Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  “Freddy,” she warned.

  “Why is he here?” John Stiles said.

  —

  I opened my eyes and I was seventeen again, and the rain pattered against the kitchen window. My father sat across from me, the ice cubes in his glass chattering. The candle on the table was the only light in the room. It cast shadows across his face. It made him look angry. It made him look dangerous.

  The memory of the night in the car washed over me like the tide coming in.

  I asked my father, “Did you hit my mother?”

  My father lit a cigarette and took a long drag. Then exhaled slowly. He nodded. “Once. Twice, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was and still am an ass.” He sighed. “Back then, I was an even bigger ass. Sometimes we fought, and sometimes she threw things at me, and sometimes she hit me. Sometimes I wrestled her down. Sometimes I shoved her away. I guess I smacked her once or twice. Some couples are like that.”

  He shifted position in his chair and looked out the window. “Some couples like to fight. Some couples like to make up. Sometimes, people like to make up so much, they don’t mind the fighting.”

  “Is that why she left us?”

  He straightened up, frowning. “She wasn’t going to leave. Not for good. She’d done this before. I guess you don’t remember but she did it every once in a while. Just packed a bag and went to her friend’s for a few days. Freddy, if there’s one thing I hope you remember about your mother, it’s that she was a fireplug. She was high drama. Always. And she was always coming back.”

  “She wasn’t coming back.”

  He nodded. “Of course she was. She was coming back just as sure as I’m sitting here. The only thing different is she thought that John Stiles was in love with her. But he just wanted to sleep with her. It was going to come to a crashing end fast enough.”

  “No,” I said. “I was there. She wasn’t coming back.”

  “Christ, Freddy.” He finished his drink and poured another. “What are you going on about?”

  And I was remembering more.

  MOMENTS

  I remember moments. They burst forth like patrons from a show. Scattered memories, scattered moments. As my father sat at the kitchen table and stared up at me, I remembered so many more things.

  —

  I opened my eyes and I was seven, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Gordon ran on his wheel, which squeaked and shrieked. Oil me, it called out. I’ll do it later, I told it.

  Outside, the wind lashed wet rain against the window. A streetlight shone through my window, the branches of a tree cast shadows against the wall.

  Downstairs, my parents argued.

  “I can’t keep doing this,” my mother shouted.

  “Doing what? Ignoring me?” he shouted back at her. “Acting like everything’s wrong? And then, just like that, thinking that nothing’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong? You think that I believe nothing’s wrong?”

  Later that evening, I awoke to the sound of smashing of glass. My mother cried out. I sat up and looked at the Darth Vader clock beside my bed.

  It was 4:32.

  But that’s not right. It makes no sense.

  —

  I opened my eyes and the streetlights rushed by me. I counted them as I argued with my mother about the missing booster seat.

  “Sweetheart,” she tried to reason, “it’s just this one time. Do you understand what ‘important’ means?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, counting the streetlights—eighty-six, eighty-seven . . .

  “And if something is important, little things that are different can be ignored for just a little while. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is important. It’s very important that you come with me,” she continued. She undid her seat belt, reached around, stroking my hair.

  “But I want my booster seat.”

  “Hi, Freddy,” said Saskia Stiles. “Are you having a GOOD DAY?”

  She was sitting in her booster seat.

  “What are you looking at, sport?” she asked me. No, she didn’t.

  I don’t know.

  —

  I opened my eyes and Chad Kennedy threw a basketball at my head in gym class as I walked by.

  “What are you looking at?” he said, then laughed at me, when I stopped and stared at him. I was annoyed, because rhetorical questions make me uncomfortable. I end up answering questions I shouldn’t and not answering questions I should.

  “I’m looking at you,” I said, because it was a true fact.

  Chad Kennedy wore a thick green coat. But that makes no sense, either.

  —

  I opened my eyes and my father threw a shot glass at me.

  “What the hell are you looking at!” he roared, and I don’t know when that was. But I was younger.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked him, and he laid his head in his arms.

  —

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see any more. My head hurt. Not like a headache, but the painless hurt that falls over you when you don’t want to think anymore about it.

  And I didn’t want to think anymore about it.

  But I opened my eyes again and I still didn’t have my booster seat and my mother was arguing with John Stiles.

  But Saskia talked to me. She sat on the driver’s side. I reached out my hands, and our fingers touched. I stopped thinking about my booster seat.

  “Did you have a good DAY?” she asked loudly, grinning widely. Her feet kicked at the back of her father’s seat. She wore a blue polka-dotted dress. Red shoes. White socks.

  “I had a good day,” I replied to her. “How was your day?”

  She laughed and kicked her father’s seat harder. “I had a good day TOO!” She laughed, until her father turned his head back to her, a scowl over his brow.

  “Saskia, please! Stop kicking my seat.”

  He turned to me, frowned, saw that I was now staring past him, at the light approaching. “What are you looking at, sport?” he asked.

  And the sound of a train whistle.

