how I wound up winning a scholarship to the most expensive school in Boston in the first place. My essay beat 3,000 other entries to get me a full ride to the Sinclair Preparatory School for Boys, and the high school Academy. Unfortunately the ride came with no transportation, so I was getting up at five in the morning to catch the 38 bus into the city center.
I looked myself over in the mirror on the back of the door, not recognizing my own reflection. At public school, I’d worn jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life. A long-sleeved shirt on picture day. A jacket in winter. Now I stared at the maroon blazer with gold around the edges, black trousers, and white shirt with the Sinclair logo. I wondered who that guy in the mirror was trying to fool.
“Stop fidgeting,” Ma said, fussing with my hair.
She’d cut it short but left some of the front long. She was a stylist down at Betty’s, and she was good at her job.
“Don’t you look handsome?”
I ducked from under her hand and scowled. “I look like I’ve been sorted into Gryffindor.”
Ma sniffed. “What the hell you talking about? You look great. Just like one of them.”
One of them.
I dropped my gaze to my old, worn out Chucks. They were the only thing that was the same about me, and a dead giveaway that I wasn’t ever going to be ‘one of them.’ The other boys would have dress shoes, but shoes didn’t come with the uniform, and Ma couldn’t afford them this month. Maybe next. Maybe never. I was okay with never. You can’t run in dress shoes.
I ran a lot. When I got mad, I ran around the old, pitted track at my public school as fast as I could, for as long as I could. I don’t know why; I didn’t particularly like running, but I was fast. I still had dreams about chasing Dad’s car, so maybe that’s why. Maybe I’m still trying to catch him. Stupid. Running on a track, you just go in circles. You always come back to where you start.
“No fighting, Weston Jacob Turner,” Ma said that morning, taking my chin in her hand and turning me to face her. The curve of her acrylic nail touched the bridge of my nose where a small break hadn’t healed straight. “You can’t be carrying on at that fancy school like you do around here. One fight and you’re out.”
That’s another thing I did when I got mad. I got into fights. I was mad a lot.
I jerked my chin out of her grip. “What if some other kid gives me hell first?”
“Let it go. You think the administration is going to listen to your side over one of them trust fund babies? Those parents donate.” Ma lit a cigarette, and shook her head of bleached blonde hair. She squinted through a haze of smoke and pointed her cigarette at me. “You fight with one of their kids, you’re going to lose even if you win. Especially if you win.”
It was still dark out when Ma smacked a smoky-smelling kiss on my cheek and told me to “scoot” so she could go back to bed. My sisters were both still sleeping in the other bedroom. They were both old enough to move out and get jobs, but instead they took the big room. I had the tiny room off the kitchen. Ma had the couch. She fell asleep on it surrounded by empty beer cans and the TV on every night, and kept her clothes in the hall closet.
By the time it reached downtown, the 38 bus had cleared out and I had a window seat as we rolled up to Sinclair Prep. All cement and statues—one of the old historical buildings since the time of the Revolution, not far from Trinity Church. I was twenty minutes early for first bell when I climbed the few cement steps to the heavy front door. I slipped down the quiet corridors where teachers worked to get their classrooms ready, careful to keep my Chucks from squeaking on the polished floors.
The library at the end of the main hall was silent. Cool. All gleaming brown wood—tables, chairs, floors, bookshelves. I couldn’t believe this was a middle school. I had to remind myself that the library also served Sinclair Academy. Even so, you wouldn’t think it was any kind of school library to see the books they had.
My fingers trailed over the spines. Grown-up books. Books I had to badger my sisters to check out for me at the public library. Books with sex and bad words and grown-up problems. I liked those better than the kiddie books. My problems didn’t feel like kid problems. When your dad leaves you behind like a forgotten sock, a piece of your childhood rots away—the part where you can just be a kid without worrying so much.
I worried all the time. About Ma and how she drank a lot of beer most nights, and ranted to my sisters that all men were trash and would always end up hurting the women they were supposed to love. She didn’t know I was listening, but I was.
