Sick & Tragic Bastard Son

by Rowan Massey

  The issue was made harder by the things my ruminations had revealed to me. If I was truthful with myself, I didn’t want to meet Lysander just in order to have closure, show him my regret, or even simple curiosity, or any other obvious thing. I didn’t need forgiveness. Not by itself. That wouldn’t have been enough. Shamefully, I needed him to love me. I needed him to worry about making me proud and I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to hear that he’d been okay, but that he’d needed me and still needed me—my help, my love, my guidance, all of that, but mainly I wanted verification that I was worthy of a son’s love.

  Getting to know Zander had soothed my pain, but even that made me feel guilty and strange if I analyzed it too much. I wanted to believe in the Clay that Zander seemed to believe in; admirable, interesting, lovable, worthy of time and care. But I thought about Lysander and still felt I was a despicable man with no right to the good life I lived. Even the love for and from my daughter felt like something I’d stolen from my son.

  If I did contact Lysander over the money, I wanted to talk it out with Zander first, just to get all the worst emotions out of my system before hitting send.

  Lost in thought, I found myself standing in front of the house with its peeling paint, lopsided porch steps, and overgrown yard, saying nothing.

  “Clay?” Zander got out of the car with Remmy in tow and put a hand on my back. “Something wrong?”

  “No, no, but I’m pretty sure, now that I’m staring at it, that I should sell it.”

  He squinted to look up at it. Remmy was pulling at his leash and barking at birds.

  “Do you think somebody will want it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

  I laughed and put my hand on my belly the way Grandpa used to do when I made him chuckle.

  “I hope so. Let’s see the damage inside,” I said.

  After grabbing our bags, we went up the steps, wary of a loose board, and I unlocked the front door. It was heavy and screeched when it opened. We stepped inside. It smelled a little musty but the air conditioning was off. It just needed to be aired out a little. There was no furniture in the place except a table and chairs that had been left in the kitchen, but I had a mattress stored away in the attic along with some basics like towels, plates and silverware, cleaning supplies, and so on.

  Zander dropped his bags by the stairs and wandered into all the empty rooms on the first floor. I followed behind him checking all the lights and faucets, looking for damage, wondering how many rooms I should paint. Some rooms had old wallpaper that I didn’t want to deal with.

  When he tried the back door, I opened it for him with the keys and we stepped out. The property had been taken over by trees. My grandparents had made sure to keep the treeline back from the house, but my tenants and I hadn’t been motivated. There were several feet of patchy grass and weeds before the bushes, saplings, and young trees took over.

  “There’s a trail,” Zander said, pointing it out. It was just a little footpath into the woods, probably created by the tenant’s children and dogs. “We could go on a little hike. It would be nice to stretch our legs.”

  I was a grown adult and long past dealing with the events of that terrible summer, but I hadn’t gone into the woods since.

  I shrugged.

  Zander handed me the leash.

  “I’ll get some water bottles and we can let Remmy get the crazy out of his system,” Zander said.

  “Sounds like a plan.” I responded with feigned apathy. I’d been to the house too many times to count since the night I tied Liam to that tree. My grandma and I had become close in the following summers when we would go to the library and get a lot of books together. She read some of the same ones so that we could talk about them. After they died, they left the house to my brother and I. He didn’t want to deal with it and didn’t need the money so he left its care up to me. For many years, there were good tenants and bad tenants. The house was rarely empty and it took the constant punishment of daily wear and tear, but I never lived there myself. I knew the house and surrounding property like the back of my hand, but the woods were a different matter.

  Zander returned with two bottles of water in his hands.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yup. Let’s go.”

  We gave each other silly smiles, as if we were children going on an exploratory adventure. We headed down the trail, Remmy in the lead, Zander in the middle, and I took his six. I had to suppress a laugh every time Zander got jerked to one side or the other while Remmy explored every scent the trail had to offer.

  There were gnats following us around. I spotted a mosquito on Zander’s neck and swatted it away. I was never an outdoors kinda guy after I became bookish, and bugs still reminded me of the night I held Lysander for the first and only time, and the afternoon I’d spent climbing a tree without my shirt on, then sleeping on the ground, letting the bugs have a feast on my flesh. I’d acted like a beast of the wilderness that day.

  I felt an irrational anxiety as we approached the area where Liam had gone through his painful ordeal. I had an inexplicable fear that if he saw the right tree Zander would have those scenes revealed to him, and I would be shamed. Nothing happened, naturally, and I told myself to be sensible.

  Zander half-turned to look at me but didn’t stop walking. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  He didn’t answer or turn around again. He only gave a small sigh. I thought over our recent conversations.

  “About getting better?” I asked.

  He nodded, still looking ahead.

  “I hope you are. Did your doctor take you off your meds or did you?” I hated the need to ask that question, but I couldn’t take care of him if I didn’t have a full picture.

