Sick & Tragic Bastard Son

by Rowan Massey

  A bottle of wine had been sitting on the sink counter. Of course she was drinking. She was going through some kind of crisis. Maybe she’d gotten depressed because of my insanity. If she didn’t get it together by Monday, her job would be at risk, and I had no one to go to for help like I’d been in the habit of doing growing up.

  I went down the hall and leaned against the wall, putting my face in my hands. I heard her slosh the water out of the tub.

  Please don’t fucking slip and die in there, I thought.

  The house seemed to be growing blackness out of all the corners, its ceiling lowering by the centimeter each minute. I went to her bathroom, grabbed a wash cloth from her shelf, and went over the stinkiest parts of my body with it. Wetting my hair didn’t keep it from looking dirty. I couldn’t believe I’d let Clay see me that way, but I’d seen him too. We’d both looked like shit waking up. Even once we’d had our coffee and a little breakfast, he’d looked like he could use a shower as much as I had. My stupid hat was still in the car. I could wear it all day and manage to look alright.

  Before I left Mom’s bathroom, I noted that there did seem to be something wrong with the drain in her shower. When I leaned over it, I smelled something sickly sweet and unidentifiable. It wasn’t my problem.

  When I walked out the front door, barely ten minutes after walking in, the ceiling had lowered enough that it was almost touching my head. Walking under the sky again was like escaping a horrific trap.

  I wasn’t about to bother anybody before noon, so I drove around in my car, wasting gas, but not knowing where to go. My hands squeezed at the steering wheel. Mom had ruined the easy, shiny vibe I’d had going. It made me angry, but I wanted to let it go. Nothing could be allowed to steal my attention away from Clay.

  I ended up at the skate park where I’d met Lottie. If she found out I’d been there, she’d probably get on my case about not bringing my shitty skateboard with me. I wanted to see her again. I liked being around my new family members. Half my old family was dead, and my Mom was garbage, but with my new family, there was something that clicked inside, like fitting the last piece into a puzzle. It was satisfying.

  Remembering the hat, I found it on the back seat and put it on before leaving the car and walking along the sidewalk where kids, mostly boys, hung out and watched each other make attempts at whatever moves. I heard a bunch of them go oooh! when someone pulled off something impressive, or else hurt himself. I turned in their direction too late to catch what had happened. They held fists in the air and grinned and looked at each other saying, wow.

  The sun darted sideways and started ringing around the earth in an explosion of light. I covered my eyes with my arm, and when I lowered it, everything was back to normal, but I had a sense of having forgotten something. I told myself to shrug it off.

  Last time Lottie and I had met there to practice, she had impressed me with her skills, which she pulled off with a casual and comfortable attitude, paying no attention to the skaters around her. I’d wondered if she had any friends around, since she was a good skater, but she hadn’t greeted anyone, and no one had greeted her. Maybe they didn’t like being shown up by a girl, or maybe she just hadn’t been able to skate there in a while because of her mother.

  “Zan! Hey!”

  I turned and she was coming toward me, throwing her board down and wheeling in a lazy zig-zag to where I stood near a row of benches.

  “You’re late,” I said, but hugged her. I felt cheesy, but couldn’t hide my smile. Her silky curls tickled my face. I let myself hug her tightly in what would have been a bear hug if my board wasn’t in my other hand. Letting her go, I held it up to take a look and had a sense of surprise. It wasn’t my old secondhand one from when I was a kid. It was new, wheels dirty, but in a barely-used way. The wheels were white and the underside was in a black and white checkered pattern. It was very plain, and very me.

  “How long have you been here?” Lottie asked. “God, you’re all sweaty. You got sweat on me.”

  “Sorry. I…was practicing…” Yeah, I had been practicing without her. It felt like a dream, but it was true.

  The wheels on my board started to roll on their own, making a familiar, spinning sound. I thought I remembered—but couldn’t be sure if it was real—going to a shop around the corner with Lottie and buying the cheapest board there. I’d just gotten my first paycheck, having worked part time for four days that week after Clay told me there was an opening at a flower shop. All I had to do was deliver the flowers around town. Sometimes it was a wedding or funeral, other times just a romantic gesture. I didn’t like the personal deliveries where I had to take the perfumey flowers up to the door of someone’s apartment. It made me feel like a dope. But I wanted the pills that let me act normal with Clay, so I was happy to earn what I could.

  Right. All of that had happened. There was no confusion. I looked up at the sun, and it burned my eyes. Everything was fine. Everything was normal.

  I was still desperate for Clay to like me. For almost a month, Greg had helped me find the benzodiazapines that helped me the most, asking people in different cliques at school who might have what I wanted. We’d found a guy who went to the local community college. He had a steady supply of Klonopin, which was perfect.

