Hurt People

by Cote Smith

  She went quiet for a while on the phone, listening to Sandy and replying with the occasional “mm-hm” and “I know.” I pictured my dad out in the parking lot, listening in. I pictured him jotting short notes in his police pad. R hit boys? MW slapped R. R & MW split? He would underline the last line, maybe draw a smile next to it.

  I stopped listening and tried to play with my toys, like my brother was his. He was in the middle of one of his epic plots. One man had a tough decision to make. Should he go after the gang who wiped out his entire family, a journey he knew could take the rest of his life, cost him who knows what, or should he stay behind with his new bride, the sister of his fallen wife, and start a new family? The man was having a terrible time deciding. The sister pleaded with him to stay, to appreciate what he had here in front of him. There’s nothing out there but more sorrow, she said. More misery. If you go, you’ll never find anything good again.

  My brother made the man nod, as if in agreement. He put the toy man’s hand to his toy chin to make him think. He gave the man a monologue. Maybe it would be better to stay. Maybe his new wife was right. The man turned and looked at the wife. He extended his plastic hand and put it to his wife’s plastic cheek. He wants to stay, I thought. Make him stay.

  * * *

  There was a loud pounding on our apartment door. My brother and I were sleeping in the living room. The hallway light flicked on and through sleepy eyes we watched as our mother shuffled to the door in a tank top and short shorts. She undid the chain and told whoever was knocking to hold their horses.

  Rick burst in. He brushed past my mother and turned on the kitchen and living room lights, stunning my senses.

  “Hey,” my mother said. “Hey, hey.”

  Rick ignored her. He stomped into the living room and almost stepped on my brother and me with his work boots. His eyes were red, I assumed from the gasoline he reeked of.

  “You two rubes need to go to your room,” he said. “Hear me?” My brother and I sat up, confused. I scooted my back to the box fan. “Hello?” Rick said, cupping his good hand over his mouth to make a megaphone. “Earth to morons. Come in, morons. Get your asses to your room. Your mother and I need to talk.”

  “Rick,” my mother said, “we’ve done our talking for the day. Go home.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But I didn’t say what I wanted to say.” He stepped around my brother and eased himself into the couch, careful not to bump his injured arm, wrapped in a new sling, a darker blue than the one before. “I feel like … I feel like I let my anger get the best of me. Earlier. But now I’m ready for a real sit-down.” He patted the empty spot next to him. “So sit down.”

  My mother rubbed her arms like it was cold. “Boys, you better go to your room. Take your fort with you.”

  My brother stood up, pillow in hand like a shield. “Why do we have to go? We were here first.”

  “Just do it, OK?” my mother said, her voice remaining calm. “Because I said so.”

  “So,” my brother said.

  Rick laughed. “See, that’s what I’m talking about. They don’t listen.” He leaned back in the couch and scratched the skin beneath his sling. “Boys need rules. That’s what I was trying to tell you. If not, they run wild. Go down the wrong road.”

  “Oh, shut up,” my brother said. “Nobody wants you here. You’re just a jerk who won’t leave.”

  Rick pushed himself out of the couch, his eyebrows raised. “What did you say to me?”

  “You heard me. Jerk.” My brother threw the pillow at Rick and Rick caught it.

  “Stop it,” my mother said.

  Rick dropped the pillow and raised his hand to my mother. “It’s OK.” He stepped around the coffee table, toward my brother. “So you want a repeat of the golf course? Is that it?”

  “I want you to leave,” my brother said. “That’s what I want.”

  Rick popped his good knuckles against his chest. “You need to go to your room. You need to take your baby bro and beat it, before it beats you.”

  “Rick,” my mother said.

  “See,” my brother said, not backing down. “See how he is?”

  “Oh, and how am I?” Rick said. “How am I exactly?”

  “You’re stupid. Too dumb for my mom.”

