by Paula Cox
“Run, Forrest, run!” the leader cackles.
“Run, Run!” his pals echo.
The old man looks up, meets my eye, grimaces, and then looks down at the sidewalk.
Right.
I pace down the sidewalk, skirt the old man, and stand in front of the three bastards.
“Walk away.”
The leader cocks his head at me, the sort of gesture that makes me want to grab him by the head and just go snap.
“Say what?”
“I said, walk away. What sort of fucking bastards are you, eh? Taunting an old man? He can’t even walk without a stick and here you are taunting him.”
All their eyes are shot with blood, all their hands shaking. One of the jackrabbits, the one with the ridiculous tattoo, looks around with the snappish paranoia of a person who’s smoked too much.
“Why do you care?” The leader laughs uncomfortably.
Good question. Maybe because I did a bad thing today. I didn’t tell Emily the truth. I could’ve put her out of her misery but I just couldn’t stand the way she was defending him. And now she’s roaming the streets, alone.
“Three.”
“What the fuck—”
“Two.”
“Come on, man—”
“One.”
“Run! Run!” the paranoid one screams, turning on his heels and sprinting away.
The other two study me for a moment, and then decide they don’t like the murder in my eyes. They join their pal.
I go to the old man, who stands at the edge of the street, watching.
“I didn’t need you to do that,” he says in a crackly voice.
“I know you didn’t,” I reply. “Just thought I’d do it anyway.”
“Your good deed for the day?”
“Something like that. How far away do you live, old man?”
“Not far. Five minutes.”
“Want some company?”
He thinks on it, and then nods. “Sure.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
I take another slug of whisky. The old man eyes the bottle as I replace the cap. I unscrew it again. “Thirsty, old man?”
“Wouldn’t mind a sip.”
I hand him the bottle. With a shaky hand, he brings the rim to his mouth and takes a swig.
“Feels good.” He smiles as he hands the bottle back to me.
I walk with the old man toward his apartment, thinking: Do I really think this is going to make up for withholding the truth from Emily like that? Do I really think this makes it alright?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emily
“That isn’t what a brother is supposed to be like,” the old man says quietly.
I’m shocked at myself. This old man asked to talk, and I talked. But I didn’t just talk casually, mentioning a couple of things. In fifteen minutes of breathless ranting, I told this old man as much as I could about my relationship with Patrick. I told him about the orphanages, the apartments, working, and most of all I told him about the beatings. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s like this old man has the power to reach inside of me, pull a couple of strings, and open me up.
When I’m done, I lean back on the bench, feeling hollowed out as though my memories and experiences have been pushed out into the park.
“I know that,” I reply, with an effort. My jaws ache from talking so much. “I know that, old man. Don’t you think I know that? But it’s not that easy.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s my brother.”
“Yes. And that confuses you.”
“Well…yeah.” I look at the old man. He sits comfortably, hands in his laps, as though he hasn’t a care in the world. I wonder who he is, what he does. Maybe he’s a retired doctor or police officer or something. He certainly knows how to quietly unravel the inner life of a person. Or maybe I wanted to share with him—anybody—and he’s just the person who happened to be here. Whatever the case, it feels good to finally unload.
He faces me. “I think people overestimate the important of family,” he says. “Or, at least, family in the strictly biological sense.”
“What do you mean?” I prompt. Patrick is dead! Your brother is dead! I push it back in my mind, focusing instead on the old man. I feel as though I am in the presence of an old sage, a wise man from a fairy tale.
“People think that because you are born to this or that person, or have this or that person as your brother, uncle, sister, whatever, that you owe them something. But let me ask you, why is that? Why must a person be loyal to the person whose blood they happen to share? Why is that the defining characteristic of loyalty?”
“I…” Words desert me. I look inside myself. It seems absurd that I’ve never asked myself this question before, but the truth is, I haven’t. Not in those words, at least. My mind played the Patrick card and that was that. “He’s my brother,” I finish lamely.
“That is not a reason. You can’t just say that he’s your brother and that’s why you stand by him. I’m asking why brotherhood is the defining characteristic of loyalty.”
“Well,” I say, spite in my voice, “I obviously don’t know, do I?”
He flinches. “You should know,” he says. “It sounds to me like loyalty to your brother has been the one constant in your life. And you don’t know the reason for it?”
I blush up to my ears. When he puts it like that, it makes me sound stupid. I turn away from him and watch the ducks for a while, tracking their ripples as they spread and multiply across the water, reaching out with watery hands.
“Perhaps it’s just instinct,” the old man goes on.
“Are you seriously telling me,” I say, gritting my teeth because this old man is casually, easily, tipping my entire worldview upside down, “that you don’t care about your family?”
