Disturbed

by Kevin O'Brien

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  He came home from school that Friday at 4:30 to find his dad sitting at the kitchen table with a scotch and soda. He wore his blue suit. His dad never came home from work before six — unless someone got sick or had an accident. Chris’s mom was pouring herself a glass of wine at the counter. It was kind of early for them to be drinking. The house was quiet, no TV blaring in the family room, no sign of his sister.

  Hanging his coat in the pantry closet, Chris gave them a wary look and asked where Erin was. His dad hugged him, and said they thought it best Erin spend the night at Aunt Trish’s.

  Chris didn’t understand. “Are you guys mad at me about something?”

  His dad shook his head.

  “We wanted to discuss this with you first — and then we’ll talk to Erin,” his mom explained. She sat down at the breakfast table.

  Chris suddenly thought of something he hadn’t considered until just that moment: cancer. Panic swept through him. “Is somebody sick?” he murmured. “Is that what this is about?”

  With a sigh, his dad shook his head again. “Nobody’s sick, Chris,” he said. “Sit down, son.”

  Numbly he obeyed him, taking his usual spot at the kitchen table. “What’s going on?”

  His dad sank down in his chair and reached for his scotch and soda. The ice clinking in his glass seemed loud against the silence. He took a gulp. “It’s this,” he said, clearing his throat. “Your mom and I have decided to live apart for a while. . ”

  Chris let out a stunned little laugh. “You’re joking.”

  He looked at his mother, whose eyes met his for the first time since he’d walked through the door. She didn’t appear sad or apologetic or angry. It was as if all her feelings had shut down. She quickly looked away — and gazed down at her glass of wine. She took a sip.

  Chris realized this was no joke.

  He couldn’t remember anything else they’d said — just that his mother was moving out. All the while, he kept looking at his dad’s hands, one around his highball glass and the other clenched in a fist on the kitchen table. His mother kept fiddling with the saltshaker — picking at the little grains of salt stuck in the pour holes. She and his dad wouldn’t look at each other.

  When Chris finally asked if he could go upstairs and they let him go, he saw the clock on his nightstand read 4:58. He’d been sitting at that kitchen table with them for only twenty-five minutes, but it had seemed like hours.

  He kept thinking of the way they’d seemed so affectionate at the Hahns’ party two weeks before, and he realized it had been a lie. Chris hated admitting that to himself. And he didn’t want to admit it to his friends — especially Elvis. So he didn’t talk about it at all.

  He felt bad Elvis had to find out about his parents’ separation from someone in school. Apparently, Mrs. Hahn had told Courtney, who broadcast it on her Facebook page. Chris had kept hoping — right up until the day his mother moved out of the house — that his folks would work things out.

  Her new home was a two-bedroom apartment in a tall, eighties-era condominium on Capitol Hill. She showed them the indoor pool off the lobby — and off her balcony, a sweeping view of downtown Seattle, Elliott Bay, and the Olympic Mountains. She kept going on about how they were walking distance from Volunteer Park and all these great restaurants, movie theaters, and shops. So when he and Erin visited, they’d never be bored.

  Chris couldn’t figure out why his mother had moved out of the house and given his dad custody. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t practical. His dad was hardly ever home.

  It wasn’t as if he liked his mother more than he liked his dad. In fact, he felt a stronger connection to his father — even though his dad was away so often. Chris remembered when he was a kid, and his dad used to give him the white cardboard eleven-by-eight sheets the cleaners put inside his folded dress shirts. It was heavier than regular paper, and Chris used the cardboard inserts for elaborate drawings of Lord of the Rings scenes. But mostly he used them for the posters he created to welcome his dad home from business trips. Chris would post one sign on a tree at the end of their block: WE MISSED YOU, DAD! He’d tape another welcome home sign on the lamppost at the start of their driveway, and another on the front door. It was always special when his dad came home. Chris would get a T-shirt or snow globe from an airport in another city, and he’d bask in his dad’s presence for the next few days — until another business trip took him away.

