How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets

by Garth Stein

  Evan, Tracy said forcefully, I got accepted to Reed.

  Reed College. That’s where the gifted people go.

  I got accepted.

  Of course she did. They would be fools not to accept her.

  That’s great.

  A long pause.

  I’m not going to college with a baby.

  He studied her face at length and knew that she was right. She couldn’t go to college with a baby. Of course not. And how would it work, anyway? How could Evan make his end of it work? He would go to his parents, lay himself at their feet, confess his sins, more sins than they could possibly have guessed. They would be disappointed in him. They would feel let down by him again. His father would accuse him of having done it on purpose. He would say something like, You sure know how to stick it to us, don’t you, Evan? Or he would look out at Evan from under his dark brow and say, I suppose when you don’t have to clean up after yourself, you don’t care how big a mess you make, isn’t that right, Evan?

  How could Evan disappoint them again? First the accident, a family-shattering event. Now this. A child at seventeen? How could he let them down again?

  I have money, he said. I can give you money.

  She didn’t answer.

  It’s the best thing, right?

  Again, she didn’t respond.

  It’s the best thing, he said again, trying to convince himself that it was.

  Is it what you want? she asked.

  It wasn’t what he wanted, no. Not at all.

  Yes.

  Are you sure?

  Yes, he said. I’ll pay for it. It’s what I want.

  A LASER BURNS his eyes. He brings a hand to his face and squints through his fingers. The reflection of the late afternoon sun off a car mirror. A burgundy minivan pulls out from a driveway. What time is it? His watch says five. That was some nap. He’s starving, but otherwise he feels good, refreshed.

  He pulls around the corner and finds the street almost completely deserted. That’s good. That means the party’s over. He parks across the street and surveils the house for a few minutes. It’s quiet.

  Finally, after what he thinks is long enough, and eager to get on with it, Evan pops open the door to his car and steps out into the newly energized air around Walla Walla.

  Yes, that’s right. Something electric. About the situation and about the air. lonized. Tingly. For the instant Evan climbs out of his car, the front door of the Smith house opens and out comes Dean. He’s changed out of his black suit and into something a little less formal. He’s carrying an old push broom, and he begins to sweep the porch. Doing chores, even on the day of his mother’s funeral. Give the kid a break already. Still, it offers Evan the perfect opportunity.

  Without thinking he swoops across the street and up the walk, hops the two steps onto the porch. He doesn’t want to think too much about it, about what he will say or how he will act. He just wants to do it. He has his feeling he can rely on. The electric feeling, the tingling, like something good is bound to come of it all. It quashes all of his natural inhibitions. It allows him to bound into a stranger’s life. Bound right in and change it all around.

  “Dean, ” Evan says, arriving on the porch, looking at the thin boy, fourteen, but boyish, his chopped-salad hair, his pimples, his magnetic eyes that are like emeralds, glowing across the porch at Evan. His small hands and pink fingers, chewed fingernails, gripping the old shop broom. Feeling comfortable in his old clothes, ripped jeans cut off just above the knee, washed out black T-shirt with a Nine Inch Nails logo on it, skateboard sneakers without socks, chicken legs, knobby knees, not really comfortable in his body yet. It occurs to Evan that when he was this boy’s age, he was having sex. He was putting his erect penis into a girl. But, oh, how he would try to prevent this boy from doing the same, if he were this boy’s father. Do what I say, not what I do. Be what I should have been, not what I am.

  Dean looks up at Evan, waiting for an introduction of some kind. Any kind. And Evan starts to give it. But it never finds its way out of Evan’s mouth. God damn. This isn’t stage fright. This isn’t being overcome with emotions. This is a seizure.

  Makes sense. The sense it makes is too clear now. A little baby seizure, a so-called simple partial, is flipping its way though the railway that is Evan’s brain, hitting switches in the wrong direction, firing synapses out of turn and, all-in-all, causing a veritable cacophony of electrical impulses that freezes Evan in his tracks, nails his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and prevents him from speaking to his son. His own son, now not more than ten feet away.