  He stopped and turned to give me a cryptic look. Letting Remmy’s leash handle fall to his elbow, he put his arms around my neck and his expression spoke volumes. As soon as I thought I detected fear, he switched to loving, begging, anxiety. I put my hands on each side of his face.

  “Zander,” I said softly.

  “Daddy.”

  “What is it?”

  He opened his mouth but took a long moment to say anything.

  “I want to tell you a secret soon,” he said slowly. “I know it’s annoying to warn you and then not tell you right away, but…well, I guess I’m annoying. Sorry.”

  With that, he turned and started walking again with his head down, and at a quick pace, leaving me to my confusion. I had to remind myself that his being such a mystery was part of why I liked him.

  We carried on, pointing out birds and squirrels. I was convinced I saw a rabbit. The forest got less dense as we went along so we took advantage of the space, walking side by side, holding hands. When we leaned over some mushrooms in wonder over how weird all mushrooms are, Remmy started trying to dig some poor animal out of the ground, getting himself filthy in the process.

  I suggested we go back but Zander said, “Onward, men! Onward we go!” and started marching stiffly like a soldier. I obeyed.

  A few minutes later and I glanced around to see the tree right there to our right. It had been so long, but I recognized it as if it were yesterday. Below it, there were fallen branches, but it was improbable those were the same ones I’d nested the kittens in. Wouldn’t those have broken down and rotted?

  I walked into the area under the tree and studied its winding branches.

  “I went to the top of this tree once when I was a kid,” I told him. “I can’t believe I didn’t fall and kill myself. No wonder I basically passed out on the ground when I made it back down. What a workout!”

  Zander came close and rested a hand on my shoulder. Still staring up through the tree, I got lost in thought again. Zander’s hand was cupping the crown of my head. Did I still believe I’d done right by those kittens? Should I have fought for them? I had a strong desire to climb the tree again, but of course, that would be futile. I had no strength.

  I t
urned away, for some reason not wanting to look at Zander, and took Remmy’s leash from him so that I could take the lead while we walked back home.

  Chapter Thirty

  Zander Age 18

  I WONDERED WHY Clay was going off the little path to stare at a tree, but as soon as he said he’d climbed it when he was a boy, the colored lights burst out from the tree and whooshed around every limb and twig and leaf. The tree was tall and wide but no branch was left without a light show. It startled me and the breath was knocked out of me for a moment.

  Clay was being wrapped and licked by several lights at once. It wasn’t the way the lights had treated Lottie. She had been a small obstacle that they dealt with in the way water deals with a rock in a stream.

  I stepped closer to him to anchor an anxious hand on his shoulder, and in the wild dance of colors, the ones in my head were getting frenzied. The lights were teaching me things. I was understanding new ideas and losing old fears. Standing just behind Clay, knowing he couldn’t see any of it, I touched his hair and opened my mouth to begin explaining everything to him from the beginning.

  But there was something there, just beyond my fingers. I softly raked through his hair where lime green streaks of light turned to lemon yellow. In the blink of an eye, I saw the tumor. The inky black vines, the squeezed neurons, the way it attracted the lights and colors—it was all there. It was much smaller than mine and had short tentacles, but it would grow.

  My chest felt tight. Was it genetic? Did he sense it yet? How long until he couldn’t read anymore? Reading was his life. I had to help him. But didn’t he see the lights? Hadn’t I seen them because of my own tumor? Maybe his just wasn’t advanced enough yet.

  He took the leash from me and headed back the way we had come. I didn’t know what he was experiencing, but he was being quiet and avoiding eye contact. Maybe he was seeing the lights and didn’t want me to know.

  I was blinded for a moment when a rogue ribbon of red went in through my eyes, joining the others and keeping my tumor at bay. It gave me a vision—knowledge. I examined the trees and the sky, and it was true; the tree didn’t have any lights traveling to or from it. It was because I’d burned the Gravity Hill tree. The two trees had been connected, sharing with each other constantly. Now it was an orphan and so were the colorful creatures in my head.

  It was fixable. Clay needed lights from this tree for his tumor. I had to burn it down. Maybe from then on our minds would be linked just as our two trees had been linked.

  He was quiet on the way back. I walked next to him for as long as the trail let me, then walked behind him and Remmy. Staring at Clay’s slumped shoulders as we went along silently, I knew he had sensed something. He didn’t have his usual loose and distracted posture. His mind was working overtime. It made me want to wrap my arms around him from behind, and tell him I knew what he was going through, and that I knew how to fix it. But I didn’t do or say anything. I sensed that he needed space.

