Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  Hazard made a disgusted noise and pitched the towel at the basement stairs.

  “I don’t want to fight,” Somers said. “Please, let’s not fight.”

  “Who’s trying to fight? You want to let your dad walk all over you, treat you like shit, make you treat me like shit, fine. I can’t change that. I’ve got nothing to fight about.”

  In the other room, Nella Knight was trying to convince a dragon to try a neti pot. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like from the snippets Hazard caught.

  “I’m sorry,” Somers said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  Hazard picked up the whisk; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Somers wiping his face, and Hazard focused on tapping the whisk gently against the bowl, shaking the batter from the wire loops before setting the whisk in the sink. He opened the drawers and rooted around for the ladle.

  “My father wants you to come to dinner tonight.” Somers’s voice was flat. Hollow. “You and me and Evie.”

  “Evie’s exhausted.”

  “He wants us there as a family.”

  Hazard flinched, and his hand moved sharply inside the drawer, and he swore. When he pulled his hand free, he had a corn-on-the-cob holder buried in the pad of his thumb. He jerked it loose and ran cold water over the two red pinpricks.

  “Did you hear me?” Somers said.

  Hazard worked soap over the two puncture wounds, scrubbing.

  “This is a big deal, Ree. The news story, that changes everything. You’re not just a local celebrity. You’re national now. And the fact that you’re gay, that’s what everybody wants to talk about. My father . . . I know he hasn’t treated you well. But this would really help him. This is the election, Ree. Right here, handed to him on a silver platter.”

  Hazard hit the tap, ending the flow of water, and turned to get a towel to dry his hand. Somers was already holding one out, and the petty part of Hazard wanted to ignore it. He forced himself to take it, though, and he dried his hands and watched bright red blood bead up on his thumb again.

  “Please, Ree. I know how hard this would be for you. It’s hard for me to ask. But it would mean a lot to my father. It would go a . . . a long way in helping bridge the gap.”

  “I don’t care about your father. I don’t care about your mother. You’re dirt to them. No, worse, you’re like a little action figure, and they don’t like it when you don’t play games the way they want you to. They can both go to hell.”

  Somers caught his arm. “Then . . . then do it for me. Please, Ree. I will never ask you for anything else. Ever.”

  Hazard shook loose from Somers. “Fine.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, Ree. Thank you for doing this.”

  “You want everybody to think we’re not together anymore? Fine. I’ll do it. You want to parade me around like a fucking trophy? Fine. I’ll do it.” Hazard pitched the second towel toward the stairs. “Guess I’d better hope your dad doesn’t want you to break up with me next week.”

  “I know I deserve that. Please don’t hate me. I just need you to understand.”

  “Yeah, I understand. I’ve seen every fucking angle of this messed-up thing with your dad. I understand perfectly fucking well. You go on and on about how I need to see a shrink, right? Well, call up Dr. fucking Freud because you’ve got so many fucking daddy issues, nobody else would even know where to start.”

  Leaning against the counter again, Somers dropped his gaze to the floor, his shoulders hunched.

  Something else was on Hazard’s tongue, something even more vicious, but his phone buzzed.

  “Mom, it’s not really a good time.”

  “Muffin.” Aileen Hazard’s voice was thick with repressed emotion. “I think you need to come down here.”

  Maybe a second ticked past. Maybe two. Hazard swallowed and found it harder than he expected.

  “Ok,” Hazard said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t speed, muffin. He’s ok for now. The doctors haven’t said anything, and you know your father: so stubborn that the mules complain about him. I just think you should come down here.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  As Hazard disconnected, Somers asked quietly, “Is he ok?”

  Hazard ladled out the batter; it sizzled as it hit the griddle, and the smell of the cooking pancakes mixed with the odor of hot, seasoned metal. Then he jogged upstairs. The duffel Somers had packed for him was still sitting on a chair in the corner of the bedroom. Hazard threw his dopp kit and a few last items in the bag, and then he took it downstairs.

  Somers was in the kitchen, moving the griddle off the range. “Ree, what’s going on? Is he ok? You need to go down there?”