  “You’re a friend of my mother’s, ” Dean says, puzzled by Evan’s lack of presentation.

  Evan stands before Dean, shaking his head. The only thing he can do. Shake his head, frustrated, angry at the implacable little fucker of a seizure rendering him mute.

  “I met you at my mom’s funeral.”

  The crying shame of it all. Being where you want to be and not being able to take advantage of it. Evan holds his finger to his lips. Shhh. A gesture of quiet. Shhh. It will all pass. He holds his finger to his lips and hopes that Dean will understand. No questions now. No talking. It will pass. It’s a baby. A simple partial seizure. Really very elementary when you understand the pathology of it. It begins with a misfire.

  “Why are you here?” Dean asks. Evan shakes his head.“What do you want?” Shhh. “Who are you?” No.“Grandma.”

  No. Not grandma. No. It’s going. The electrical firestorm. The giddy feeling that Evan had attributed to the excitement of the moment had actually been an aura preceding a seizure. He should have known. He should have sensed it. So easy. A lab rat would have known. There will be no cheese for you!

  “Grandma!”

  Ellen appears. It’s almost gone. Bad timing.

  “Go inside, Dean, ” Ellen says sharply. She walks toward Evan. “What are you doing here?”

  Finger to the lips. Shhh. It’s okay. Really. It isn’t contagious. It’s called epilepsy.

  “Frank’s sleeping, ” Ellen says. “You don’t have to worry about him waking up, he took a pill.”

  That’s not it.

  “How did you know?” she demands.“Was it Brad?”

  Evan nods. Yes, yes, it was Brad. Brad told him everything.

  She allows herself a burst of rueful laughter, which seems to expel some of the anger from her system and soften her demeanor a bit. She runs her hand up her forehead. It brushes against her stiff hair. It’s been styled. Not like when she was young and Evan would see her around Tracy’s house, back in high school. She smoked back then for one thing, and drank. White-trash Mormon. Now she’s reformed.

  “He looks like you, ” she says rather sadly.

  The words are almost free, almost turned loose by the brain. Evan strains. He tries to speak. “Gaaa, ” is all that comes out.

  Ellen looks at Evan strangely, but she ignores his sound. She’s obviously wrestling with demons of her own. Her glance darts from Evan to the door and back.

  “I think you—” She stops, squeezes her eyes closed, composes herself.“You haven’t come to take him away, have you?”

  He shakes his head. No, no. Not that.

  “Because I don’t know what I’d do if . . . I can’t lose him again.”

  Again? Lose him again? What does that mean?

  She takes a deep breath and resigns herself to something.

  “Please don’t make trouble, Evan, ” she says. “Tell him you’re a friend of Tracy’s, all right? Tell him you and she were very close. But—Please. Don’t take him away from me.”

  She disappears into the house. A moment, then Dean emerges.

  “Who are you?” Dean asks.

  Evan’s ready. It’s gone. He knows he can talk if he wants to. But his confidence is understandably low. He needs a few more seconds to get things together. He motions for Dean to follow. Dean does. Evan leads him to his car, a place where he feels safe, where they are both protected. He gestures for Dean to
get in; he does. They sit for a moment.

  “Who are you?” Dean asks again.

  Evan turns to him. The tip of his tongue.

  “I’m getting out if you don’t tell me who you are.”

  Evan closes his eyes. It’s right there. The tip of his tongue.

  “I’m your father, ” he says softly, amazed, himself, that anything came out.

  A moment of shock flashes across Dean’s face. But only a moment. Then a half-smile.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  Where are they going? He hadn’t thought they were going anywhere.

  Dean snaps on his seat belt and looks forward.

  Evan, startled, mimics Dean’s movements. He starts the car. Evidently they’re going somewhere. He shifts into first and pulls away from the curb. But where? He laughs to himself. He doesn’t know.

