by A J Grayson
‘You sure you want to sit inside and read instead of going out and running around?’ she’d asked. Tom had nodded in aggressive surety. He was absolutely positive. And she couldn’t resist the enormous smile on his face as he crossed his legs, cracked open the cover and stuffed his nose into its pages.
That had been then. In the present moment, the memory brings Kate a deepening sense of fear. Since she hasn’t called Tom to get ready for supper, it means he’ll still be there – in the corner with his book, oblivious to the world. Right where she’d left him. His tufts of hair will be sprouting out from the top of its pages, his face somewhere in his story, and he won’t hear his father approaching. He won’t have heard the groaning of the wood on the steps just now.
Which means Andy is going to walk into the house and find him there. In the corner.
Reading.
And in an instant, Kate knows this means that the evening she had planned, the evening she’d thought lay ahead of them, was over.
38
The Living Room
It’s seeing Tom in the corner with a book that sends Andy over the edge. Outside, on the porch, he’d only been taunted by the tree and the memories of the better life he’d once thought he’d have, but to enter into the house and be confronted with his own flesh and blood, rubbing in the insult – it’s too much.
Books are all this kid’s good for these days. Of all the stupid, childish, useless things. Tom may only be five, but Andy had been five once and he sure as hell hadn’t wasted his father’s time with books. By five Andy knew tools. By five he’d help his old man on the car, or fix the truck, or do his bit with good, proper chores around the house. By five a boy is supposed to be learning the skills to become a man.
But not this one. His son is too otherworldly bookish to have two wits of common sense about him, not to mention any semblance of a work ethic. A useless child. A useless child who flaunts his uselessness like a badge of honour.
And Andy’s simply had enough.
‘Fucksakes,’ he mutters as he walks into the house and slams the front door behind him. His anger builds as he moves, every step fuelling his disappointment and disgust. As the door thunders closed, Tom’s face pops up from behind his book. The cheerful blue train engine on its cover looks absurdly out of place in this house.
For an instant Tom’s eyes look happy, like a boy’s eyes are supposed to look when they see their father. He’s been startled out of his reverie, but his thoughts are still in storyland and filled with dreams. But then Tom sees Andy, and immediately his face changes.
‘That’s right,’ Andy says, louder, ‘you can wipe that little smile off your face. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself.’ He stands in the centre of the room. He has an arm extended, a grease-covered finger pointing towards his son in the corner.
‘Let me guess, you’ve been buried in that book all day and haven’t done shit around the place.’
Tom doesn’t answer. His face is a full shade whiter now, his eyes wider. Andy doesn’t really expect a response. Kid may be learning how to read faster than others, that’s what they tell him, but he doesn’t talk much. Especially not when he knows he’s in trouble. Then the boy’s as good as a mute.
Taking a hammer and a few nails to the loose boards on the back steps doesn’t require talking, though. Andy had shown his son how to use the hammer. Twice. He’d shown him where the nails are kept, in a glass jar in the garage. And he’d shown him the wobbling steps and given clear instructions.
He decides to give Tom a chance to prove he’s not a total waste of space. He knows the boy will fail the test – he always does – but he’ll give him the chance anyway.
‘The steps?’ he asks his son. ‘You do what I asked you with them? You pick up the hammer like a man?’
Andy doesn’t feel it’s necessary to elaborate. Tom damn well knows what he’s been told to do. And Andy knows, even as he hints at the one, singular thing that he’d asked Tom to take care of, that his son hasn’t done it.
The boy timidly shakes his head. The movement starts slowly, as if he’s afraid to move at all, and especially to have to make this gesture. But soon his head is swinging back and forth in a dejected negative. For what it’s worth, he looks genuinely upset. He knows he’s failed.
For a moment, Andy isn’t sure what’s coming next. His whole body is tense, poised at the precipice of something. He knows this knife-edge well, what it’s like to teeter between control and the complete loss of it. He teeters as long as he can.
