How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets

by Garth Stein

  A full week passes like this. Evan doesn’t call his parents and they don’t call him: the “go fuck myself ” comment probably was too much for them. He doesn’t call his brother and his brother doesn’t call him: Charlie has always been famous for being able to block out the little nuisances in his life (his brother, his son, his wife . . .) in order to better concentrate on his work. He talks to Mica briefly a couple of times, but she’s on the go, go, go.

  And then a funny thing happens. Evan takes Dean down to the indoor skating park near Safeco Field, where Evan is forced to act fatherly for maybe the first time when he tells Dean that, no, he won’t buy him a two-hundred-dollar pair of new blades, and, yes, Dean will have to use the junky rental skates; and, while Evan is watching Dean grinding any rail he can find and landing some precision airs, being smooth on his transfers and even adding a three-sixty to the tail of his frontside gap (like Evan knows what that means; but the kid sitting next to him in the bleachers with the cast from his wrist to his shoulder is busy doing a competent play-by-play:“One day I’ll work for ESPN and cover the X-games, ” he says), his cell phone rings. Caller ID: an area code he doesn’t recognize. Jamaica?

  “I found you.”

  For a moment he thinks it’s Mica, and that thought makes him practically cry: she found him. A statement that resonates so deeply. No one has ever said that to him before. No one has ever found him before.

  “I’ve been waiting, ” he says. It sounds kind of romantic.

  “I can’t do it.”

  What? It’s not Mica. It’s someone else.

  “Who’s this?” Evan asks.

  “It’s Ellen. I can’t do it. I can’t do what you ask.”

  Oh, shit. Ellen. Ellen. Evan gets so focused on certain things that other things go on and he doesn’t even think about them.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I believe you, ” she says.“I agree. I loved Tracy and I love Dean. I would love to take care of Dean, to raise him. But I have to agree with you that it would not be good to raise Dean near Frank. And I know that Tracy would never have it that way. Never. She would prefer Dean be with you.”

  Evan watches Dean, suddenly detached from what he’s hearing. Dean’s like a little mongoose with wheels on his feet. He’s so damn quick, and he shoots up those ramps, it’s positively dangerous, but Evan signed the waiver and Dean insisted that he knew what he was doing.

  “Check it out!” Cast Kid shouts, punching Evan’s arm, “alley-oop topside soul! You know that kid?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Frank has his problems, Evan, I know. I know. But I love him all the same. And as much as I would love to have Dean with us—”

  She’s stopped by her own sobs. She’s crying.

  “As much as I would love that, it wouldn’t be right, because I loved Tracy, and I would never, ever, ever do anything that would betray her.”

  “Mrs. Smith?”

  “If Frank doesn’t have me, he has no one, Evan. If Dean doesn’t have me, he still has you. You see that, don’t you?”

  “Oh shit! He’s down! He went for a five-forty and he’s down!”

  Evan leaps to his feet. Cast Boy flies down the bleacher steps and hops the railing into the pit. Dean tried something too hard. A five-forty. It was too much. He was showing off. He’s down. He’s in pain.

  “I won’t contest anything. I’ll have our lawyer deal with Tracy’s estate. We’ll sell the house, put everything into a trust fund for Dean. You will be the trustee. I just want you to know we won’t fight you, you have our support.”

  Evan makes his way down to the railing.

  “Mrs. Smith—”

  “Take care of him, Evan. He’s just a child. He’s fragile. Please take care of him like Tracy would.”

  The line goes dead; Evan looks over the railing at his son who is pooled on the floor of a concrete basin with three strangers attending to him. He climbs over the railing, throws himself down into the pit, and, thank God, as he approaches, Cast Boy looks up and gives the thumbs up. Dean isn’t hurt. Thank God, he isn’t hurt.

  ICE AND HEAT. Ice and heat. That’s the proper way to deal with contusions and deep muscle bruises, both of which Dean has. Thankfully, he was wearing pointy-parts body armor—elbows, knees, wrists, and head were all protected—which only left his ribs and his left thigh open for injury, and both areas got injured pretty good.

