Brutal

by Michael Harmon

  This house was middle class, but single-guy-living-alone middle class, which meant upper middle class. My mom had paid thirty-seven thousand dollars for the sofas in the living room. I'd never seen her sit in them. As I glanced around this place, it was immaculate, but it all seemed lived in. Comfortable to a certain extent.

  Straight ahead of me was the main hall with a staircase branching off and going up. The hall continued to the kitchen. I peeked in the sitting room to see if my dad was anywhere and saw another set of open doors, these solid wood, leading to a study, a mahogany desk with a laptop sitting on it inside. David sat behind it, intent on the screen.

  I walked through the sitting room and he looked up when I came to the door, then closed his computer and smiled. “I see you found your way in.”

  I nodded. “I met your neighbor.”

  He brightened. “Victoria? Very quiet woman. Al most antisocial. She has a nephew about your age living with her.”

  “Not her. The guy. Velveeta.”

  His smile disappeared. “Yes. He is somewhat new to Benders Hollow, too. Last year.”

  “He told me he had to take a dump the size of Chicago.”

  “That would be Andrew.”

  “That's his name?”

  “Yes, but he does go by Velveeta.”

  I looked around the room. Darkly lit with paneled walls, more bookcases, a leather reading chair off to the side, and a lamp on a mahogany occasional table that matched the desk. I liked it. “This is a nice house.”

  He stood. “Thank you.” He came around the desk. “Here, let me show you your room. I put your bag there if that's okay?”

  “Sure.” I followed him out and around to the main hall, then up the stairs. He pointed to a room at the end of the hall, explaining that was his room, the next door was a closet, the next my bathroom, and the door at the other end of the hall was my room.

  He opened it and I followed him in. He took a breath, clasping his hands. “I hope this will do. There's another bedroom downstairs off the TV room that you're welcome to, but I thought you'd like this because it's bigger.”

  I looked around. I had a queen-sized pedestal bed with a real headboard, and even if the comforter was flowered and definitely not me, I didn't care. “It's fine. Thanks.”

  He brightened, then walked farther in. “I took the liberty of a few things like the dresser and computer for your schoolwork but decided it would be best for you to decorate how you saw fit.”

  I looked to the computer near the window. “You bought me a computer?”

  He nodded, excitement in his eyes. “I didn't know what you'd be bringing, but figured a new gadget or two would be a nice housewarming gift for you.” He paused, looking at me. “I want you to make yourself comfortable here, Poe. This is your home.”

  I didn't know what to say because I knew what this was. The age-old buying-my-acceptance gig. Get her a bunch of crap so she'll stay out of the way and won't cause trouble. But the light in his eyes told me different. He reminded me of a little boy giving a surprise. It sucked, because I wanted to think it was fake. Every time my mom bought me something, it was to get something. Usually forgiveness, but always something. “Thank you.”

  “As I said, I waited to buy bedding and such until you got here. We can go tomorrow afternoon and find what suits you.”

  I looked at the hideous comforter. “It's fine. Really.”

  He smiled. “Honestly, I had no idea what to expect before you arrived.”

  For the first time in a long time, I felt self-conscious about what I was wearing, and it made me mad. I looked down at my ripped fishnets and black boots. “I suppose you were hoping for a normal person?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. I made no assumptions. A lady friend told me that the biggest mistake a man can make is picking out clothing or bedding for a lady, so I didn't. You'll have to excuse my ignorance.”

  Now I felt like an idiot for being a jerk. I covered it with a smile. “Tomorrow sounds fine.”

  He scrunched up his nose, looking at the bed. “Is it that bad? It's been in the closet for years.”

  I laughed. “Pretty bad. I'm not a flowery kind of girl.”

  He nodded. “Very well. Tomorrow it is, then. I'll leave you to unpack and get settled. We'll eat dinner at seven?”

  I unzipped my bag, glancing at the clock on my bed stand. Five-thirty “Sure.”

