by David Connor
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Mrs. Q already told her to stop directing me.” Carrie sighed. “She says if there’s a problem with my performance, it’s her job to help me work through it, not L…” She cut herself off when Tuptim, A.K.A. Laura, approached.
“Bye, Charlie. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Laura.”
I smiled at the girl and got nothing back.
“I’ll see you back at Shelby’s.” Carrie offered a hug that told me she needed me to squeeze her tight in return.
“I do have to pick up Wilbur, but you should probably be asleep by the time I get there.”
“You’re such a dad.”
I smiled at that, too. “Someday, maybe.”
“I thought Patrick was coming.”
“So did I.” Every time the auditorium door had opened, every time the one in the lobby did to the courtyard outside, I expected him to be the one coming through it. “He probably sat down to have tea with whoever he was delivering medicine to. He’ll be sorry he missed your rehearsal, though.”
She touched the pendant at my heart, like Shelby had not three hours earlier. “This is for him, huh?”
“It is.”
“And I bet he wears your initial.”
“How did you know?”
“It only makes sense. I was there when the love story began.”
It was nice to see Carrie’s emotion change, to see her smile.
“Maybe not when it began, but to see it grow, for sure,” she said. “For chapter two. Patrick would definitely wear your initial.”
Before I could respond to that, Carrie was swept up in another wave of teenagers and virtually carried out onto the deck on the other side of the doors. I loved seeing how most of her peers seemed to love being around her. Before I could make it outdoors, before I could even hit Patrick’s picture on my contacts list to check on him, Mrs. Quintero cornered me again with her wish list.
“If it’s too much, start at the top, do what you can, and ignore the rest.”
“Not too much at all. Whatever the store can’t do, I will, using my employee discount.”
“You’re too kind.”
“I was into theater myself,” I said. “Way back in the day.”
“Really? What shows?”
This led to a fifteen-minute conversation about Rogers and Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim, one that wasn’t actually torture. Still, I was glad to get away to head to my car, thinking perhaps Patrick was waiting there to surprise me. I could imagine him wearing a springtime coat, with nothing on top underneath but the tie.
The parking lot had emptied out. There was a muggy sort of haze hanging in the air, from the warmth of the day, even as the night had become quite chilly. I smelled cigarette smoke and figured a couple of teenagers might be partaking in one last illicit puff or two before taking off for home. Once Mrs. Quintero pulled out, there were only two vehicles left, mine way across the pavement, and the one with a telltale orange glow sticking out the open window. Patrick’s was nowhere in sight.
“Hmm.”
When I walked by the one with the tokers, I overheard something that broke my heart.
“It’s not bad enough I have to kiss a…I have to kiss one that’s a…”
The sentiment, even without the worst of the words, would have gotten me in the chest. The epithets, the first racial, the second one homophobic, punched me in the gut. My first thought was the speaker had been Laura, possibly talking about Carrie. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think Carrie, as Charlie, identified as gay and was out to her classmates. I had no idea what her sexual orientation was. She hadn’t yet shared that part of herself with us. Not that one had to be out—or even gay—to be called the F word more disgusting than the one that rhymed with duck. It didn’t matter, anyway. The slur spoken was offensive either way, no matter what gender Carrie was attracted to.
2019 wasn’t supposed to be this way anymore, especially among the young. They were the promise of a less hateful, more enlightened future. That had always been the hope. It was one of those moments when my conscience and character battled with my strength. I knew I should confront this person, whether it was Laura or not, whether she was speaking about Carrie or someone else entirely. I ended up feeling like a pretty lousy jerk myself, because as I walked by the car, all I said was “Be nice,” not even directly at the people inside, but definitely loudly enough for them to hear me. I sucked as a human being.
Karma agreed. When I got to my car, as I watched the taillights from the other disappear down the long, winding hill that was the high school’s driveway, I noticed my front, passenger side tire was flat.