  The patchy light coming through the trees had a glistening quality to it, like light filtered through a pool of water. It made me think of the time we had gone as a family to that beach. New memories unfolded, the kind that look back at you from the future. It was all about traveling on a plane with Clay on my right, Lottie on my left, our mothers seated behind us. The girl talk going on back there made us laugh. We made fun of them secretly between the three of us. We landed in a city of reflective sky scrapers. It bordered a white beach where we got sand in between our toes and up our butt cracks. At the end of the day, we drank a pitcher of ice cold lemon aid, and compared sunburns, and gently spread aloe vera on each other’s backs.

  “Well that was a little tiring,” Clay said.

  I came back to the world. We were at the house. Remmy stopped pulling on the leash and waited for the door to open, tongue hanging out. Inside, Clay stopped at the thermostat and adjusted it to be a little colder.

  “Man, I wish we had a sofa to crash on,” I said.

  “Well, at least we have a mattress as soon as we drag it out of the attic.”

  I slumped over dramatically and he laughed. He offered to do the work himself but I wouldn’t let him. After giving Remmy a bowl of water, we schlubbed up the stairs. In the short hallway he opened a door that led to a little attic room. I’d pictured the mattress laying in a musty attic that could only be accessed from stairs that fold down from the ceiling, but the space wasn’t even that dusty. After we’d dragged it vertically into the largest bedroom and let it thud to the floor, we put a set of sheets on it, kicked our shoes off, and collapsed, shoulders pressed together. Clay took my hand and gave me a smile that told me we would be having sex. I wove our fingers and smiled back.

  “This mattress is better than the one I had on my floor back home,” I said. “Downright luxurious.”

  His expression turned serious and I immediately got embarrassed.

  “Why were you sleeping on the floor?” he asked.

  “On a mattress on the floor,” I corrected, and turned my head away, closing my eyes because I didn’t want to elaborate. He knew me well enough not to ask for more information.

  After a long moment, he rolled onto his side and rubbed my chest. He put little pecking kisses all over the side of my face until I turned my head and kissed him. I’d never had kisses like his from any man before. His taste and all the movements we made were so familiar and comfortable, not like the unpredictable kisses of strangers. I could still smell the forest on his clothes.

  He slid his hand up my shirt and coaxed me to take it off. I sat up and pulled it over my head and he did the same. Looking at his body reminded me of the fact it could be our last day together being romantic. He might never want to speak to me again…

  “Let’s do something kinky,” I suggested. I wanted to do something special with him for our last time.

  He cocked his head and smiled.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  We sat there eyeing each other, mulling it over.

  “If we had a real bed I could tie you up,” he said.

  I laid down and raised my hands over my head, resting them with wrists together.

  “Let’s pretend,” I said. “What else?”

  He laughed and rose to straddle me, running his hands over my chest and kissing me. My chest rose and fell with more excitement than I’d felt with him in a few weeks. He picked up on it and deepened the kiss. I was already wanting to use my hands but I kept them in place.

  “How about this?” He picked up his shirt and placed it around my eyes, but only folded it behind my head. I loved it but it wasn’t enough.

  “No, tie it tight,” I told him, and he did. The big, clumsy knot was uncomfortable behind my head but I was a little bit into being uncomfortable in order to pleasure someone. Okay, a lot into it. “You can bite me if you want.”

  I was in the dark so I couldn’t see his expression but his movement paused.

  “No, I don’t want to hurt you,” he said gently.

  “I want you to mark me.” I didn’t like the begging tone in my voice. I didn’t want him to know it had become important to me the instant I had the idea because it would mean I would have some remnant of him left on my body if he rejected me by tomorrow. “Please.”

  “Okay, baby,” he said softly and kissed me before moving to my chest and nibbling my nipple.

  I bit my lip, wanting him to bite hard without any convincing from me. His teeth harmlessly bit down over and over, almost like he was gnawing on me, but not enough to hurt. He licked at it every time as if trying to sooth any pain. I arched and flexed, trying to encourage him. He switched to my other nipple and finally drew a flinch out of me. His hand rubbed at it. He kissed it gently.

  Glad my face was mostly covered, I felt disappointed. But this was Clay. He wasn’t going to ever hurt me. I considered giving up, taking the blindfold off and telling him to forget it. Even if he couldn’t mark my body that way, he’d already marked everything important. My chested tightene
d up with emotion. He was going to send me back to my mom’s piece of shit house and wish I’d never existed. Despite it being very probably true, I told myself to keep my cool.

  He laid on top of me, slowly shifting his weight into me until I was a little crushed. I felt a heavy sigh against my ear.

  “I can’t,” he laughed, and buried his head in my neck. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m like all those exotic hookups of yours. I can’t hurt you. It makes me feel sick inside.”

  I forgot the pretend ties on my wrists and hugged him. We stayed that way a while. I had a building need for the entire world to recognize our sweet moment—a crowd of over seven billion people stopping to watch the perfect show, all of humanity coming to an eternal pause around us.