  Chapter Three

  I looked at my bag, then thought better of un packing and flopped on the bed. Soft heaven. Some things a girl likes, even punker chicks with black fingernail polish and eyebrow rings, and a nice bed is one of them. This thing alone was almost worth coming to Benders Hollow for.

  I woke up to knocking on my door. “Poe?”

  I looked at the clock. Seven-thirty Shit. I scrambled off the bed and opened the door, checking my cheek for drool. “Sorry, I was sleeping.”

  “Long day, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I could tell he was irritated from the tension around his mouth. This was great. First day and I already screwed up. “Yeah. I'll be down in a sec.”

  I came downstairs a few minutes later, and the table was set for two in the formal dining room. Dad rose from his seat until I took mine, then sat down. I looked at the meal. A fresh salad, baked salmon with lemon slices and purple onion, and some kind of pasta I didn't recognize. “Wow. You're a cook?”

  He waved it off. “A hobby.”

  I sighed, feeling rotten for being late. “You didn't have to do this, really. I'm used to TV dinners and soup.”

  “I enjoy cooking. Most times it's for one, so this is nice.”

  “Are you mad? You could have come and got me earlier.”

  He put his napkin in his lap. “I'm afraid I'm not used to anything but my schedule of things. Living alone has a tendency to create intolerance for other people's way of doing things.”

  “You sound like a counselor or something.”

  He looked at me. “I am.”

  I froze. “You are?”

  He nodded. “I take it your mother hasn't talked much of me.”

  “Nothing.”

  He took a bite, chewed, laid his fork down, and con tinued. “Yes, I am a counselor. At the school you'll be attending.”

  My stomach went queasy. “At my school?”

  “Yes.”

  “My counselor? For my grade?”

  He nodded. “The high school here is small. Six hundred students. I'm the counselor for all grade levels.”

  I ate, suddenly finding a great interest in studying my fish. Wonderful. I had a shrink for a dad, and he was going to be with me all day. “When does school start around here?”

  “Next week. Tuesday.”

  “That's like two weeks earlier than back home.”

  “You're concerned about me being there? As a counselor?”

  I kept my eyes on my plate, my anger building. This was all fitting together now, and I could imagine the phone conversations Mom had had with him. The last thing I wanted to do on my first day was get heavy with him, but I felt suckered. “I don't need counseling.”

  He cleared his throat. “You're being defensive, Poe, and there's no threat. Really.”

  I met his eyes. “I'm not screwed up. I'm not here because of me, I'm here because of my mom. No matter what she told you.”

  “I told you what she talked of, Poe, and it wasn't bad.”

  I put my napkin on the table. He was full of shit. I knew my mom well enough to know what she said. She'd blamed it all on me just like she blamed every other crappy thing in her life on other people. I stood. “I know my mother, so you might as well stop.”

  “I know your mother, too.”

  That stopped me. He'd just opened a door he shouldn't have, and I could feel it building in my gut. I'd been set up. By him and Mom. I could just see her on the phone, using her diplomatic and caring voice. Oh God, I'm so concerned about her. It's like I don't know her
anymore—she's changed so much. With the black outfits and the way she talks negative about everything, I'm at a loss. Hmmm. Maybe you could help her out, David? Get her back on track? I mean, that's what you do, right? I knew this deal. I wasn't to blame for our retarded mother daughter relationship. She just didn't want to be a mom anymore, and they'd both played me. I didn't fit into her perfect elitist life just like I didn't fit here eating salmon with a guy I'd never really ever met. The venom bubbled. Nothing was worse than having somebody look at you and knowing what they were thinking.

  What made me even angrier was that here I was on the first day with my stranger dad and I was already getting into a fight with him. I was doomed to conflict, but I couldn't help it. I'd spent years thinking about this moment, and those thoughts had never been good. They'd been full of Poe Holly giving her loser dad both barrels before she rode off into the sunset. “Whatever. I'm sure you know her so well because you were around so much?”