  Dean spends the next day nursing his wounds. Evan spends it on the phone with the Seattle School District. He makes the calls from his bedroom with the door shut; he still hasn’t told Dean.

  “I’ll mail you out an enrollment form and an immunization and medical records form. When was his last physical exam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’ll need a new physical, probably, unless his old doctor examined him recently. Do you know who his old doctor is?”

  “No.”

  “You should find out. He’ll have the immunization records. Do you claim a religious or philosophical exemption?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I see. And, of course, we’ll need all school records from his old school district. Can you get those sent directly to us? They will only process the request if it’s made by a parent.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll mail this out today, although it will be faster if you come to the office and pick it up. Do you know where we are?”

  “What school will he go to?” Evan asks.

  “Well, we’ll have to see where we can place him.”

  “I pay taxes.”

  “I’m sure, but—”

  “There’s a school right up the street on Queen Anne.”

  “Yes, Mr. Smith, I’m sure there is—”

  “Wallace.”

  “Yes, Wallace, I’m sure there is, but—”

  “No, Mr.Wallace. I mean, Evan. I mean, his name is Smith. He took his mother’s name. Dean Smith. Her name was Tracy. My name is Wallace. Evan Wallace.”

  “Mister . . . Wallace? . . . I’m sure there’s a school quite close to you.”

  “He’s going into the ninth grade. It’s a high school. I see the kids all the time.”

  “I’m sure you do. But, Mr. Wallace, we do our enrollment in April. The classes have already been filled. Now, since you do pay your taxes, we will find a place for your son, but at this late date, I cannot guarantee where we will find this place. It might very well be at the high school up the street. It might be in another cluster or another reference area. All I can say, Mr. Wallace, is that we will find a place for your son, and we will provide transportation for him as needed.”

  “Transportation?”

  “Either yellow bus or a Metro bus pass.”

  Evan sighs.

  “Do you think any private schools nearby would take him?”

  “I’m sure they’ve all filled their classes, too, Mr. Wallace. It’s a little late in the season.”

  “A bad time of year for someone’s mother to die.”

  She waits a respectful amount of time.

  “I’m sure any time of the year is a bad time for someone’s mother to die, ” she says.

  “But this is the worst season.”

  “Yes, ” she reluctantly agrees, “in terms of school placement and moving to a new city, I suppose I have to agree with you, Mr. Wallace, this is the worst season.”

  His next call is to a real estate broker, and her response is much more encouraging.

  “I can sell it in a heartbeat, sight unseen, ” she boasts. Her voice sounds as if it might reach through the phone and smack him in the face.

  “It’s not very big, ” he says.

  “Location, location, location, Evan. Feel your heartbeat. Do you feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how fast I can sell your apartment for you.”

  “Don’t you need to see it?”

  “Of course I need to see it. And I need to have a deep-cleaning crew work it over. And I n
eed to take all your unnecessary furniture and put it in storage. But I know I can sell your apartment in two weeks, a month, tops. I work at six percent, exclusive only. I’ll drop the paperwork by this afternoon and pick up a key and we’ll move this property, Evan, I promise you. We’ll move this property and get you into something better suited for you and your newfound life with your son.”

  He staggers from his bedroom, finally feeling the true impact of Ellen’s phone call. It’s one thing to play dad for a week, but to be dad . . . that’s a little shocking. Meanwhile, Dean is somewhere in the icing cycle.

  “You need heat?” Evan asks.

  “I just started ice.”

  “Stay with ice.”

  He sits down next to Dean and they watch a bass-fishing derby on OLN.

  “Do you fish?” Evan asks.

  “No.”

  “Do you like fish?”

  “You mean, to eat?”

  “I don’t know. I’m wondering why you’re watching a bass derby.”

  “I find it restorative, ” Dean says.

  Evan nods as if he understands completely, yet he’s really wondering where in the hell Dean came up with that one. Restorative? Must have been on a standardized test or something.

