by Susan Perabo
Paul shook his head, stifled the laugh that rose like bile in his throat. So now it had come to this, he thought, liars directing liars. Call in the expert witnesses to oversee their expert fantasy.
Sonny and Ian rose uneasily from their chairs and took a few baby steps into the shot. Neither of them seemed especially anxious to get too close to the spot where Roger lay. They took a perfunctory glance at the scene — the baggie fat with blood, the awkward angle of the leg — then both looked away.
“It’s cool, eh, Sonny?” Ian asked, touching Sonny’s elbow, tugging him back toward the chairs. “Looks about right, yeah? Looks good to me.”
Sonny nodded dumbly. He might have been sleepwalking.
“All right, then,” Lilly said. “Let’s do it.”
Ian
Sonny, what —
Sonny
Forgive me . . .
He raises the ax in the air. Ian screams.
“No!” Sonny shouted, stumbling forward into the scene.
“Cut!” Lilly yelled. She turned to Sonny, annoyed. “What is it?”
“It’s wrong.”
“No, it’s cool, Sonny,” Ian said gently. Again he reached for Sonny’s elbow, pulled him back a few steps. “It’s all right. It’s fine.”
“He didn’t scream like that,” Sonny said to Lilly. “He didn’t scream at all.”
“I have to scream,” Roger protested from his spot on the floor. “Somebody cuts off your foot, you scream.”
“I’m telling you right now,” Sonny said, turning on him furiously. “He did not fucking scream.”
Lilly raised her eyebrows and glanced at the cameraman, who was grinning sheepishly. Paul’s stomach clenched. Stop, he wanted to say to his father. Please, just stop. Ian was apparently thinking the same thing. “Don’t worry about it, man,” he said calmly to Sonny. “Let me scream. What difference does it make?”
Sonny looked at Ian with pleading eyes, frantic words forming on his lips.
“No,” Ian said, shaking his head to the unspoken words. “No, Sonny. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Let ’em do it however they want.”
Lilly Douglass cleared her throat. “Take two!” she called.
Ian nudged Sonny into his chair, looked down briefly at Paul and smiled weakly. Paul turned to the scene, to the basement, watched the ax rise in Dale Markham’s unwavering hand. It was a real ax, and the glint from the edge of the blade in the set lights blinded him momentarily as the ax reached its highest point. Then the ax was falling and Paul looked back at Ian. His eyes were shut.
• • •
“Can it, asshole!”
Paul started awake. His sleep had been fitful, full of whispers and darkened faces. Had he dreamed Can it asshole? No . . . it was Ian’s voice that had shouted, startled him from his half-sleep. He tumbled out of bed, drowsy and disoriented, and wandered into the living room. His father was sitting on the balcony with a bottle clenched between his thighs. Ian was standing at the iron railing, shouting at somebody.
“Go home, you stinkin’ drunk!”
“What’s up?” Paul asked, stepping outside.
“Kathy!” a voice bellowed from below. “Please! Kathy!”
Ian turned to Paul with a smirk. “Some idiot’s lookin’ for his girlfriend. Thinks she’s in the hotel somewhere.”
“Kathy!”
Ian turned back to the street. “Kathy’s up here givin’ me a blow job!” he shouted. “She says she don’t want to see you!”
Paul turned to his father, expecting some kind of reaction. You couldn’t just yell blow job from your balcony, right? But Sonny’s expression didn’t change. His mouth was hanging open at an odd angle, as if he were asleep. He was shirtless; his belly hung over the tight band of his sweatpants and pressed against the wet lip of the liquor bottle. Fucking pathetic, Paul thought. Fucking —
“C’mere,” Ian said, gesturing to Paul. “Take a look at this guy.”
Paul scooted past his father and joined Ian at the edge of the railing. Nine stories below, half lit by streetlights, a man about his father’s age stood with his arms outstretched and his head tilted up.
“Kathy!” he wailed.
Paul smiled. “She’s givin’ us blow jobs!” he shouted euphorically. He spun around to look at his father; still no reaction. He’d never felt so free in his life! He could do anything, say anything, and no one could stop him. And the guy, way down there, he couldn’t hit back.
