Tito the Bonecrusher

by Melissa Thomson

  This couldn’t be right. The room felt like it was moving slightly, up and down, like it was on small waves. I put my head back down on Louisa’s pillow to try to make it stop.

  “Oliver wasn’t just trying to see Tito the Bonecrusher,” Louisa told Mom. “He was trying to talk to him. He thought…” Her voice dropped, and I thought she was trying not to laugh at me for having such a stupid plan. “He thought he would learn how to rescue Dad. He was trying to bring him back here for my graduation.”

  By the time she got to graduation, I realized she was sort of crying.

  Mom’s hand was on my back again. “Oh, Oliver,” she said. “I know this has been hard for you. It’s been hard for all of us, but it’s been especially hard for you and Louisa.”

  “It hasn’t been hard for you—you have Carl,” I said, my voice muffled by Louisa’s pillow. “And Louisa wouldn’t talk to Dad. Nobody cares except me. Not even Dad.” I thought about how Dad had taken the plea deal to go to jail. “The only one who wanted him to get out of jail and back to Virginia was me. And he was guilty the whole time. I can’t believe he was guilty. I thought … I thought he was good.” I don’t know how much of that last part Mom and Louisa could understand, because I was gulping between every word.

  Mom stopped rubbing my back. “Oliver,” she said, her voice sounding kind of choky. “Look at me.”

  I wiped my eyes and nose on Louisa’s pillow and sat up a little bit. I turned toward Mom and Louisa. Mom was still crying, but not in a big, loud way like I was. Louisa was back to being kind of stiff.

  Mom made me scoot closer, and she put her arm around me. She made me look right at her. “Your dad got caught up in something he shouldn’t have. He was so focused on getting back here to you and your sister that he went along with something that was wrong. He made bad choices. And now he’s dealing with the consequences of those choices.”

  My eyes were like faucets at this point, but Mom kept going.

  “You have every right to be upset with him, but I hope you know that he would do anything for you and Louisa. You said this isn’t hard for me, but it is. It’s still hard. How could I not care about the one person who has loved my babies as much as I have since the day they were born?”

  Under normal circumstances, both Louisa and I would have objected to being called babies, but I was too far gone to do anything other than keep wiping away the tears pouring off my face.

  Then Mom sighed and said, “I should have talked to you both more about everything that was happening.”

  “What was there to even talk about?” Louisa muttered. “You said we had to accept it. So we’re trying. But it just sucks. He still lied to me.”

  I thought Mom would say more about Dad loving her babies or us needing to take things one day at a time or other mushy junk. But she just hugged us both in silence. We sat like that for a while.

  It actually wasn’t terrible.

  22

  FLORIDA

  Obviously, I was 100 percent grounded. Louisa was, too, for boxing me up, and sneaking me into the gala. So basically nothing happened in my life until the following Saturday, when Louisa and I flew to Florida to visit Dad.

  Uncle Victor met us at the airport.

  “Welcome to Florida!” he boomed when he saw us come through security. He had two oranges in his hand, and he gave one to Louisa and the other one to me.

  On our last trip to Florida, Dad had brought Florida oranges to us at the airport.

  “No thanks,” Louisa said to Uncle Victor.

  “Those are from your dad,” Uncle Victor said.

  “I know,” Louisa said flatly, handing her orange to me.

  Part of me was sad that Louisa didn’t want her orange because it was from Dad, but another part of me was like, Hey, two oranges.

  “These are jail oranges?” I said. I hadn’t known there was such a thing. I turned them over to see if there was a sticker on them or something.

  “Oh my god, Oliver,” Louisa said. “No. It’s like, a symbolic gesture.”

  Uncle Victor thinks my dad is the greatest guy on the planet. Like I said, Uncle Victor was wild as a teenager, but apparently he started getting in serious trouble after his mom got sick and passed away. He was hanging around some rough, shady guys and having problems with the cops. But Uncle Victor says my dad helped him turn things around. He even talks to groups of kids about staying out of trouble and not messing up their lives.