“Crap.” I popped the trunk. The sound I heard was different than the one I’d been expecting. I knew that but proceeded anyway. Rifling around a bit, air compressor or spare, I wondered which way I was going to have to go.
Back to the front of the car, down on my hands and knees, I inspected the tire.
“You need this?”
Recognizing immediately that the voice speaking to me wasn’t Patrick’s, my chest and gut seized all over again.
Chapter 5
“Answer me, G-Man.”
I jumped at the feel of cold hardened steel under my hair at the back of my neck. There was a ton of light in the parking lot. I would have seen anyone who’d been there, unless they didn’t want me to.
“What are you doing here?” Once I’d determined the tire had been slashed, it had taken but a moment to place the blame on one person, even though he’d been thousands of miles away, last I knew. “What do you want?” As I stood, he kept the tire iron touching me in back.
“Just here to offer a hand.” He towered over me, like Patrick, and was adjusting his red baseball cap as I turned. “I still have your spare key.” He showed me and then stuck it back in his pocket.
“I’ll call Triple A.”
“I can give you a ride, G-man. Come on. Get on the bike.” When Tom nodded to his left, only then did I see his motorcycle, parked in one of the darkest spots in front of the building.
“I…I’m waiting for someone,” I said, glad Carrie was gone, and that Patrick hadn’t yet shown up.
“Your fiancé?” Tom raised his weapon. “Congratulations on that, by the way.”
“How do you…? Oh. Facebook.”
“Yup. You really should adjust those old privacy settings. Quite adorable, the two of you. I wonder if the guy knows what he’s getting into.” Tom shook his head. “The good, the bad, the awful, the pathetic…” He took my wrist, and we started forward.
“I should stay and wait.”
“He won’t be coming,” Tom said. “I stopped in at the pharmacy for some Advil. I had a feeling you were going to have a splitting headache before the night’s over.”
The tap to my temple wasn’t hard, but felt like a blow, nonetheless, as if Tom had put his full force behind the metal bar.
“I’m considerate like that, G-man. Remember?”
I’d come to loathe the nickname. “What did you do to Patrick?”
“Goose, come on. We just had a nice talk. That’s all. Get on the bike. I’ll take you to him.”
I yanked free. “I don’t want to go with you.”
“Even to see your beloved?” My ex’s calm voice was always more unnerving than his rage, because that was never far behind. “You’re not making any sense. He loves you. He said so. When I mentioned how you and me go way back and offered my well wishes, he told me all about your stupid ghost stuff, the road trip, the tree, and went on, and on, and on about the night at Cost-Mart in the snow…”
“You told him your name?”
“Well, no. I’m not an idiot. Just in case you had, I didn’t, just that I know you. That was all it took to get him to spill every detail of your big, stupid romance. Oh, and these.” Tom reached up and ripped the P pendant from around my neck. “Pat showed me his.” He pulled something out of his pocket. Only when it hit the ground, did I know
it was Patrick’s.
“What did you do to Patrick?” I asked again.
“Come and find out.”
“We don’t need to do this, Tom. If you just go away…”
“We’re going together.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah. We are.”
My arm felt like it might break when twisted around to my back. “Fuck. Let me go. You’re not going to kidnap me. I mean, I know you’re…”
“You know I’m what, G-man, huh? You know I’m what?”
“Look, Tom. Take a breath, right? Like you do.” I inhaled and exhaled deeply to show him, my arm still at his mercy. Sometimes, that worked. When Tom raised the tire iron, when a smirk spread across his face after I flinched, I remembered sometimes it didn’t. “This is too far.” I tried to hold my voice steady. “You realize that. You have to, Tom. Way too far.” He wasn’t listening. “What if Patrick called the cops, huh?” Everything I said felt wrong. The last thing I wanted to do was to make Tom angrier with Patrick.
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he could. Maybe he couldn’t. He was kind of incapacitated when I left him back there at the pharmacy.”