  HE HAS HALF a mind to keep on driving. Just go, man. Drive all the way home to Seattle. Beyond Seattle. To Canada. To Japan. China. Get a rice paddy and live off the earth for the rest of his life. Raise his son to be a peaceable man, a leader of the free world, a respectable man whom people will want to follow.

  They don’t speak as they leave town. Evan takes quick stock of his brain state and determines that he’s okay. Having a small seizure doesn’t mean a big one is coming, though it doesn’t entirely preclude the possibility. The good news is that a big one is always preceded by an aura—a bit of a warning sign—so he’d have time to pull over. It’s all about risk management.

  Evan glances over at Dean and wonders what he’s thinking. What on earth could be going through this boy’s mind? He has just met his absentee father. Is there resentment? Hatred? Or just relief that he has a father at all and that he wasn’t spawned from some kind of weird laboratory experiment, a fatherless child, the cloned replica of FDR or something, merely DNA scraped from the polio-withered big toe of the great orator, injected into an unsuspecting egg and implanted into the waiting wall of his mother’s womb.

  And still they don’t speak.

  Evan doesn’t know where he’s going, so he heads west. He saw a sign for the Whitman Memorial on his way into town, and thinks that might be the ticket. He vaguely remembers the Whitmans from his ninth-grade history class. Missionary martyrs. Maybe if he takes Dean to the Whitman Memorial, they will find some kind of greater truth. Maybe they will both be better able to understand their unique situation.

  They drive into the parking lot and Evan stops the car. He glances at Dean who seems unimpressed by the location. Like he was expecting a water-slide park or something. Evan opens his door. When he sees that Dean isn’t getting out with him, he sits back in his seat. This wasn’t a good idea, he thinks. Say something. Do something.

  He’s still feeling sluggish from the seizure. He can talk okay. It’s just that the link between his brain and his tongue is a little scrambled. He may think to say one thing, but something else might come out of his mouth. It happens. Best to avoid dialogue at this point. He reaches over and touches the scruff of Dean’s neck. A fatherly gesture. Dean pulls away instinctively, but tries not to make it look obvious.

  “I thought we could take a walk together, ” Evan says. It works. That was just what he was thinking and then he said it.

  Dean doesn’t move. He has no intention of taking a walk.

  “Got a cigarette?” he asks.

  “You shouldn’t smoke, ” Evan responds without thinking. Ah. Unconscious speech. Everything is in order.

  “You’re a natural.”

  “A natural what?”

  “A natural father.”

  Evan nods. They sit silently for a minute, neither of them budging. And then Dean evidently decides something.

  “Okay, ” he says with a snort. “I’ll play.”

  He climbs out of the car and walks toward the park entrance. Evan follows. He pays their admission and they enter the Visitor Center, a dark room boasting intricate dioramas under plastic domes, vast wall hangings detailing the history of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and their tribe of Presbyterian missionaries, and a massive HVAC system blasting visitors with about a million BTUs of frigid air.

  Evan is amazed at how easy it all is. They stroll through the exhibit at a leisurely pace, pausing at each display to read the information cards. They take their cues from each other silently, exchanging glances, moving when the other moves, pausing when the other pauses.

  They learn things together. Things like that the Whitmans arrived at this very site in 1836 and built their mission. That they made friends with the Indians in the area. That they called for more missionaries. That they converted the Indians, and that the Indians took to conversion for a time, until the measles nearly killed them off. When the Whitmans’ God failed to end the plague, the Indians decided enough was enough and massacred all the missionaries, including poor Narcissa Whitman, who was with child.

  “Know your audience, ” Evan says.“With some Indians it’s put up or shut up.”

  “Huh, ” Dean says, with a hint of irony. “Interesting.”

