Chapter Five
Tristan
I was practicing for my song for Fresh Voices that night and still kind of reveling in the afterglow of the amazing sex Elly and I had in a fucking closet when somebody started banging on my door. I would have just pretended like I wasn’t home, but I’d just been strumming the damned guitar. Shit! I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone right now…unless it was Elly and she was here for more.
I walked over to the door and said, “Who is it?”
“It’s your mom and dad,” I heard my mother’s tremulous voice say. If that wasn’t a buzz kill, I don’t know what was. I’d grown to hate the sound of that voice and I’d honestly be happy if I never had to hear it again.
“I’m kind of busy right now,” I said. Then I held my breath and hoped I’d get lucky and they would leave. I knew it was a pipe dream.
“We just want to see you for a minute Tristan. We haven’t seen you in over a month.” That time it was my mother’s whiney voice that floated through the door. “Just for a minute.”
Shit! What the hell do they want? They always want something but I’ve turned them down so often I rarely had to tolerate them asking any longer. I don’t know who they bothered when they weren’t on my doorstep and I didn’t care. I appreciated the reprieve.
I pulled the door open and said, “See, it’s me, still alive. Thanks for stopping by.”
The old man looked like holy hell. He was shaking and sweating and his eyes were sunken about six inches back into his head. I was trying to remember how old he was…not quite fifty yet. He looked about sixty five. Mom was pretty torn up herself, but she didn’t look like she was about to drop dead at least.
Realizing my sarcasm was falling on deaf ears anyways I asked him, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Tristan, baby…can we come in for a minute?” Great, Mom’s broken out the pleading voice. She missed her calling; she should have been an actress.
“I’m really busy…” I tried again.
“Please baby, just a minute.” Baby, yeah right.
Deciding it would be easier just to listen to what they wanted and get turning them down over with, I stepped back and let them in. The old man still hadn’t said a word and it looked like my mom was actually holding him up. She led him over to the couch and helped him sit down. I wondered if he was really that bad off or if they were playing it up, hoping I’d feel sorry for him. Fat chance.
“Okay, Mom. What the hell is going on?”
She looked at my dad sadly and then took a deep breath. My guess was she was giving herself some time to work up the tears in her eyes. She obviously had no clue that either way whatever it was wasn’t going to affect me.
“Your daddy’s real sick, honey. He needs to go into a program, and he wants to…but they told him he couldn’t test dirty. Medical doesn’t pay for detox anymore and we can’t afford it….He’s been trying to do it on his own. I’m scared for him and to top it off, we’re between places right now…”
“I don’t have any money,” I told her, hoping that’s what they’d come for and they’d leave.
“We know that, honey. We’re not looking for money…”
“Then what, Mom? The only time you come around is when you want something, so what is it?”
“He’s sick, Tristan. He’s really sick and I was hoping you’d let us stay here for a while…”
I laughed. I know that sounds terrible, but unless you were there while they were “raising” me, you wouldn’t understand.
“No Mom, you can’t stay here. This is a studio apartment. I hung up a fucking curtain over there to make a bedroom. Where do you think I’d put you?”
“Baby, we don’t need much space. I’m looking for a job. Your daddy can’t work because he’s just so sick…”
“He’s not sick, Mom! He’s withdrawing from that shit he puts in his veins!”
“He wants to quit baby…”
“And what about you, Mom. How long have you been off the pipe?”
“It’s been over a month since I’ve touched the stuff.”
“What are you substituting for it?”
“Nothing, baby. We both want to be clean. We want to be the parents to you that we used to be…”
“Are you delusional? When were you ever parents to me? Even before you both discovered how much you loved getting high, you weren’t ever parents.” She had the audacity to look like I slapped her in the face. Then she said, “It hurts me when you talk that way, Tristan. You know I brag on you…even now. I was at the shelter the other night for dinner and that Fresh Voices show was on. I saw your beautiful face flash across the screen and my heart swelled with pride. I told everyone, ‘That’s my boy’.”
“That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re wasting your time, I haven’t won yet and even if I do win, you got the money the first go-around. I get the money this time and you can keep living on the streets. You’re done living off of me and my talent. None of which I got from either of you by the way.”
I went over to the cabinet in the kitchen and took a full vial of cocaine that I’d just bought out of the flour canister. I didn’t care that I would be without, whatever it took to get rid of them. “Here, share this with him,” I told her, like they were little kids with only one candy bar. It was pathetic. “He’ll be fine in a while. Turn a few tricks and make some cash until your welfare check comes and everyone will be okay. Alright? Get it out of your head that I’d give you a single penny if I won that million dollars. It won’t happen.”
Again, she looked hurt, and shocked that I would talk to her that way. She was looking at me with what looked like real tears in her eyes now. The old man was on his feet, headed towards the vial in my hand.
I tossed it to him and he looked at her and said, “Come on, Brenda. He doesn’t give a shit.” It was all a fucking act. They came for money for drugs, just like they always do.
I laughed again. The old man was taking my last G of coke and he wanted to get in the last word before he left. These people were too much. They would be poster children for sterilization before they managed to procreate. Dad took my mother’s arm and led her towards the door.
Before they got there, she looked at me again and said, “I don’t know what happened to you. You used to be such a sweet boy.” That was it. I walked over and pulled open the door for them.
“Get out, and please don’t come back. I really don’t want to do this again.”
They limped out together, old and broken before their time. My mother turned around and looked at me one last time and that was when I got in my last word…I wanted to make sure that she knew her guilt trip was lost on me. “You happened to me, Mom. I’m a product of your raising.” She started crying again. I didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t my fucking problem. I had my own crap to worry about.
Their surprise visit had pissed me off so bad that now I was all amped up and I couldn’t fucking concentrate. I opened the fridge and was at least happy to see I had a couple of beers left. Other than a lime and something that I think used to be cheese, that was all that was in there. I grabbed one and twisted off the top, drinking half of it in that one big gulp. I fucking hate that I’ m related to those losers. I took another long swig off the beer and then tried to refocus on the music I’d been writing before I was so rudely interrupted.
I sat down on the barstool and picked up my guitar. I played a few notes of what I already wrote but my head just couldn’t let all the crap with the parental units go. I got it in my head then that maybe I should write a song about that. Maybe it would be cathartic to release some of the anger and frustration I felt towards them in a song.
I started writing and within a half an hour, I had written the most dark, depressing song in history. I set it to the melody of another song I’d written not too long ago and I sat there, alone in my crappy apartment and sang the song I’d written about my crappy life. When I finished it, I was more depressed than before I started. I always tried to tell those freaking stupid therapists in rehab that talking about depressing shit didn’t help. It didn’t change anything and it only served to remind me of what a crappy hand I was dealt. They used to tell me that it would destroy me if I kept it inside. I always thought it was a bunch of bullshit and this is proof as far as I’m concerned.
It took another beer a few good hits off the bong and another hour to get my head back where it needed to be. I tried to put the parents back where they belonged…at the bottom of the shit pile in my brain and I set about finishing what was important…my song for round three.