  It’s kind of weird that Dad is the one who is locked up in the correctional center, since Uncle Victor was the troublemaker for so long. But that’s how it is, I guess.

  “Thanks,” I told Uncle Victor. I handed him the two packets of pretzels the lady next to me on the plane gave me because I was “such a well-behaved young man.”

  “Your dad can’t wait to see you,” Uncle Victor said as we walked out to the airport parking lot, “and it will take about a half hour to get to the … to the place where you’ll see him, so we are going straight there instead of going to my apartment first.”

  Louisa just nodded, and I worked on juggling my carry-on and the oranges.

  “So how was your flight?” Uncle Victor asked us once we were in the car.

  I guess I was nervous or something about going to the prison, so I started talking and couldn’t stop. I told Uncle Victor about the lady next to me on the plane who used to be in the CIA, the flight attendant who gave me extra ginger ale for free, and how I almost lost my boarding pass between the security line and the gate for our flight.

  “Would you just shut up for five minutes?” Louisa snapped from the front seat. “How can you feel like running your mouth right now?”

  “What are we supposed to do, just sit in total silence?” I responded.

  “I’ll turn on the radio,” Uncle Victor said quickly. “Louisa, you can decide what we listen to.”

  Louisa started fiddling with the radio buttons, and I sat in the back seat and looked out the window. Everything seems brighter in Florida, I guess because it’s so sunny. The sky is bright blue, and the palm trees are bright green. It’s like the whole state wants you to feel warm and happy, which is just annoying, especially when you don’t feel either of those things.

  At a traffic light we pulled up next to another car with two kids in the back seat. The boy was crying and yelling, and the girl was scowling with her arms crossed. I know it’s weird, but I was kind of happy to see other people who weren’t riding around on bikes and smiling all day, having some great old time in Florida.

  We eventually drove up to a pale yellow building with a reddish roof and a sign that said FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, SOUTH FLORIDA. It looked exactly like the building Mom had shown us on the internet not long after we found out Dad was going there.

  As soon as we walked in, I realized with absolutely one million percent certainty that even if I had met Tito and told him I needed his help, I would never, ever have been able to rescue Dad from this place. The security at the airport was small potatoes in comparison. FCI South Florida had guards, metal detectors, cameras, the works. And there was only one entrance. In Tito’s movies, there are always multiple entrances and exits to places, so he can use an entrance where there’s only one guard, or the door can be kicked in, or something like that.

  Once we got through security, I sat down on a hard plastic chair to wait for Dad. Louisa and Uncle Victor sat on either side of me. I looked at the signs on the waiting room walls. One had a picture of a friendly-looking lady in a business suit, and the text below her photo explained how to get help from a lawyer. Then there were a few signs about the rules.

  We sat in those plastic chairs and waited for almost an hour. Finally they called us back to see Dad. Louisa was still crossing her arms. And she took a long time to stand up.

  * * *

  Dad was sitting on one side of a rectangular table in a big room. He looked kind of nervous, like he wasn’t sure how we were going to react.

  I had planned to be mad
at Dad when I saw him. If he tried to hug me, I was going to take a step back, and say something like Don’t you DARE or How COULD you? And then he would apologize for making bad choices and beg us to forgive him.

  But when I saw him, I lost track of my plan. I couldn’t help myself. I ran right to the table and threw my arms around him like I was four years old.

  Dad hugged me tightly, but only for a moment. “We can’t hug for too long,” he said, glancing at a guard standing nearby. When Dad let go, I thought Louisa would still be standing right inside the door next to Uncle Victor, probably with her arms crossed. But I looked, and she wasn’t there.

  I looked around the room, trying to figure out where the heck she had gone. This is embarrassing to admit, but I even bent down to see if she was hiding under a table or something. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  I looked back at Dad.

  “I think she went back to the waiting area,” he said gently.

  Wow.