But his mind is already spinning. The words Damned little bastard float through his consciousness on repeat. All day he’s been at work. All day, providing for this damned little bastard and his mother, and the damned little bastard can’t so much as lift a finger unless it’s to please himself with a book or a stick or a toy.
It doesn’t take long. It never does. Just a few seconds. Andy’s frustration mutates into rage. He lurches the two steps over to Tom’s corner and grabs the book out of his son’s hand. Tom pushes himself further back, shaking.
‘You relax once you’ve done some goddamn work!’ Andy shouts. He can hear his old man’s voice in his, the same voice that used to shout the same things at him, when he was cowering in his own corner doing whatever it was he did that had set his old man off. It’s a disgusting thought, realizing he’s become his father, but Andy is caught up in the moment.
He takes the thin book in both hands, open to the place where Tom had been reading, and rips it apart at the spine. The flexing of his muscles, the physical vibration of the paper and glue tearing away from their bond – they’re like a charge in his skin. The rage increases. He flings the remains of the book at the far side of the room. They fly into the branches of the Christmas tree before falling to the floor.
The tree shakes. Two paper angels fall from their branches and flutter down to join the remains of the book.
Andy turns back to Tom, crouched in his corner. His heart is thumping, his blood flowing in torrents that thunder in his ears. And that little bastard has been asking for a good dose of correction for some time.
Andy reaches down to his belt buckle. It’s the usual way, and he can already feel this is going to be one of the usual encounters. A father’s duty. The way people learn. The way he learned …
But he stops himself before his belt is undone. The normal course of events is interrupted, and the strangest distraction halts him. There’s the scent of something coming from the kitchen. Something rich and hearty that at first he can’t identify. Something unexpected. But then his nostrils and taste buds collaborate to piece together the evidence. Bacon fat. Spices. The blood-rich scent of red meat, and not just any meat. Steak.
Andy’s blood courses again, on fire in his veins. He simply can’t believe what his senses are telling him. He’s infuriated, and his nose is bearing a new insult. An incomprehensible reality, a fuel for his rage.
I work my damned hands off to get us enough money to get by, and that bitch goes and spends it on steak!
He can see Kate’s face in his mind. That cow, that sad excuse for a woman. That sorry, deceptive, lying, home-wrecking wretch of a wife. He can imagine her sneaking around their room while he’s asleep, stealing cash from his wallet. That’s probably how she’s done it. He’s had his suspicions for a while. Stolen his money then gone out lady-shopping and spending it on indulgences, thinking he’d never be the wiser. No wonder they still lived in a shit-hole like this! No wonder they could never up themselves to a better lot in life. A good man is satisfied with a burger. And the bitch wastes my money on …
He isn’t able to finish the thought. His anger has taken over. His thoughts have become a pure mess of rage and fury, no longer coherent phrases or emotions but simply a mass of uncontrollable fire. And he doesn’t want to control it. He wants to let it out, to let it run its course. It’s the only thing that helps. The only thing that can make a situation like this better. And it’s the only thing that can teach a lesson n
o words could ever convey.
His buckle has come undone and he’s unthreading the belt as he moves. Tom is pressed into his corner, shaking at the beating he’s certain will come, but Andy is no longer aimed at him. He’s wrapping the belt around his wrist and elbowing his way through the kitchen door. Into that room where his wife has betrayed him yet again.
I’ll show her what happens to bitches who steal.
39
The Living Room
Only whimpers manage to make their way through Tom’s throat. There’s no point in screaming out. He’s learned that there’s never anyone around to hear. There’s no point in crying, either. Tears are supposed to attract the people who love you. They’re supposed to call them to your side, to wipe away the wetness on your cheeks and say things that make the pain better. But nothing ever makes Tom’s pain better, and the only person that loves him is in the other room. She’s in the other room and can’t get to him. And he can’t get to her.