  There was a pause. Rick glanced at my mother, and for a moment it looked like he expected her to defend him, to say something nice about him so he wouldn’t have to say something mean to my brother or hit him again. But my mother remained quiet.

  “Oh, now I’m the dumb one?” Rick said. “This coming from the brothers with half a brain between them.”

  “That’s half more than you got,” my brother said. He smiled a bit, feeling confident now, sensing he was winning. “You have all your rules, but you don’t get that nobody wants them.”

  “No?”

  “No. Nobody cares.”

  “I care.”

  “So?” my brother said. “Nobody cares if you care. Nobody cares about you, either. You don’t belong here.”

  Again Rick looked at my mother, who opened her mouth but still didn’t say anything.

  “Well, if I don’t belong here, idiot, then where exactly do I belong?”

  My brother took a step back, putting some distance between himself and Rick. He curled his lip like one of his villains, and I knew whatever he said next was going to be something mean, something he had wanted to say for a long time, but had been waiting for the right moment. Waiting for Rick to fall into his trap, for Rick to be his weakest.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” my brother said. “You belong in prison. With the rest of the scum.”

  Rick didn’t look at my mother for help this time. He lunged at my brother, one arm raised like a crippled bear. But my brother was ready and easily jumped away.

  “No!” my mother yelled, breaking her silence. She jumped in between them and stuck out her arms. “Cut it out! You,” she said to Rick. “Sit down on the couch.” She turned to my brother. “You, take your brother and go to your room. Now.”

  “Did you see that?” my brother said. “See what I mean? Tell him to leave.”

  My mother grabbed my brother by his arm and dragged him away from Rick, into the kitchen. She bent over him and put her finger in his face. “I’ve had enough of this. You need to say you’re sorry and go to your room.”

  “No,” my brother said. “I’m not going to say sorry. You don’t even like him. You know you don’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” my mother said. “You don’t talk to people like that. I don’t care who they are, or what they’ve done.”

  She shoved my brother toward the living room, and his face lost any sense of pride he felt from beating Rick. He walked over to Rick and stood in front of him, arms at his side. But he did not apologize. Instead he turned and kicked the box fan over, the same way our dad kicked our TV the day he left us for good. My brother looked at our mother a last time and went to our room, leaving me and our blankets behind.

  “I’m sorry,” my mother said to Rick. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He didn’t mean it.”

  Rick slid off the couch’s arm and into his original spot. He wouldn’t look at my mother. He stared at our coffee table, thinking of things I could only guess. Prison, maybe. His cell. My mother went to him and sat in the spot he’d patted earlier. She took a throw pillow and slid it gently under his arm. Neither of them said anything, and the only noise in the apartment came from the box fan, lying on its back from my brother’s kick, whirring loudly like a vacuum lifted off the ground, begging for someone to put it down.

  I stood the fan up. Part of its front plastic was broken off, and there was a hole big enough to fit my hand through.

  “Go to your room,” my mother said. “I won’t say it again.”

  * * *

  Exhausted from his anger, my brother fell asleep right away. I lay in bed listening to his heavy, troubled breathing for what I thought was an hour before realizing I was thirsty, th
at I could use a glass of mixed milk. When I opened our bedroom door, I knew Rick wouldn’t be there. I could feel that he wasn’t. In bed with the lights off, I hadn’t heard my mother and Rick yell at each other, like I thought I would. My mother hadn’t told Rick that he couldn’t talk to us like that, that he shouldn’t threaten to hit us, and that his way of doing things was wrong. Rick hadn’t gotten mad and yelled back, like my dad might’ve done, shouting he was doing his best, and tough luck if she didn’t like his methods. No one was told to get out, that they were through for good this time. No doors were slammed. The only sound that ever came was a call from my dad, fifteen minutes after Rick left, asking how my mom was, and if everything was all right.

  My mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, drinking a cold cup of coffee. I opened the fridge and poured a glass of milk and tried not to look at her. When I finished my milk, I put my glass in the sink and turned to leave.

