Mike was beside himself. Scared. Irate. Anxious. It got to a point that he dreaded getting phone calls, worried that Victor might be shot, or worse. Some in his family called. One told him, See, I told you how those people are. Why did you have to adopt him? Why’d you have to ruin our family name? Mike shot back, We’re not fuckin’ Rockefellers. For shit’s sake, we’re Kellys. And hung up the phone. Privately, though, he had run out of patience with Victor, and when Victor turned eighteen, Mike thought, He’s an adult now, he needs to find his own way. Mike kicked Victor out of the house, sold the Schaumburg home, and moved to the city.
* * *
—
To hear it from Victor’s side, well, it’s much the same story. He loved his dad. He loved that he had a home. He loved that he had something that was his. At times he felt as if it was the two of them against the world. Once, when visiting Disney World, as they were walking along, arguing about something, a black couple approached Victor to ask if he was okay. Okay? He was more than okay. This was his dad. He didn’t care that he was white. He didn’t care that his foul-mouthed dad yelled at him for cursing. He shrugged off the family members who behind his back used racial slurs, who couldn’t stand the idea of a black Kelly—and he quietly admired the way his dad stood up to them. But he and his dad argued over everything, arguments of little substance but of such rancor. Once Victor got shot in the eye with a paintball gun, and on the way to the doctor’s they argued so loudly and so heatedly (they can’t recall what it was over) that at a stoplight Victor jumped out of the car and ran off.
Victor had a lot roiling inside him. He felt as if he didn’t belong anywhere or to anyone. That was his fate in life, he thought. The white kids at his high school thought he was cool. He spoke street slang. He had a swagger about him. At one point he thought to himself, I just want to be normal. I don’t want people to know I’m adopted. I don’t belong here. Truth is, he felt like a misfit. He desperately wanted to feel that he had a place, that he had a history. He knew little about his past, other than that his mom had one day dropped him off at his grandmother’s, in the Robert Taylor Homes, a forbidding public housing complex. He doesn’t know why his mother gave him away, or why he was so short-tempered, or why he had found a permanent home in the end and his five younger siblings hadn’t. They ended up in foster care. He tried tracking down his mother once, found her through Facebook, and then talked with her by phone. But she started asking him for money, and he just stopped returning her calls. Outside of his dad, he’d never talked with anyone about this. “No one knows my life,” he told me once. “Maybe I’m ashamed about it. I keep it to myself.”
After Mike kicked him out, Victor lived from couch to couch, first in the suburbs, then in the city. Sometimes he slept in a park. He looked to belong somewhere and began hanging out with a gang, the Latin Counts. He got high with them, drank beer and Barcardi rum. It felt right. It felt like who he was, or at least who people expected him to be. For $200 he bought a .38 special at a house he’d been directed to by fellow gang members. And then one day he and a friend, another Latin Count, took the Metra from the city to Streamwood, a suburb, to meet a couple of girls he’d met at a party a few nights before. They strolled through a park, and when they reached the sidewalk a car drove by filled with four young men who contorted their fingers to resemble pitchforks, the symbol of a rival gang. The car pulled a U-turn and three boys sprang from the car. One wielded a bat. Another yelled, Count Killer! Still another threw an empty beer bottle at them. One of the girls started to cry. Victor reached into his waistband and pushed the girls aside. He held the pistol with two hands, shaking. One of the rivals taunted Victor: You ain’t gonna shoot. Pull it. What you gonna do? Victor purposefully aimed low. He didn’t want to kill him. He pulled the trigger. The boy kept coming. He shot two more times, and the boy reached for him, grabbing his wrist before falling. Victor stood over him, the anger welling. It felt like the times at the orphanage when the staff would bark at him and insult him. He felt like nothing mattered at this point. Victor shot one more time, aiming at the boy’s stomach.
Victor took off with one of the girls, his friend with the other. They split up into couples so they could pretend they were just out on a date. Victor took the girl’s hand in his. But an unmarked police car screeched to a halt in front of them. Victor ran, tossed the gun into someone’s backyard, and tried to scale a fence before the police caught up with him, threw him to the ground, and cuffed him. He was nineteen, and they asked him if he wanted to make a phone call. He declined. The only person he knew to call was his dad, and he wanted nothing to do with him.