  “Hello?” Lottie waved a hand across my line of sight, and I laughed nervously. I didn’t know what I’d just experienced, but it had been strange. I forced myself to focus on the present. The wheels on my board stopped spinning abruptly. A woozy chill went through my stomach, but I steadied. There was a crackling, electric look to the sunshine bouncing off car windshields in the parking lot. That was nothing though. It was nothing.

  “I’m fucking tired,” I said. “I’ve been out here for an hour at least. Need some water.”

  “Well, get some, you dummy.” She shook her head and smiled as if to say, typical.

  I headed for the drinking fountain. Lottie got on her board and followed me, weaving lazily across my path. There was another guy bent over and drinking, so I had to wait. Public drinking fountains were pretty disgusting, but I’d forgotten my water bottle before leaving Clay’s. He didn’t know I’d been skating, much less with his daughter. He thought I worked full time, then came home to him every day tired from being at the florist, ready to use his shower. After that, he would read to me until I dozed off with my head on his shoulder or we got horny, one or the other.

  I hadn’t spent a night at my place for most of the past four months. When I did go home, Mom’s house smelled sour and was so smokey and messy that it was as if I were choking to death. The last time I’d been there, Mom had been passed out in the living room, the kitchen had had layers of filth on every surface, especially in the sink, and I’d spent the night in my car because the ceiling was so low in my bedroom that I had to crawl out into the hall on my belly. It would have kept coming down until I was crushed in my sleep. It had been a miserable night of remembering what things had been like in the past—all the misery and anger. My entire history was seen in a new light, and I saw that it was my Mom who deserved blame. Being around her and sleeping in that horrible, empty little bedroom of mine had become impossible. I never wanted to be in my own home again. I considered it an abandoned place.

  The guy at the drinking fountain stood up straight and sighed in satisfaction before giving me a nod and letting me have my turn. The water was lukewarm, and I could smell some kind of disinfectant on the basin, but I was incredibly thirsty and gulped it down for a long moment. When I felt like I had no choice but to choose breathing, I let up and wiped a hand over my mouth.

  Lottie was looking at my clothes, eyeing me strangely.

  “My dad has that exact shirt,” she said.

  I was wearing a blue button down over an old T-shirt.

  “Just an old shirt,” I said.

  I’d never seen it before, but at the same time, I knew it was Clay’s. Turning my back on her, I dropped my board to the ground and glided away with practiced ease, en
joying the vibrating on my feet. She wouldn’t possibly guess what I’d done with her dad just from a shirt. I’d long since learned not to sweat the small holes in my story. They both believed I was what I presented myself to be. If I didn’t act nervous, they wouldn’t suspect a thing. Lying was becoming second nature; a way of life.

  “Teach me something new,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “You can’t handle anything new yet.”

  “I’ve been practicing like crazy. Watch me.”

  I showed her how I could do a one-eighty no comply flawlessly several times in a row. For some reason that one had escaped me for a long time. It took me three tries to pull off a kickflip and heelflip thingy but I got it in the end. I was rewarded with Lottie’s hoots and applause. I bowed to her, grinning. I didn’t work hard at any of it and tended to just roll around and zone out, so I was pretty proud of myself when I actually learned something.

  We’d been skating together every two days or so after school, and several hours on the weekends. When she’d complained that her mom was worried about a fall that resulted in skinned palms and a skinned knee, I’d taught Lottie how to lie. Nothing else in my life besides lying had made me feel like I was good at something before. Sitting with her over a notebook, helping her figure out what her mom could be convinced of, and how, and how often, and the suspicions that she might have to deal with, had given me a sense of pride for the first time in my life. Lottie really loved skating, and I knew she would be happier if she could get the restless energy out of her system by doing what made her happy.

  With my guidance, Lottie started with little hints to her mom that she’d met a boy, then said she was dating someone named Derek. I’d refused to take selfies with her for proof, but convinced her to wear all the safety gear her mom had bought for her so that she didn’t have to explain away any bruises or scrapes.

  As for me, I had the same concerns when it came to Clay because if he knew about the skating he might associate me with Lottie. But I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I didn’t try to learn too quickly. Simply being careful not to fall was working for me. I’d scraped up my palms once, but it had been easily explained away as clumsiness at work.

  “So, where were you?” I asked.

  “Ugh, wait. I’ll tell you in a sec.”

  She dropped her board and glided away in one smooth motion. I followed. It as our habit to go to an open patch of pavement and weave around each other in a crazy eight shape, taking care not to collide some days, colliding on purpose on other days.

  “My dad is for sure dating some guy,” she said reluctantly, blowing past me when we reached the middle of the eight shape at the same time. I shook on my board for a moment. Stay relaxed, think fast.

  “I thought you said he wasn’t being annoying anymore. So dating is a good thing, right?”

