That night, I stared at the clock on the wall while downstairs my father slammed cupboard doors.
When we got home, he said, “Just go to your damned room,” and stomped to the kitchen. “Get out of my bloody sight before I do something I can’t take back.”
I would not sleep, I knew. The threads lay heavy, blanketing my mind like fresh snow. I thought back to when we walked out of the committee room. The principal had dismissed my father and me without making a decision on my status. For the time being, they said, I was suspended, and they would decide if they were going to expel me. That made me afraid.
It was a brand new type of fear that I had never felt before.
For the first time, I was afraid of losing someone. I was afraid that, upon being expelled, I would have to go to another school, and Saskia Stiles would no longer be my chemistry partner. I knew I would get a new chemistry partner, but I knew that it was unlikely it would be someone whose company I wished to keep.
I sat on my bed, flipping pages. Downstairs, my father muttered in short bursts. I knew he was drinking; I heard the spritzzz of each opening can of beer.
My father drinks. My mother left us. I flip pages to calm myself. Academics call my family situation dysfunctional. I call it life.
—
A text.
are you up
Yes.
are you having a good day
No.
say, do you want to go swinging in the park
Do you want to go swinging in the park?
yes
say, do you want me to come too
Do you want me to come too?
yes
Okay.
when are you coming
when are you coming
when are you coming
Now.
squeak
—
I sat on my bed, turning pages and wondered how I could go swinging in the park with Saskia.
I hadn’t been to a park for years. I hadn’t been on swings in even longer.
When Saskia and I went to Excalibur House, there was a playground in the back and we played there on our break. Saskia rode the swing the entire time. Sometimes I pushed her.
Memories arose, and I thought of a time at Excalibur House in the playground. There were six of us, in a circle. I stood beside Saskia, who was debating the merits of riding the swing with her interventionist.
“You can ride the swing after your exercises, okay?” Saskia’s behaviour interventionist told her.
Saskia nodded. “Okay.”
“Good, then, let’s—”
“But I want to ride the swing now,” Saskia said and walked toward the swings. The BI ran after her, chiding her along the way.
I observed this peripherally but was distracted by my propeller arms. My own behaviour interventionist knelt down before me and said, “Look at me, Freddy.”
We were all supposed to be playing a game, but the fresh air was exhilarating. We jumped up and down. I waved my hands in a clockwise motion. Clockwise was good. My BI said something to me that I did not hear. I was too busy thinking about what would happen if I waved my hands in counter-clockwise motion rather than clockwise motion. I didn’t hear her and didn’t realize she was talking to me. To be more precise, I didn’t hear her because I didn’t realize she was talking to me.
—
Listen: I was four years old when I watched my first Charlie Brown special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and it was the first time I heard Charlie Brown listen to his teacher.
The teacher said to Charlie Brown: Mwa Mwa, Mmmwa mwa MWAH MWAH.
When someone is talking to me and I don’t realize it, I hear the same thing. This is why I liked Charlie Brown: he heard noises in a way that I sometimes did. The only difference between Charlie Brown and me was that, when he heard the teacher speak, he understood her and could Pay Attention. Charlie Brown was, evidently, someone I could learn a great deal from. He could have advised me on what to do.
That was what I heard from my BI, a bunch of sounds. I didn’t know they were directed toward me, so I didn’t pay attention to them. My BI said, Mwaa Mwa mwaMwaaWaa. And I had no idea if that even meant anything.
We had come outside to practise standing in line, by taking turns going down the slide. We were supposed to line up in an orderly fashion, go down the slide, then go to the end of the line. But I kept losing track of where we were in the chain of supposed-tos.
Saskia was tired of the game and argued about the merits of riding on the swing. Others ran around, screaming, flapping their arms. I swung my arms in circles until my interventionist put herself squarely in front of me, and told me to go stand at the slide.
Instead, I went and stood at the swing. I didn’t like slides. I didn’t like swings, either, but I did like being near Saskia, and I wanted to stand and watch her swing.
“Freddy,” said my interventionist sternly, “look at me.”
“Mwaa mwaa, mwa mwa MWAH mwaa,” I replied.
—
Tonight, after Saskia’s text, I felt a tug, a pulling I hadn’t felt in a long time, a yearning to go back to a park with her and watch her swing. Just watch her swing, and not think about anything else. Without interventionists telling me to look at them. Without my father telling me to stop ruining his life. Without a principal telling me I was a threat to students everywhere.
I wanted to stand and watch Saskia swing. Maybe I would push her, too.
My phone vibrated.
are you coming
Yes.
i know your secret
What?
shhhhh
it’s a secret
Okay.
i’ve known you all my life
you were my friend
you stopped coming to excalibur house
I stopped.
i said see you later
you said see you later
It took ten years.
the last day i saw you it rained
Yes.
i was under a blanket
You were not.
my mom cried and i cried
say, why did you cry
Why did you cry?
shhhhhh
it’s a secret
THE LOOSE TOOTH
I opened my eyes and I was seven, and I didn’t want to go have dinner. Not yet. I wanted to stay in the living room, with my book, and stare out the window. I wanted to turn the pages of the book in my lap.
