The Dangerous Art of Blending In

by Angelo Surmelis

  She looks down and shakes her head. With her head still down, looking at the dining table, she begins to wipe dust off the surface—where there is no dust—with the left sleeve of her robe.

  “Then you go ahead and get into this.” She looks up, still wiping her sleeve on the table, and runs her eyes over all my battle wounds. “I used to look like that.”

  This last line is said very faintly and far away. I want to ask her to repeat it, but she gets up and grabs the coffeepot from the kitchen. It’s filled with light-brown liquid. Her coffee is always really weak, and then she adds so much cream that you can’t even make it out as coffee anymore. This is one of the things I know about my mother.

  She grabs a small dessert plate from the cabinet above the sink to the left. With one hand she places the plate on the table and the coffeepot on top of it, neatly, precisely. She sits back down.

  “My brothers used to beat me till both my eyes were swollen shut and my lips were so cut I couldn’t eat.” She pours what looks like a full cup of cream into her mug, then adds a splash of coffee. I’m still. My father would say I didn’t know what she’d been through. That her life wasn’t easy. I just never knew the details. I never cared to ask. Am I a horrible son?

  “Because they didn’t want me to disgrace the family. They raised me. No parents. They did. I had big ideas. Like you. Big ideas for myself. I wanted to be a singer.” She smiles a little at the memory. “But that was considered work for loose women.” Her voice goes flat. “Small village. Small minds. I would sneak off when they were at work to take lessons with a woman in the next town over.” She adds two teaspoons of sugar to her coffee. “They found out. They beat me to teach me about honor. About a woman’s place.”

  She looks at me and I look at her. Neither one of us says anything. The words are there between us, and I want to say something but I don’t know what. I’m trying to see my mother as a girl, as someone who would sneak off and try to live her dreams.

  Finally, she says, “You’ve disgraced us, don’t you see? Everyone looks at us, everyone at the church, here in our neighborhood. We live in a small village. They all talk. You don’t think they know what you are? You don’t think I know what you are?”

  I am going cold everywhere, inside and out.

  “You make our life so much harder. My beatings taught me lessons. You. You learn nothing.” She takes another sip of her coffee. And then she says to me, her only child, “They should have killed you.”

  From someplace very far away, I hear the bedroom door open and my dad clearing his throat. Every morning the throat clearing is intense. Maybe it’s all the years of smoking, or maybe that’s what happens when you’re old. He’s headed to the bathroom, where a good solid five minutes of hacking, coughing, and throat clearing will take place.

  My mother leans in, looks right at me, and lowers her voice to a hush. “Die. If this is who you are.”

  And now blood has turned to ice. My limbs have turned to ice. I am frozen.

  She leans back in her chair. She takes me in. Scans my face with all its evidence of violence. Her eyes squint. The corners of her mouth turn upward slightly.

  My dad enters the dining room. “Morning.”

  She turns to him and smiles. “Morning, my love.”

  thirty-two

  I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Kalakee Medical Offices. It looks like I’m the only person in here under eighty years old. There’s a man and a woman directly across from me and he is leaning slightly on her.

  There’s a woman sitting by herself to my left with a cast on her right foot, below the knee. On my right there are two men, probably slightly younger than the couple, and they are both asleep. Or dead. I can’t tell.

  I feel dead inside.

  “Evan Panos?”

  I raise my hand. Everyone, except the sleeping/dead men, looks in my direction.

  “Use that door and come on back, honey.” The nurse smiles and points to a door next to the reception window. She leads me to a small room and has me take a seat on the examining table.

  “So, I hear you were in a car accident?” She inspects my face.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you driving?” Her hands are on either side of my neck, feeling around.

  “I wasn’t. Um, I was . . .”

  “Have any trouble focusing?”

  All the time.

  “No. I feel fine.”

  “Where does it hurt?” She places her hands softly yet firmly on either side of my chest.

  “It hurts a little there and my hands.” She takes my hands in hers and examines them. “How did your hands get so beaten up?”

  I just look at my hands. How did they get so beaten up in a “car accident”? I try to come up with an answer quickly but my mind is not cooperating.

  “Were you wearing your seat belt? Were you flung into the windshield or door?”

  “Yes. The windshield.”

  “So no seat belt?”

  “No, I was wearing a seat belt. Always. Just the force of the impact and my hands just . . .” My voice drifts off.

  She picks up her chart, looks down at it, and starts to write. “Well, you may have just slammed them into the dashboard or something. No bones look broken, but we’ll X-ray everything.”

  “Yes.” I am nodding. “The dashboard.”

  “Take off your shirt, please.” I don’t move. “Evan?”

  “It’s not—”

  “It’s okay. I do this all the time. It’s my job. Shirt, please.” She points to my shirt. I start to take it off. “What’s all this?” She comes closer and starts looking at my chest, the sides of my body, and then she goes around and examines my back. She comes around and looks right at me. “The doctor will be with you in a minute or two.” She exits.