I worried about the parade of scummy boyfriends that went in and out of our apartment over the years. Trash, just like Ma said. Maybe she was right about all men. I worried I would grow up to be trash too, and would hurt any woman I might someday love, so I vowed not to love anyone.
I worried about money. Not for me, I could get by. But Ma had an ulcer from worrying about bills, and chugged almost as much Pepto as she did Michelob. They shut off the water last month for three days until Uncle Phil paid the bill.
Getting this scholarship was going to help my family. I’d get into a good college, get a good job, and maybe cut out the worrying for a little while.
In the library, I looked for one of my favorites, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. They didn’t have it. It was very grown-up. I’d read it twice, and certain parts of it more than twice, under the covers in my bedroom with either my notebook, or a fistful of Kleenex at the ready. Or both.
Henry Miller wrote about lice-ridden beds in Paris flats (a flat was a kind of apartment, not a woman’s shoe; I looked it up) and about being hungry. Always hungry.
I was hungry a lot too.
Miller also wrote about ‘crawling up’ a woman in bed, and used bad words for her body parts. His writing made me want to grab my notebook and pen to write down my own words. I shouldn’t love a woman, but I could write about the sex I would someday have, or admire her beauty from a safe distance. I’d write poems instead of books, where you choose only the words that mattered most, and you didn’t have to say who it was about. It was just a poem, and poems can be about anyone or no one.
And anyway, writing helped. I stopped worrying when I wrote or when I jerked off.
Ha! I should’ve put that in my essay.
They found me at lunch, where I was reading Kerouac’s On the Road, and eating spaghetti and green beans from Sinclair’s gourmet cafeteria.
One hot meal a day: check.
“Look here, it’s the charity case.”
Jason Kingsley. I’d already heard all about him and it was barely noon. He slid onto the bench directly in front of me, while his richie friends sat at my empty table, boxing me in.
“What did you call me?” I asked, my heart pounding a slow, heavy beat of dread.
“You’re the contest winner, right?” Jason asked. “The one who wrote that essay about your dad abandoning your family?”
I slowly lowered my book, amazed my hands weren’t shaking as a rush of humiliation swept through me like a wild fire, making my skin hot.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s me.”
How the hell…?
“They posted your essay on the Sinclair website,” said a redheaded guy with bad skin, who’d crowded in next to me. “Did you know that?”
“He totally did not know that,” Jason said, watching me.
A couple of guys snickered.
Fuck everything, everywhere.
I’d forgotten that when I entered the contest, one of the stipulations was Sinclair could publish the winning essay wherever they wanted. When I submitted the damn thing, I didn’t think I had a prayer of winning. It hadn’t mattered.
Now it mattered.
“So your dad took off and left the sock behind?” the redhead said. “Sucks to be you.”
“That does suck, Sock Boy,” Jason said, plucking a green bean off my tray and chewing it. “You must feel like shit.”
“Sock Boy,” the redhead snickered. “Good one, Jason.”
“Really? Sock Boy?” I said. “That’s the best you can do?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said stiffly, tilting his chin up. “Maybe you’re not worth more than Sock Boy.”
Redhead picked at a zit on his chin. “You think you could do better?”
“I can think of a crap-ton better insults, just off the top of my head.”
“Prove it.”
“Sure. No problem.”
I cracked my knuckles, thinking fast. But the insults came easy; I’d twisted that knife in my own guts a thousand times since Dad left.
“What about…Your dad abandoned your family and all you got was a lousy sock?”
Snickers.
Jason crossed his arms. “Lame.”
I shrugged casually, while my mind revved like a racecar at the starting line. “Mmmkay. You’re lucky; on Take Your Son to Work Day, you get to stay home.”
The redhead kid snorted a laugh, earning a glare from Jason. I kept going, and my audience warmed to me quick. With each insult I hurled at myself, the other guys got more and more into it, covering their mouths, laughing and oohing, like a rap battle, where I was the attacker and victim, both.
“I hate to say you have a deadbeat dad, but if the sock fits…?”