“I care about my family,” the old man says. “But not my biological family. In my younger years, I made a new family for myself.”
“You got married?”
“No. I…I started a business. Now my colleagues are my family. I’ve earned their loyalty and they’ve earned mine. And that’s what it comes down to, when you get past all the blind devotion. Earning it. You have to ask yourself. Has this person earned your loyalty? What have they done, other than be born to the same parents?”
“He wasn’t always bad,” I mutter. Tears threaten to sprout in my eyes. I fight them back. This man is provoking a maelstrom of activity in my chest, a cacophony of conflicting emotions. But something strange happens the more I talk with him. Before, loyalty to Patrick dominated. It was the status quo. But now I’m thinking…thinking about whether or not this old man might have a point. Perhaps my loyalty was misplaced.
The realization hits me like a gunshot to the chest. My heart pounds in my ears and sweat slides down my forehead.
“Maybe not,” the old man says, his voice soft as he watches this change in me. “But how much bad does a person have to do before you say, enough?”
“I’ve just…” I trail off, shaking my head. “I’ve just never questioned it. Not really. Not until I met…” Not until I met Jude. Not until he showed me that there’s a different way to live. Not until he showed me that a man—even a violent man—doesn’t have to take out his anger and resentment on a woman. Not until I fell in love with Jude and he showed me a whole different side to life.
“I’m scared I won’t know who I am if I just let him go,” I admit.
I question myself for the hundredth time: Why am I sharing with this man? Why am I opening myself up to him? Why am I revealing the soft fleshly places inside of me? But the answer is simple. Just because he’s here and he’s listening and he sounds like he understands. For a long time, I’ve just wanted somebody who understood.
“Sometimes in life,” he says, “you have to make your own family. We find our own lovers, our own friends, our own way in life, but always we shackle ourselves to those we were hurled against in the birth lottery.”
&n
bsp; “You sound like you know a lot about it,” I mutter.
“Oh, I do.” The old man smiles sadly. “I know more about it than most. My father was a cruel man. A cruel, cruel man. The sort of man to kick you in the face to wake up if you fell asleep in his favorite chair. But, oh yes, he had his good side, too. He took us on holidays. He worked hard and kept a roof over my head. But he beat the hell out of me every night until I was fourteen years old. He hated his life and he took it out on me.” A dark note enters the man’s voice. He clenches his fists. Suddenly, he doesn’t seem so old and kind anymore. There’s fire in him. “I killed my father,” he says coldly. “I killed him on my fifteenth birthday. I wouldn’t take it anymore. I had all the same doubts you have, now. I hated myself for what I did. I felt like I’d betrayed him. But the truth is, he was the one who betrayed me. All the beatings, all the hate, nothing can make up for that. It’s difficult to accept that you’re the victim, but sometimes it’s necessary.” He winces. “I haven’t talked about my past for a long time.”
“Nor have I, not really.”
“It feels good to unload, doesn’t it?”
I nod.
We sit in silence for a few minutes.
My kneejerk reaction of seeing Jude covered in Patrick’s blood has faded. In its place is something else, something new, something I never expected to feel. I find myself thinking of Moira and Jude, about how they stood by each other through the hard times and never turned on each other. I find myself comparing their brother-sister relationship with mine and Patrick’s. Patrick was nice every so often, but I don’t know if he ever really loved me, cared for me, or if he just saw me as a punching bag.
And the old man’s words make sense, I think. Loyalty has to be earned. Why did I never think of that before? But then I guess I was too busy playing the Patrick card, wasn’t I? I was too busy playing the mouse. I was too busy dancing to Patrick’s tune, just like I’ve been doing my entire life.
“You seem different now,” the old man says.
“You don’t know me. How could you possibly know if I’m different?”
“Different than when we met.”
“An hour ago?”
“Yes. Is that so strange?”
“People don’t normally transform in an hour, old man.”
“No,” he agrees. “But perhaps you’ve been transforming for a while now, and you’ve only just realized.”
I pause, reflecting, and then say: “Yeah, there might be something in that.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jude
After I help the old man up to his apartment, I return to the streets.
I walk aimlessly, just thinking. I think about Emily, about how we met, about how angelic and perfect she looked when she stepped from the crowd in that cold dark place she had no business being. I think about our sex, about the closeness. I think about how different it is with Emily, how it’s nothing like it was with Anna. I care about Emily, really care in a way that reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart. I want her to succeed, I want her to be happy; there’s so much more to us than just sex.