  “Well, yeah…but, he’s acting weird and won’t tell me anything about the guy. Like, what is he worried about? It’s making me paranoid.” She tried a 360 flip and failed. It should have been second nature to her.

  “What do you know about the guy?” I kept my eyes on her reactions as much as I could without falling on my face. Her frown made her look young, like a little girl doing a math problem.

  “Nothing. That’s the thing. If I keep asking questions he gets cranky and says, ‘We aren’t at the right stage for meeting family.’”

  “Why is that bad?”

  She stopped and flipped her board up and caught it. “It’s not like he’s never dated. He’s never been shy about showing me pictures and telling me about the men he goes out with, not that he dates much at all. With this guy, Dad refuses to tell me his boyfriend’s name. Imagine if I did that to him!” She was bending forward, gesturing. “He’s super obviously in love, and he won’t tell me about it. It makes me wonder if he’s hiding something weird, but I can’t imagine what. He’s so boring usually.”

  “In love?” Of course that was what I latched onto.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s the most disturbing part. I’ve never seen him so distracted. You know that goofy smile people always get when they start falling for somebody? Every time he gets a text from this dude, he starts smiling his face off.”

  She put on an exaggerated smile, and I laughed. She looked a lot like Clay sometimes. I couldn’t help smiling too, hearing that he liked getting my texts, which I sometimes worried I sent too often.

  “This mystery man is practically living at his house too,” she went on, “and when I’m over there, I feel like I’m intruding on somebody I’ve never even seen before. But I asked Dad about it and he said, ‘Oh, no, no, he doesn’t live here. Don’t be ridiculous.’”

  “So…” I got on my board and started circling her. “Why does it make you paranoid exactly? Maybe he just wants to make sure everything is perfect, you know? Perfect timing.”

  She got back on her board and we chased each other in as tight a circle as possible. It was a nice way to talk. It kept things from getting awkward when the conversation lagged.

  “Fuck timing,” she said. “I’m gonna figure it out. I can’t stand the curiosity. You gonna help me?”

  “Um…” I turned away from her and rolled slowly away in a random direction. I wasn’t exactly running away from her. I just needed to think.

  Discouraging her would never work. She was the kind of person who did whatever she wanted. I’d have to pretend to help, misleading her the whole time. It would get complicated.

  I reached a chain-link fence and stopped to lean against it. Lottie was a ways behind me, but headed in my direction.

  “Jeez, you are tired,” she said when she reached me. She leaned her back against the fence. “I’m gonna try and get hold of his phone. It’s locked, but maybe there’ll be a notification on the screen if I time it right, then I’ll have a name. Is that too sneaky?”

  “Yeah, that’s extremely sneaky. People’s phones are like an extension of their brains. It’s weird to touch other people’s phones. Don’t do that to him. He’ll be pissed and weirded out.”

  Lottie sighed.

  “I’ve been trying to catch him talking on the phone, but he only texts.” She grinned mischievously and wove her finger through her curls. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. What should we do? Any ideas?”

  “All you need is a name, right? After that, you can find the guy on Facebook or whatever.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Look around the house for anything he might have left there with his name on it. Letters or…what if he reads a lot, like your dad? Maybe there’s a book hanging around with his name on it. Look for things like that.”

  She laughed and rubbed her hands together excitedly.

  “You’re so good at sneaky shit. I love it!” she said.

  “Thank you very much,” I said in a silly voice and tipped my hat to her.

  All I had to do was plant a book with someone else’s name in it. Easy. I put an eye to one of the openings in the chain-link fence and closed the other eyelid. The sun was warm, but the breeze was cool. The light sparkled and moved like water, bouncing off the windows in the nearest building. I was just as bright inside. I knew what the sun was thinking and feeling. My body radiated a steady heat, and I was expanding in a way that made me wonder if people saw me getting bigger right before their eyes.

  “You look happy today,” Lottie said.

  “I’m pretty happy,” I admitted, and gave her a smile.

  She stiffened and just eyed me sideways for a moment. She was bad at hiding her emotions.

  “What?” I asked, but I already knew.

  “Meet anyone special?” Her tone was teasing, but forced. She was jealous.

  I rolled my eyes and casually looked away. “I wish.”

  She was clearly upset, but she clenched her jaw and tried to smile. Aware that she was failing at hiding how she felt, she stepped away and got on her board. I let her roll away.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Clay
Age 38

  SINCE CHILDHOOD, I’ve given many dogs a good life, more than making up for the animals I killed that summer. That is, if you want to think of the world as a place with checks and balances. Helping Zander work through his issues with his father, and letting him help me with my issues with my son, was having a similarly soothing effect on my conscience. Lysander never left my mind, and I didn’t want him to, but Zander made me feel less guilt ridden, less like something was dying and rotting in my chest. Now and then, he would give me hints about his father, but the way he talked about his mom was becoming more intriguing than his dad.