“If you need a man-to-man talk, does your mom take out an ad on Craigslist?”
“Are you a Jehovah’s Witness now? They don’t celebrate Father’s Day either.”
The guys were in an uproar now, but Jason’s jaw clenched. I leaned over the table.
“Knock knock,” I said, glaring at him.
“Fuck off.”
“Knock knock.”
He sniffed, not meeting my eyes. “This is stupid.”
I cocked my head to the rest of the table. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” they answered in unison.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but not your dad, that’s for goddamn sure.”
The peals of laughter seemed to strike Jason in the back as he hunched over and flinched as if the insults were directed at him, instead of me.
“You look confused, buddy,” I said. “You need me to explain that one?”
“You think you’re so fucking smart?” Jason said. “You just insulted yourself ten times over. But you know what?” He smiled darkly. He had the simple truth on his side, and he knew it. “It doesn’t matter how clever you think you are. You’re just Sock Boy, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”
His hand snaked out and he shoved my half-full tray of food into my lap, painting my pants and white dress shirt with spaghetti sauce and milk.
“Ooops!” Jason said, jumping out of his seat. “My bad.”
I shot to my feet, ignoring the cold milk in my crotch and hot spaghetti sauce on my stomach, and stared him down, nose to nose. My hands were balled so tightly into fists that my knuckles ached. Jason didn’t back down and the entire cafeteria went quiet, watching.
“Go ahead,” Jason seethed in a low whisper. “Take your shot. I got six witnesses who’ll say it was an accident. You’ll lose your precious scholarship. You wanna take that chance, Sock Boy?”
I sure as hell did. But hitting him would get me kicked out. Ratting on him was out of the question. That left letting it go like a goddamn chump.
“What’s going on, guys?” asked a friendly voice.
Out of my periphery, I saw a tall guy, dark hair, big. He looked older than the rest of us.
Lots of kids talked on the first day of school, informing incoming seventh graders of their place in the Sinclair caste system. Jefferson Drake, a football-playing senior at the Academy, was the most popular kid in school. King of Sinclair. His little brother, Connor, was the prince.
I guessed this was him.
Connor stood with his hands in his pockets, casual, as if he owned the school, instead of being just another twelve-year-old kid.
Jason smirked and turned away. “Nothing,” Jason said. “Sock Boy had a little accident.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Connor said, frowning at the mess on my uniform. “Why you gotta be an asshole, Kingsley?”
“I’m not. Just clumsy, I guess,” Jason said, but he backed off. “See you around, Sock Boy. Shame about your shirt.” He clucked his tongue. “You can always write another essay. Call it ‘Laundry Day’ and maybe the school will pay for a new uniform.”
“Maybe your mom will,” Connor said, grinning.
Jason laughed and the two bumped fists. “See you at practice, Drake.”
“I hope so. You need it.”
Jason flipped him two middle fingers and took his crowd away with him.
Fuck all of these guys, I thought.
I angrily brushed cold spaghetti noodles off my pants. The slacks were black and hid the stain, but my shirt looked like I’d been shot in the gut.
“Shit.”
“You got a spare?” Connor asked.
“Fuck off.”
He held up his hands. “Hey, just trying to help. I have extra, and my house isn’t far from here. If we left now, we can be back before bell.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“It’s either that or you go the rest of the day looking like an extra in a bad horror movie.”
Connor’s friendly grin was seemingly a permanent fixture to his face.
“Why would you help me?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Connor Drake, by the way.”
“Congratulations.”
Connor laughed and lowered his hand. “Come on. You need to change, right?”
I clenched my teeth. “I guess.”
“Let’s go.”
He started walking. I followed.
“You’re new, right? You weren’t here last year.”
“No shit. I’m Wes Turner, the charity case.”
Connor’s dark brows came together. “Charity case… Oh, that was you? The essay winner? That explains Kingsley’s nickname. Hey, don’t let him get to you. He’s not all bad. We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”
“Has he been a prick that long?”
