Dancing at the club feels lonely. Sleeping alone feels lonely. At least at Ma’s, I have people to be lonely around.
It’s pathetic, but the highlight of my days are pictures of doors and walls. My phone chirps, and my heart soars higher than a bird for the second or two before I remember that nothing real has changed. Nickel’s still not here. This—whatever it is—could be over in an instant. The tower could all fall down, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I should tell him to leave me alone. Tell him I’m done and block him. But here I am, holding on to the thinnest thread, and why?
Because I’m a fool.
No.
Because I’m his anchor. He’s floating out there, a hundred miles away, and even if he never finds his way back, I’m not letting him go.
I’m not stupid; I’m hanging tough. It’s the only way I know how to be.
CHAPTER 18
NICKEL
My first visit to Dr. Rosenthal, we talked bikes for about forty-five minutes. I told him I almost punched my girl in the face, he asked me if I’d done it before, I gave him the short version of my rap sheet and Steel Bones came up, and then he started tellin’ me about his bikes—he collects vintage Triumphs—and that was it until the chime on his phone went off.
The next time, we talked roads—he likes heading south along the Luckahannock and the twists and turns up by the bluffs same as I do—and then he made me tell him what it feels like when I get aggressive.
I told him about the ugly, and he said there ain’t no such thing. It’s feelings that got names, and I need to man up and stop actin’ like my aggression is something I can’t possibly control ‘cause that’s a load of horseshit. He used other words, but that was the gist.
Now this guy is sixty-five if he’s a day and no more than a buck twenty soaking wet. He wears thick glasses, crosses his legs like a chick, and his office has got all these pictures of birds of the walls. Dude has brass balls.
The next couple times we talked about my triggers, and he taught me de-escalating strategies. He talked a shit ton, but it all boiled down to take a deep breath and walk away.
Last time he made me break down all the times I could remember losing my shit, so that was fun. Not sure what it was all about, but I left feelin’ like warmed-over shit. I’m a little leery today. It ain’t as if I’m proud of what I am. I don’t get off on tellin’ war stories like Creech or Bucky or some of the prospects who want to look hard.
I sit on the couch across from the doc like usual. Don’t care what you’re supposed to do, I ain’t gonna lay down in front of no dude.
“John!” Dr. Rosenthal crosses his legs and smiles. He always sounds really stoked to see me. “How have the past few days been?”
“Good. Good.” Hell, actually. Story’s ignorin’ my texts, which is fine, but I’m in knots worryin’ about her at Sunny’s with the Rebel Raiders out there, God knows where, plannin’ God knows what.
“Any incidents of aggression since we last met?”
“Nope.” I don’t think you can count joggin’ a Rebel Raider hang-around’s memory with a few blows to the head. I wasn’t mad or out of control; it was business. Besides, Dizzy went way harder than me on the guy.
“And have you been practicing the lazy-eight breathing I showed you?”
“Sure.” No, I have not. I have been breathing, though, so I’m countin’ it.
“Attend any meetings?”
“Yeah. Sunday night.” Now that I have been doing. Doc’s got me going to the group of random addicts that meet at the Church of Christ. Sex, pills, booze, food…sex with food and booze while on pills. They take all comers. It actually helps. I guess no matter what shit you’re tryin’ to stop doin’, there’s common ground amongst fuck-ups.
“So.” Dr. Rosenthal clicks his pen. He keeps a legal pad in his lap, but I don’t ever see him write on it. “This week I want to talk about something different. I want you to tell me about the first time you remember seeing violence inflicted on another person.”
I don’t know where to start.
“Like on TV or real life?”
“Real life.”
Shit. I don’t know. It’d be easier to remember a time growin’ up when someone wasn’t gettin’ beat on. I try to think, but my mind’s a blank.
Doc shifts in his seat. “Let’s try this. Can you tell me about a time when you saw violence inflicted on another person in high school?”