  I sit on this thin piece of paper that’s covering the examining table and think of what the hell I’m going to say to Dr. Boutouris. My life in this town, when I step back and look at it as an observer, is not one worth fighting for. Is it? I don’t want this life, so why do I keep fighting for it?

  I don’t know how long I sit here before the door opens and Dr. Boutouris enters.

  He stands in front of me. He seems taller than the last time I saw him, at my uncle’s restaurant, but I wasn’t sitting at the time.

  “Hey there, Evan. Sorry to hear about your car accident and I’m sorry you won’t be joining us for Thanksgiving.”

  I am avoiding eye contact. My entire body has gone rigid. Please don’t ask about all the scars.

  He starts to put his hands on either side of my chest to feel my ribs. “The nurse already checked there,” I say more loudly than I intended.

  This catches him off guard and he steps back. He then moves closer in and starts examining all the bruises, cuts, and wounds. He is very careful, as if I might break. He doesn’t know I’m already broken.

  “Have you gotten into any other kinds of accidents?”

  I just blink at him.

  “Evan?”

  “I’m here for X-rays. That’s what my—”

  “Son, your entire body is covered. This isn’t all from a car accident. It can’t be.”

  “I fall off my bike sometimes . . . also, I’m not very coordinated in general.”

  He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if he believes me. I wonder if he sees other kids like me.

  “I don’t even feel it anymore when I fall.” I try to laugh it off.

  He frowns at me. “Do your parents know about all these—”

  “Do they know how klutzy I am? Oh yeah. I’ve always been this way.” More nervous laughter. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to make Thanksgiving, though.”

  He’s still frowning. “I’ll get the nurse back in and she’ll take you to the X-ray room.”

  An hour later, I’m standing outside the medical office. I text Henry:

  Done.

  He texts back almost immediately.

  B right there.

  “Get
in.” He swings the door open from inside the car.

  I get in. I take a breath for the first time since I walked into the doctor’s office.

  “Where to?”

  “I need to get back home.”

  He pulls out of the parking lot and then glances over at me. “So. What did—”

  “They took X-rays. He asked about all the other bruises.”

  “Did you say anything?” I just look at him. “Right.”

  “I don’t know if he believed me.”

  “Do you ever—do you ever think of talking to anyone? Like him or the principal? I don’t know, someone other than me?”

  It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. “It’s hard enough at home.”

  We drive for a few blocks in silence. I can feel him thinking, feel him wanting to fix this. But he can’t fix this or me.

  I say, “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “Ev, have you checked any emails or texts other than mine?”

  “Why? Jeremy keeps texting me but I don’t want to read them. I don’t want to deal with him right now—or maybe ever.”

  “You may want to look at them.”

  Something in his voice makes me pull the phone out of my pocket and scroll through Jeremy’s texts.

  Henry’s voice is a little shaky. “Is there a video text?”

  “Uh. Yeah, actually. I see one.” I hit Play. Henry is silent.

  The more I watch, the warmer my face gets. My face must be the color of a pomegranate.

  Oh.

  Shit.

  Henry pulls the car over. “Are you okay?”

  I set the phone down. I stare straight ahead. My lips and tongue feel numb. I’m so embarrassed. My hands are resting on my lap but I can’t feel them. I know they’re there, but they feel like nothing. “Ev?” I keep staring out the windshield. The sky is so clear. Unseasonably so. This time of year the sky is usually gray with lots of clouds, the big, puffy kind.

  “I don’t remember any of this.” Which makes this whole experience even more mortifying. My gaze hasn’t changed and the feeling in my hands hasn’t returned.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “It’s probably online by now. My parents will eventually hear about this. Or see it.” I think I can start to feel my left hand. “You know, I’ve been so worried that all my worlds would collide. Everything that I’ve worked so hard to file in the appropriate place would somehow escape.” I stop staring out the window and turn to look at Henry.

  “It’s funny, but I never thought that this was something I had to worry about. That I was the one to worry about. All this time, I thought it was my mom or Gaige or the pastor or everyone else. But it turns out, it’s me.”

  thirty-three

  I write:

  Where ru right now?

  Jeremy texts back:

  Just getting out

  Can u come to the apartment?

  B right there

  Clearly I’m full of some kind of abnormal confidence to invite Jeremy—anyone, really—over to where we live. Even when my parents are out, I usually don’t have the courage.

  “Damn, Panos.”

  “Come in.”

  “Seriously? Come in? What happened to don’t ever set foot in my house?” He walks past me, and now he’s standing on our floor, on my mother’s floor. “I’ve never been inside these apartments before. Not bad.”

  “Do you want something to drink?” Even when I’m pissed I can’t help myself.

  “I’m good.”

  I say, “Sit.”

  Jeremy sits in the center of the sofa—my mother’s sofa—and he looks completely out of place, like he’s one more piece of me that doesn’t belong here.

  I don’t sit. I stand. I say, “There’s a better way to say this, but hell if I know what it is right now. What the fuck is your problem?”

  “Panos . . .”

  “No. You get so much . . . I let you get away with so much. The Mr. Q bullshit, Tess, everything. I keep believing that there’s a better person in there.”