  They continue their game out the rear door of the building and along the path that leads to the hill atop which the Whitman Memorial obelisk stands. Silently, easily, they hike the steep hill together, reaching the summit as if it is some symbolic hurdle they have vaulted together. The light from the sun is golden. The shadows of the wheat are long, and large-winged black birds hover over the fields, searching for prey. Evan feels that he has chosen a magical moment to reunite with his son. He feels the energy of the spirits around him.

  “This hill is where the Whitman missionaries were killed, ”Evan says.

  “No, ” Dean scoffs, “actually, this hill is where the memorial is. They thought it would look nicer if they put the memorial on a hill. The missionaries were killed down there.”

  He points to a small pond to the southwest.

  “You’ve been here before?” Evan asks.

  “Yeah. My mom used to bring me.”

  My mom . . .

  Suddenly the magic is lost. Suddenly Evan feels like he’s in over his head. They’re playing father-and-son like they’ve done it before. They’re playing make-believe. But none of it is true. The truth is that they are total strangers with no shared experiences, no mutual references, and only one thing in common—Tracy—and she’s dead.

  He knows he’s supposed to say things, but he doesn’t know what. Desperately, he looks out to the land, hoping for something to divert Dean’s attention. He could continue his conversational evasion, create more distractions, talk about the birds, for instance—hawks, or whatever they are—he could ask Dean what he thinks they’re eating—shrews? gophers? voles?

  “Okay, ” Dean says, finally.“We’re here. Let’s hear it.”

  “Well, uh . . .” Evan stumbles. He tacks on a chuckle.“Boy, this is awkward.”

  Dean refuses to acknowledge the awkwardness of it.

  “Yeah?” he asks dispassionately.“You said you wanted to talk to me. So talk.”

  “Well, let’s see. I’m not sure how to start, ” Evan admits.

  “Are you kidding?” Dean laughs bitterly. “I’ll tell you how to start. Start by telling me you love me. Tell me you missed me all these years. Tell me it’s good to see me, that I look just like my mother. Give me a hug and tell me it’s good to hold me. Come on, Dad. You know the routine. You’ve seen it on TV. You want to try this again in a couple of days? You could watch some Oprah tapes, study up. She does this kind of thing all the time. You’ll pick it up fast.”

  Evan is rattled by this speech. It sounds remarkably practiced, like Dean’s been waiting for this very moment his entire life, rehearsing in front of a mirror for the day he will see his father for the first time.

  “That’s not what I—” he starts. That’s not what he . . . what? That’s not what he wants to say? That’s not true. It is what he wants to say. It’s not what he expected Dean to act like? What did he expect? He must have expected something. After all, he dr
ove all the way across the state for this very moment. It certainly would have been easier to not show up at Tracy’s funeral, avoid this scene entirely, treat it like a surgeon might treat a bullet that is lodged next to the heart. Leave it alone. But on some level he knows the simple ineluctability of it: this trip includes this conversation. At some point he had to have acknowledged the truth to himself. So why, then, is he unprepared for it?

  “I want to start by apologizing, ” he says.

  “Apologizing? For what?”

  For all of it. For everything since the beginning of time.

  “For everything.”

  “For everything, ” Dean repeats.“You’re sorry for everything.”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t mean any harm?”

  No, but—it occurs to him that he and Dean are talking about two different things. Evan’s sorry that Tracy ran off; Dean thinks he’s sorry because he ran off. What does Dean actually know? What did Tracy tell him? What does he think?

  “Okay, Dad, ” Dean says.“You’re sorry. Sure. I’ll buy that. Apology accepted. You’re forgiven. Water under the bridge. You’re free and clear. Feel better?”

  No. He doesn’t want to be forgiven. He’s sorry that it happened; he’s not sorry that he did something wrong.

  “So if that’s all you came for, ” Dean continues, “maybe you should take me home. I mean, I understand that when my mom died you probably figured I needed a parent figure, so you felt some kind of obligation to come here, but I’m okay, really. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry yourself.”

  “But I want to—”

  “Well then you should have a long time ago, right?”

  Evan doesn’t answer. But I want to explain—