Ian laughed and elbowed him in the ribs. “Check out those sweet titties, Paulie!”
“Those are some sweet tits!” Paul shouted.
“Cut it out,” Sonny said softly from behind him.
“She’s doing all of us!” Paul shouted. “All of us at once!”
The voice, still soft, but a hint of authority behind it: “I said cut it out.”
Paul turned to his father. “No,” he said.
Sonny sat back. His eyes were two dark holes. “Alrighty,” he said. “I’ll just sit here quietly. Nobody has to pay me any attention. You two go on about your business. If anybody wants anything from me I’ll just be sitting here quietly.”
Ian turned to him. “Why don’t you go to bed?”
“It’s early,” Sonny said. “I’m just gettin’ started.” He took a drink from the bottle, offered it to Ian.
“I’m done,” Ian said, waving it away.
Sonny shrugged, then held the bottle out to Paul. “Wha’dya say, tough guy? Have a drink with the old man?”
Paul stared at him, bewildered, his brain turning flips in his head. A small sound came from his mouth, a pointless release of air with no word attached.
“Jesus, Sonny . . .” Ian reached out and snatched the bottle from Sonny’s grip, dropped it over the balcony railing. A few seconds later Paul heard it shatter on the sidewalk.
“What the fuck!” the voice shouted from below.
“Have another drink — you’ll feel better,” Ian yelled. Then he turned to Sonny. “What’re you thinking, man? Kid’s twelve years old.”
“You think I don’t know how old my own kid is?”
“I think you’re having a really shitty day,” Ian said wearily. He rubbed the corner of his mouth, winced. “I think you need a break. And I think you need to give Paul a break.”
“Forget it,” Paul said. “I —”
Sonny stood up slowly. It wasn’t like Ian standing slowly, wasn’t anywhere near uncoiling; it was like an old man lifting himself from a soft, low chair that he’d been sitting in for six hours. “You trying to tell me how to raise my own son, you moron?”
Ian didn’t move an inch. He shook his head. “Go to bed, man. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“No I won’t,” Sonny said. “And stop telling me what to do. You think you own me? Think you can hold it over me forever?”
Ian scowled. “You’re talking crazy. Why don’t you just shut up and go to bed?”
“Kathy!”
“Let’s all go to bed,” Paul said hopefully. He didn’t feel so free anymore, felt in fact that the balcony was a cage they’d all been dropped into by some mad scientist, that — if the scientist’s hypothesis was correct — someone would be eaten before morning.
Sonny looked at him briefly, blinked twice, then turned back to Ian. “You think you can say whatever you want to me, don’t you?” he asked. He smirked and wavered a bit on his feet, an idiot drunk at last call, picking a fight he’d have no chance of winning. “You think I’ll let you roll right over me. You got all the cards, don’t you Nazi boy?”
“Don’t push it, Sonny.”
“Why? What’re you gonna do? Gonna kick my ass? Gonna kick me when I’m down like you did those nigger boys?”
“Don’t do this, man,” Ian pleaded. “You’ve had a bad day. We all know that. Just sleep it off, okay? You —”
“Just get it over with!” Sonny shouted. He teetered on his feet and grabbed hold of Paul’s shoulder for balance. “I know you want to. I know you�
�re just dying to spill the whole —”
“C’mon man, I —”
Sonny dug his fingernails into Paul’s bare shoulder. “Just tell him, why don’t you? He’s just sittin’ here waiting for you to tell him. Can’t you see that? You think I fucking care anymore? He’s just —”
“Dad . . .” Paul squirmed in pain. “Dad, that hurts.”
Ian grabbed Sonny’s forearm with one hand; with the other, he pried the trembling fingers loose one by one, freeing Paul from his father’s grip.
“Please,” Sonny said. “I want you to tell him. Don’t tell him. Please? Please?”
“Sonny . . .” Ian said gently. “He already knows.”