  THE CHANGING LIST OF

  MY FAVOURITE THINGS

  My mother came off the list of my Favourite Things on April 5, 2012, when I replaced her with boxing. There were already four things that I thought about more than my mother. Boxing was now the fifth thing.

  It was no longer clear why I should think so much about my mother. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in seven and a half years. I couldn’t say with certainty that my heart would race faster or if I would feel eager anticipation to see her again. Clearly, it was more prudent to move boxing onto my list of Favourite Things.

  Moving her off the list was made easier by the knowledge that she abandoned me. That she perhaps stopped loving me. Her leaving was, therefore, egregious.

  Now, here I was, seventeen, and I sat in the kitchen. My father, getting drunk again. Telling me why she left.

  A thread awoke and told me.

  She still loves you.

  It told me. It didn’t ask a question, like a thread always does. It had been there for a decade and now awoke.

  Your mother didn’t stop loving you, it told me. And I knew it was true.

  She still loved me. She left because

  because

  because

  because

  —

  My father was drunk, staring at me from across the kitchen table.

  “Why did I stop going to Excalibur House?” I asked him.

  He looked down at his glass for a while before answering. “I moved you to a private school. It was best for everyone concerned.”

  “Who was everyone?”

  “You. Me. Linda.”

  “Why?”

  He took a deep breath. “Your mother didn’t abandon you.”

  I stared back, my muscles frozen.

  “She died, Freddy,” he said, and the time was now 6:19 PM, March 27, 2015.

  THE TRAIN


  I opened my eyes and my mother was screaming, and John Stiles instinctively stood on the brakes, even before he began to turn himself around to face forward again.

  When the windshield exploded, it was like cold snow bursting through an open window.

  The car spun like a top, and I heard, so close, the pounding of train wheels on the track, the screeching of steel on steel.

  And then it was quiet.

  Then a ringing in my ears. Then the patter of water as it fell on the roof, the ticking of hot metal. Then voices outside. I felt the cold air streaming through where the windshield once was.

  Saskia kicking at the back of her father’s seat. “Daddy,” she called. “Daddy, HELLO.”

  John Stiles didn’t respond.

  I heard the opening and closing of car doors. “Is everyone okay?” someone shouted.

  “Daddy!” called Saskia. “Helllllooooo!”

  My mother lifted her head slightly. Blood poured from her scalp. I could see a ridge of bone above her ear. “It’s time to be a man now,” she said. “Get on with your life.”

  And then there were hands on me, on her, people calling to us, saying things too quickly for me to understand.

  “Don’t hurt him,” my mother said and closed her eyes.

  And Saskia Stiles calling to her father.

  “Helllooooo!” she called out. “Daddy, helllloooo!”

  The clock on the dashboard.

  It was 4:32.

  MY FATHER

  My father lit another cigarette. He offered me one. I didn’t respond. He shrugged and put the pack in his front shirt pocket.

  “She was going to a battered women’s shelter,” I said.

  He snorted. “Bullshit,” he said, without conviction.

  “She wasn’t in love with John Stiles,” I continued. “He was driving her to the place where she would get away from you.”

  “Freddy,” he said, low and angry. I recognized the tone of his voice. It meant stop. But I kept talking.

  “John Stiles was taking her away from you,” I said. “Not me. You.”

  “Shut up,” he said. He rubbed his forehead. Outside, the wind was increasing, and waves of rain pelted the window.

  My father poured himself another shot of scotch and drank it quickly.

  “You little insufferable shit,” he said. “You mongoloid bastard.”

  “A bastard is a fatherless child,” I said.

  “Shut the fuck up will you,” he said.

  “She didn’t leave because of me,” I said. “She left because of you.”

  I said it carefully, the words coming out slowly, as the threads exploded in my mind. Suddenly, it felt like my world had rotated 180 degrees. Up was the new down.

  “You,” I repeated.

  He slammed a hand on the table. “She couldn’t take you anymore!” he shouted. “I almost couldn’t take it, either. You were a twenty-four-hour job, Freddy. We never had a moment of quiet. We never had a moment when we could let our guard down. If you weren’t into one thing, you were into another. If I said do one thing, you said you wanted to do another. If I said do the other thing, you said you wanted to do the first thing.”

  “She was leaving you, not me,” I said.

  He hit the table so hard his glass tipped over and ice spilled on the table. “She was leaving you!” he roared. “It was you that drove her out. You that put such a strain on our marriage that it broke. It was you that pushed her over the edge. Jesus, Freddy, if you weren’t so fucking you, she’d still be here with us today. If you weren’t so fucking retarded, she’d never have wanted to fuck John Stiles and run away with him.”

  He sat, panting, glaring at me. After a moment, his head dropped heavily. He poured himself another drink.

  “No,” I said.

  He took another drink. “No, what?” he growled.

  “No, it’s not true!” I shouted, stood up, grabbed the table, and turned it over on him.

  THE FIGHT

  My father liked to listen to country music, but only a subset of the genre. When he drove me home from Excalibur House, he played it loud.

  “I listen to real country music,” he often told me.

