The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

Dad poured more whiskey for himself. “The nightmares change. Sometimes Mark is falling and I can’t get to him. Sometimes I’m falling and Mark is laughing at me. Sometimes it’s you falling. But the scream is always the same. I woke up almost every night in prison with his echo in my ears. I know what it’s like. You go to bed with acid and wake up with sweat.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Look, Kev,” Dad said. “What I did to Mark was… bad. But I’m a different man now than I was then. Slower to anger. I read. I’m trying to figure out something better to do with my life. You’re a different person than the boy who hurt Robbie too. You don’t sneak out at night, you were more focused on your schoolwork at the end of the year, and you’re doing this play. You made yourself better. You don’t deserve torture.”

  “Will talking about it make the dreams stop?” I waved my glass. “Or should I just drink more of this?”

  Dad stayed silent for a moment, then took the whiskey bottle into the kitchen and put it back in the cupboard. “That’s a bad path to follow, son.”

  The room was a little spinny, now, and my tongue was loose in my head. I heard myself say, “Peter has a whole bar in his house.”

  “Yeah. About that.” Dad sat down again. “What’s going on with you two?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You weren’t freaked about that guy being dead. You were freaked about Peter. Or something close to him. Is it just because he killed a guy? Or because you two are closer than what you told that detective?”

  My mouth was dry and slack at the same time. Words piled up in the back of my throat, but no way in hell was I going to say any of them. Not to Dad. Instead I said, “Me and Peter just hung out. His house is unbelievable.”

  “Kevin—”

  “And Peter is my boyfriend, Dad. I’m gay.”

  The words fell out of my mouth like lead weights and landed on the couch between us. I stared straight ahead, totally not able to believe I’d said that. It just popped out. Dad froze. His mouth was partly open, and his face got red. Silence made the air hot and stuffy. My heart was pounding again, and I couldn’t look at him. My hands shook. He was going to blow a piston. The awful silence went on and on. A weird thought crossed my mind—when Dad threw me out, would he at least let me keep my bike?

  “Jesus fuck.” Without another word, Dad drained the last bit of whiskey and slammed the glass back down. I cringed. Then he grabbed me around the shoulders and held me so tight I could smell the alcohol and sweat. “Jesus fuck. It’s okay, Kevin. It’s okay. Jesus, I love you, and it’s okay.”

  It was the last thing I expected to hear from him. A big lump burst in my throat, and I was crying again. Shit. How many times was I going to do that? I felt light and airy and safe all at the same time, tight in my dad’s arms like a little kid. He knew and he didn’t care. Or he did care, but it wasn’t bad. Or—I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. It was just… good. For once. And it made me bawl like a first grader.

  But I felt guilty too. Peter was in jail, and I was getting feel-good hugs from my dad. Still, I wanted it to keep going. Dad didn’t care that I was gay. An anvil I’d been carrying on my back for years had disappeared. I wanted to cheer and leap into the sky and punch the sun. Why hadn’t I told him earlier?

  “Okay,” Dad whispered into my hair. “Okay. We’re all right. We’re going to be all right. You’re my son, okay?”

  I pulled back a little, into the adult world, and scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Okay.”

  We both inhaled and let out the same heavy sigh at the same time. That made us crack up. Both of us laughed hard on that saggy old couch. It was stupid and not that funny, but the more we tried to stop laughing, the more impossible it became. I laughed until my stomach hurt and I was gasping. Dad did too. That felt nice.

  At last Dad said, “So Peter’s your boyfriend.”

  “Uh-huh.” I sat up straighter and had a strange urge to reach for my whiskey glass. Hm. “We kind of started seeing each other when rehearsals started.”

  “Son of a billionaire. You could do worse.”

  That made me laugh again.

  Dad said, “You know I’ve got a lot of questions, right?”

  I was grinning. “Right.”

  “But since this might take a while,” he continued as he got up, “I want to see if there’s any pizza left to go with this whiskey.”