* * *
—
A couple of days later, a relative called Mike to tell him he had read about the shooting in the Daily Herald. Mike asked him to read him the article. The only relief Mike felt was that Victor’s victim lived. His relative’s wife got on the phone and berated Mike. Why’d you adopt him? He’s an embarrassment to the family. We all told you not to do this. Mike just took it. He’d known it was coming. Eventually. But once he’d composed himself, hours later, he called back and his relative answered. I need to speak to your wife. He refused to put her on. Tell the cunt not to kick me when I’m down. Fuck you. I don’t need this shit right now. But Mike’s vitriol was really directed at Victor. I didn’t raise a criminal. Shooting someone? Where’d this come from?
Mike drank. Screwdrivers. Jack Daniel’s and Coke. Vodka tonics. He’d go on binges. One night he got so drunk at a bar—ten vodka tonics—he goaded a well-known rock musician, someone he’s asked me not to name, and threw a punch at him. At a friend’s wedding, again drunk, he hit on a pregnant woman. I’m married, she told him.
Happily?
I’m pregnant!
So is oral an option?
He told Victor he wouldn’t visit him in prison. You fuckin’ chose that life, he told him. You deal with the consequences. He didn’t even attend the trial where Victor got sentenced to five years. (Victor would serve half that if he didn’t get into trouble in prison.) Mike felt like a failure. He was embarrassed. A son convicted of attempted murder? He felt dirtied by it. He felt alone. What’s more, he’d been holding on to a secret, something he hadn’t shared with anyone. It gnawed at him. It isolated him. It led him to drink even more. No one knows the real Mike, he thought. That’s how Victor felt about himself, too. No one knows the real Victor.
* * *
—
Mike never visited Victor during his two and half years in prison. They talked regularly, though, every Sunday on the phone, but those were awkward conversations. What Mike would never concede to Victor is that he looked forward to those Sunday calls, so much so that he wouldn’t make any plans for fear he’d miss it. Mike wanted to know Victor was okay. As for Victor, he had no one else to talk to. What’s more, he wanted to make things right with his dad, and his dad could make him laugh, which didn’t come easy for him in prison.
When Victor got out, he asked his dad if he could live with him while he was on house arrest. They had him wearing an ankle bracelet, and he needed a stable address. Mike relented, and eventually got Victor a job at his real estate firm. The day after Victor got off parole, he visited some friends in the suburbs, and they climbed a fence to swim in someone’s backyard pool. When the owner came home, rather than fleeing, Victor stood his ground and told him to fuck off. When Mike heard that Victor had gotten into trouble yet again, he started drinking margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant, at noon. Three hours later the restaurant cut him off, and he headed to a birthday party for a friend, and announced his entry by shouting, Where are the whores? At one point he playfully put two friends, one of whom was black and the other Hispanic, in headlocks. He yelled a racial epithet at each, thinking he was being funny. But he later realized he’d become his uncle that night. It was the last drink he ever took.
The police came to Mike’s building, knocking on doors
, looking for Victor, for the trespassing offense. (The pool’s owner ended up not pressing charges.) Mike was humiliated, and at a coffee shop he told Victor he wanted his name back and offered him $1,000. He knew Victor was desperate for money, so he figured he’d take him up on it. I don’t want you to be Kelly anymore, he told him. I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to see you. I’m done with this. Mike’s friends told him it felt coldhearted, that it’s what his relatives ultimately wanted, but Mike felt betrayed and was bone-tired. To Mike, Victor seemed to be weighing his decision whether to take the money, but really Victor was thinking to himself, This is all I have. If I lose my dad, I’m gonna end up in the streets for good. I wouldn’t have anyone. Without saying a word, Victor got up and walked out, slowly, like he was letting his dad know who was in control.
That was it. They stopped seeing each other. Or talking. Six months later Victor got a job busing tables at a nightclub, and he came by to show his dad his paycheck, to let him know that he wasn’t hanging out with the same people anymore, that he was moving in a different direction. But Mike didn’t buy it. Mike didn’t trust him—nor did he trust himself.