I wander, checking my cellphone every few seconds and taking slugs of whisky to help me along. My feet lead me to toward the city proper, skyscrapers and yellow cabs and honking horns and chaos. I want to see Emily so bad it’s an ache in my body, starting at my fingers and going all the way to my toes. My whole body yearns for her. I skirt around people and each time I see a woman, I think it’s Emily. But it never is. They’re never as attractive, never as vibrant. No other woman can pull at me like Emily can.
Without even meaning to, I wander into the bar. I didn’t even realize I was heading in this direction before I walk through the door.
The place is empty except for Tool, who sits in the back, head lolling, snoring softly. When the bell above the door rings, he snaps awake, hand going for his gun.
“Oh.” He laughs gruffly. “Thought someone had come to end me, man.”
“Not today,” I mutter. “I thought everyone had the afternoon off.” I join him at the table, legs wobbling a little from the whisky.
“Yeah, we did. But the boss called me up and asked me to sit in for a little bit. Wanted someone to watch the place whilst he went out. No idea where he went, though.”
I wince. “My fault,” I admit. I explain to him quickly about Emily mistaking Barry’s blood for Patrick’s.
“That’s rough, man. Can I have a swig of that?”
I slide the whisky across the table. He takes a long sip and then wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s rough. But why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”
“I just…” I think back on it, at her distraught face, at the reaction which made me question where the hell her allegiance for that prick comes from. It’s damn hard to look into the face of somebody you love and see that they care for a man who’s beaten them countless times. “I just couldn’t stand how she reacted. I don’t know. I got…I got angry. But almost straightaway I regretted it. But by then it was too late. She was already gone. Left her cell, too.”
“Ah.” Tool rolls a cigarette, strikes a match, and lights it. “The boss’ll find her, man. The boss could find a needle in a needle factory.”
“Yeah. But he hasn’t texted me.”
I realize I sound desperate. I hate it, and yet I understand it at once. I am desperate. Desperate to be close to Emily, desperate for her to be safe. When it comes down to it, I’m just standing on the shore, watching helplessly as my parents sink to their deaths. When I think of Emily, I’m that boy all over again, only Emily is sinking into herself, into years of abuse, into a life spent on an unquestioned leash.
“Maybe he’s just talking to her,” Tool offers. “You know how the boss is. Once you get him talking, he doesn’t tend to stop.” He pauses, squints at me. “Jude, man, do you love this girl?”
“Yes,” I say without pause.
Tool flinches; I flinch, too. In this life, you don’t admit how you feel so quickly. But with Emily there is no goddamn question. I love her and the thought of her wandering, somewhere unknown, is like acid in my belly.
“Good for you, man,” Tool says. There’s no judgment in his face, as I expected there to be. But then, I remind myself, Tool is married. “You should’ve told her straight-up it was Barry’s blood.”
“I know.” I lean back, sighing. “I fucking know that. But what’re you supposed to do when the woman you love refuses to give up her abusive brother?”
“The boss’ll talk to her,” Tool says confidently. “He’ll make her see things in a different light.”
“Right,” I murmur, wanting to believe him but finding it difficult. “But you didn’t see the look on her face.”
“I can’t pretend to understand people, man. I never have, not really. Half the time it’s like I don’t even know my own wife. But that’s only ’cause people are fucking hard to understand. Who knows what’s going on behind their eyes, you know? Not me, that’s for sure. But the boss does, and I think you do, too, a little—more than me, anyway.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, genuinely perplexed.
“You’re a good man, Jude. In a different life you would’ve been a vet or a medic or some shit like that.”
We both laugh. Tool says: “I’m serious, man. Everyone says you’re a good man. Nobody would ever say otherwise.”
“Except my marks.”
“Well…” Tool shrugs. “Yeah, except them. But who gives a fuck if killers and rapists and assholes don’t think you’re a good man?”
“Has that whisky gone to your head, Tool?”
“Ha, ha.” He takes another swig. “Not yet, but it’s getting there.”
“I just wish it was simple,” I say.
“What was?”
“How people feel. I wish it was just one way. But with Emily it’s like there are two people inside of her. She still has black eyes from where that piece of shit beat the hel
l out of her, and when I come home and she thinks I’ve killed that same piece of shit—she freezes on me. How does that work?”
“People, man, I’m telling you…”
We drink in silence for a few minutes. I check my cellphone about one-hundred times, but there’s nothing. No texts, no calls. Nothing. I stuff it back into my pocket with a growl deep in my throat. My mind goes into overdrive thinking of all the things that could be happening to Emily right now. Maybe she got drunk and ended up at some dingy bar somewhere; maybe some guy is taking advantage of her. Maybe she ran into Patrick; maybe she’s dead. Why did I let her leave, dammit!