My father disagreed. He called something unintelligible as he came into the living room and I was certain he wasn’t speaking to me, because he made no sense.
This is what he said: “Freddy, DINNER!”
This is what I heard: “Mwaa mwa. MWA MWA.”
Naturally, I ignored it. He couldn’t have been speaking to me. I don’t even know what Mwaa is.
He tried to close my book; I jerked it away and turned from him. This time, he spoke directly to me.
“Freddy,” he said angrily, and I didn’t know why he was angry.
“What,” I said, still staring out the window.
“It’s dinner.”
“Okay,” I said. Two pages forward. One page back.
“Close your book.”
“But I’m getting to the best part.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re not even looking at your book.”
“Yes, I am,” I explained. I turned two more pages, continued to look out the window.
“Fine,” he said. “You can get to the best part after dinner.”
“Listen: I need to—”
“Just get in the fucking kitchen!” he shouted at me and grabbed my book. I refused to let go. He pulled hard, and it tore at the binding. Pages, already loosened from countless hours of turning, spilled to the floor.
“NO!” I shouted at him, but he tore the book from my grip and I began to scream. I stood up, swinging my hands at my father, pummelling him on his shoulders, his chest, his stomach.
“
Freddy, stop it!” he shouted and pushed me back. I lunged forward at him and he slapped me across the mouth so hard I lost my balance. It startled me. It stopped every single thread in my mind. It brought my thoughts to a grinding halt.
What was that? they asked.
I tasted blood. Something rattled in my mouth. I spit out a tooth.
In the hall, my mother gasped. She stared at me, her eyes wide, one hand clutching the other.
“Freddy,” she said, then backed up.
I scrambled after the tooth, which lay under the sofa chair.
“What the hell, Freddy?” my father said.
I held the tooth up like a trophy. “My loose tooth!” I shouted, hopping up and down. “It came OUT!”
Time seemed suspended. My hand holding the tooth triumphantly in the air. My mother, with hands to her mouth in the hall. My father, unsure of what to do with his hands, his mouth bobbing open and closed.
“Okay, Freddy,” my mother said softly. “Let’s go put it under your pillow, okay?”
“Okay,” I said happily and ran upstairs as fast as I could.
“What the hell did you do?” I heard her shouting at him.
JACK SWEAT’S ROOM
At the age of eight, Jack Sweat started slapping the heavy bag. He was, after all, the son of the Butcher.
Jack could have been an elite boxer; he was an intelligent person, but he lacked a killer instinct. He admitted it. He wasn’t concerned enough with victory that he would sacrifice anything to obtain it. The truth was, victory wasn’t the goal.
“If I get in a dust-up,” he told me, “and the judges call it even, and the other guy has done everything he could to beat me, and I did everything I could to beat the other guy, then that’s the perfect fight.”
This was a philosophy not discussed with his father, who belonged to the Old School, where your opponent was the enemy. To the Butcher, the challenge of the fight was not the fight, but the victory. If he had known that his son was more interested in the competition than the victory, he would have been disappointed. So Jack kept it to himself.
He was the youngest of three, and his older brothers were in the army. Jack lived with his parents in a three-bedroom apartment just down from the shop. The Butcher shared one bedroom with his wife, Elle. Jack had the second bedroom. The third bedroom was where they kept the trophies Jack won in competition.
The Butcher called it the Jack Room, but it was the Jack Room in name only. In all the times I visited, Jack only went in there twice.
The only other people who went into this room were the Butcher, guests who visit the Butcher, and Elle, who went in to dust.
Jack went into this room sparingly, only to put a new trophy on a shelf or hang a new medal. For a while, when he brought a girl home, he took her into the Jack Room, and hoped it would make her sexually excited to see the trophies, medals, and plaques for Best Fight of the Night. Sometimes it did, but the sexual excitement was muted by probing, poking questions from his parents. The Butcher and Elle came from hearty prairie farm stock and a love of tradition. They did not approve of young boys and girls spending time together, alone, and especially frowned on the idea that boys and girls may become sexually excited by each other.
After a while, Jack stopped showing girls the trophy room. The gains from displaying his physical accomplishments were outweighed by the losses accrued. His mother inevitably doused the flames of any passions aroused.
By the time Jack turned seventeen, he stopped bringing girls home altogether. He stopped going into the room himself, and let his father hang up his medals or find a space on the shelves for the trophies. He only took one other person into the room, years after he stopped bringing anyone else.
He brought me.
Jack Sweat showed me his trophy room when we were both seventeen, in my last semester at Templeton College. One day, after I had finished a workout and was lacing up my street shoes, he came over and said, “I want to show you something.”
I looked at the Butcher, who nodded at me, indicating I was free to leave. I stood up and followed Jack through the side door and down the street to his apartment. At the end of the hall, he opened the door and told me to go in.