  “She’s really mad,” I said. “She … Well, she feels like you lied to her.”

  “I understand,” Dad said. “She has every right to feel that way.”

  Dad paused and just looked at me, like he wanted me to have a chance to say more.

  I didn’t actually know the details of how Louisa felt, but that didn’t stop me. “And she is really confused. She wonders why you told her you were going to be at her graduation when you knew all along you wouldn’t be. And she wonders if you are just going to lie all the time.”

  “I understand,” he said again. “I really messed up. I should’ve known better than to get involved with Walker Stewart.”

  “Louisa doesn’t understand why you did it.”

  I thought maybe he would say that we were too young to understand, or that it wasn’t any of our business, but it almost seemed like Dad had been waiting for me to ask.

  “I could tell her my reasons. It doesn’t mean they are good reasons. I thought it wasn’t hurting anyone. I thought that doing what Mr. Stewart wanted was the simplest way to get what I wanted, which was to move back to Virginia and get a house with a little more space, and help pay for Louisa’s college tuition. But that’s no excuse…”

  I didn’t know what to say, so all I said was “Oh.”

  “To be honest,” he continued, “I didn’t think about it that much. If I’d stopped to really think about it, it would have been a lot harder to do. And it’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Oliver, there’s no way for me to explain how terrible I feel about letting you down.”

  “You mean Louisa,” I said.

  “I mean you, too.” Dad looked at me. “I’m so lucky to have a son like you.”

  Here I started kind of crying, which hadn’t been part of the plan, either. I wiped my eyes and cleared my throat. “The other thing that … Louisa … doesn’t understand is the plea-deal thing. Why would you choose to go to jail?”

  “They were going to send me either way,” he said.

  “But you could’ve fought it,” I said.

  “No,” he replied. “They would have gotten me. And who knows for how long, and how much money I would have lost. I’d already had to spend most of my savings on legal fees. I could’ve been left with nothing and still had to spend a lot of time in jail. It wasn’t much of a choice, Oliver. You have to know that I would never choose to be away from you and your sister if I didn’t have to.”

  I believed him. He looked so sad.

  A guard lady told me it was almost time to go.

  I squeezed my arms around myself like I was hugging my feelings in.

  “I will try to get Louisa to come in tomorrow,” I said.

  “That’s a nice thought,” Dad said, “but you don’t need to do that.”

  I hugged Dad goodbye for the day, but I didn’t cry or anything. I was already trying to figure out a way to get Louisa into the visiting room with me. As we drove back to Uncle Victor’s apartment, in silence this time, I thought about the ways Tito would do it. Maybe I could throw a jacket over her head or something and push her in. Or maybe I could tell her that Bryce from Los Angeles High was in the room?

  I thought about the signature moves, but none of them seemed like they’d work. I was so disappointed. It had helped me so much to hear Dad talk through everything. I was sure it would help Louisa, too.

  Finally, that night, just as I fell asleep, I thought of something I could do.

  * * *

  The second day, the waiting room situation was exactly the same. We went to the prison, waited an hour to see Dad, and they called us back. Louisa stood up slowly, but she looked like maybe she was going to sit right back down.

  She glanced at me. I hadn’t moved.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  “Don’t you want your time with your father?” Uncle Victor said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I got to talk to him alone yesterday. I want Louisa to have a chance to talk to him alone.” My voice sounded kind of shaky, but I added, “I’d rather miss some time with him and let Louisa tell him what she really thinks. I know she won’t say how mad she is in front of me.”

  “Go ahead, Oliver, I’m fine,” Louisa said. “I can wait out here again.”

  “Please, Louisa,” I said, even shakier but a little louder. “Please let me do this for you. Please go talk to him. I don’t care if you yell and scream at him. Just please go.”

  I hadn’t planned to start crying in front of the other people in the waiting room. Let all your feelings out in public definitely wasn’t one of the signature moves. But as it turned out, the public crying was the move that worked. I think Louisa was so embarrassed to be seen with a bawling kid that she was glad for a chance to get out of there and into the room with Dad. So she went.

