by Emma Scott
“You have to take care of yourself, Isaac,” Martin said. “You’re meant for something bigger and better than what you have now. And I know this is the part you don’t believe, but you deserve something better.”
I looked away to the mirror and wiped the last streaks of dried blood from under my eyes. “I have to audition first,” I said, my voice tight in my throat.
Martin swatted me between the shoulder blades. “Yeah, you do. Don’t blow it.”
I made a noncommittal sound and slid out from under his hand on my shoulder to pull on my boots.
“Heading home?” he asked. “Or a hot date with one of your women?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to work.”
“No chance,” he said. “You have the night off.”
“I can’t afford to take the night off.”
“You think I’m going to dock your pay? On your birthday?”
Martin hauled his bulky, scratched up leather bag onto the dressing table. He dug around and came up with a thick red envelope. “Happy Birthday, kid.”
I stared for a moment, then took it from his hand. It was gift-card heavy. Probably for the clothing store in Braxton. My heart sank in my chest under the weight of everything Martin had given me tonight. Not just the card.
Hamlet, the role of a lifetime.
The talent agents.
A real shot at getting out of here.
The gratitude overwhelmed me, filling me up, and mangling what poor words I struggled to utter.
“You didn’t have to do this. Any of it. But… I’m grateful.” I cleared my throat and stuffed the envelope in the back pocket of my jeans. “I mean, really. Thank you.”
“It’s from both Brenda and me,” Martin said. His smile tightened. “How’s your old man going to be tonight?”
“He’s probably got the surprise party all ready to go.”
Martin crossed his arms and pressed his gaze.
“You know how he’ll be, Marty.” I shrugged on my leather jacket. “Passed out or on a rampage, itching for a fight.”
“You watch yourself. And remember, our door is always open—”
“Yeah, okay. Tell Brenda I said thanks.”
He let his arms drop with a tiny sigh. “You bet.”
Martin’s concerned gaze followed me like a warm wind at my back to the cab of my old blue Dodge. An icebox. My breath steaming as I turned the engine over and let it idle to warm up. I turned Martin’s offer over too, tried to get it to warm up in my mind.
The Fords lived in a large, brick house on Front Street. Huge maple trees out front, a wrought-iron fence along the sidewalk. The house was built in 1862 and had been redone and renovated. The inside was filled with eclectic sculptures and paintings they’d collected over the years from artist friends, and from their own extensive travels.
I’d been over there a hundred times, and on a few occasions, when Pops got really violent, I stayed in their spare room. On those nights, I thought plenty about living with Martin and Brenda permanently. I knew they’d have me. I was nineteen and I could live where I wanted. Pop couldn’t say no. And yet…
Lying in the soft bed in the Fords’ guest room, with the heater working perfectly, surrounded by comfort and sturdy brick walls instead of cheap siding, I hadn’t been able to sleep. I’d imagined my dad alone in that shitty trailer, and remembered when I was a kid, before Mom died, and how he’d play ball with me. Or let me pretend to shave in the bathroom mirror with him in the morning.
Pops was a broken down drunk, but he was my family.
In my truck’s front seat, I fished out the red envelope from the back pocket of my jeans. The card was fancy—probably from that expensive stationary store up in the mall in Braxton. Gold drama masks, tragedy and comedy, adorned the front. Inside was a fifty dollar bill, a gift card to The Outpost clothing store—also in Braxton—and a handwritten message in Martin’s neat scrawl.
The money is for what you want. The card is for what you need.
Happy Birthday,
Martin and Brenda
My vision blurred. “Fuck, Marty.”
Pops might be blood, whispered a thought. But Martin and Brenda are family.
I got my shit together, revved the engine a few more times and rubbed the last condensation off the window. From my parking spot across the street from the theater, I could see a few people still congregated, talking to cast members.
And then I saw her.
Willow. The new girl. Standing with Angie McKenzie and her crew on the steps. Her hair spilled out from under her pink hat and over her white coat. In her gloved hands was a rolled-up Oedipus program.
“She saw it,” I heard myself say.
Like a dope, I touched the window. Safe and hidden in the dark confines of the cab, I stared as Willow glanced up at the glowing marquee. The light illuminated her stunning face, a perfect oval of smooth skin and large eyes. Then her friends tugged her arm, and they headed down the street in the opposite direction.
I didn’t know this girl for shit, but I added Willow Holloway seeing me perform tonight to the birthday presents from Marty already in my pocket.
And for the first time in my life, I felt rich.
Isaac
I left the lights of Harmony in my rearview while the road ahead grew bumpy, dark, and cracked by ice. The homes on this side of town were small, surrounded by chain link fences and bare trees scratching at the sky.
My shoulder muscles tightened as I pulled up in front of our trailer—the lights were on inside the living area. I took a deep breath to calm down. Pops might be passed out instead of prowling, I told myself. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I killed the engine and tucked the envelope with my gift card and cash in the glove compartment. Bringing evidence of Martin Ford’s generosity into the trailer was asking for a shit-load of trouble.