  “Poe…”

  “Don't Poe me. I get enough of that shit from her as it is. I didn't come here because I'm screwed up, I came here because she decided to not be my mom anymore. I'm expendable.” I stared at him. “Just like I was expendable when you left.”

  He sat back, taking a deep breath. The counselor had a problem, and he could eat dirt for all I cared. Even though I felt rotten. He took a minute. “What's the solution to this?”

  I looked at him. “What?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You think you're alone in this, Poe? That you're the only one dealing with preconceived assumptions about how you're seen? As much as you wonder how I see you, I wonder how you see me. Will you sit down?”

  I looked at him again, wondering what his angle was. Then I sat. “I don't need counseling.”

  He shook his head. “I'm not saying you do. You're saying you don't.”

  “I know what this is about.”

  “I'll tell you what I see if you tell me what you see. Deal? No counseling involved, no talk afterward. Just the truth of what we see.”

  I took a drink. Now we'd see what the “truth” meant to him. “Fine. You go first.”

  He folded his hands across his stomach, staring at me. “I see a young woman who feels betrayed by her mother, abandoned by her father, and manipulated by her circum stances. I see you love her and will defend her, but I also see that you've distanced yourself from her. I see anger and resentment toward me, and I see you searching for answers that are hard to find. I also see a smart, articulate, and passionate person who feels like she doesn't belong anywhere, least of all in a place like this, and a person who needs to make a statement to the world. I see you've been uprooted from everything you know, but I also see strength. I don't see fear, though I know you must have it.” He looked at me. “I also see a person who thinks she doesn't need help from anybody and a person used to taking care of herself. That's what I see.”

  Whoa. When he said the truth, he meant it. I felt like my entire life had just been dissected, and I wondered if I was that see-through. I took a breath.

  “Your turn.”

  The truth. Crap. He'd called my bluff, and as everything boiled through my head, I got a little bit nervous, then mad. Fine. If he wanted it this way, he'd have it this way. “Okay. When I got off the bus, I saw average. Blah. A guy who lives alone and is lonely. I see you trying to be fake and full of crap to make me feel good about being here. Buying me things and making things perfect and cooking a great dinner to make me feel better about having a dad who didn't have the guts to have anything to do with his daughter's life for sixteen years. I see a guy who didn't give a crap about anything other than himself, and now I know why you two split up. You're both exactly the same.” I clenched my teeth, trying to hold back the torrent he'd invited to the table. Tears of rage welled in my eyes even as I saw him flinch. Like I was physically assaulting him. It pissed me off even more. He was weak. “I see a coward and a selfish bastard who agreed to let me live here because maybe helping me will help him to feel better about what a crappy person he's been for my entire life. I see a guy who's worse than all the other guys my mom brought around because you didn't do anything but sit here and hide in your lonely miserable life for whatever stupid reason you have.”

  • • •

  I felt like bawling my head off because I wanted everything I'd said to be wrong. To be false. It would be so nice to sit at this table and pretend that this man was really my dad. That out of the blue, bammo, I had a nice new father. An addition to a wonderful life. But I didn't. The guy sitting across from me hadn't given a crap for sixteen years, and now a fish dinner and a few hot-key counselor words were supposed to fix it. No dice.

  I wiped my eyes, not looking at him, but wanting to desperately. I couldn't. “I'm done.”

  Silence. Then he spoke. “Very well.”

  I frowned. He should be yelling at me right now for saying those things. He should be telling me none of it was true and that I didn't understand because I was a kid. Just like Mom always did. “So do we sit here like two idiots or something? Give each other big hugs and go back to pretending everything is cool?”

  He shook his head.

  I looked up, angry again. “Then what?”

  He stood, picking up his plate and glass. “I'm going to do the dishes.”