  ACT II: SCENE II

  KEVIN

  IRIS CALLED to say rehearsal was still on tomorrow evening and she was calling for an extra one in the afternoon. Could I be there? I said I could. She asked how I was doing, and I said I was fine. That wasn’t much of a lie. I was in-the-freezer scared for Peter, but I was on-the-beach happy about Dad, so it kind of averaged out. Iris sounded like she wanted to say more. I quickly said goodbye and hung up.

  Night pressed against the windows, and the muggy summer air felt heavy on my skin. The box fan barely made a difference. I paced the trailer like a lion because I had no idea what was going on with Peter. Worry pushed me back and forth, back and forth. Peter was going to prison for life. I would never see him again. The police would find out about me and Peter.

  Other stuff pushed at me too, stuff I couldn’t put my finger on. It was awful. A thing with jagged teeth was going to jump out of the bushes at me any second, but I couldn’t say what the thing was. For a minute I seriously considered calling Peter’s house, but what could I say? “Hi, I’m your son’s boyfriend and the reason he beat up that guy Les. Maybe he killed him because of me. Anyway, is he still in jail or what?” Sure.

  Dad finally looked up from the book he was reading. “I’d offer you more whiskey, but I think you’ve had more than enough this year.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered and leaned against the front door. “I can’t sit still.”

  He set the book facedown. We’d already done some talking. I’d told him that, yeah, I’d known for a long time I was gay, and no, I’d never been interested in girls, and yeah, I’d fallen pretty hard for Peter, and no, we hadn’t had sex, geez, why do you have to get so nosy, even if you’re my dad?

  “You can’t sit still about the gay thing, or the police thing, or that guy dying?” Dad asked. “Or is it all one big junkyard?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening to Peter,” I burst out.

  Dad checked his watch. “If you want the truth, he’s probably getting out about now.”

  That stopped me. “Out?”

  “Look, buddy.” Dad leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I met a lot of guys in prison, and they were all dirt poor, like us. Didn’t matter if they were innocent or guilty. They were all in jail because they were poor schlubs who couldn’t afford anything but a public defender. The rich guys, they were born with Get Out of Jail Free cards in their mouths. And you can bet the Morse family has a high-powered lawyer with a whole deck of them. Your Peter won’t spend more than a few hours in there.”

  I considered that. It didn’t seem fair. Dad had gone to jail, and quick, because he’d had a public defender, while Peter—

  No. Dad had gone to jail because he’d pushed Mark Brown off a building, and I was on probation because I beat Robbie Hunter almost to death. And Peter….

  “What if he did it?” My mouth formed the words before I could stop them. “What if he killed… that guy?”

  A moment passed. Dad sighed in the way that always meant he was going to say something I wouldn’t like, and my jaw went tight.

  “You would know better than I would, buddy,” Dad said. “I only met him once. But I gotta tell you… he’s a Morse, and in my experience, rich people do what they want, and the hell with everyone else. Would he want to kill that guy Les?”

  Peter’s voice echoed in my head. I’m going to kill him.

  “I can’t think,” I said abruptly. “Going outside.”

  The door slammed behind me, and darkness closed its warm breath around me. I grabbed my bike and pedaled down the starlit road.
The pavement stretched in front of me, long and pale. My chain rattled softly, and my tires hummed on the asphalt. So much was going on, and I couldn’t sort it all out. I tried to empty my head and let it slide away, like the silver road sliding under my tires.

  What did they do with Les’s body? I tried to imagine it lying in one of those steel drawers in a morgue somewhere with a sheet draped over it. Or was it naked? They always put a sheet over bodies for TV shows and stuff, but I read somewhere that real morgues kept them naked so the examiner or coroner or whatever could look. A cold chill clenched my stomach. What if they took swabs of Les’s skin and found my DNA on it? I stopped pedaling, and my bike whooshed silently for several yards while I got myself under control. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t get my DNA off Les because his own DNA would contaminate the sample, right? And that was even if they thought to look and if Les hadn’t showered after he attacked me. Jesus, I hoped he had.

  Houses stared at me with dark eyes as I glided past, and my thoughts wandered back to Peter. His hair was black as the night, and his arms were strong as the asphalt, and he slipped his big-guy hands over my face… and pretty soon I would be writing poetry or some other dumb-fuckery about him.