“Sure.” That was any given Friday or Saturday night. “One of my brothers got some of us prospects together to rough up this dude who’d been creepin’ on one of his girls.” I chuckle, remembering. “We find the guy, and he wouldn’t let us get a shot in.”
“Okay, okay. How about middle school?”
Heavy, Charge, Forty, and I were always scrappin’ back then. It’s hard to pick, but I got to grin, sortin’ through the memories.
“All right. One time my brother Forty—you got to understand, this guy is a neat freak—anyway, this new kid’s messin’ with him, tryin’ to make a name for himself, and he throws Forty’s backpack in a mud puddle. Forty’s like, torn, ‘cause he can’t stand mud on his shit, but he also wants to tear the guy a new asshole. So basically, he’s like scrubbin’ the backpack with one hand and slammin’ the guy’s face in the dirt with the other, gettin’ madder and madder when the dirt won’t come out.”
Doc’s kind of grinnin’, too. This sucks a lot less than last time.
“How about elementary school?”
I tell him about a time when Harper’s mouth wrote a check her ass couldn’t cash, and Heavy ended up havin’ to dive into a six-on-one girl fight. He lost. I stayed out of it.
“And what about before you went to school?”
The temperature in the room dips about ten degrees.
Like the house on Barrow Road, this ain’t a place I go voluntarily. My brain spits this shit up, of course, all the time, but I don’t ever think about it on purpose. A few memories of neighbors brawling or my brothers workin’ something out float through my mind, but it’s like when someone says, “Don’t think about elephants.” And then you can’t think about nothin’ but elephants.
It’s like I’ve been in denial this whole conversation, and deep down, I knew what Doc was asking for from the beginning. I could tell about something else. I could change the subject. Refuse to talk. Walk out. I got choices, but I I told Story I was gonna try.
Besides, no matter how people act like it is, rememberin’ something ain’t as bad as living it. You ever doubt that, ask someone which they’d rather do.
“My Ma used to make dinner.”
Doc nods for me to go on.
“She was raised by her grandmother so she could cook real good. Homemade pies. Meatloaf. Pot roast. She stayed home with Ike and Keith and me, and come about three o’clock, she’d set us in front of the TV and go make dinner.”
“That sounds like a good memory.”
My gut sours. It’s not.
“So one day, she goes into the kitchen to make a pot roast, and we’re watchin’ Sesame Street or something. And my dad had left his pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. Well, Ike, who’s always been a shit, sits there and unwraps them, one by one, makin’ a stack out of the tobacco. And Keith, who’s also a shit, fake sneezes and blows it all over the carpet.”
It’s so weird. I must have been four or five, but I can remember exactly where I was sitting—on the floor right up close to the TV.
“Anyway, my dad comes home from work—pissy as usual, probably more so since he forgot his smokes—and he sees what Ike and Keith have done. I can remember—”
His face turning bright red and the veins in his neck popping. Me turning off the TV like that would calm him down. Wondering if I should run.
“He took one look and shouts ‘Farrah!’ Ma comes out of the kitchen holding the pan with the roast in two pot holders. She was smilin’. She always tried to make dinner so it was ready the minute Dad came home.
She was probably thinkin’ she nailed it.”
I shut up for a minute ‘cause my chest is burning. Doc has gotten real still.
“He tried to grab the pan out of her hands, but it was too hot, so he dropped it. That made him even madder. So he picked it up with one of those mitts and slammed it across her face.”
I stop. Most people can’t handle shit like this. Doc’s still with me, though. He’s got his pen in his hand, and he seems okay.
“What happened next?”
“Well, pot roast all over the living room carpet for one.”
She’d looked so fucking surprised. I don’t know why. Even though I can’t remember anything specifically before the pot roast incident, Dad had always been mean and quick with his fists.
“The lip of the pan cut her forehead, and she was bleeding down her face. It left a burn, too. She bent over to, like, scoop the roast up.”