  Hmm, maybe Brain and I should add that move to the list.

  * * *

  “That must have been hard,” Uncle Victor said, “to do that for Louisa.”

  “Not too hard,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of the time. I read all the signs in the waiting room. Then Uncle Victor let me play a game on his phone.

  When Louisa came out, her face was kind of puffy, but she didn’t look mad.

  Even though visiting time was almost up, I was able to go in and talk to Dad for a few minutes.

  Afterward, Uncle Victor took us to the beach, which was about 50 percent fun and 50 percent trying not to be annoyed by all the happy families around us.

  * * *

  The third and last day of our visit, Louisa and I both went in. Dad asked us about our trip to the beach, and then he said he wanted to answer any questions we had.

  Louisa had a TON of questions about what Dad would do when he got out. She asked where he would work, where he would live, and if it would be hard for him to get a job now that he had a record. He said that because he made a plea bargain with the judge, it would make it easier for him to get a job when he was released. But he looked a little unsure.

  “I have some good leads,” Dad told us. “I’m lucky to know a lot of people who still trust me. But nothing is certain.”

  I had been so convinced that I was going to rescue Dad from jail that I hadn’t even thought about what his life would be like when he got out. Unlike Louisa, I hadn’t thought of any questions, but it didn’t matter, because Dad wanted to ask me about something.

  “Spaghetti-O,” Dad said, “your mom said to ask you about what happened last weekend. Something about the Empire Hotel?”

  Oh, right. The failed three-step plan.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I mumbled, looking at the table. “I had this plan, but it didn’t work.” I kicked the heels of my sneakers against the legs of my chair, over and over again. Kick, kick, kick. “I tried to … find someone to help us. To get you out of here.”

  It was the first time I had said anything to Dad about the plan to meet Tito.

  “What was your plan?” Dad asked.

  “Um. Well, we were t
rying to meet Tito the Bonecrusher. He always knows how to get people out of bad situations, so I thought maybe he could help you. But we didn’t get to talk to him. It was just a stupid waste of time,” I said to the table.

  “It wasn’t stupid,” Dad said. “You’re lucky nothing bad happened, and you absolutely needed to get grounded. But I can think of only one other person who would ever think up a plan so complicated and challenging to try to help me.”

  “Tito the Bonecrusher?” I said. He was the only real hero, and that was just in the movies and the wrestling ring. I don’t know why the rest of us even tried.

  “No,” Dad said. “Not Tito.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Grandma Olivia?” Louisa guessed.

  “That’s right,” Dad said.

  Then Dad told us a pretty rough story about why he had to leave school when he was eleven and why he never talks about his dad.

  He said that his dad had never been very nice to his mom. At one point, things got really bad and his mom was worried for their safety. But his dad had threatened to hurt her if she tried to leave.

  “So she had to make a plan for us to escape,” he said. “She had to plan the whole thing so he wouldn’t know. That’s how we wound up living with Victor’s family.”

  I knew they’d all lived together, but I had never known exactly why.

  “Anyway, your grandma Olivia and Victor’s mother, Louise, were two of the strongest people in the world,” Dad continued. “And that is why you, Louisa, are named for Louise, and why you, Oliver, are named for Grandma Olivia.”

  That was a pretty good reason to be named for her, if she took a big secret risk and got herself and Dad out of a bad situation.

  “And now you’re stuck in a bad situation,” I said.

  Man. This was too much. Louisa was sniffling beside me. I put my head in my hands on the table and tried to pull it together a little bit so I didn’t totally lose it like I had in Louisa’s bedroom.

  “It is pretty bad,” Dad agreed. “But I’ve already served one month of my sentence. I know it feels like a long time, but it could have been much longer. And like I said, when I leave here, I have people who can help me get another job and move on.” He glanced around at some of the other people in the correctional center visiting room. “That’s not the way it is for everyone.”