Tom can hear her, though, and every time he does he repeats the same little, compassionate whimper. It’s all he can offer her.
He knows the different sounds that come from the different corrections. Before, he didn’t know which sounds went with which, only that they were all bad. But since Father had started correcting him, too, Tom had learned how to identify them. They were like a little catalogue in his mind, linked together through experience.
There was one sound made when the belt was swung and the leather strap snapped against your clothes. It made a different sound if it hit skin – more of a pop. There was another sound altogether when Father swung the buckle end and that hit you. That was more of a thud, like when you drop a rock onto a carpeted floor. Then there was a sound for when he wrapped it round his wrist and punched. That’s the sound Tom hears now. That’s how Mother is being corrected. It’s kind of a muffled sound, usually with a grunt behind it, and there’s usually a lot of heavy breathing since it takes more work for Father to correct them like this.
Tom hears the grunts and the breathing. He hears his mother’s cries, which eventually fade to sobs. He’s expected that. She usually stops crying out after the first few seconds, just like now. Just like Tom, when it’s his turn. Because crying out is like shedding tears: it’s supposed to attract the people who love you. It’s supposed to call them to your side to make the pain better.
But Tom can’t help her. He cowers in his corner. He whimpers. The edges of his vision start to go hazy and white. He so wishes he could help her, but he’s just too small. He tried once, and that’s what started his father correcting him, too. He’d walked into the bedroom when Mother was being corrected – the popping kind of sound, with the belt hitting her skin – and shouted out, ‘Stop it! Don’t do that to Mommy!’ (This was before the story at school and the advent of Mother and Father.) He’d yelled the words as loudly as he could, certain that instructions yelled that loudly would be listened to and his father would stop whatever he was doing. Tom didn’t know quite what it was, but the tears covering his mother’s face were enough for him to know she didn’t like it, and that meant it was bad. But she was also shaking her head at him, like she didn’t want him to be there. He’d never encountered that before. Tom had never known his mother ever to want him to be anywhere but at her side; but as he’d burst into that room, she looked like she wanted him to go away.
His father’s look had been different. He’d never seen a grown-up look like his father looked, just then. He looked like a monster, even though Tom know that his father wasn’t a monster and that monsters weren’t real. But he was as scary as a monster. There was sweat on his cheeks, and his eyes looked sharp. When Tom was done shouting, he looked right at him. He had his belt in his hand, and it was raised high over his head. Slowly he’d let it down and turned to his son.
‘The fuck do you want, you little brat?’ he’d asked. His words were so mean. Like they were from someone else’s voice.
‘Stop doing that to Mommy,’ Tom had repeated. He’d stomped his foot. That was another sign of how serious he was. He didn’t know what was going on, but he’d shouted and stomped, and so now it would have to stop.
But his father hadn’t stopped. Instead, he’d turned towards Tom and lunged at him. He’d crossed the room so fast that Tom almost thought he was flying. But people can’t fly.
But then, he’d never thought people could do the things to each other that he then learned his father could do. He’d ripped off Tom’s T-shirt – actually ripped it, a great tear all the way down the left side – and thrown him onto the bed.
And then Tom had heard the snapping sound again. Only this time, when it came, his whole world exploded. His skin went on fire. It started in his back, but went like a lightning bolt through his whole body. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t have any breath.
He heard more snaps. Felt more explosions. And he heard his mother sobbing softly, ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry.’
And Tom is sorry now, too. Sorry he can’t do anything for his mother in the kitchen. Because they are grown-ups, and he is a boy. Just a little boy.
But one day I’ll be big, Tom says internally, and despite himself there are tears flowing down his cheeks now. His vision has gone blurry, the way it does when he gets so upset, but his mind is clear. One day I’ll be big, and I’ll help her.
40
Christmas Day – Two Weeks Later
The day is finally here, and Tom is as excited as he can remember being. The promise of gifts hadn’t been a lie. This morning, as he bounds into the living room with a heart full of boyish hope, he spots them. Right where tradition says they should be.