Chapter Eight A cloud of cigarette smoke loomed just beyond the foot of Paul’s bed. Below it, on his knees with his back to his son, Sonny was picking rumpled clothes from the floor; he shook out, folded, then set each article of clothing carefully into the duffel bag beside the dresser. Paul lay motionless, his eyes open to slits, watching his father go about this odd business. He did not want to ask him what he was doing. He thought perhaps if he remained silent long enough his father would have time to reconsider, return the clothes to their heaps on the floor, go back to bed. From the way the sun slanted through the room, Paul knew it was early, probably just the other side of night. Maybe his father was still drunk. Dressed in only blue pajama bottoms and bath slippers, Sonny packed slowly, thoughtfully, almost cautiously. Sometimes before he folded a shirt he held it out in front of him and looked at it for several moments, as if it might contain some secret truth.
“Paul,” he said sharply, without turning.
Paul quickly closed his eyes, tried to breathe evenly. The zipper scratched around the bag; the small silver latch clicked into place.
“Get up, Paul.”
Now he opened his eyes. Still his father had not turned or risen, remained on his knees at the foot of the bed as if praying or vomiting.
“Dad? What’re you doing? What’s goin’ on?”
Perhaps feigned confusion would stall his father, would make him pause just long enough to ask, yeah, hey, what the hell was going on? But it didn’t work. Sonny stood slowly, turned.
“Time to go.”
Paul sat up. “Go where?”
“Home.” Sonny dropped his cigarette on the carpet and stepped on it with his slipper. “I changed your ticket, called your mom. She’s gonna pick you up in Harrisburg this afternoon.”
“Are you comin’?”
He already knew the answer, but he asked anyway, out of some tender hope that maybe his father had decided they had both had enough, that now that all skeletons were loosed from their enormous closet those same skeletons could just keep on dancing right on down the road and the world as it had been before could be promptly and magically reconstructed. Yesterday he’d wanted to leave his father behind, maybe forever. But today, this morning, he just wanted things to go back to the way they had been. But there was nothing in Sonny’s face that indicated this might be even a remote possibility. His eyes were weary, his lips bloodless.
“No,” Sonny said. “Just you.”
“I’m leaving in a couple days anyway. Can’t I stay till then?”
Sonny cleared his throat belaboredly, searching for words in the scrape of cigarettes. “I don’t think it’s right for you to be here anymore,” he finally said. “I don’t want you hanging around Ian, don’t want a repeat of the other day. Next time you might get caught in the middle. I can’t have that.”
The lie was so outrageous it propelled Paul out of bed. “I wanna go home anyway,” he said bluntly, hoping it would hurt his father, scare him, even humiliate him. He possessed so few weapons; he had to utilize the ones he had. “I was thinking about it yesterday. I’m glad to go.”
He pulled off his T-shirt and threw it onto the duffel, then stared at his father, daring him to meet his eyes. At that moment Ian hopped into the room, steadying himself with one hand against the door frame.
“What’s up?” he asked, yawning. “It’s like six o’clock, you guys.”
“Paul’s leaving,” Sonny said. “He’s going home.”
“Wow,” Ian said. “How come?”
Sonny scratched the back of his neck, vigorously, as if he’d been struck with poison ivy. “Because I say so. Because I’m his father.”
“Hmmm,” Ian said. He looked back and forth between Paul and Sonny sleepily, processing this new information. Paul caught his eye; though still bruised from the fight at Disney, it had turned almost sky blue in its healing. Ian gave a brief smile and Paul looked away.
“I’ll go too,” Ian said.
Sonny blinked. “What?”
Ian shrugged. “If Paul’s going then I’m going. I’m sick of this place anyhow.”
Sonny shook his head. “You should stay. They need you.”
Ian cackled. “They don’t need me. They hate my guts, every one of ’em. And you know what? They don’t need you much either. Why don’t you come with us? Why don’t we all get out of here?”
Paul’s head was spinning. Another new Ian: an Ian who would manipulate his father into leaving, who would take his side, who would back Sonny into a corner. A safe corner. Home.
“But we wrap in a couple weeks,” Sonny said, just on the cusp of desperate. “You stay here with me. Let Paul get back to school.”
Ian took two hops across the room and sat down heavily on the foot of Paul’s bed. He rubbed his face, groaned, then looked up at Sonny. “Haven’t you had enough, man? Really, haven’t you? Yet?”