* * *
—
Mike had known since third grade. Once in elementary school he told his mom he was worried something was wrong with him because he was attracted to other boys. She sloughed it off and told him, Everyone has those feelings. They’ll go away. In his thirties, he came out to a friend, who then warned him he needed to keep it to himself, that he’d lose friends and family over it.
He heeded this advice. He didn’t tell anyone else. He had a tough enough time admitting it to himself. All that crassness toward women? The lap dances? It was all a front, a mask. The drinking? Mike had no doubt it was because pretending he was someone he wasn’t wore on him. In recent years he’d put on nearly seventy-five pounds. Mike had always told Victor that he had to be true to himself, and he felt like he’d been hypocritical. He needed to tell Victor before anyone else. But he also knew that doing so would further alienate Victor, that Victor would walk away, that he’d tell Mike, I’m done. This is why I’m so screwed up…because you’re so screwed up. This wasn’t an effort to get Victor back but rather an act of necessity, an effort to get himself back.
They’d barely spoken in over a year, and when Mike called and told Victor, who was now twenty-four, We need to get together for coffee. I’ve got something really important to talk about, Victor imagined he had cancer, or worse yet, that he was dying. They agreed to meet the next day. Along with the drinking, Mike had quit cigarettes, but he was so nervous he bought a pack, smoking as he paced in front of the neighborhood Starbucks. He thought to himself, I can’t do this, and started back to his apartment before spotting Victor coming down the block. Tall. Lanky. Handsome. His hair worn in long braids. Still some swagger in his step. Mike went inside and found a table near the back. He ordered a coffee, but Victor, who clearly had no intent on lingering, didn’t order anything and just sat down. Mike skipped the small talk and spoke fast, his words running together, a tic he has when he gets nervous. Here’sthethingIgottotellyou. He breathed in. I’mgay. Once he said it, he felt some relief. I feel like this is right for me. This is the way I am. He closed his eyes. Victor stiffened. He muttered, Okay. So what are we here to talk about? What’s the problem? At that moment Mike thought to himself, I raised a damn good kid. I really did.
It happened slowly, but the two started checking in on each other. Victor knew all too well the burden of carrying secrets, of not knowing yourself, of knowing that a part of you is missing. Wanting to find out about his childhood ate at him, and he was too ashamed to share what little he knew with anyone else. And he was deeply ashamed of what had landed him in prison, that he had in an act of fury shot someone. He knew what keeping all that inside did to one’s soul. On one level he envied his dad, that he was being true to himself, but he also worried about him. Mike was thirty-nine and for the first time had a steady partner and was asking his son for relationship advice. Mike was concerned because he and his partner argued a lot over petty stuff, and Victor assured him, That’s normal. You’re going to love each other. You’re going to hate each other. That’s what a relationship is about. Of course, he knew. He’d been through it in his relationship with his dad. Victor felt he had something to prove, that he was more than that moment when he shot another boy, that he wasn’t a thug. He got a job working at the front desk of a high-end fitness club, and when he was promoted to manager, he stopped by his dad’s apartment to show off his new shirt, a white polo with the club’s insignia stitched on the pocket. Of course, Mike couldn’t help himself, and he told Victor he needed a haircut.
* * *
—
Five years later, Father’s Day, Victor arrives just as the sun’s setting, at 8:30 as he promised, fresh from work at the fitness club. He’s twenty-nine now, dressed in a polo shirt so large he seems lost in it. His jeans sag off his hips, the pants seemingly held up by threads. You’ve got to get clothes that fit, Mike tells Victor. Victor laughs and gives him a hug. Mike has been feeling down lately. He broke up with his boyfriend last December, and though he knows it was the right thing, he is feeling lonely, anxious that he won’t find someone else. Victor hands his dad a card on which he’s written Another great year with me and you being together. You’re the best ever. Love, Vic. He’s also brought two cigars—the Macanudos Mike used to smoke with his uncle. It’s tradition. Mike never reconciled with his uncle, though he visited him in the hospital when he was dying from a stroke. His uncle was in and out of sleep, and Mike, rather than trying to work through their differences, just reminisced about The Searchers, their favorite John Wayne movie. Victor knows Mike’s uncle hated the fact that he’d become a part of the family, but he also knows that when Mike was younger his uncle had been his mentor, his friend, and so he brought these cigars to honor that.