  Hazard thought it would be smart to take some water with him; he opened cabinets, looking for the Hydro Flask Somers had insisted on buying.

  “Hey,” Somers said, moving behind Hazard. The movement stopped, and Hazard sensed hesitation, and then took two quick steps clicked against the kitchen floor. Somers touched Hazard’s arm, turning him, pulling him into a hug.

  “It’s ok,” Hazard said, the words too big for him, and he shook once, a whole-body thing more violent than a shiver. “He’s not—not yet. He’s ok. But my mom thinks I should come down.”

  Somers rubbed his back, and after a moment, Hazard leaned down, hiding his face in the crook of Somers’s shoulder.

  “Hey,” Somers said after a moment. “He’s still doing ok. And the Hazard men are tough. Trust me, I know.”

  “Yeah,” Hazard said.

  “We’ll head down there right after dinner.”

  Hazard put a hand on Somers’s chest and pushed free.

  “I’ll pack Evie’s things—” Somers was saying.

  “Evie is tired.”

  “I know she’s tired. We’ll do a quick dinner—I know it won’t be fun, but Father wants a few photos, so you should probably be prepared—and then we’ll drive straight down.”

  “No, John. She’s not going on a road trip tonight. She’s not sleeping in a strange bed tonight. She needs her own bed, she needs her own blanket, she needs an early night because she’s exhausted.”

  “Kids are resilient; she’ll sleep in the car, and we’ll make sure she gets—”

  Hazard started to laugh, pushing past Somers, not sure where he was going yet, just anywhere but here. “Christ, your dad really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

  “Hey, hold on.” For the first time that night, Somers’s voice gained an edge. “You’re not being fair.”

  “I’m not being fair?”

  Somers’s mouth was drawn in a thin line.

  “My dad’s dying in hospice, and you want to go have a tea party photo op so your dad can win this shitty little election.”

  “You just said your dad is fine. I’m not trying to be heartless, Ree, but we can spare an hour for a quick dinner with my parents, and then—”

  “It’s like I don’t even exist,” Hazard said. The words escaped him before he even really understood them, but when he heard them out loud, he realized how deep the wound went.

  The house settled around them; the griddle clicked once as the metal cooled.

  “That’s not fair,” Somers said.

  “No,” Hazard said. “No. I get to come first, John. I never said that to Alec. I never said it to Billy. Fuck me, but I wish I had. And I never thought I’d have to say it to you. But I get to come first. I deserve that much. Not your parents. Not your friends. Not this bullshit town that you’re just as desperate as your dad to impress. Me. That’s what a relationship is about. A real one, anyway.”

  “You? You come first?” Somers threw his head back, staring at the ceiling, the tendons in his neck popping out. “Holy fuck. You have no fucking idea, do you? You’re so busy patting yourself on your back, feeling so fucking superior, that you never even thought about it. Do you have any idea what I’ve given up to put you first?”


  “I’m not having this conversation with you.” Hazard moved toward the door to the garage. “I can’t—”

  “You absolutely are having this conversation. Right now.” Somers moved faster, cutting him off, one hand planted on the door to hold it shut.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Here’s how I put you first.”

  “Move, John.”

  “I don’t have any friends. Did you realize that? Or did you just assume that my whole life, I’d been sitting around nights and weekends, twiddling my thumbs until you came along?”

  Hazard grabbed Somers’s arm.

  “Don’t,” Somers said. “I don’t have any friends because I started dating you. Some of them hate me. Some of them are laughing at me. Some of them might still want to be my friend, but they don’t know how to do it because all of the sudden I’m a big queer. Instead, I have you.”

  “Sounds like you made a bad trade.”

  The look on Somers’s face was indescribable, and then he laughed. “You know what else? I don’t have colleagues at work anymore. Yeah, I go to the same job. I work with the same guys. Some of them still treat me the way they used to, but most of them act like we’ve never met before. I don’t go out for a drink after work. I don’t get invited to birthday parties and bachelor parties and weddings. Instead, I come home. To you.”

  “This is high school,” Hazard said. “This is high school all over again. Only for the first time in your life, you don’t get to be the center of attention, and it’s killing you.”