  “Rinse your glass out,” my mother said. She wasn’t facing me, but knew I had forgotten. “You and your brother, you always forget. Or maybe you just don’t listen.” I rinsed the glass out and stood by the sink, watching the water swirl down the drain, unsure what to do, what to say. “Come here,” my mother said. “Come sit by me.” She pulled a chair out with her foot. “Things haven’t been good lately. Have they?”

  I shrugged. Her breath tasted of coffee and wine.

  “No, they haven’t,” she said. “I know that. I wish there was something I could do, you know, but I don’t know what.” She kicked me under the table, by accident. “Do you? Do you have any ideas?”

  I could feel my mother’s eyes on me, but I continued to not look at her. I focused on everything else in the kitchen instead. The empty cookie jar. The splintered square table. My mother’s coffee cup. I closed my eyes and imagined each item disappearing, being sold by my mother when something bad happened and we needed the money. I imagined having to say goodbye to everything in the apartment, one by one.

  “The pool,” I said. “You could take us to the pool.”

  My mother laughed. “Is that it? Is that all you guys want?” I nodded. “All right, cute boy. If you think that’ll do it, then the pool it is.”

  She sipped her coffee some more, and I got up to go back to bed. She kissed me on the cheek and said she loved me.

  “You promise?” I said.

  “I promise.”

  twelve

  I WOKE BEFORE my brother. I didn’t like doing this, being out in the world before him, but there was a sound. It was the dumb buzzing of my mother’s alarm, beeping me out of my sleep. I closed my eyes and sent her a mental message to turn the thing off. The message didn’t get there. I put my head under my pillow and fake suffocated myself. That didn’t stop the sound either.

  I stomped down the hall and knocked on my mother’s door. Soft, then loud, then angry. I hated this. She slept like my brother, not lightly like me. I banged three more times and threw the door open, letting it whack the wall. I went straight for the alarm and mashed buttons until I found the snooze.

  Another sound, this one from beyond our walls. It was the early chirp of a bird, calling to one of his buddies. My mother’s window was open, and I could feel the morning breeze fly by, puffing out the window’s thin curtain. I breathed in the air, which smelled of chlorine, tasted like the pool.

  I turned to the mess of covers in my mother’s bed. It was dark in the room, blacker than the hall. “Are we still going to the pool?” I said. The lump didn’t respond. “Mom.” Nothing. I bumped the bed with my hip. “You promised,” I said. “We’ve got new moves to show you. You’ve got to see our new moves.”

  When there was still no movement, I put my hand on the blanket where I thought her hip would be, but the covers caved. I felt all around, before diving into the cold blankets. She wasn’t here. She was supposed to be, but she wasn’t. I looked at the alarm to try to make sense of this. Its double zeros looked like surprised eyes.

  I walked to the kitchen, knowing my mother wasn’t there. My brother was there, though, sitting at the table, eating a big bowl of cereal.

  “I used the last of the milk,” he said.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  He pointed his spoon at a sticky note on the fridge. She had arranged her words like a poem.

  Boys, Rick is sick.

  Had to run to work. Should be home

  after lunch. Stay inside. Sorry

  NO POOL.

  I Love You.

  I crumpled the note in my hand. “She said she would be here.”

  “What do you care, stableboy? Dad’s picking you up later anyway.”

  I sat down and stared at my brother’s cereal. “That isn’t milk,” I said. “I hate this.”

  “I know,” my brother said.

  “Rick was fine last night.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She told me.”

  “That’s your problem,” my brother said. “You’ve got to stop listening to her. She just says things.” He stabbed a few flakes. “So does Dad. You know he’s the one who messed up Rick? Yeah, I heard them talking last night. Rick was here until like two, begging. What a fucking baby.”