Connor laughed. “Pretty much.” He lifted his chin at the security guard at the front door. “Hey, Norm. Just running home to get something for my friend, here.”
Norm the Security Guard opened the door for Connor Drake, like a doorman in a fancy hotel. “Be back before bell.”
“Will do.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, as we stepped out of the school and into the light of a September afternoon. “Lunch is closed.”
“My parents donate a lot of money,” Connor said with that mega-watt grin. “A lot of money.”
He walked us around the corner and down Dartmouth Street, which led toward a neighborhood of old, elegant row houses in tawny sandstone and black ironwork. Connor and I walked along red brick sidewalks and passed old-fashioned street lamps. The entire block looked like one giant castle.
“Hey, congrats on the scholarship, by the way,” Connor said. “I heard a lot of kids tried for that. Your essay was really good.”
My shoulders hunched. “You read it too?”
“My parents can’t get over it. Made me read it twice.”
Fuck me sideways.
“It was all right,” I muttered. I waited for Connor to give me shit about that goddamn sock. He didn’t.
“It was better than all right,” Connor said. “You’re lucky; I can’t write to save my life. And wouldn’t you know it, I have Mr. Wrightman for English.”
“I have Wrightman too,” I ventured. “He’s tough?”
“The toughest,” Connor said. “He assigns a crap-ton of papers, long stories, short stories… Hell, I heard he even makes us write poems. Fucking poems.”
I stepped a little lighter. “Yeah, that sucks.”
“Tell me about it.” Connor glanced at me. “But you should do all right. Is that what you want to be when you grow up? A writer?”
The day before I might’ve said yes, but Sock Boy had shown me that I wasn’t ready to deal with the repercussions. Writing was something I’d keep to myself where it couldn’t hurt me again. I was worn out from being hurt. My dad taking off showed me with brutal clarity the cost of having feelings, of caring too much. I still wanted to write, but making a habit out of bleeding my heart out and having it thrown back in my face was not going to happen. Not ever again.
“I’m not sure yet.” I glanced up at him. “You?”
His grin widened. “I want to open a sports bar in downtown Boston. Like Cheers, you know? I want to stand in the middle of it all, with a game on every TV. I love baseball. Do you like baseball?”
Before I could answer, he went on.
“I could talk baseball all day. And hockey. I want to make a place where people can hang out, talk sports or watch a game, and just have a good time.”
I nodded. “Seems like you’d be good for that.”
Hell, Connor Drake, even aged twelve, seemed like he was put on this earth to open a sports bar. But his grin dimmed.
“Tell my parents that. They think I should go to an Ivy League college and do something ‘big and important.’ Doesn’t help that my brother, Jefferson, is all about big and important.”
I didn’t know what to say. The idea of doing something ‘big and important’ seemed impossible for a poor kid like me. If I could get into a good college, get a decent job to help my Ma out a little, I’d consider it a miracle.
“You’re from Southie, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“What’s that like?”
My hackles went up. “What’s what like? Living in a crappy apartment and needing charity to pay for a decent school?”
Connor wasn’t put off by my hard tone; a trait that would endure years into our friendship. The glue that would hold it together many, many times.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. Sometimes it seems like everything around here is so complicated…when it doesn’t have to be. I like simple, you know?”
I scowled. “Being poor is pretty damn simple. You need money for shit and you don’t have it. The end.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta suck,” he said, and somehow, I didn’t want to deck him one for sounding so blasé about what was a constant struggle in my universe.
Connor had a strange charisma; as if he were impossible to dislike. His superpower. I was the opposite; I made it really damn easy for people not to like me—I preferred it that way. And yet here I was, hanging with the most popular kid in my grade who’d told Norm the Security Guard that I was his friend. The disorientation grew stronger when Connor nodded his chin ahead.
“So, this is me.”
I stared, slack-jawed. A four-story Victorian row house in rustic beige with black window frames. The kind of house you’d see in Boston historical brochures. A staircase led from the brick sidewalk to black double doors with ornate stained glass at the top.
