“What happened?” I asked. “What did he do?
“He called the Amalekite.”
My father told me that my mother had called back after my brother had left. She said she was taking him to court and taking us kids back. He was going to pay child support. She even threatened to call the cops. “She’s holding us hostage again,” he said.
I’d known this day was coming. I’d known it would be messy. But that my brother and father had both spoken to my mother this morning was an actuality I was not prepared for. I felt exposed. She was in our lives again, just like that, as though she’d been here all along.
He stopped pacing, faced me. “How are we going to punish him?”
His question turned real in the silence.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Suddenly he was in my face, screaming, “Why aren’t you as mad as me? What’s wrong with you? He chose her over us. You want to go live with her too? Is that it? Are you a goddamn traitor too?”
I wiped specks of his saliva from my face. My cheeks turned hot as they always did before I cried. He was asking me to choose between my dad and my brother. I needed him to back away a few feet. I needed space to think. I swung my legs onto the floor, put my head down, pretended to deliberate his question.
My father dropped to his knees. He clutched my bare calves. “Don’t give up on me, boy,” he said. “Don’t you give up on me.” He lifted my chin. “How are we going to punish your brother?”
The tears came.
Just a few, and I wiped them away.
“Ground him,” I said.
“What else?”
“Spank him.”
“We need something more dramatic.”
“You could threaten to send him back.”
“And if he wants to go back?”
“Let him,” I said, finding in this answer a way to also protect my brother. “We don’t need him,” I lied.
“In medieval times your brother would have been drawn and quartered. You know what that means? The king would have tied his limbs to horses and ripped him to pieces. We need something that’ll bring him back in line. Something he’ll never forget.”
He was looking to me for the answer. I was afraid of what would happen if I did not give him what he wanted, but also of what would happen if I gave him what he was asking.
“We could surprise him when he comes home.”
“Could?” he fired back.
“Surprise him,” I said.
“Details.”
“Hide behind the door.”
“Go on.”
“Tackle him when he comes through.”
He waited for more.
“Tie him up with rope,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “What else?”
“Then threaten to send him back.”
I watched him drift off into his imagination, stage it out, visualize the execution of the plan. All the while he muttered that he loved me, that I was the only person in the world he could trust. I’d gotten off easy, I thought, and maybe so had my brother. But then my father’s face turned cruel.
“Treason is a capital offense,” he said. “What else?”
“Threaten him with a knife?”
He asked me if that was a question.
“Threaten him with a knife,” I said.
* * *
All afternoon I waited for my father to come to his senses. When I realized he would not, I tried to make myself angry with my brother. He’d broken the pact—why should I defend him? It didn’t work though. I couldn’t vilify my brother. But I also refused to warn him. I was too furious with my mother. She knew my father. What did she expect would happen? How could she have been so stupid, so careless? She was the one doing this to my brother. This was her fault. Besides, he would be able to fight us off. These days my brother was about as big as our dad. And I was too young, too weak to be a real factor. Plus I didn’t plan to try.
When my brother walked through the door, my father wrapped him up around the waist, pummeled him to the floor. My brother fell hard. He squirmed violently. I jumped on his legs, hugged his ankles, as instructed. My brother had locked his arms beneath his chest. My father warned him to give them up. He drove his knee into the small of my brother’s back. My brother groaned, gathered enough momentum to somehow throw my father forward. In the commotion my father’s pants had wiggled down. His bare ass was exposed. His face was red from exertion, from humiliation. He jumped back on my brother, yelled at him to stop fighting.
“Fuck you,” my brother said.
My dad bit him, twisted free an arm, then pushed my brother’s wrist up between his shoulder blades.
“That hurts,” my brother cried. He gave up his other arm. “Please. That hurts.”
Enough, I wanted to say. We were only supposed to scare him.
My father tied my brother’s hands behind his back.
“I’m getting up now,” my father told him. “Don’t you fucking move.”
“I swear,” he said.
“Swear what?”
“I swear I won’t move.”
My father stood, pulled his pants up. He looked to me, his eyes wild and fevered. He disappeared into the kitchen. My brother turned onto his side to catch his breath. He rolled his hurt shoulder, wiped his running nose on the carpet. He had rope burns on his wrists already. My father had tied them too tight. My brother looked down at me holding his ankles. He was confused and frightened. He didn’t understand what I was doing. He bit his lip to make it stop quivering. I loosened my grip, then let go of him completely. We’d hurt him. He’d cried for help. I was horrified by what we’d done.
My father returned to the living room just then. My brother saw the knife in his hand. He scurried backwards across the carpet until he hit the wall. My father stepped slowly toward him. With each sentence his voice rose. “This is your fault,” he said. “You called the Amalekite. You turned your back on us. You forced our hand. You have something you want to say to us now, don’t you? Tell us! Tell us you’re sorry! Tell us you gave us no choice. That we are right to do this to you. That you deserve it. You’re a coward and a traitor! Now put your tail between your legs and show us your ass.” My father crouched, got in my brother’s face. He pointed at me. “Better yet, look at your brother over there. He’s the one whose heart you broke. This was all his idea. Even he knew you had to be brought back in line. Look at him. Tell him you’re sorry. Admit to him that you’re no different from your cunt mother!”