They order pizza from a place up the street, and Mike, who has been sober for six years, hands Victor a beer which he kept in the fridge for his visits. They wander out to the balcony and sit across from each other in metal deck chairs, relishing the breeze blowing in off the lake. Are you going to get back with Dan? Victor asks. Mike shakes his head. He never really liked me, Victor says. Mike tries to brush it off, but he knows Victor is right. His boyfriend never took to Victor, didn’t like it that Victor never attended college, that he didn’t speak the king’s English. If it’s going to make you happy, you should…, Victor suggests, trailing off. Mike shakes his head and smiles.
When Mike came out, most of his friends embraced him. But there were those who pushed him aside. One of his former coworkers, one of the guys whom he would party with at lunch every day, wrote him, Good luck in your new life. Sorry I can’t be a part of it. Mike seemed okay with it. He had Victor.
Victor, puffing on his cigar, confides that his girlfriend, with whom he’s been having trouble, has threatened to tell his boss about his criminal past. Victor has kept it hidden from the fitness club, knowing that if they had known, they probably wouldn’t have hired him. Victor has long had a fear that people will learn what he’s done, and he often lets his worries unfurl, imagining the worst thing that could happen. (Indeed, at his and Mike’s request, I changed their last name in this story.) He tells his dad that if the fitness club finds out, he’ll lose his job and end up homeless, back living in parks and on friends’ couches. It feels too real for Victor. Mike assures him that if things don’t work out, he always has the extra bedroom. It ruined my life, Victor muses, and then corrects himself. I ruined my life. I’m a felon. I have to work twice as hard. I have to lie. Mike laughs. Not with me. Mike, too, knows what it is to lie, to lie about who you are. He knows the churning stomach, the effort it takes to pretend you’re someone else, the unceasing sense of humiliation.
Mike has tried to encourage Victor to open up with others, to talk with young people about his journey, but Victor thinks
it would feel too much like bragging. Besides, he tells his dad, It really messed me up. Mike leans back in his chair. Everyone makes mistakes, he says. Some are worse than others. Mike pauses. When are you gonna start wearing clothes that fit you? You’re twenty-nine. It’s time you look it. Victor rolls his eyes and takes another draw of the cigar.
Chapter 7
The Witnesses, part one
JUNE 22…JUNE 23…JUNE 24…
The sun had just set, and before heading home, Ramaine Hill kissed his girlfriend, Kaprice, and hugged his two-year-old son, RJ. He hopped on his nephew’s BMX bike, which was too small for his five-foot-eleven frame, and so he had to ride it standing up. He always listened to music, mostly Lil Wayne these days, and so he put in his earbuds. This was when Ramaine felt most at peace. By himself, with his music. He pedaled the three blocks home, his head bobbing, singing along to Lil Wayne’s “Swag Surfin.”
…You think we gon’ do our thing?
Well ain’t it sunny in the summer?…
Ramaine, a sleepy-eyed, open-faced twenty-two-year-old, wears his hair in braids and has a quiet demeanor about him, a shyness really. He doesn’t feel comfortable around people he doesn’t know well, which includes just about everyone except for his family and Kaprice. Not long ago his grandfather, whom he’d never met, visited, and when he arrived Ramaine disappeared upstairs, accessed the roof, and descended through another staircase, exiting through the mailroom. Anything to avoid having a conversation. Anything to avoid having to explain himself. Anything to avoid contact. He always has his earbuds in, listening to music, as much an escape as it is a way to keep the world at bay. Mostly R&B and rap. When his aunt asks him to take out the garbage or clean his room, he seems to ignore her, often sitting on the couch, rocking to his music, oblivious to his aunt’s entreaties. He sometimes falls asleep at night with his earbuds in. Kaprice remembers when they started hanging out together, in their early teens, Ramaine didn’t want to come inside her apartment, didn’t want to have to talk with her mom, and so he would sit with her outside, on a park bench. He was old school. When at the age of fourteen he decided he wanted to date Kaprice, he asked her mom for permission. He told Kaprice’s mom, I’m really feeling her. I want her to be my girlfriend. Kaprice’s mom laughed and gave him the okay.
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