“Yeah,” I replied.
Until I was seventeen, only four people had ever kissed me. Only my mother kissed me on the mouth. But then Jack Sweat kissed me on my lips. His mouth was open, and his tongue pressed against my lips.
My mind raced. I hadn’t been kissed in almost ten years. I had no reference point from which to craft an appropriate response.
Only my mother ever kissed me on the lips. Jack Sweat wasn’t my mother. No one kissed me before with an open mouth. Jack Sweat slid his tongue over my lips when he kissed me.
His lips held, opening just a little, pressing against my lips, warm and soft. When he pulled away, there was a bit of a pop.
He looked at me. He wasn’t smiling. He stood, a few inches from my face, watching me intently. I didn’t meet his look. My eyes started to water. My nose started to itch.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, and I grabbed the first relevant reply in my hastily gathered list of possible responses.
“I think you need to step back,” I said to Jack Sweat. I don’t think he expected that.
He stepped away from me. We stood, not looking at each other.
A few moments passed.
“Maybe you should go,” he said, his teeth gritted together.
I stepped backward slowly. I turned and walked to the door, then stopped. “I like this room,” I said.
“Just go,” he sighed.
“Goodbye, Jack,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
He didn’t answer.
I walked downstairs and out the side door. I think he was sad that the room didn’t have a chair just then.
—
Two days later, I went to the gym as per my schedule. I changed and sat down beside Jack, who was wrapping his hands. I began to wrap my own.
“Go away,” he said, without even looking at me.
“I don’t want to go away,” I said and began eating my sandwich.
“Sit somewhere else.”
“I want to sit here.”
“Fine,” he muttered and picked up his towel and headgear. “I’ll sit somewhere else.”
“Is there a problem with you two Nancies?” asked the Butcher.
I said nothing, but I stared at Jack’s headgear. After a moment, Jack said, “Nothing, Dad. Nothing.”
“Freddy?” asked the Butcher. “What’s up?”
“I just want to sit here.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Why don’t you do that?”
Jack shook his head. “Bloody retard,” he muttered and started walking away.
“But listen—”
The Butcher put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me from following Jack.
—
In the ring, Jack was out of control. He swung wildly, dropping his guard in sacrifice. He came at me quickly, throwing punches even as I was coming to the centre of the ring, and he pushed me back. I was momentarily confused, and he connected once, twice, three times and I fell back into the ropes.
“Stop,” ordered the Butcher. He motioned Jack back to his corner. Jack paused, puffing angrily, half turned away from me in contempt. “Freddy, you gotta be aware of your opponent.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You gotta know that they can come at you right away. Don’t expect to set up first.”
“Okay.”
We touched gloves and he started swinging almost immediately. I backed away from him, dodging some punches, blocking others. Others clipped me at threatening angles, but none landed with any great force.
Not yet.
I had no idea what to do because this was a style I had never seen before. He gave no thought to his own defence. He focused everything on the attack.
When his left hook misses, his chin is forward. Within reach.
But his right is coming across just after it. Before the left has finished even.
So step to the hook. Let the left go by and follow it with your head.
A left jab sent me back two times. My nose was bleeding. An overhand right tagged me above the eye and I saw stars.
The left hook. It’s coming.
His knee dropped. That was the tell. I stepped back and a left hook scythed by. I stepped in and his right grazed the back of my head. My cross didn’t miss. It caught Jack square on the jaw where the mandible reaches into the skull, where the power of the blow runs up the jawbone and explodes into the brain at the joint.
Jack’s knees wiggled and gave way. He collapsed to the canvas.
I stood over him. “Best two out of three?” I asked.
“Just go away,” he whispered. “Just go away.”
THE LAST CONVERSATION
WITH THE BUTCHER
When I went back to the gym on Wednesday, Jack wasn’t wrapping his hands. I began to wrap mine, and the Butcher came over. His face seemed angry but it didn’t seem angry. It seemed sad but it didn’t seem sad. It was an expression I hadn’t directly encountered before, and I didn’t know what it meant.
“Jack’s not in today, Freddy,” he told me as he sat and finished wrapping my hands. “We’ll just do pad work today, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed.
—
On Saturday, Jack wasn’t there.
“He’s probably not coming back,” the Butcher said. “Not for a while, anyway.”
“Where is he going?”
“He’s going to work upstairs.”
I stood up. “I’ll go ask him to come downstairs.”
He took my arm. “Sit,” he said. “He doesn’t want to come downstairs.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t want to spar for a while.”
“Why?”
The Butcher leaned back and scratched his chin. “He just doesn’t, okay? Maybe you should take a break yourself.”
“I don’t want to take a break.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Jack is . . . well, Jack has things he has to work out, you know?”
“No.”