  His dad might not have been home much; but when he was around, he spent a lot of time with Chris — and attended his swim meets (something his mom never did). All of his friends’ mothers had crushes on his dad. So when people told him that he was starting to look like his father, Chris took that as a big compliment.

  He wondered what they’d do now whenever his father went away on business. Hire a live-in housekeeper? Go stay with Aunt Trish in Tacoma? Chris didn’t like it there. Aunt Trish had a house that smelled like rotten fruit and a cat who hated him. Plus she was vegan, and there was never anything decent to eat in her place.

  It didn’t make any sense that his mother was the one moving out. Was she sick of looking after him and Erin? Was that why she’d decided to leave?

  “Your father and I have already told you — several times — this separation has nothing to do with you and Erin,” his mother pointed out. “And neither does my moving out of the house.”

  She was behind the wheel of her SUV. Chris, in the passenger seat, couldn’t see her eyes behind her designer sunglasses. Wind through the open window blew her close-cropped hair into disarray. She’d recently highlighted it with some silvery-brown rinse, a new look for her new life.

  It was his and Erin’s first weekend visiting her in her new condo. He and his mom were driving on Interstate 5 back from North Seattle, where they’d just dropped off Erin at ballet class.

  “You had to know, Mom,” he said, squinting at her. “You had to know that Erin and I would really miss you. It just screws up everything with you moving away. I mean, if Dad was the one who got a new place, I don’t think it would have made that big a difference, because he’s away so much anyway. Y’know?”

  “I had to know that you and Erin would really miss me,” she paraphrased him in a cool, ironic tone. She looked stone-faced as she stared at the road ahead. “The way you used to miss your father when he was away? Do you think it was easy for me, raising the two of you practically on my own? Yet every time your father came home, you kids treated him like visiting royalty. You were always so happy to see him. Always the hero’s welcome. .”

  “I thought you felt the same way whenever he came home,” Chris murmured numbly.

  “See how much of a hero he is to you and Erin when he’s the one who stays put and does all those thankless household chores,” she growled.

  Chris swallowed hard. “Then it’s true, you’re sick of us.”

  “No, goddamn it, I’m sick of him!” she cried. She twisted the wheel to one side. The driver behind them blasted his horn. Chris braced a hand against the dashboard as his mother pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. She slammed on the brakes and the tires screeched beneath them. “I’m sick of you and Erin thinking he’s so goddamn wonderful when he’s never really been there for you — or for me.”

  Stunned, Chris stared at her.

  One hand gripping the wheel, she swiveled toward him. “He fucked around. Did you know that? Did you know your father — your hero — can’t keep his dick in his pants?”

  Chris just shook his head. He’d never heard his mother use such language, and he couldn’t believe what she was saying. He still braced himself against the dashboard, though the Saturn was idling on the shoulder of the road. Other cars whooshed by.

  “Every time he goes out of town, it’s just another opportunity for him to screw whomever he wants. Five years ago, he came back from Boston and gave me a dose of chlamydia — at least I think it was Boston where he must have caught it. I can’t be sure.
For a while, he even had regular, steady girlfriends in some of those cities. Of course, he couldn’t stay faithful to them any more than he could stay faithful to me. One, her name was Cassandra, she lived down in Portland, and she was crazy. I’m talking certifiable. She was calling the house day and night, threatening me, for God’s sake. She even left a decapitated squirrel by our front door, the insane bitch. Your father can sure pick them. That was last year. . ”

  Chris vaguely remembered for a while the previous May, when his mom had instructed him not to answer the phone and not to let Erin pick it up. She’d said some crackpot had been calling. He couldn’t comprehend that the crackpot had been a woman his father was screwing. He just kept shaking his head at his mother. He couldn’t say anything. He felt sick to his stomach.

  “Now you know,” she said, her voice cracking. From behind her dark glasses, tears started down her cheeks. She leaned back in the driver’s seat, took off the glasses, and sobbed. “This is no way for a mother to be talking to her son,” she muttered, plucking a Kleenex from her purse. She wiped her eyes and nose. “But I couldn’t stand to have you go on worshiping him, when — when he’s been a terrible husband and at best, a parttime father.”