  “I was thinking maybe you wanted to head back to Yakima for a few days, ” Evan says after some famous fisherman bags a bass and stuffs it into a special lifesaving box where it will be kept alive until the end of the tournament, at which time it will be weighed and released back into the wild, now a deranged and psychotic victim of post-traumatic-bass-stress-disorder. “You could get your good skates and stuff.”

  Dean measures up Evan good and long.

  “Okay, ” he says cautiously.

  “Clothes. Personal items. You must miss it—”

  Shit, he shouldn’t have said that. He must miss it. He must miss his mother, since she’s DEAD!

  “Yeah?”

  “Let me be straight with you, kid, ” Evan says, sucking it up. “I was kind of thinking that you would stay with your grandmother most of the time. You know? You’d go to school out there and I’d come and spend weekends with you, and maybe you’d even spend most of the summer with me or something. But that’s not the way it’s going to work out, apparently.”

  Dean waits for Evan to explain the way it will work out.

  “Apparently, your grandmother can’t leave your grandfather— or, she doesn’t want to. And, frankly, I’m glad about that. But even if I gave you the choice, and you said you wanted to go live with them, I wouldn’t send you back there with Frank around, because . . . because I just couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. Because I know he did some things. But, more importantly, because I know Tracy—your mother—didn’t want you there for some reason, and I don’t need more than that to know what to do. Do you understand? You’re going to stay with me for a while. Even if you don’t want to. You’re going to stay with me.”

  Dean watches Evan for a long moment. He has an innocent, almost angelic look on his face. Because he’s crossing the line. He’s still a boy, not yet a man.

  “Are we going to live in Yakima?” he asks.

  “I—”

  Evan feels a surge of panic, followed by guilt. Why would he assume that Dean would assume that they would live in Seattle? Where is it written that a son has to move to the father and not vice versa? Shouldn’t he continue to grow up with his own friends, in his own house, with his own memories around him all the time?

  “I don’t know. I—we can discuss it. We can think about it. But I’m not sure how I can live in Yakima and still make a living. I’m not sure it’s practical.”

  A dark, perplexed look falls over Dean’s face. He turns back to the TV. He works his lips, chews the inside of his cheek; he’s trying not to cry.

  “Dean?”

  “I miss my mom, ” he says, and he looks at Evan and tears are in his eyes, and Evan doesn’t know how to handle it, what to do. He reaches out awkwardly, puts his hand behind Dean’s neck, and that’s the right thing to do, apparently, because Dean responds to it by leaning forward, tipping himself, folding himself into Evan’s shoulder and becoming a limp little kid crying on his dad. Evan embraces him and feels Dean’s tears, warm and wet, as they soak lightly into his T-shirt, and Evan can’t really do anything but sit there and hold him and think, poor kid. He misses his mom. Poor kid.

  THEY GET INTO his car and drive. East out of Seattle via Interstate 90, an awe-inspiring highway that plows up Snoqualmie Pass like a great Roman road, full of majesty, a masterpiece of engineering that reduces the Cascade Mountains—at one time a fearsome and perilous range—to a mere speed bump, nothing more than a brief ear-popping transition for the masses. South at Ellensburg onto Interstate 82, which veers through the Yakima River Valley and into Yakima itself, a small agricultural hub with delusions of grander things: upon reaching Yakima, the traveler is met with a roadside billboard proclaiming the city THE PALM SPRINGS OF WASHINGTON. So be it.

  Dean directs Evan off the freeway and through a ghostly commercial district, distinctive because of the hundreds of empty boxcars stenciled YAKIMA VALLEY APPLES, or YAKIMA TOMATOES, which are piled five-high alongside the handful of railroad tracks that run through the center of town, up a broad avenue and into a neighborhood called Nob Hill. It’s an old neighborhood with pretty tree-lined streets and nice houses. It’s not a wealthy neighborhood, but it’s not poor. It’s a neighborhood of people who care about their houses, tend their own gardens, pay the neighbor’s kid to mow their lawn. The lots are small, the houses neatly arranged behind white picket fences. Kids play in the street or in front yards, dogs wander without leashes, the roads are peppered with Neighborhood Watch signs designed to ward off burglars and thieves.