My brother’s eyes, no longer filled with fear, now beamed with exhilaration. They were big and boyish too. In them I saw us both back in Kansas, years younger, racing each other home from school on our bikes. We drop our bags at the back porch, run off into the woods to play. We hide, one of us challenging the other to come find him. Before the broken dishes and private investigators he hunts for me amid trees just wider than we are, and I keep a hand over my mouth to not let laughter betray my position. We were happy. He was all I had left of that time. I jumped up, leaped across the room, threw myself onto my brother. I shielded him and begged his forgiveness.
I was pulled from my brother’s body by my hair. My father’s backhand sent me staggering across the room. I crashed into the coffee table. Glass shattered around me, which seemed to send my father into a fury. He screamed that this was exactly what our mother had meant to do—divide and conquer. How had we forgotten? Why were our memories so short? Why weren’t we on his side? He worked himself into such a state that he drove his fist into my brother’s face. He flipped him onto his stomach, lifted him by the rope around his wrists, dragged him facedown across the carpet. My brother writhed in pain. His shoulders looked like they might rip from their sockets. My father threw him onto the couch, put the knife right up to his throat.
“Tell me you’re sorry. Tell me you’ll never do it again,” he said. “You want this to stop? I need something from you first. I want your fucking word.”
My brother
blubbered incoherently.
My father yelled at him to stop crying, apologize, get it over with. “You have the power to end this. Just promise you’ll never do it again. Just say the words.”
My brother’s breath was spastic. He tried to quiet himself. Then to say something. He hardly mustered, “I, I, I, I, I . . .”
“If you can’t speak, shut up,” my father said. “Just shut the fuck up.”
He threw the knife to his side, put his hand over my brother’s mouth.
Wrists still bound, my brother thrashed, struggling to throw my father.
“Why are you fighting me?” my father yelled. “Stop fighting me.”
He put his other hand over my brother’s mouth to keep control.
“Stop and I’ll stop,” my father said.
My brother didn’t stop. He couldn’t breathe. Snot bubbled out of his nose. Spit sounds and muffled screams came from his mouth. He shook his head side-to-side. He thrust his hips, kicked his legs. My father kept his hands pressed down. I watched all this paralyzed by fear. “I’ll kill you,” my father said, his voice cracking. “Stop or I’ll kill you.” Then my father’s body suddenly shuddered. He fell on top of my brother, wrapped his arms around his son. My brother jolted up, gasped for air, shoved him off the couch. There on the floor our dad began to sob, and a look came over his face like he didn’t know who he was, or where.
* * *
That night, after my brother and I had cleaned up and dragged the coffee table to the Dumpster, my father called him into his room. I listened outside the door as he told my brother that he should never have contacted our mom. That we’d felt betrayed and did not know what else to do. “I would never hurt you,” my father said. “We only meant to scare you. Please forgive me. Do you forgive me?” Then he said, “Thank you. I forgive you, too. Can I have a hug?” The bed squeaked as my father scooted closer, I guessed, because a moment later he said, “Put your arms around me, son.”
I stepped outside to the park.
Overhead the moon was hidden. Clouds were backlit at their feathery edges. A strong wind from the east, from the Sandias, swept over the grass. I winced at the thought of today. My father turned us against each other—it was his method of control. And I’d fallen for it again. Any remorse I had for the Polaroids now felt false. I had let down my brother, just as I had my mom. I was so disappointed in myself, and I swore then that I would never again choose my father. I never again wanted to harm anyone I loved. I was on my brother’s side now. He was my brother for life. I’d been lucky today that he had not been more seriously hurt.
A flock of birds came to rest on a nearby piñon tree, populating its limbs like leaves. And though I could hardly see them, hardly hear them, I was happy for their quiet company and hoped they would not leave me soon.
NINE
We were dropping our dad off at the airport. The big account was gone. The call came a week back. He’d been asked to return to Kansas to tie up loose ends. Once he was out of town, my brother and I were leaving New Mexico for good, forever. My brother had secretly kept contact with our mom over the past few weeks. The bus tickets were already bought. He’d told me the plan a few nights ago in bed.
“Does she know about the knife?” I’d asked him.
He nodded.
“The whole story?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good,” I said.
The war was one of information. The more she knew, the better.
It was morning, cold. The sun had not yet crested the Sandias. The earth was still dark. My father drove. He was dressed for a different kind of December. He reached behind his chair to tickle my brother in the backseat. My brother shied from contact. Neither of us had spoken to him in weeks. We avoided him as much as possible. He seemed to understand why. Or he at least seemed confident that we’d eventually come back around.
“You hear a fat lady?” my father said. “I don’t hear a fat lady. Means we haven’t lost yet. There’s still time to make you boys proud of your papa.”