  He took a final violent bite of cereal. Two G.I. Joes from a forgotten plot lay in the middle of the table. I made the Army guy my dad. The guy with the metal head, I turned into Rick. Metalhead wouldn’t tell my dad what he knew about the Stranger, so my dad had returned to the golf course, confronted him in the cafeteria, or in the golf cart garage. My dad said, Listen, Metalhead, you know what the Stranger has done, what he’s promised to do. Stop playing games. Metalhead scoffed, twirled his keys around his finger, the rabbit’s foot a green blur. I could help, he said, but I also could not. So the Stranger wants you out of the picture? Seems to me that’s something we have in common. And maybe my dad would lunge for him then. Or maybe he’d ask him one more time, politely, with respect, before Rick—before Metalhead—told him to pound sand. You don’t get it, he would say. I don’t like you. I’m not like you. When I get ahold of something good, he would say, putting two fingers in my dad’s face, shaping them into snake fangs, which would paralyze my leg a few days later—when I get what I want, I don’t let go.

  “Dad pushed him,” my brother said. “That’s all I know.”

  A moment later there was a knock on our door, our dad telling us to let him in.

  “What will you do?” I asked my brother. “When I’m gone.”

  A worm of a smile wiggled its way across my brother’s face. He stood up, patted me on my shoulder. “The stableboy is gone, so I guess I’ll ready the horses.”

  * * *

  My dad put me in the cruiser. As I waited for him to walk around and get in the driver’s side, I looked out at our apartment building, its dull brown bleached light by the sun. Tall maples curtained the front windows. I tried to see through those curtains, through those walls and into our apartment, to guess what my brother was doing.

  I saw nothing. I felt like I’d left recess early, and everyone was having fun without me.

  I shook my head. I put Sandy’s words in my mind and told myself my brother would be fine. Where would he go? Where can anyone go? When my thoughts began to clear, I saw the smoking lady, this ghost of early summer, by the dumpster. She was smoking and talking to someone. I couldn’t tell who, not until my dad backed out and pointed the car away from the Frontiers. We drove too fast for me to be sure, but I was almost positive the person the smoking lady was talking to was Chris.

  * * *

  That night I was tucked in. I was put to bed and promised to. My dad wasn’t going out. Not tonight. He patted the blanket and asked if I wanted a story. No, I told him, which wasn’t true. I wanted a story, just not from him.

  In the middle of the night I was woken by water rushing through the pipes above the bed. My dad must’ve used the bathroom upstairs. Minutes later, he was standing over me. Son, he whispered. Son. He couldn’t see me, or tell if I was sleeping, and
for a moment I studied him, the way he waited, impatiently, his arms crossed, his body in full uniform.

  “I have to run to work.”

  “Now?” I said. The word came out as more whimper than whisper.

  “Yes, it’s an emergency.”

  “Is it him?”

  “Don’t know what it is yet.” I sat up, but held the blanket close. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll lock the door and you’ll go back to sleep.”

  “What if he comes?”

  “He won’t. He’s far away.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, if it is him, then that means he’s not here, right? He can’t be two places at once. No one can.”

  He patted me one more time and left, ascending the cheap, squeaky stairs.

  * * *

  I woke up the next morning with the world lapping around me. I ran upstairs to see my dad, to have him sit me down and say, Son, we got him. But the upstairs was empty. No notes, no poems, nothing. I made peanut butter toast and tried not to think about the worst possible things. I stayed away from the basement, where the spiders lived. I stayed away from the stairs, which led to my dad’s room, which led to his closet, and to the tape.

  My dad came home a half hour later. The Stranger tip had been a bust. Some bored teen playing a prank. I pictured a swarm of patrol cars swooping in on the battery factory, only to find nothing. Or they found a boy, my brother, grinning, hands up in a fake apology.

  But my dad had to go back to work. The false lead had angered the Chief, who didn’t want to spend his last damn days on the job chasing a ghost. My dad needed to work hard, to work the morning after the night, if that’s what it took.