Blood in her eye, burned, and she was worried about the fucking roast. It didn’t make sense to me until now. This minute. She was probably thinking if dinner was ruined too, she’d get it even worse.
“Fuck.”
“What was that?” Doc asks. “What was that thought you just had?”
I lift a shoulder. “I just realized why she did it. Why she went after the roast.”
“Why do you think she did that?”
“To stop him from going any further.”
“Did he stop?”
“Never.” A twisted grin contorts my lips, but I can’t force it away. “That night, he made her pick all the tobacco off the carpet by hand while he sat in his recliner and kicked her whenever she got close enough.”
“Where were you when this was happening?”
“At the kitchen table with my brothers. Eating the pot roast.”
“How did you feel?”
“Like I was gonna puke. Ike and Keith were bitchin’ the whole time about how it had been on the floor, but I ate it all. Their leftovers, too.”
“Why did you do that?”
It feels like I’m explainin’ the obvious. “’Cause if he saw any left, she’d get it even worse.”
“That must have been horrible for you.”
“Worse for her.” After that, she didn’t make real dinners no more. She’d microwave ravioli or make a box of macaroni and cheese. She got some pain pills for the burn on her face. That was the beginning of the end.
“You must have felt powerless.”
“I was.” I couldn’t take my dad in a fair fight until I was twelve or thirteen. He was a big guy, but hard living slowed him down.
Doc sighs and leans further back in the chair, re-crossing his legs. “John, I want to point something out to you that you might not be fully aware of.”
I shrug. Lay it on me. This walk down memory lane cannot possibly suck more.
“There’s this thing in psychology. A defense mechanism called compensation. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Like when a dude with a small dick gets himself some boneshakers?”
Doc shakes his head, half-smiling. “You’re thinking over-compensation. Compensation is when you try to make up for something by putting your energy in something else.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve told me a lot about your episodes of aggression. I’ve noticed something.”
I wait. He blinks like I’m supposed to guess.
“The customer who elbowed the woman you work with.” He raises one finger.
“The skip you were telling me about who was running from an assault charge against his grandmother.” He raises a second finger.
“How you met Story. The men who were videotaping her without her permission.” He raises a third finger and then twists his wrist like I need to count them. “Do you see a trend?”
Well, yeah. When he lists it out like that, of course I do.
“I am going to suggest that your aggression isn’t generalized. You’re not an angry person like some of the patients I treat. You’re compensating for what happened when you were young and powerless.”
My chest tightens. What he says…it feels too good to be true. Like a scam to convince me I ain’t broken when so clearly I am.
He goes on. “Most of your aggression seems to be in defense of others, particularly women, who you perceive as being abused or in danger.”
He’s giving me way more credit for control than I deserve. When the ug—when I’m feeling aggressive, I ain’t thinking much at all about what I’m doin’. My fist in the wall is a good example.
“What about with Story, then? She wasn’t in danger from nothin’ but me.”
Doc’s nodding. “Yes. As you tell it, you believed she was in a sort of danger—caused by you—and you became violent. We can argue about the realities of the situation, but emotionally, what you did was logical considering the coping mechanism you’ve developed in response to what was, in my professional opinion, a devastatingly traumatic childhood.”
“Logical? It was completely fucked up.”
Doc keeps nodding. “Yes, it was. But it wasn’t out of nowhere. It wasn’t from a place of rage or hatefulness.”
“I was out of control.”
Doc sighs and sets his pen on his blank pad of paper. “John, I want to ask you something. That night when your father assaulted your mother, was he in control?”
It went on for hours. After she picked up the loose tobacco, he made her scrub the gravy stains from the carpet. The whole time, he was watching Married with Children, laughing his ass off.
“Yeah. Yeah, he was.”
“You’re not your father, Nickel.”
I know this, but hearing it? A weight lifts.
The chime goes off, and as I write the man a check, I think maybe I understand all the birds on his walls, their wings spread, gliding through the sky. This must be how they feel.