“This is your house?” I asked.
“One of them,” Connor said with a grin, again avoiding sounding like an arrogant douchebag.
I stared up at his house, drinking it in because my brain couldn’t comprehend that people could actually live in houses that belonged in brochures. Connor wasn’t just rich, he was billionaire-rich. I wondered if his parents were famous. He looked famous himself—like the guy they’d cast in a movie about a popular star baseball player, who takes the poor kid under his wing. The kind of guy who was too happy to be a bully or prick, and who coasted through life on a never-ending wave of his parents’ money.
Turned out, I was right about all of it, and the poor kid Connor Drake took under his wing was me.
The Drakes’ cleaning lady washed my uniform and gave me one of Connor’s old shirts. After school, we went back and played his Xbox that was hooked up to his state-of-the-art sound system while sitting in dual black leather beanbag chairs.
Connor asked me to stay for dinner, and I met his parents, Victoria and Alan Drake.
Mr. Drake owned a hundred different companies under the Drake name, and Mrs. Drake was a state senator. Boston royalty, or as close to it, as you could get.
The Drakes fed me the kind of elaborate dinner I’d only seen in movies about rich people. In their immense dining room, under a heavy crystal chandelier, I felt some of the pressure they put on Connor: to work hard and get better grades, to go to college, instead of opening a sports bar like he wanted. They wanted a friendship between their son and me—the scrappy street kid who’d show Connor how far hard work and smarts could get you. They wouldn’t shut up about my essay; how impressed they were, how I’d turned a bad situation into something positive.
I thought Connor would hate me after his parents talked me up so much, but for some crazy-ass reason, he liked me. Our friendship was instant, as if we’d known each other in a past life and were just picking up where we left off. And despite his parents’ pressure, he was happy. I’d never met anyone who was happy. The tight coil of tension that twisted my gut since my dad left, eased a little when I was around him. I wasn’t jumping for joy every minute, but sometimes I stopped worrying, and that was enough.
Connor saved me from a Sinclair-lifetime of dodging fights and being called Sock Boy. His buddies left me alone, and by the time we started at the Academy, they were my friends too, if only by the sheer power of his effortless charm.
The Drakes treated me like a son and even extended their generosity to my mother and sisters over the years. My family’s loud talk and Southie accents never sounded more pronounced than they did bouncing off the Drakes’ dining room walls, but the Drakes treated them with kindness and respect. To my mortified humiliation, they paid the bills Ma shamelessly admitted she couldn’t pay. They gave generous gifts at birthdays and holidays, never asking for a thing in return.
Still, I felt an unspoken pressure to take care of Connor, to make sure he ‘made something’ of his life aside from running a sports bar. I never tried to talk him out of his sports bar dream, but I kept him afloat at Sinclair by helping him with the essays and papers in Wrightman’s class.
By the end of the first year, I was writing them for him. Connor wasn’t dumb, but he didn’t like to think too hard or dig too deep. Contentment was his default mode. He lived to laugh and have fun and when I wrote his papers, I tried to channel his happiness over the rough, fraying wires of my own anger and pain.
I always remembered to misspell a word or two.
Throughout high school, I broke every Sinclair record for track and field. Running got me a two-year NCAA scholarship to Amherst University in western Massachusetts.
A liberal arts college wasn’t what the Drakes had in mind for Connor, but he hadn’t shown an interest in any college until I got into Amherst. Connor—who could have gone anywhere in the country thanks to his parents’ checkbook—wanted to stick with me, and that touched me more than I could ever say.
I promised his parents to help him out and make sure he did his work, knowing I’d be writing his college papers too.
The Drakes paid the rent on a sweet, off-campus apartment for us, which allowed me to stretch my scholarship over three years instead of two. They would’ve paid my entire tuition if I let them, but the free rent was hard enough on my stubborn pride. I was determined to make it on my own—to show my asshole dad I didn’t need his help. But every kindness the Drakes bestowed was a weight on my shoulders. A growing debt.
And where I came from, debts must always be repaid.