I turned my key into the lock and cringed as the door squeaked. I peeked my head in, a lion tamer preparing to walk into the cage. Pops was sitting on the couch. Sitting up and passed out. Chin to chest and snoring wetly. The TV blared the news. A second bottle of Old Crow had joined the first on the coffee table, also empty. The air was thick with cigarette smoke.
I eased a sigh of relief. Creeping on silent feet, I shut off the TV and lights. I thought about laying my father down and covering him with a blanket, but I’d learned the hard way it was safer to leave him alone. I didn’t want to perform the final Oedipus with a busted nose.
The heater whirred quietly but the initial warmth from stepping inside was already wearing off. In my room, I kicked off my boots and jacket, then climbed into bed fully dressed.
My thoughts drifted back over the performance. Lorraine was right: I gave so much every night on stage—so much rage and regret. It was cathartic, letting it all out in that theater. Letting Oedipus’ pain be a conduit for my own. I gave so much because I had so much to give since Mom died.
I rolled over on my thin mattress, trying not to think how Mom would’ve been at the show tonight, and every night. Maybe Pops would’ve been with her, and the hard, tough streak in him wouldn’t have turned rotten and ugly if she was still with him. We’d still be living in one of those little houses I’d passed on the way here like we did when I was a kid, instead of this run down trailer. Instead of Pops’ drunken bellowing and rage, the air would be filled with Mom’s humming as she worked in her garden, or she’d sing aloud to the radio as she drove me to The Scoop for ice cream “just because.”
When Mom was alive, I loved Harmony. Its soundtrack was her sweet voice playing in the background of life. But she’d been silenced forever, and when she died, some part of me went dead silent too.
I rolled over, putting my back to bullshit fantasies and burrowing deeper into my blankets. Done was done. She was dead, Harmony was Hell, and the only sure way to escape the misery and find my voice again was to get the fuck out.
Martin invited talent agents to see me.
My acting could
take me somewhere else. I didn’t perform for accolades. Compliments nauseated me. But now I recalled tonight’s applause, the standing ovation that went on and on and on. The repetitive clapping reverberated in my head, blocking out the cold wind whistling under the trailer.
And just before sleep took me, I remembered the gold of Willow Holloway’s hair as she stood under the theater marquee, staring up at it as if it held the secrets to the universe.
Pops was out of the trailer early the next morning. I watched him through the kitchen window, walking the far rows of junked cars in the yard. He was hardly more than a bulky blob of army green jacket and red hunter’s cap. Smoky breath pluming from his mouth.
He often walked the graveyard of his business, like a mourner walking among the headstones of a cemetery. Grieving his hopes and dreams. Grieving my mother. I could almost sympathize, if I didn’t know damn well he’d come back inside, pissed off at the failure of his business and the shitty hand the world dealt him, and he’d take it out on me.
My fingers touched a scar on my chin, mostly concealed by my light beard, where Pops had hurled a lamp at me. Another time he’d brought in an iron bar from the yard, demanding I find more and get to the recycling. When I didn’t hustle fast enough, he broke my arm. I’d done Death of a Salesman in a cast.
The last time he took a swing at me, I hit back and left him with a black eye that he showed off at Nick’s Tavern. Then the rumors at school started. I was violent, high-tempered and heavy-fisted, just like my old man. But no one fucked with me, which was exactly how I liked it.
I turned away from the window and took a shower in the trailer’s one tiny bathroom, freezing my nuts off as the cool air slithered in through the cracks in the windowsill. I dried and dressed quickly, putting on the same jeans as last night. I pulled on a clean T-shirt, layered a sweatshirt over that, then shrugged into my jacket.
Pops was coming in just as I was going out.
“Where are you going?” he said, blocking the doorway.
“Out,” I said. “Then to work at the theater. Then the show.”
“Out.” A smoke-lined exhale snorted out his nose as he backed me inside the trailer. “Does out include spending one damn minute at the gas station?” He flipped a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the yard. “Or checking the answering machine for part requests? Good product is rusting away out there while you prance around a stage.”
I gritted my teeth. We hadn’t had a call to the yard for parts in six months. Our only business was Pops sitting in the Wexx gas station every Sunday, and me stripping useable parts out of the rusting junk in our yard. No one came for gas, and I’d already been through what we had a hundred times.
“I can’t strip ‘em when they’re iced over,” I said.
“Bullshit. We got acres of potential profit going to waste because of your lazy ass.”
My jaw ticked. One load of scrap in my flatbed wasn’t going to buy a pack of smokes. With the shitty rates, it would take me weeks to load and haul enough down to the metal recycler to make anything decent.
“I make more money at the theater,” I said. “When the snow melts, we can start up the recycling again.”
And maybe you could run the station like your franchise contract says to.
Pops’ face turned ruddy, and I wondered if he was going to try something. I drew myself up to my full height and tilted my chin. At six-two, I towered over him. Since the broken arm three years ago, I’d been lifting weights to ensure he’d think twice before fucking with me.
But he was sober. Whatever scrap of decency he had in him—and it wasn’t much—wasn’t drowning in booze this morning. Yet. He pushed past me, whiskey fumes and stale cigarette smoke filling my nose.