  Dean’s house is light blue with white trim. There are rose bushes in the front yard, but they haven’t been cut back recently. The dead heads cling to the vines, little bundles of withered petals that stay the growth of new buds trying to emerge. Strangely, the grass is uniformly green, as if it has been watered regularly for the past week by a computer-controlled sprinkler system that works ceaselessly, even in the face of death.

  Dean hesitates before getting out of the car, as if he’s having second thoughts.

  “You okay?” Evan asks.“You want to go in?”

  Dean nods slightly.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, ” Evan says. “If you need some things, just tell me where they are and I can go in and get them and we can go back to Seattle.”

  “No, ” Dean says quickly, turning to Evan. He looks afraid. Not of ghosts, but of what he is feeling. They get out of the car and walk up the flagstone path to the front door. Dean takes out his key and lets them in.

  “Make yourself at home, ” Dean says with deliberate casualness as he turns and heads off down the hallway, disappearing behind a closed door.

  Make yourself at home. Easy enough to say. But Evan can’t. He can’t move, he can’t even step into the house. He is struck, standing in the foyer. His feet are rooted to the tiled floor. He is overcome with a horrible creepy feeling. Dean may not be afraid of ghosts, but Evan is.

  The house is of generic, inexpensive construction. The décor is run of the mill. Wall-to-wall carpeting, a fireplace of laid sandstone, ornate brass-plated light fixtures, overstuffed Levitz furniture; not bad, but not good either. The art on the walls consists primarily of framed posters. Again, not bad, but not great. It’s all very Tracy, though. That’s what gives Evan the creeps. Everything cries out Tracy. And Evan isn’t really sure why. He tries to recall her home in Seattle, when they were in high school together. Maybe that’s it. This house has the same kind of feeling. It’s a feeling that Evan has always taken note of, since, growing up in his parents’ house, which was immaculately decorated with expensive furniture and artwork— posters only allowed in the kids’ bedrooms, and barely then—he noticed the difference when he went to other people’s houses. Upon reflection, Evan suspects that the fu
rniture in front of him may very well be the same furniture Tracy’s parents used to have. It’s hard to furnish a house on a limited budget—parental hand-me-downs are acceptable.

  And then . . . here’s Evan assuming that Tracy was on a limited budget when he doesn’t even know what it was she did for a living. So many things, so much weirdness rushing through Evan’s mind. He doesn’t feel totally comfortable with it, with the idea that he is looking at his parallel universe, where he might have been living for the past however-many-years had he gone down a different path. Very Twilight Zone. It disturbs his equilibrium. He needs to walk to keep his balance.

  He walks straight through the living room toward the back door. The kitchen and breakfast nook are to his right. Something smells of dirt or mildew, and it seems to be coming from that direction. He doesn’t want to confront the smell. Not yet, anyway. Because that smell is the echo of death. A house, suddenly abandoned. Food left on the counter—I’ll be back in a minute, honey— and a silly miscommunication, a “You go right, I’ll pass left, ” resulting in a collision of powerful, heavy metal boxes that twist and deform in grotesque ways after impact, and then what was inconceivable is quickly woven into the fabric of the universe by small Turkish girls who have been waiting patiently for instructions as to which design to make, which patterns to use to illustrate the story of your life, their little fingers so adept at tying intricate silken knots, the humidity of the coastal summer making them furrow their brows, the workings of the massive loom casting skeletal shadows across their laps. Evan opens the sliding glass door and steps out into the backyard. Outside, there is no smell.

  The yard needs some work. A kind neighbor has mowed recently, but that’s about all he’s done. Weeds are running rampant in the flowerbeds, and some kind of creeping vine has ransacked a couple of low bushes, all but strangling the life out of them. But even with a Gray Gardens feel, the yard is kind of nice. A small brick patio, an ivy draped arbor overhead to give shade, a playable patch of lawn, a bird bath with green water in it, a couple of bird feeders hanging from the trees, a barbecue grill: propane, not charcoal. A small, round glass-topped table with a closed umbrella sticking out of the middle and four vinyl-webbed chairs around it.