Sonny clenched his jaw. “I’m staying,” he said firmly.
“Fine,” Ian said, shrugging. “I’m going.”
He got up and left the room without so much as another glance at Sonny, who pressed his eyes with the heels of his hands, rocked a little on his unsteady legs. Paul felt sorry for him. He couldn’t hate him now, looking like he did, no matter how many lies he told. He would be here alone. It was like dropping an infant in the middle of the ocean.
“Dad . . .” he started.
“Get the rest of your shit together,” Sonny said.
Their plane sat at the gate at LAX for nearly an hour — mechanical problem, a valve that needed replacing. Fate, Paul thought hopefully. His father would have an extra slice of time, enough silent moments alone in the suite to realize he was a fool for staying behind. Any minute now, he would sprint breathlessly on board, flop down in the open seat in the row in front of them, look over his shoulder and give Paul a smile, a knowing, easy smile that said you had to know I couldn’t let you go.
“Think those guys know what they’re doing?” Ian asked, nodding out the window. His chin was three different shades of blue.
Paul followed Ian’s gaze. There were two men in yellow jumpsuits and giant headphones standing under the wing of the plane, signaling to each other with their hands.
“Probably out partying last night,” Ian said. “Probably trying to remember what plane they’re working on.”
“My mom’ll kill me if I die,” Paul said, imagining the 747, a twisted ball of silver and fire, dropping from the sky somewhere in the broad Midwest, while his mother waited impatiently at the Harrisburg airport.
Ian laughed. “That’s kinda funny. That’s what your dad said when we were in the basement. You know what, though? If we crash?”
“What?”
“Bet they’d make a movie out of it.”
Paul smiled despite himself. A hint of movement at the front of the cabin caused him to swivel his head in anticipation. But no. Only a flight attendant with an armful of pillows. Fine, he thought. Let his father stay here if that was what he wanted. The intercom crackled and the pilot announced that the mechanical problem had been fixed, the broken part replaced, that they’d be pulling back from the gate shortly.
“He’s a bastard,” Paul decided, as the wheels folded up under them and the city disappeared in the morning below. “A crazy, stupid bastard.”
“Sett
le down, jocko,” Ian said. He was leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed. “You’re just pissed.”
“You thought he’d come, didn’t you?”
Now Ian opened his eyes, smiled wearily. “Kinda.”
Paul twisted uncomfortably in his seat. He was burning up. His hair stuck to the back of his neck and the seat belt was wearing a line of sweat across his middle. “What’s he want to stay there for anyway? They probably all think he’s a freak, the way he was acting yesterday. Isn’t he embarrassed?”
“Not as embarrassed as he would be at home.”
“But nobody knows. Nobody but you and me.”
Ian shook his head. “Don’t matter anymore. He’s blown a gasket, man. He wouldn’t even be able to look at your mom, much less you.”
“But I don’t care,” Paul said. “I don’t care what happened.”
Ian looked at him for a long time. It seemed to Paul that Ian was looking right through his face and into his head, at all those thoughts squirming around in the muck that he himself couldn’t make any sense of.
“Yeah you do,” Ian said.
Paul turned to the window. Did he? Below them, the business of the world continued. They had reached an altitude where the only things he could be certain of were freeways, swimming pools, and baseball diamonds. From this height, who really cared what his father had done? Down there were dads and moms and sons and daughters spinning their own private webs of lies that he knew nothing of and never would. So what did it matter, really? His father’s lie was one more victimless crime, perpetrated on a world that expected stories to unfold in certain ways. His father had told the story that everyone wanted to hear. And Ian had told it too, had gone along. If there was any victim, wasn’t it him?
Ian was asleep, his cheek against his shoulder, his swollen lips parted. Paul looked at him, tried to figure out what it was that drove him to do the things he did. His father he could understand; his goal was to save face, to remain the hero everyone thought he was. But Ian’s motivation was a mystery. Why lie? Why cover for his father, a man he didn’t know until the day he wound up beside him in a cold, dark basement? Ian was too full of contradictions, unreconcilable. How could you save a stranger and then turn around and bash a kid’s head into an iron railing? How could you be a hero and a monster at the same time?