The room was small. A single window had no curtains. The window ledge was empty, except for the hull of a common housefly, dead after prolonged efforts to flee the room through the windowpane. The closet doors had been removed, and a chest-high bookshelf was in the middle of the closet. There were no books on the shelves. There were only trophies. The smallest were on the lower shelves, and the tallest were on the top. Nine medals were wrapped around the three tallest of them all.
The walls were covered with plaques and photographs. There were framed clippings from newspapers, describing fight cards in which Jack competed. Three of these included photographs of bouts showing Jack trading punches with an opponent.
We stood in the centre of the room.
After a moment, I understood that Jack expected me to be impressed, but I was not versed in the ability to look impressed. I swivelled my head slowly. I deliberately stopped and focused on random trophies. I read the text of newspaper clippings on the wall.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I like this room,” I said.
He nodded. “Thought you might.”
Thirteen plaques hung at eye level, surrounded by photographs. My eyes never left the pictures. Seven of them, framed, showed Jack in mid-round battle. Nine showed him posing, post-fight pictures, beside his father. In two of these, Jack was in his fighter stance. In six others, his father had his arm around his shoulders.
“It’s quiet in here,” I added.
“Yeah. I kind of knew you were going to say that.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going—I’m working tonight. But I thought you would like to see this room.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me, a small frown on his face, as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he let out a sigh. “Did you want to stay in here a little longer?”
“Yes,” I said, still looking at the photographs.
He nodded. “Just let yourself out.”
“Okay.” My eyes fell on one photograph. The referee holding his arm in the air. Jack, exhausted, leaning backward as if he was going to faint. His father supporting him, both arms around his chest in a bear hug. The Butcher looked like he was dancing. As happy as a man can look without drawing suspicion to himself.
I sat on the floor, my back to Jack, staring at this photo. A moment later, I heard the door close behind me.
I watched the picture, and on the canvas of the ring, I saw a clock rise up.
4:32. 4:33. 4:34.
I stayed for an hour.
—
After seeing the Jack Room, my workout routine changed. After the last round of sparring, I would towel off the sweat and tell Jack, “I want to see the trophy room.”
Most times, Jack or the Butcher would say, “Not today, Freddy.”
Other times, Jack would glance at the Butcher, who’d nod or say, “Make it snappy.” Then, I would walk down to their apartment, often by myself, go in, and say, “Hi, Elle,” as she made dinner in the kitchen. Sometimes she’d say, “Hi, Freddy.” Sometimes she’d wave. Other times, she ignored me. I would go into the Jack Room.
I liked it in there because it was always warm, and always quiet. The window spilled into a narrow back alley. The only sounds outside were the occasional faint honk of a horn, or the rattling of a shopping cart as a homeless man scurried from trash container to trash container.
I liked to sit in the middle of the room and look at the photographs of Jack Sweat and his father. Seeing them, I felt calm. My mind quieted. It was like the early mornings, without threads rattling around in my brain.
The last time I sat in the middle of the floor of Jack Sweat’s room, he came in with a new trophy. This was a break in tradition—usually only the Butcher added memorabilia. But this time it was Jack. The trophy was mediu
m-sized. It would go on the middle shelf. Only first-place trophies went on the top shelf, and he didn’t win the competition this time.
He nodded to me. I sat cross-legged, still in my boxing shorts, still wearing my hand wraps, my shirt damp with sweat from the day’s workout.
He added the trophy to his collection and stood beside me. I stood up.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I didn’t think anything. I understood that he wanted to know what I thought about the contents of the room. I requested appropriate answers from my memory, and quickly a list of responses came back.
After a few moments of consideration, I chose the optimum answer.
“This room does not have a chair in it,” I said.
He looked around. Then he smiled. “It could use a chair, couldn’t it?” he said.
Then he stepped closer and kissed me on my lips.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF A KISS
Listen: These are the people who have kissed me in my life.
My mother kissed me frequently. I remember every kiss she gave me, and I remember the final one, on a train platform, the ticking of rain on hot metal, the hiss of air released from the brakes. She kissed me on the forehead and said goodbye.
My father kissed me less frequently, and he stopped when I was seven. That’s not right. He kissed me on the top of my head as I lay in the hospital. His last kiss was when he thought I was asleep, but I was in the midlands between sleep and wakefulness, and his kiss seemed to be from far away. His voice, barely audible, echoed through the high country of the place from which I listened and waited.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Ten years ago, Saskia Stiles kissed me on several occasions, at the urging of her parents.
“Say good night to Freddy,” Linda Stiles said, as they put on their coats in our front hall.
“Good night,” she said, looking at the floor.
“Well, kiss him, for Chrissake,” urged John Stiles, and my mother laughed loudly and my father frowned.
Three times, before they left our house, or before we left their house, John Stiles shook my hand, but Linda Stiles kissed me on the cheek.
“Good night, Freddy,” she said. “You’re a treasure.”
Do You Think This Is Strange? Page 17