“He’s got a lot on his mind. Going to college next year. NCAA scholarship possibility. His grades.” He shrugged. “You know, a lot of thinking about where he’s going.”
He paused. “Who he wants to be, I guess.”
—
That night, the threads were waiting, and I got little sleep as I tumbled the questions in the dryer of my mind. Why did Jack Sweat kiss me when it made him so upset afterwards? I’d never seen him kiss anyone else, nor had I ever seen a boy kissing another boy. This was an unusual event, and I wasn’t sure what I had done to enable it. Once again, my action, or lack of it, was possibly responsible for another conversational head-on collision.
I carried the threads through the weekend and then to school. I wandered through the day, not talking to anyone, paying little attention in class. I meandered through lunch, then began to go to my next class, but was unable to because Chad Kennedy had Oscar Tolstoy pressed against my locker door.
“You’re gay,” he said to Oscar. “Say it. Come on, say it.”
THE FRONT OF MY LOCKER
Objectively speaking, Chad Kennedy was not a good person.
He had few of the characteristics of a good person: he did not treat others with consistent respect, except for those with whom there would be negative consequences otherwise. Those who could not punish him for neglected courtesy were discarded as irrelevant.
Oscar Tolstoy was such a person.
So was I. Until the moment I told him to move away from my locker.
“You’re in my way,” I said to the back of Chad. There were several people standing around, and they stepped away, forming a ring.
I stepped into that ring.
Chad didn’t answer me. I assumed it was because he didn’t hear me.
“You’re in front of my locker,” I said again, a little louder. When I said it, the hall fell silent.
He turned and glared at me, frowning, the same frown he used when he was about to do something to someone.
“What are you looking at?”
he demanded.
“What are you looking at,” I said back to him.
He pushed me and I pushed him back. He pushed me again. I pushed him back again and he grabbed my shirt. I looped my arm under his and bent my elbow. With a rotation, I wrapped around his arm and pulled down. His arm dropped, but he didn’t let go, and it dragged him closer, bending him down with the pull of my arm.
I punched him as hard as I could and his knees wobbled. He stepped back defensively, brought his arms up, and swung at me.
He missed. I didn’t.
I didn’t miss the three times I struck him in rapid succession, and his knees gave out. He leaned forward into me. With all my might, I pushed him back; he stepped on his own shoelace and fell back into the glass case across the hall. The shelves collapsed on him. Trophies tumbled down, striking him on the top of the head. He sank to the floor.
He didn’t get back up. His head began to bleed. He closed his eyes.
“Crap,” someone said. “He’s our quarterback!”
THE MILK RUN
when are you coming
Tonight.
—
I opened my eyes. It was time to go see Saskia. I stood at the kitchen door, staring at my father. He sat at the table, a can of beer in front of him.
“What?” he barked.
“We’re out of milk.”
“And you think I should just go get some so you can have your precious goddamn milk?”
“Yes.”
“You want milk?” he said, taking a drink of beer. “Get it your goddamn self.”
He turned to stare out the window. I didn’t move. After a moment, he turned and glared at me, then took another drink.
“Okay,” I said. I took my coat from the hall closet and slipped out the front door.
—
I remember the first time I realized someone was lying to me, which means that I remember a time when I believed everything I was told.
I remember when I told my first lie, which means I remember a time when I only told the truth.
I rarely lie, because I am not good at it. I have a good poker face, but my lies crumble under prolonged questioning.
Listen: If I had told my father I was going to the store, the conversation may have gone in an entirely different direction.
“I’m going to the store,” I said to my father in the scenario envisioned in my head.
“The bloody hell you are,” he growled. “Go back to your room.”
Or if I tried a different approach.
“Can I go to the store?” I asked my father. “We’re out of milk.”
“I don’t give a shit,” he said in this scenario. “Get the hell back in your room.”
“I need to go to the store,” I told my father in the third scenario.
“What for?”
“I need baking soda.”
“What the hell do you need baking soda for?”
“A science project.”
“For what class?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“No, Freddy,” he said. “Which class has a science project?”
“I don’t have a science project in any of my classes.”
“So why do you need baking soda?”
“I don’t,” I replied.
“Bloody well get back to your room, then.”
Telling a lie carries too many risks. I’ve found it is better to not lie. So, when I told my father we were out of milk, I wasn’t lying.
I knew that he would refuse to get the milk for me. He was content to sit and drink and be angry at me. I suspected he would tell me to get it myself. So, when he did, I interpreted his instructions as literally as possible.
He didn’t specify which store to use, so I was free to choose the one I wanted to patronize.
I chose the 7-Eleven down the street from Saskia Stiles’s home.
—
An hour later, I stood at the front door of the home of John and Linda Stiles.
There were four unanswered texts on my phone. The first had come in eighteen minutes ago. It was from my father.