He pulled into Albuquerque International Airport, parked in front of the departure terminal. My brother switched to the driver’s seat. I met my father at the trunk. I’d imagined this moment for the past few days, trying to think up some small gesture he wouldn’t be able to decode. I didn’t know when I would see him again. I’d decided that helping him with his bag would be kind of like a good-bye. I grabbed his roller, handed it to him. His face turned shy and full of gratitude. He smiled, moved to hug me. But then he stopped, went still, froze completely. I saw him fill up with worry. Had he figured it out? Was my gesture that obvious? I followed his eyes to a police officer who had come out the sliding doors and struck up conversation with a skycap.
My father threw his bag back in the trunk, told me to get in the car.
He jumped into the backseat. I took shotgun.
“Drive,” he said.
We took a lap around the airport.
At the economy lot he directed my brother to pull in, park.
The ignition off, we heard my father’s long slow breaths.
“I should just shut up,” he said. “I haven’t worked this stuff out yet in my head.” He took a moment, started again. “As you get older, if you’re paying attention, you learn a lot about yourself. It’s easier, you get it? Behavioral trends become kind of obvious over the course of a lifetime. There’s more data to interpret.” He thought for a moment, planned what to say next. “Over the past few weeks I’ve learned that I engage in two kinds of activities: self-improvement and self-destruction. The day the police showed up, I realized that my greatest fear, my worst fucking nightmare, is going to jail. I can’t do it. Not ever. I got so fucking close that time, and I’ve found myself wondering ever since: What happened to me? How did I lose control? I’m telling you boys the truth now when I say that I haven’t used since that day.” His tone dropped to a tremble. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to win back the big account. I’m going to make you proud of me. I wasn’t always like this, remember? The drive down here I was a kid again, wasn’t I?”
My father’s sadness was drawing me in. I looked to my brother to gauge his reaction. He kept his mouth shut, eyes forward. I followed his lead.
“I have cocaine on me now,” my father said.
My brother got out of the Jeep, slammed the door, sat down on the curb.
After an awkward silence my father asked me if he could talk out loud for a while. “You don’t need to respond,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything. Please just don’t get out of the car. I think I need someone to listen to me for a minute. I can explain. I don’t want to use the stuff. I just wanted to travel with it. It makes me feel safe knowing that it’s there. I should get rid of it, I know. I need to get rid of it. Get rid of it,” he implored himself. “I’ll just blow it all in the bathroom is what I’ll do. I’ll flush it down the toilet, OK?” Then his voice broke as he asked: “Your brother still loves me, doesn’t he?”
For so long it had been my job to comfort my father. He was asking for the same generosity I’d given him a thousand times before. In fact one kind word from me would have made us both feel better. But that was over now. I opened the door, sat down next to my brother on the curb.
My father took his time getting out of the Jeep. He walked slowly to the trunk, grabbed his bag. He approached us, invited us inside the terminal. He had some time to kill before his flight and thought we all could sit at the bar, have a bite, play hooky from school. He needed his boys near him. We were his strength, he told us. “We could just watch TV, if you don’t want to talk.”
My brother and I remained quiet.
The silence grew comfortable and still.
My father rolled his bag to the exit, took the stairs.
* * *
That afternoon, our bags packed and sitting by the door, the phone rang. My brother picked it up. It was our mom. We’d been waiting to hear from her. My brother wrote down the specifics: times, add
resses, confirmation codes. We were leaving first thing in the morning. When they were finished talking, my brother tried handing me the receiver.
I blurted out that I’d rather speak to her in person.
She heard me. I heard her say she loved me.
There was strength in her voice. I’d remembered it differently.
My brother said good-bye, hung up.
He went straight to the freezer, took out the peppermint schnapps, poured two glasses. He knocked his back all the way. I followed his lead. The booze stifled my breath at first, closed up my throat, but then it got easier to breathe. He poured us another. I went to the window, opened the blinds to let in the day.
After the second drink my brother pulled his pants down, started rubbing himself against the couch. He scooted across the carpet like a dog with an ass itch. I pissed in the dishwasher. We put on my father’s CD of the Spanish guitarist and walked around like zombies, bumping into walls. Only a few minutes before, when my brother was speaking to our mom, I had been crippled by the fear of siding against our dad. I was paranoid that this was all a ruse, that he was somehow watching us, that he was behind his bedroom door, ear to the receiver, ready to run out, call me a traitor. He’d say that I’d always been on my mother’s team. He’d tell me that no one in our family trusted me. He’d want me to know that I had orphaned myself. Now the butterflies stirring up a fit in my stomach came to rest, and I stopped asking the questions I only just realized I’d been repeating to myself my entire life: What does my father need from me right now? What am I doing wrong? How can I make him happy? In his absence the apartment felt enormous. We could do anything, go anywhere. Even so, we needed a third drink to try his bedroom door.
“I’ll take the dresser,” my brother said. “You get the closet.”
In the closet the smell of his cologne lingered. I checked a jacket pocket, sniffed a collar, fanned ties on his tie rack. After a step back I took in his suits and shirts and slacks. There was a shoe box on the top shelf. I called my brother over to grab it. We sat down on the bed to examine the contents.
One of the Boys Page 7