  A few cars sped by, and Chris cleared his throat. “How long have you known he was — messing around?” he asked timidly.

  “It’s been going on since you were about five, maybe even before that. I’m not really sure. He hasn’t exactly been honest with me.” His mother blew her nose, and then turned to him. Her red-rimmed eyes wrestled with his. “You said earlier that my moving away screwed everything up — and that if your father was the one getting a new place, it wouldn’t make such a big difference. Well, sweetie, you’re right. His life wouldn’t change much at all. It would be very easy for him. He’d get a bachelor pad and probably have a live-in girlfriend within six weeks. Well, I’ll be damned if I let that happen. It’s why I moved out, honey. Maybe if he actually had to be a full-time father for a while and keep house for you and Erin — well, perhaps then he’d grow up. He might even begin to appreciate me a little more, though I doubt it.”

  “I think he appreciates you already, Mom,” Chris whispered. “I really do. He’s going to want you to come back, I know it.”

  His mother took a deep breath, readjusted her seat belt, and put her sunglasses back on. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Your father will cancel his business trips for a while, but he’ll hire a housekeeper to do the cooking and cleaning. After about a month, he’ll need to go out of town, and he’ll get the housekeeper to stay with you and Erin. And pretty soon, he’ll start traveling on a regular basis again. . ”

  She glanced over her shoulder and pulled back onto the highway. The SUV began to pick up speed. The sound of the wind through the windows and the motor humming almost drowned her out. But Chris could still hear her. “And then one day,” she muttered, “he’ll come home from one of those trips with a woman he’s very serious about — some woman who’s younger and prettier than me. . ”

  It was scary how accurate his mother’s prediction was. His dad did indeed stay home for a few weeks. They went through two housekeepers: one who stole and one who was lazy as hell. Then he found Hildy, an honest, hardworking Russian woman who didn’t speak English very well and smelled like an open can of vegetable soup. Hildy stayed with him and Erin when his dad started traveling again.

  What his mother hadn’t predicted was how miserable Chris would be. He was utterly disappointed in his dad — to the point of contempt. His grades started sliding, and he didn’t care. His timing at swim practices and meets was atrocious. He hated disappointing his swim coach, Mr. Chertok, because he was such a nice guy. Mr. Chertok tried to get him to talk about what was bothering him. But Chris was so ashamed. He couldn’t talk to Mr. Chertok, or any of his teachers, or Elvis.

  He never uttered a word to his dad about what he knew. At this point, he didn’t want much to do with him.

  He wasn’t too happy with his mother, either. In order to get even with his dad, she was willing to screw up his and Erin’s lives. Neither she nor his dad were around to hear Erin crying in her room at night. Hildy, who slept on an air mattress in a curtained-off corner of the basement rec room, didn’t hear her, either. So Chris always came in and sat in a white wicker rocking chair that was usually reserved for a big stuffed giraffe she called Bill. Chris would keep her company until she nodded off.

  “At least Erin has you to lean on,” Elvis pointed out to him, while they wandered around Northgate Mall one Saturday night. “But who do you have? Why don’t you ever tell me what’s really going on with you? Something’s bugging you big-time, and it’s more than just your parents’ splitting up. . ” He grabbed hold of Chris’s arm. “Are you even listening to me?” he asked, raising his voice. “I’m worried about you, man. I mean it, you’re acting really weird.”

  Frowning, Chris glanced over at the entrance to a clothing store. “A little louder. One or two people in The Gap didn’t hear you.” He started walking again — toward the food court.

  Elvis caught up with him. “Listen, if you don’t want to unload on me, then you should talk to a shrink or maybe Mr. Corson at school.”

  Chris squinted at him. “Corson? Are you nuts? Only losers, psychos, and problem cases go to him. No thanks.”

  Elvis cleared his throat. “Maybe you forgot that I had a few sessions with Corson a while back.”