◆◆◆
By Wednesday night, I’m back down to earth.
My heart’s pounding. My mouth’s dry. I thought the ride to Shady Gap would settle me, but every mile I got more and more riled up. By the time I turn into the gravel parking lot, I’m so amped my right eye is twitchin’.
Shady Gap Recreational Center
Story’s here. It’s the night she teaches her adult ed dance class.
I don’t feel ready. Dr. Rosenthal says I can make my own decisions, but the people at the support group say I need time, and I guess that’s true, but when Gail from group told me about this meditation class, and come to find out it’s only offered this night, well…I ain’t strong enough to turn down fate.
I could avoid her, duck quick into the class, but my body won’t let me. The craving is so deep, at night it takes over my mind, and I wake up in a sweat, my cock hard as rock, groaning Story’s name.
If Heavy wasn’t keeping me on the road, chasing down leads with Wall, I wouldn’t be able to take it. I’d be camped out in front of the Dentist’s house like a stalker, and Story’d probably call Heavy to drag me off, and that’d be it. I think she’s finally gotten smart. She leaves me on read, and I don’t blame her.
She hasn’t blocked me, though. Not yet. This shit ain’t totally hopeless.
I slide off my cut, stow it in a saddlebag, and jog inside. The building is a converted junior high, and it still smells like a school.
The class I’m going to is in room 102, but I trip down the stairs, slappin’ the ceiling on the way like I used to do at Petty’s Mill Middle when I started to get some height on me. Reminds me of old times. School was a nice break back in the day. I could nap at a desk knowing no one was gonna wake me up with a fist or a boot, and there was breakfast and lunch.
Story’s always bitchin’ around the club about having to teach a dance class in a basement, so I know I’ll find her down here. I don’t know what I’m gonna say or if I’m gonna puss out and bounce without talkin’ to her, but I guess I’ll figure it out in the moment. What could go wrong?
Everything. That’s what.
I follow th
e sound of Lou Bega. That song with all the girl names.
“Okay, ladies! Kick ball change! And slide. Slide.” That’s my girl. That’s her sweet, bossy voice.
I sidle into the doorway of a dimly lit, open space that smells like sweat and really old, sour milk. There are no windows, but someone has hung a few mirrors up on a far wall. The joint is packed. Easily thirty ladies are lined up in Spandex and sweats, not one under fifty.
It takes a second to find her, but there she is, in the front, wearing a headpiece with a mic. Her hair’s in a high pony-thingy, and fuck me, but she looks like a 1980s exercise instructor, the kind I jacked off to when I first discovered how my dick worked. She’s got on sparkly silver leggings, a hot pink leotard crawlin’ up her butt, and a thin, white belt.
It’s messed up, but I ain’t the only one whose eyes are glued on that ass. You’d have to be dead not to watch that shit jiggle.
“Now grapevine left!” She points left, and everything’s bouncing, her hair, her ass.
My cock goes rock hard, tenting my pants. That’s one reason why I don’t normally wear athletic pants. I duck out real quick to tuck my dick under my waistband. Don’t need to give the grandmas a show.
“Sashay! And kick! Two, three. Kick!”
The ladies are huffing and puffing, but they’re all grinning or laughing or trying to whip their hair like Story and pop their asses like she does. A few of them in the front row look serious as hell.
I ain’t never seen her like this. She’s a boss.
“Margie!” she sings out. “Can you take it lower?”
“Not since the Clinton administration!” a short, grey-haired lady hollers back from the last row.
“Well, how about a shimmy, then?” Story shakes her titties, and all the ladies hoot and cackle and follow her lead, big ol’ titties flapping everywhere. I didn’t think I had it in me, but my face burns. I think I’m blushing.
“Now that I’ve still got in me!”
“You don’t use it, you lose it,” Story says, pointing for her class to go the other way.
“I never had it, so I don’t miss it,” a plump lady in grey sweats calls out, and again, the ladies howl while they dance in unison.
Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 17