  Then he was gone, leaving me with the silence of not knowing what was going on in this awkward, uncomfortable place. If I had just said things like that to my mom, she would have spent the next hour and a half drilling it into me why I was crazy and how I was just looking at it all wrong. He just got up and did the dishes. I wondered how they ever got together in the first place, then picked up my own plate. The one thing my mom always said was that I could never let things alone.

  He stood at the kitchen sink with his back to me, rinsing plates. The dishwasher stood open next to him. I walked in, setting my stuff on the counter. I put the rinsed plates in the dishwasher. “What just happened?”

  He paused, looking out the window into the darkness. “I wasn't ready for that. I'm sorry.”

  I wasn't used to this. By now, Mom and I would be going back and forth like machine-gun fire. “Are you mad?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  I put the last dish in the washer. “Maybe I should go home. Maybe this just isn't going to work.”

  “No.” He faced me. “Poe, what you just said to me hurt. Terribly. But I know it's the truth for you, and that's something I have to face. I knew in the back of my mind that those feelings would be there, but I wasn't ready for it. Maybe I hid from it. Hoped it wouldn't come out like this. Maybe I did hope you'd be different in that way.”

  This is the part where I knew I should apologize, but I don't like those parts, and I didn't want to be anybody other than myself. My mother never apologized for a single thing in her life, at least sincerely and I'd gotten used to it. “Why'd you ask for it, then?”

  “Because the opportunity was there and I knew it had to be done. The sooner the better, I suppose.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Turn that knob. I already put the soap in.”

  I looked at him. “What?”

  He turned the dishwasher knob to the start cycle. “What I'm saying is that if you're willing, we move on. Not ignore, but move on. Take it step by step and see what happens.”

  “You want me here?”

  “Yes. I do. And it may be partly selfish, but I do. I want to know you. And I do feel as though I've got to make up for lost time. That's unavoidable.”

  I nodded, nothing coming to mind other than sappy stuff, and this wasn't a soap opera. He was using all the make-everybody-feel-good adult-speak, but at least he was being honest. “Okay.” We stood there not knowing what to do next, so I told him I was going to my room.

  He nodded, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. “I'll be in my study if you need me.”

  Chapter Four

  With school starting in two days, we spent the r
est of the weekend shopping. I didn't have a thing for school other than a suitcase full of clothes. Dad showed me the town, which still reminded me of a painting, and I met a few of the locals working cash registers and restaurants. It took me all of a day to tell the difference between the tourists and the townies. Rich tourists have a tendency to look different from the people who serve them, even if the people who serve them make good money.

  The main avenue of Benders Hollow was full of wine and gift shops, high-end restaurants, and a few clothes stores with nothing in them I liked. Dad told me the locals never shopped the main strip because the prices were high, so we spent most of our time twenty miles down the highway at an outlet mall. People didn't stare at me as often there, either.

  We didn't talk much on Sunday, at least not about anything from last night, and I was thankful. I'd been thinking about it, though, and I knew he was right. I did feel alone and bitter and angry about a lot of things, but he was wrong about one thing. I wasn't consumed by it. This was my life, and if there was one thing my mom taught me, it was that I was the only one responsible for making it different.

  I did get new bedding, too. Dad also made me pick out an iPod, a docking station, and some cool speakers for my room, which I felt weird about but accepted, telling him I would pay him back. He shrugged it off and said that certain things were necessities in a teenager's life.

  Monday night rolled around and I found out something important. My bathroom was big and the walls and floor were real tile, which meant awesome acoustics. I took a half-hour shower, working my voice through note patterns and bars and missing my band big-time. I'd talked to my buds the morning before and hated it because I was depressed for the rest of the day. Milson had come up with a new riff, hotter than hell, he'd laughed, and my insides crumbled. They'd told me I would be back and they'd wait, but I knew it wouldn't happen. A new singer would come along and I'd be history.

  When I came downstairs after my shower, Dad wasn't in his study like he'd been every night after dinner. He was puttering around the kitchen scrubbing the grout lines on the counters with a toothbrush. He made my mom look like a slob.