  I wanted to. I ached to write long love letters to him and sneak them into his room so he’d find them on his pillow. And I thought how sweet it would be to send him flowers—did guys do that for other guys?—and I longed to stand on the stage and shout to everyone in the show that we were a thing.

  I also felt scared. What if his black hair was like the black hair of a bad guy in a movie? What if his strong arms had punched Les into that steel drawer? What if his big guy hands had crushed Les’s skull? I could be in love with a killer.

  Soft summer wind skimmed through my hair. So what if Peter had killed Les? Les had… he had raped me. If anyone deserved to die, it was Les Madigan. But people who killed were bad people. Deep inside there was something wrong with them. I knew because I had almost been one of them. I remembered the complete rage that filled me when I hit Robbie Hunter with a baseball bat, and I remembered how awful and satisfying it was to hear the wood crack his bones. The sound still woke me up at night with ice running down my chest and Robbie’s picture staring at me from the nightstand. How could I have been so horrible? If the cops hadn’t shown up, I would have been a murderer. I hated the police, but they’d stopped me from becoming the worst monster there was.

  My dad was a monster. I was a monster. I came from a family of monsters. No way I would ever let someone get close enough to find out how bad I was.

  But Peter did. And Peter had turned out to be a monster just like me.

  Except.

  I had hurt an innocent person. Peter, on the other hand, had killed Les after Les had hurt me. He’d done it because he loved me. I was a monster. Peter was a monster hunter.

  Was that love, being willing to kill? Love and murder pulled me in two directions until my tendons popped. I didn’t know if I wanted anyone to kill someone for me, even if the someone was Les Madigan. I didn’t want him alive, but I didn’t want him to be killed by Peter either.

  I needed to talk to Peter, but he scared me too. If Peter had killed Les, would he do the same thing to… someone else who got him mad? To my dad? To me? Peter was a billionaire. He could do whatever he wanted. He could buy my home, my stuff, my dad—even me—a hundred times over and never notice. Did people matter to someone like that? Was that why he killed Les? Because Les didn’t matter?

  My jaw tensed as I pedaled. Les was spit on a wad of gum on my shoe. I hated Les. His murder made my heart sing rock songs. But I didn’t want Peter to be the one who killed him, and I didn’t want him to go jail for it. Everything mixed up inside me like acid soup. I needed to talk to someone—yell, shout, scream—but I didn’t have anyone. Dad had just found out I was gay, and my boyfriend had been arrested for murder. How could I tell him that I’d been…? That the guy Peter killed had…?

  My stomach clenched, and nausea forced me to stop by the side of the road and take deep, damp breaths. I won’t throw up, I won’t throw up, I won’t throw up.

  I didn’t throw up. But only barely.

  It was weird. Sometimes I could think the word… the R word… and sometimes I couldn’t.

  The long grass rustled by the ditch. I dropped my bike and jumped back with a yelp. For a moment I was back in the park, and Les was running his hard, sweaty hands over me. His weight was pressing down on me, and his breath was in my ear. My insides shriveled, and my lungs dried up. My heart pounded hard in my ears. I was alone in the dark.

  Then the feeling was gone. The grass moved, and a raccoon ambled onto the road. It caught sight of me and froze. I stared at it, and it stared at me.

  “Get!” I yelled at it.

  The raccoon bolted back into the grass. I stood on the road for a long moment with my dead lungs and my hyper heart until I finally got back on my bike to head home.

  I SLEPT way in. Dad was gone when I woke up. He’d left a note on the kitchen table saying he still had drywall work—yay!—and didn’t know what time he’d be home, but he loved me and hoped I would be okay alone, and he left a smiley face at the bottom. He hadn’t left a smiley face at the bottom of a kitchen-table note in a long time. Huh.

  The phone rang. I jumped up and stubbed my toe on a pile of books. They scattered like they were trying to escape. Forcing my heart back under control, I reached for the receiver, then jerked my hand back. The caller ID screen read Peter Finn Morse and a phone number. Shit.