“If you hurt Patrick…”
“If I hurt Patrick what?” Tom got right in my face. “You gonna hit me again?”
I didn’t answer.
“You want to find out, you’ll get on the bike.”
“No.”
Tom yanked me hard, raising me to meet him eye to eye. “You can come, or you can fight me. Those are your choices.”
When he pulled me forward, I didn’t resist.
“Atta boy.”
At the bike, Tom tossed the helmet a little too hard, and then cussed me out when I missed and let it hit the ground.
“Stupid fuck.”
“Sorry.”
I put it on, maybe more for protection from the tire iron or his fists than from the ride. Once I was behind him, “Hold on,” he said.
I jumped a second time, when the weapon hit the pavement. Did I feel any safer now? No. Flinching once again at the sound of the engine starting, I was sure I caught another grin on Tom’s face, when he briefly looked my way. “Where are we going?” I figured it wasn’t actually to see Patrick, which begged the question, why was I going along? At the moment, I feared for Wilbur and Shell, Rip, too, and Carrie. If Tom knew where I’d spent the evening, there was a chance he knew why and for whom.
“Hold on.” His raised voice broke through the helmet and the roar of the bike. It cracked me, broke me, like his fist had in the past, nearly as much as the tire iron would have. “Or don’t.” He jerked forward, then stopped. He did it several times—Forward, stop, forward, stop—just to torture me, before taking off at full speed.
Leaning into the first corner, I prayed for the man I loved as I held on tightly to the one I thought I once had. Somehow, I was actually surprised by the turn of events, that Tom would, in fact, go this far.
“Slow down!” I had no idea why I thought he would listen.
We sped down the winding, twisty school hill way over the ten mph speed limit, and eventually off the grounds, where we went even faster. I wasn’t dressed properly to be on the back of a motorcycle in early April, even on a day that had started off mild. The chill down my back wasn’t brought on by weather, though.
“Please, slow down.”
Traffic was light. Ours was a sleepy little area where the roads were pretty deserted after a certain hour on a weeknight. Tom took a left, the way we would have needed to go to get to Patrick’s pharmacy. Still, I doubted that would be our final destination. I prayed to God, to Jefferson and Calvin, too, that Patrick was okay, that Tom hadn’t really hurt him. It wouldn’t be above the Tom I knew to say he beat up Patrick just to torture me. I hoped that was it.
The guardrails went by in a blur once on the main strip. Instead of seeing the uprights as having space between them, it was all just one long gray fuzzy line. Even scarier, was how close we were to them, weaving back and forth, from one side of the yellow line to the other. When my grasp slipped from Tom’s middle and my hand flew freely, before I regained my balance and laced my fingers for a better grip, I swore I’d brushed the cross piece. It felt as if both of us were about to fall off the bike.
We sailed through the light at the intersection we should have turned down to get to O’Hanlon’s Pharmacy. At least it was green.
“Slow down, Tom. Please.”
Of course, he didn’t listen. If he even heard me, he did just the opposite. I knew the crash was coming before it even happened. Wiping out was Tom’s intention all along, I would have bet, going down and taking me with him.
My life flashed before my eyes, just like it was supposed to, from start to finish. From kindergarten to finish, to be completely honest, I saw it all. There were lessons I should have learned earlier.
The classroom was nearly full by the time I got there on my very first day of school. Mom was always late.
“Max, you sit between Tommy and Ferris.” Miss O’Dell was all smiles, Tommy, too, but Ferris looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“He’s a little faggot,” Tommy whispered when I sat.
By first grade, I had come to hate the swings on the playground. I’d come to hate recess.
“Tommy, you’re pushing me too hard.”
“Stop being such a crybaby.”
There were happy memories, too, blessings to count. Shelby and I went to live with Gramma and Grampa when I was seven and she was eight. We liked to play Yahtzee under the kitchen table, while Gramma cooked pasta for baked mac and cheese.