What the hell is taking you so long
I ignored it and, five minutes later, he texted me again.
Where are you
Again, I ignored it. My phone must have rung in the meantime, but I had turned off my ringer. I don’t like phone calls.
Pick up the damn phone
I arrived at Saskia Stiles’s house, just as the fourth text message came in.
Freddy
I ignored it again. My mind raced with other thoughts, other questions, other threads.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack Sweat and his trophy room. I couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss he had given me. Not the kiss itself, but the feeling of the kiss.
The touch of lips on lips.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel if those were Saskia’s lips, and I didn’t know why I was wondering it.
I tumbled the thought over and over again.
At which point, Linda Stiles opened the door.
“Yes?” she said.
She stood in the middle of the doorway, looking at me, but I was not there anymore. My eyes had lost their focus. I was chasing a thread, following it from conjecture to conclusion, like a rabbit across a warren.
This was an inopportune time to be lost in a thought of kissing her daughter. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my awareness, I realized it, but was having trouble communicating this to the rest of my body.
“What do you want?” she asked. It was good that she did this, for little else could have disturbed me. But she asked a direct question, requiring a direct answer, and I was good at answering questions like that.
“I’m here against my will,” I said, at last.
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
I began remembering the words I had practised on the way over. The words I had assembled from years of conversation practice during therapy. “Good evening, Mrs. Stiles, I would—”
But she cut me off. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time for sales pitches.”
She started to close the door. I said, “I’m Freddy Wyland.”
She froze. I didn’t know if she was going to turn around or close the door. She stared at me, her eyes wide. Her hands let go of the door and clasped each other. She leaned forward as if to get a better look at me. I wondered if she wore contacts and, if she did, if she was wearing them now.
“Freddy?” Linda Stiles said. “Freddy Wyland? What are you doing here?”
I stared back at her.
“Answer me, Freddy,” she said.
“Mrs. Stiles,” I said slowly, making sure I enunciated. “I would like to have a discussion with you and Mr. Stiles.”
Her expression hardened. “There is no Mr. Stiles,” she said.
I blinked. “When will he be back?” I asked, thinking I may have misunderstood the phrase; perhaps “There is no Mr. Stiles” was a colloquialism that meant he was buying groceries.
“Freddy, he’s not coming back. He’s—” She hesitated. “He’s been gone for a decade. Didn’t your father tell you?”
Suddenly I was afraid.
“Is he buying groceries?” I asked, and the words came out high-pitched and strained.
THE STILES RESIDENCE
The day after I saw my mother for the last time began a stretch of days that aren’t in my memory. There is a patch in my head, a blip of the timeline, in which I remember nothing at all. A black span of ten days from the late morning of September 10 to the evening of September 20.
Now, as I stood in the doorway of John and Linda Stiles’s home, I felt waves of panic wash over me. I remembered. I remembered a little.
Only a little.
Linda Stiles used to wear her hair down, but tonight she wore her hair in a tight ponytail. The last time I saw her, ten years ago, Linda Stiles also wore a tight ponytail. And a blue cardigan, like the one she wore tonight. When I remembered that, I became afraid.
My father looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me, as if it took him a few moments to bring me into focus.
“Sit down, Freddy,” he said. “I need to tell you something.”
I didn’t remember anything that happened after that. But now, standing before Linda Stiles, remembering only that my father told me to sit down, I began to shiver.
A POEM, TEN YEARS OLD
I opened my eyes. Linda Stiles’s living room was small, and the rug was faded. I sat in the middle of the couch and stared at a tank of fish on the other side of the room. A single clown fish ambled around, just above fake coral. Back and forth. Back and forth, like a book turning its own pages.
Linda stood in the kitchen with the phone to her ear, yelling at my father.
“He’s your son, not mine,” she said. “This is your mess to clean up.”
I trembled. Threads burst into my head like panicked tenants.
Linda Stiles came out. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag. She sat on the couch beside me. “You need to go home, Freddy.”
“I would like to take Saskia to the park.”
“Not a chance,” she said, shaking her head. “Not a chance. I don’t think Saskia wants to go to the park.”
“Yes, she does,” I said.
“Go home, Freddy.”
“But she told me to come over.”
“Who did?”
“Saskia,” I said. “Saskia told me to come over.”
“Saskia doesn’t speak, Freddy.”
I nodded my head. “Yes,” I said, “she does.”
She massaged her temple. “Freddy,” she said, letting out a long exhale. “Saskia has been non-verbal ever since—” She paused. “Ever since the last time you saw her.”
“I want to take her to the park,” I said.
She jumped up. “No!” she shouted and pointed to the door. “Get out! Just get out of here, Freddy!”
I stood up, too. “But I want—”
Do You Think This Is Strange? Page 18