Three presents, wrapped beneath the tree.
He literally shrieks with joy. For a moment Tom worries that the noise will get him in trouble. His father doesn’t like a lot of noise, and he definitely doesn’t like yelling. But then Tom isn’t worried. It’s Christmas. However bad things can get on other days, nobody gets mad or hits on Christmas.
The shriek attracts Mother, who appears a moment later from the kitchen, beaming. There are good scents coming from behind the door: sweet cakes. Cinnamon. Something with cooked pumpkin. There is flour on Mother’s hands and she shakes it off on the dress she always wears for special occasions.
But Tom can barely keep his focus on her. The presents are crying out to him, almost like they know his name.
‘Is Dad coming?’ he asks. He’s decided to stop calling him ‘Father’ for the day – a special Christmas gift between the two of them. He didn’t have enough money to get his dad anything else, and his father’s never been one for homemade gifts. Mother said Tom could claim joint credit for the present under the tree she’d actually bought and wrapped, with his father’s name written on a small card attached to it, and this made Tom happy. But he knew that ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Father’ would be a kind of extra present itself, and that made him even happier.
His mother pats his fluffy hair, washed and towelled dry the evening before. Her face is a smile, and most of the blue marks are gone. What’s left are the lines that are starting to show, which she once described to Tom as laugh lines. ‘But you don’t laugh that much, Mother!’ he’d answered, and she’d laughed at that. When she did some of the lines got deeper, so maybe there was truth in what she’d called them. But Tom had the suspicion some of the lines came from other things, too.
‘Your father will be here in a second. Why don’t you get the gifts out from under the tree. You can pass them out once we’re all together.’
Tom complies eagerly. The presents are very different by feel, though all wrapped in the same light paper. His mother’s handiwork. Each has the name of its recipient penned in beautiful handwriting – the kind called cursive – on a small card that’s been decorated with a sketched image of a tree, a ribbon, or a star.
Tom’s father’s gift is heavy, hard and oddly shaped. Mother’s is hard, too, but not quite as heavy. It has strangely pointed ends. Tom’s is the lightest of the thre
e, and not hard at all. It’s soft and with no distinctive shape. Squeezable inside the coloured paper.
The temptation to tear into it is almost overwhelming. When he presses his fingers in, the paper yields beneath them and Tom knows if he presses just a little further, just the tiniest bit, it will tear and he’ll be able to catch a glimpse of whatever is inside. He’s rarely ever been so tempted to do something he knows he shouldn’t. But he’s resolved to be on his best behaviour today, so instead he sets out the gifts in the centre of the floor. They’re only a few feet away from their previous location beneath the tree, but now they’re assembled in opening order, right there where they can’t be missed. Tom sits immediately beside them, as if moving too far away might result in them disappearing altogether.
Andy arrives after a few minutes. He’s still in his pyjamas, unshaven and dishevelled, his hair oddly matted on his head. For an instant he looks like he wants to be left alone, but at the sight of his boy and wife seated around the bundle of gifts, a smile crosses his face.
‘You waited for your old man, didn’t you?’
‘Of course we did!’ Tom cries out. He grabs the heaviest gift, shoots up onto his feet and rushes it over to his father. Andy smiles again and takes it from him.
‘Open it, Dad!’
Andy might not like the season, but the moment is a hard one to protest. Another smile finds its way onto his unshaven face and he complies, sitting on the old sofa and tearing away at the paper. He even makes a little show of it, flinging the torn-away scraps into the air so that they flutter down like big, lop-sided snowflakes. Tom giggles.
The hard object beneath the wrapping is finally exposed. It’s what Andy wanted. A bottle, the biggest size, of his favourite. Maker’s Mark. The kind of bourbon too expensive to buy. The kind you had to get as a gift – even if it’s a gift you have to tell your wife you expect to be given. She’d complied, like a good wife should.