  His head is down.

  “And yet you continue to find new and shitty ways to prove me wrong!” I’m pacing. “I didn’t even know about what I did that day. I don’t remember anything.”

  “You must have blacked out or some shit.” He rubs his neck, still looking down. “I didn’t know what to do, man. I was scared. I felt responsible and . . .”

  “What? Wait. . . .”

  “Mrs. Kimball spoke to my mom about Henry. She told her about him coming out. You know, my mom and her have been friends for—”

  “And you told the whole school?”

  “No, man. Dude, I told no one.” He looks at me briefly and then puts his head back down.

  “Jeremy, don’t fuck with me right now. I’ve got nothing to lose, so don’t—”

  “It was my mom.” He looks back up at me. “Not the school. I guess she called her friends and . . .”

  “Real classy.”

  “I’m sorry, man. I was scared.”

  “Yeah. You said that.”

  “So, you saw the video.”

  I nod.

  “What—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do your parents know anything?”

  “Not yet. I don’t think so. I mean, they know about the fight but not about this part.”

  “It’s a good thing they don’t get online, right? It helps to be Old World sometimes.” He’s trying to lighten the mood.

  I just toss him a look. Probably one I’ve gotten from my mother, because he goes all stiff and straight. “It’s only a matter of time before a ‘friend’ tries to help by telling them that a video exists where I come out as gay and tell everyone that I’m in love with Henry Kimball!”

  “I want to make this better. And listen, I don’t care what you and Kimball do. Really, man. I just want you to—”

  “What? What else do you want me to do, Jeremy? Huh? What’s wrong with me?”

  “Panos . . .”

  “No. Why do I let people treat me like this?” I’m back to pacing and now I’m shaking my head as I speak. “I allow it. I make excuses for it. It’s okay that she beats me ’cause her life was hard.” I stop and turn to face Jeremy. I bend down and get right in his face. “Even when I see the fuckery I still let more shit happen.”

  I can tell he’s completely lost. I go back to pacing. “I let people treat me badly and when they actually don’t, I run. I avoid. I fucking say no to something that can be good for me.”

  “Evan. What did you say? Who beats you?”

  I stop and look at Jeremy. I was right to believe there’s a better person in there. I can see that guy in there. Jeremy just hasn’t met him yet.

  thirty-four

  It’s Thanksgiving. And three days since the incident at school. So far, my parents have said nothing.

  “Want to go for doughnuts?” my dad says, entering my room.

  “It’s late, for us.”

  “It’s never too late for doughnuts.” He looks at his watch. “It’s just after nine.”

  “Are they open today?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “Okay.” I grab my jacket and baseball cap and follow him down the hall.

  “Vee, we’re going.” He yells this from the front door as he opens it.

  She appears from the bedroom with a bunch of clothes draped over her arm. “Not too late. I want you both to help me decide what to wear for this afternoon.”

  “See you soon.” He closes the door behind us as we exit.

  Linda must have the day off. There’s a new person working the counter.

  “What can I get you two?” She’s older than Linda. I think. Friendly but in a much more reserved way. She has dyed, bright-red hair and matching lipstick. Her nails are painted a turquoise color.

  “Two coffees, a cruller, and two chocolate glazed.” My dad orders without any hesitation.

  I say, “I don’t know if I should have two.” Fo
r some reason I want to punish him, to make him feel bad.

  “Take the other home for later. How are you feeling?”

  “Great. Amazing.”

  He swallows, looks down. Looks back up with this dumb, hopeful look. “It’s all healing. I can tell.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mother is putting all her hopes on this restaurant idea. She’s really invested emotionally.”

  “You?”

  The waitress appears. “Two chocolate glazed. Coffees and two crullers.” She places everything in front of us.

  “I only wanted one cruller.”

  “You can take the other home.” She smiles and walks away.

  My dad smiles and takes a sip of his coffee. “I want the restaurant, I do, and the fact that people are helping us, well, it’s great.”

  “Nervous?”

  He nods while eating. “One of the cooks at work has a daughter who goes to your school.”

  “Oh.”

  “She was there the day of the fight.” He takes another bite and a swig of coffee.

  “Oh.” I place both my hands on either side of my coffee mug and stare into it, wishing it was a portal that I could drop into. A portal that would take me away to another world, far away from this one.

  The waitress is back. “You guys need anything else? More coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” My dad lifts his mug to meet her coffeepot.

  “You, dear?”

  “No thank you.”

  She hesitates. She’s studying me. Don’t do it. Don’t ask what happened to me.

  “Do you mind if I—what happened, honey?” She examines my face.

  “He stood up for himself.” My dad smiles at her. It’s a sad smile. I feel a tightness in my throat.

  She smiles back, notices a couple of new customers at the other end of the counter, waves, and heads toward them.

  I say, “Are you going to eat the second cruller?”

  “You want it?”

  “No. Just checking.”

  “I’m sorry about dinner tonight. It’s probably best that you rest, right?”

  “So you know about what happened?”

  I see my mom’s face. I hear her voice as she told me she wishes I were dead.