  “You only listen to real country music?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes,” he laughed and turned up the car radio.

  I sat in a booster seat in the back, on the middle of the seats, where I had a grand view of the road ahead. From there, I could easily see my mother and father, and they could see me. She could turn her head to look at me and smile. He could look at me in the rear-view mirror and wink. I could try to wink back. I had no idea why we winked. But it was interesting, so I did it.

  “Real country music,” he continued, “is music that speaks to the unique American condition. And there’s not a lot of that out there these days.”

  “There’s not a lot out there?” I asked.

  “That’s right.” He laughed again. “There’s not a lot of real music, period. Where are the George Joneses? Where are the Willie Nelsons?”

  I considered this. “Are they in the glove compartment?”

  “I guess they’re just in your heart, Freddy.”

  And then there was Johnny Cash. His favourite singer was Johnny Cash. His favourite song was “A Boy Named Sue.”

  “Just when you think you got it tough, kid,” he said. “Just when you think it can’t get worse, remember that someone once was a boy and his name was Sue.”

  After that, whenever things got worse, I remembered this.

  Someone is named Sue, I thought.

  So what? said the threads.

  —

  I opened my eyes, and my father sat across the table from me, and a thread spoke to me.

  Freddy, it told me. It’s you. You are Sue.

  “No, it’s not true!” I shouted, stood up, and turned the table over on top of my father. He fell off his chair and crashed against the kitchen cupboard. I walked deliberately over to him, to stand over him, to tower over him. To glare righteously.

  Or to try and glare righteously. Having never been angry before, I wasn’t sure how to be angry. But I had seen it enough times that I knew the range of typical angry steps involved.

  “Are you kidding me!” I shouted down at him.

  His foot shot out like a piston, driving into my ankle. I tumbled to the floor.

  “Goddamn it, Freddy,” he roared, kicking me in my hip, then standing up. “What the goddamn bloody hell are you—”

  I grabbed a chair and slammed it into his thigh. As he staggered back, I leapt to my feet and stood, knees bent, in a perfect stance. We were two arm’s lengths apart. I knew how to close the gap quickly, where to step if he threw a punch at me, and where to strike when he missed.

  But before I could move toward him, his arms swept the two glass tumblers from the counter at my face. As I threw my hands up to protect myself, he launched himself at me. Before I could register, he was upon me and drove his fist straight into my cheekbone. My vision exploded. Bright flashing lights blinded me and I fell back against the fridge, and he pinned me there, his hands closing around my throat.

  I smiled.

  I heard music.

  THE FIGHT CONTINUED

  There are foolish things people can do to me. One of them is to grab me with both hands. It means that they have left themselves undefended.

  As my father pressed me against the fridge, leaning into me, clamping down on my windpipe, I brought both my arms under his and wedged my hands up between the insides of his elbows. Lifting up, I forced his arms apart, forced his elbows to bend, and pulled him closer to me.

  I smashed my forehead into his nose. He stumbled back, and I hit him several times in the face, left and right, left and right, until one fist found the sweet spot where the first knuckle strikes the middle of the mandible, at the precise angle, the doorbell to the brain.

  Hi, my fist said. I’m here.

  My father slumped back, his eyes fluttering, and his hands released me
. I pushed back from him, dragging in my breath. He staggered and tried to regain his feet.

  Still gasping for breath, I stepped forward and lay on him like a hammer on a nail.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE SHE LEFT

  I opened my eyes and I was seven years old.

  The night before she left for the last time, I heard them arguing downstairs. His voice was slurred, dragging out the soft consonants.

  “It’s time for me to move on,” she told him. “It’s time for us to move on.”

  “Move on to where,” he wondered.

  “Not to where,” she said. “From where is what you should be asking. Look at us. Is this who we want to be? Is this where we want to be? I’m tired of beer in the fridge. I’m tired of a recycling bin full of wine bottles.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve been talking to people,” she said. “I think maybe you—”

  “Oh, good Christ,” he muttered. “Here it comes. This is just great.”

  “When I say move on, I don’t care where we move on to. I just care that we move on from this. But right now, I’m trying to move on, and you’re still there, and I’m moving on without you.”

  He made a spitting noise. “We do pretty good. We got a house. We got a good life. You like it here. I like it here.”

  “Does Freddy?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me, Bill,” she said, her voice rising. “Do you think Freddy likes it when we’re hungover Saturday morning and he has to watch TV for hours? Do you think he really likes it?”

  “Hell, yes. He loves it.”

  “Don’t you think he’d rather be hanging around us?”

  “Flapping his hands and staring at nothing? He’d rather watch TV. He’d rather watch it all day.”

  “And do you think that would be good for him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Bill?”

  “You’re not making sense. How did we get from drinking to you accusing me of giving him too much TV?”

  “Not you. Us. Every time we do something to ignore him. Every time we can’t crawl out of bed to spend time with him. Every time we forget we promised to take him for a walk. Every single goddamn time, Bill. We’re crushing him. Any chance he’s got, we’re wrecking, because we won’t stop.”