“Time to get washed up, you two. Whoever can guess what shape the noodles are tonight gets a glass of Pepsi.”
“If we say the same answer, Shell,” little me said conspiratorially, “we both win.”
Gramma liked this game. She’d choose between elbows, shells, dinosaur shapes, even spaghetti sometimes.
“It’s ziti!”
“You’re always right, Maxi,” Gramma said with a smile, pouring half a glass of Pepsi for little me and half for little Shell as we sat at our full plates.
I discovered later Gramma knew I knew she would always leave the empty Ronzoni box right on top of the trash. Shelby thought for a while I had ESP, but then decided I was just really good at guessing. Now, she would never know otherwise.
Seconds later in real time, months later in my lifespan’s timeline, two playful children waved to me from Gramma’s front yard on Easter morning from a decade in the past.
“Got another one.”
“Me, too!”
“Here’s two!”
The colorful plastic eggs had been easier to find that year, because of a light dusting of snow.
I was reminded of tumultuous tween and teen years next. First, scenes of snow days outside with Shelby and TJ flew by. Then, I saw myself cuddling up to him or one of the cats in bed at night. There were a few nice Christmases, where even my father was in a good mood when he stopped by, and in seventh grade gym class, I hit the new kid, Richard Dolensky, in the nads with my floor hockey stick during a heated game.
“Take him down to the nurse, Tucker!”
By age sixteen, I knew I was gay, and Richard—now Rip—and Tom were still a part of my life.
“Young Tuck, Tuck, Goose, don’t tell me you’re falling for that shitwad, Tom!” Rip took the spot beside me in the cafeteria seconds after Tom walked away with my square of cake and chocolate milk. “Bro, you can do way better.”
I’d have to let him know he’d tried, but I didn’t listen.
“Here. Have mine.”
And also remind him how he gave me half of his cake and his carton of “brown cow moo juice” that day.
Covering myself in the present did no good as I saw myself lying naked with Tom upstairs in the hotel where prom was still happening down in the banquet room in May of 2001.
“You give great head, G-Man.”
My first tim
e.
“So do you.”
Covering myself in the present did no good as Tom’s fists came flying at my face, once he’d yanked me from that bed and pinned me to the wall in the past.
“You ever tell anyone, I’ll fucking kill you.”
His first time.
Once again, looking like Gomez Addams, with his little mid-pubescent mustache and wearing a pinstripe suit, Rip was there when I ducked outside right after.
“Shelby and I are taking off, Goosey. Come with us.”
I kept my jaw to the dark side of the courtyard. “And be a fifth wheel? No thanks.”
“You’re never that, Bro-ford.”
“Bro-ford?”
“It’s a term of endearment,” Rip said.
“Aww. You de man…Bro-ham.”
Our first time.
Shelby pretended to agree with what he’d said. “Half the reason Rich is with me is because he likes you,” she claimed, standing there in shimmering silvery silk.
“Maybe not half.” Rip offered my sister a kiss.
She’d looked so happy and at ease with him, I thought, watching the playback. She still did, to this day. I also thought again how being touched—any sort of intimacy—was something we both had to learn to accept. I was glad Shell had gotten there before I, and knew I was leaving her in good hands. There was comfort in that.
Graduation Day soon came. I saw my grandfather jumping to his feet at my name being called.
“Maxi! Maxi! Maxi!”
I knew what was coming, and sure enough, there was Gramma, tugging on his suit jacket sleeve and whispering something in his ear, like she had that June day.
“Goose! Goose! Goose! Goose!”
She’d set him straight.
“Grampa. Sit down,” I mouthed, not happy with him, not at all.
Nearly twenty years later, it felt kind of good, and I loved him for it.
My time in combat overseas, only to come home on leave to different battles and explosive anger, had often left me wondering if death wouldn’t be a reward. Now, seeing it all play back, I wondered if my doom was more like punishment for staying in that life so long. But then, there I was in the next memory, another sweet one.