“Get the fuck out then. Useless. I don’t want to look at you.”
Feeling’s mutual, I told myself, and slammed the door behind me as I left. Unscathed, but feeling like he’d hit me anyway, right in the goddamn chest.
I drove up to Braxton. At The Outpost clothing store, I bought two new pairs of jeans, socks and underwear. The lady at the register said I still had fifty dollars left on the gift card.
Jesus, Marty.
I left my purchases with her and went to the kids’ section. I found a weather-proof winter jacket—a good one, not some cheap crap—in bright blue, and on sale for $45.99. I held it up to judge the size, then took it to the register.
“For your little brother?” she asked as she brought the card balance to zero.
“Yeah,” I said.
She smiled. “How sweet.”
At the mall food court, I grabbed a slice of pizza and a Dr. Pepper, then headed back to Harmony. I still had an hour before I was due for work at HCT; I veered back to my end of town, taking the customer road that flanked the eastern edge of Pearce Auto Salvage. At the far end, where the scrapyard’s fence served as the backyard to a row of small houses, I parked and got out.
An old rusted out pickup truck, upside down, lay against the chain link. Like a forgotten prop in an action movie. From inside the cab, I heard a voice softly singing Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.”
I put two fingers to my lips and gave a low whistle.
The singing stopped and Benny Hodges climbed out from the truck. His grin flashed, bright white in the dark of his skin, before he dialed it down to a thirteen-year-old’s bored nonchalance.
“What’s up, my brother?” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans then offering me a fist bump. “Happy Birthday.”
“Thanks.”
“Mama made you something. Hold up, let me get it.”
He ducked through a tear in the chain link fence, his too-small coat flapping behind as he ran across the snow-deadened grass. He went into his house and came back out with a small, round cake on a plate under plastic wrap. Forks stuck out of his pocket and jangled as he ran.
He climbed back under the fence and held out the cake to me. It was white with cream cheese frosting and Happy Birthday Isaac! in a boy’s messy orange lettering.
“Carrot cake,” he said, beaming. “Your favorite, right? And I did the words.”
“Thanks, Benny,” I said, my heart clenching. “Thank Yolanda, too.”
“She’s at work, but told me to tell you Happy Birthday.” He peered up at me, undisguised eagerness in his deep brown eyes. “We’re going to bust into that now, right?”
I chuckled, “Yeah, let’s do it. But first…”
I set the cake down on a semi truck tire, and held out the bag from The Outpost. Benny peered at it suspiciously.
“What’s that?”
“A jacket.”
“Is it my birthday or yours?”
I held out the bag. “Yours is too small. Take it.”
He hesitated, pride keeping his hands at his sides.
I sighed. “Your ma keep a roof over your head?”
“Yeah.”
“And food on your plate?”
He nodded.
“Damn straight,” I said. “And how often does she make something for me and Pops?”
Benny scratched his chin with one finger. “Once a week?”
“At least. That’s her looking out for us.” I held out the bag. “This is us looking out for you. Take it.”
He took it.
“The kids at school were giving me shit…” He shrugged out of his old coat and put on the new. Zipped it to his chin and smoothed down the sleeves. He smiled and for a moment, he was an ordinary kid, not a young man forced to grow up fast without a father.
“It’s warm,” he said.
“Good.”
We shook hands, and then he gave me a half-hug and a manly thump on the back.
“Thanks, bro,” he said thickly, holding on a little longer than necessary. I let him.
I met Benny three years ago. Or found him, rather, out here by the fence. He was huddled against the semi tire, sobbing over his father—killed in Afghanistan when Benny was five. He wanted to cry somewhere away from the house. “
Where Mama wouldn’t see and worry,” he’d said. He told me it was his job to take care of her now. I told him I took care of my Pops the same way. We’d been friends ever since.
Benny let go of me and left the sentimental moment to blow away in the cold air.
“How was school this week?” I asked as we dug into the cake.
“Aight,” Benny said. “Science test.”
“And?”
“Eh.”
“You’re too smart for ‘eh’. Work harder. You staying out of trouble?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
I glanced down at him with raised eyebrows. “Always.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. Who’s your new girl this week?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Bullshit. You’re the king of booty calls.”
“Your ma know you talk like that?”
“No.”
“My ass.”
He shrugged. “She don’t care.”
From what I knew of Yolanda Hodges, she cared plenty. She cared too, about what kind of example I was setting for her son. But I’d let him mess around with my phone one night and he saw an age-inappropriate text from one of the girls I sometimes hooked up with. To take the edge off.
Naturally, Benny asked a thousand questions. I didn’t bullshit him then, and I wasn’t about to start now.
“Listen,” I said, trying to form a few smart words, my jaw working like a rusted hinge. “You got to treat all girls right. No matter what. No matter when.”
“I will.”
“I’m not fucking around. The girls that I—”
“Bang? Screw? Nail?”
I glanced down at him. He grinned up at me.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Those girls. We have an understanding. It’s okay that I don’t stick around and take them out or call them all the time. They’re not my girlfriends and they don’t expect to be. Sometimes girls like to…”