  Chris remembered, and immediately felt bad. After meeting with Elvis, Corson had tried to get Mrs. Harnett to join AA, but it didn’t take. Nevertheless, Elvis liked him a lot — as did most of the kids at school. Corson’s claim to fame was that two years back, he’d decided to quit smoking, and gotten over a hundred students to pledge they’d quit, too. The final number of students who actually stopped smoking was seventy-something, but it was still a big deal.

  Chris gave his friend a limp, apologetic smile. “If I buy you a Cinnabon, would you forget that last remark — and drop this whole conversation?”

  Elvis frowned at him. “That’s really disgusting. Do you think just because I’m slightly overweight, that I’d trade in my dignity and my deep concern for your psychological well-being — all for a Cinnabon?”

  Chris nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Make it a Caramel Pecanbon, and we have a deal.”

  As they headed for Cinnabon, Chris thought about Mr. Corson. He couldn’t go to him for help. It was like admitting to himself — and everyone else — that he was indeed very screwed up.

  Instead, Chris exercised every day — to the point of exhaustion. After swim practice, he ran laps around the track or lifted weights. It was a good excuse to avoid going home for a while, maybe even miss dinner, especially when his dad was in town. He’d come in late, make himself a sandwich, and then hole up in his room with the TV and his homework.

  This routine went on for about three weeks, but it didn’t make him any happier. The only sliver of happiness he knew was a weird, warped satisfaction whenever he made it obvious to his dad that he politely loathed him.

  His mother had been right about another thing. Sure enough, his dad brought some woman home from one of his trips. And she was indeed younger and prettier than Chris’s mother. She worked at the Hilton in Washington, D.C., where his dad attended a pharmaceutical convention. But she was really an artist, so his dad said — whatever the hell that meant. The way the two of them talked, they’d known each other only a few weeks. But Chris wondered if his father had been screwing her long before the separation. Was this Molly person the reason his parents had split up?

  He was thinking about that as he ran the track at dusk on a chilly Tuesday in early May. It was the second of three laps he intended to make around the football field. But his lungs already burned, and he felt depleted. Cold sweat soaked his jersey. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. He’d spent most of it in Erin’s room, comforting her from nightmares. She’d woken up screaming—twice, for God’s sake.r />
  He started to run faster and faster as he thought about his poor little sister, who was always so frightened at night now. He thought about the last time he’d stayed at his mother’s, when she’d been so concerned about how skinny he’d become — and the dark circles under his eyes. But within moments, she was grilling him about his father’s new girlfriend, Molly. His mother was far more concerned about that situation than she was about his health. She was pathetic. So was his father, already smitten (at least that’s the word he used) with this young woman — just two months after separating from his wife. What an asshole.

  Chris poured on the speed until it felt as if his heart was about to burst. He staggered off the track and collapsed onto the cold, damp grass. He started crying.

  He didn’t know how long he sat curled up on the ground, shivering and sobbing. But he noticed someone else on the track, rounding the turn and making his way toward him. Chris quickly tugged the bottom of his jersey up to his face and wiped away the tears and sweat. He tried to catch his breath. He recognized the other runner now, in gray sweats. Tall and lean with wavy, dark hair, it was Mr. Corson. Just keep moving, pal, Chris thought. Get the hell away from me. I don’t feel like talking to anybody.

  Slowing down, Corson smiled and waved at him. Glaring back, Chris just nodded.

  Corson must have gotten the hint, because he trotted past him and started to pick up speed again. Chris let out a sigh. He didn’t mean to be rude. He just wanted to be left alone.

  “Goddamn it!” he heard Corson cry out. “Son of a bitch!”

  Chris saw him hobble off the track and stumble to the ground. Corson grabbed his right leg below the knee and rubbed it furiously. “Damn it!” he howled. He was wincing in pain.

  “Are you okay?” Chris called. His throat was a bit scratchy from crying.

  “I think I pulled a muscle or something,” Corson replied, still grimacing. He rocked back and forth while he massaged his calf. “This seriously hurts. . ”

  Chris got to his feet. “Maybe it’s just a leg cramp,” he said, approaching him. “I get those when I don’t have enough sleep or I’m stressed. It’s best to walk it off.” He stood over the guidance counselor and held out his hand. “Let me help you.”