  The phone rang again, and I turned to stone. What the hell was I supposed to do? Shit. Okay, okay, okay. I took a deep breath and reached for it. But I couldn’t pick up. Instead I ran outside and dropped onto the front stoop with my fingers in my ears for a count of fifty. When I unstopped my ears, the phone was silent. The morning pine-tree shade was already warm. I went back inside. No message light on the answering machine. We were the last family in the world to be stuck with an answering machine instead of voicemail. I guess we were lucky just to have a landline. People on welfare get those free government phones so they can look for jobs, but Dad was a convicted felon, and felons don’t get a lot of government help.

  I was still mixed up. I was glad Peter had called me. He must have a zillion things to do, and he called me rather than do them. I was important to him. Wow. I’d never felt important to a… to a guy like that before. Except he was a killer. Maybe. I still didn’t know what to think.

  To keep my mind off it, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the kitchen table with my Earnest script. My lines were all highlighted in neon orange. I stared at them, willing them to go into my memory. I’d heard somewhere that the best way to memorize something was to start at the back and work your way to the beginning. That way when you ran through stuff, it got easier instead of harder. A lot of my lines were scenes with Peter—Jack—but I tried to ignore that.

  ALGERNON: Where have you been since last Thursday?

  JACK: In the country.

  ALGERNON: What on earth do you do there?

  JACK: When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

  ALGERNON: And who are the people you amuse?

  Gravel popped outside. I shot to my feet and flicked up the bent metal slats that covered the windows. A blue Camaro was pulling into the driveway. My heart jerked hard, and a metallic taste came to my mouth. It had to be Peter. He wasn’t supposed to come here. Not right now. But he did. What should I do?

  Peter got out of the car. His Mustang must have been impounded by the cops, but that wouldn’t stop a Morse, right? His face looked pinched and unhappy, like his shoes hurt and his belt was too tight. I wanted to run out and hug him and tell him it would be okay. I wanted to feel his arms around me. And I wanted him to leave so I could sort out what the hell I was doing. Carefully, silently, I twisted the deadbolt on the door to lock it.

  He took a deep breath, like
he was sucking up courage, and stepped toward the front stoop.

  I fled. I ran to the bathroom, jumped in the tub, and yanked the shower curtain closed. My heart was pounding yet again, so hard it made my eyesight jump. My hands shook with tension, and I cupped them over my ears. That didn’t stop me from hearing him knock.

  “Hello?” came his voice from outside, and I could hear how nervous he was. He knocked harder. “Kevin? Hello?”

  I crouched in the tub, wondering if Peter could hear my breathing. If he would just go away. But at the same time, I also wanted him to come in. Why did I have to try out for that stupid play? Then none of this would have happened.

  The front doorknob rattled. Peter was trying to open it. I almost swallowed my tongue. My toes were clenched tight enough to rip my socks. Through the thin trailer walls, I heard him sigh.

  “Kev? I know you’re there. You have to be. I need to talk to you. To someone. Please?”

  The ache in his voice hurt my stomach. How did he know I was there? My bike. Was it parked at the front stoop? I couldn’t remember. But the truck was gone. For all he knew, I was somewhere with Dad. Shit. Peter didn’t even know I’d told Dad about us. Was there even an us left?

  “Kev?” Another long silence. My legs ached from crouching so long, but I didn’t dare move in case he heard me. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you at rehearsal.”

  Rehearsal. He would be at rehearsal. I had been concentrating so hard on just memorizing lines and trying not to think about Peter himself that I’d forgotten. Of course he’d be at rehearsal. Or maybe not. Maybe Iris would get someone else to play the part. The thought turned my arteries to cement. I didn’t want to play Algy if some other guy played Jack.

  The car crunched away. I waited for a count of one hundred before I got out of the tub and checked the window slats. Empty driveway. Why did I feel so empty too?

  AFTERNOON REHEARSAL was at one. I rode my bike down, glad the day had turned cloudy, though it was definitely still summer. The closer I got to the theater, the tenser my stomach got. Iris liked to say that “on time” was late and “early” was on time, which meant we weren’t supposed to arrive when rehearsal began. We were supposed to arrive early so we could be onstage when rehearsal began. But the closer I got to the Art Center, the slower I rode. I didn’t actually get there until 1:01, which meant I was late—one of those tardies Iris talked about on the first day. Shit.