  Somers looked like he’d been about to say something, but his face transformed again. Letting his arm drop, he moved away from the door. And then he made this strangely old-fashioned gesture, after you, and said, “Yeah.” He shook his head and said it again:” Yeah.”

  After a moment, Hazard opened the door; the cold air from the garage came with the smell of gasoline, and his eyes watered. Blinking furiously, he said, “You put me in this position, John. My dad’s dying, and you . . . you cornered me.”

  “You know what, Emery? All that stuff, it wouldn’t matter. Not in the big picture. But what do I get when I come home? I have to dig and scrape for the faintest glimmer of affection. I have to work so hard for an ounce of it.”

  He was turning the ring on his finger, the way some people do to loosen it before taking it off.

  “Goodbye, John.”

  Hazard picked a path to the minivan, opened the garage door, and drove into the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  MARCH 29

  FRIDAY

  8:17 PM

  THE DRIVE TOOK HAZARD longer than he had planned. Part of it was that he had barely made it out of town before pulling onto the shoulder of the road, getting out of the van, finding the tire iron, and beating the hell out of a rotting log. When he could breathe again, he stowed the tire iron, got behind the wheel, and sat there. He replayed the conversation a few times, not angry anymore. Then he checked the visor mirror, with its weak glow, and picked flakes of bark and wood pulp out of his hair, off his jacket, from his jeans. His hands still stung as he eased back onto the state highway and headed into the night.

  The hospice was a five-story brick building that stood up from the skyline of Kermit, Missouri like a sore thumb. Everything else in town was one or two stories. Even the grain-feed manufacturing plant was only a couple of stories, and if they had silos, they weren’t anywhere Hazard could see them. Tonight, he didn’t trust himself, so he followed the directions from his phone, even though he could see the hospice from the highway and he was pretty sure the city limits were within spitting distance.

  A black woman with a pin-straight weave stood at the reception desk, talking to a mousy guy who was sitting behind the desk, typing on a computer; she wore a doctor’s coat over a nice blouse and slacks, and she nodded at Hazard when he approached.

  “I’m here to see someone.”

  “Rodrigo will help you,” the woman said before excusing herself.

  Rodrigo asked a few questions, had Hazard sign in, and then he looked at Hazard’s ID, checking it against the signature. He did a lot of glancing up. He had big eyes and long, dark lashes. He didn’t look so mousy from up close.

  “Through that hall to the elevators,” Rodrigo said. “Your father is in room 503, so when you get to the top, you’ll turn right.”

  Hazard nodded, trying to get his ID back into his wallet.

  “I get off at ten,” Rodrigo said.

  The driver’s license seemed to have grown. Or maybe the wallet had shrunk. There was no way it would fit in the plastic-covered ID slot. No way.

  “If you need to talk,” Rodrigo said. “Or whatever.”

  Growling, Hazard forced the card; stitching ripped, and the side of the wallet gave, spilling half a dozen credit cards onto the floor.

  “Here,” Rodrigo said, “let me—”

  “I got it.” Hazard grabbed the cards and shoved them in his pocket. He shoved the ruined wallet and the ID in another pocket. And then he took off for the elevators.

  He had a minute to pull himself together in the elevator. It was quiet, with only the faint hum of the cable complemented by Muzak from a hidden speaker. No mirrors on the walls of the car; normally, people liked mirrors in an elevator. They provided a distraction and made the space seem bigger. But not in a place like this, Hazard guessed.

  Then the elevator chimed, and the door slid open. The loose threads of self-control that Hazard had gathered slipped away, and his whole face felt like it was on fire. He shuffled out into the hall, turned right, and counted up to 503. The door was closed, and Hazard wondered if Rodrigo had got it wrong, if this was someone else’s room. What if Hazard stepped in and whoever was in here, what if they were dead? Hazard had been in the presence of death before, but not like this. It was a cold weight at the back of his brain. He was just going to turn around, go back downstairs, and make sure Rodrigo had gotten the room right. He didn’t want to wake up a stranger. And then he pictured tapping on the door, stepping inside, and someone dead and laid out under a sheet—silly, he told himself, that’s so silly because they wouldn’t just leave him like that—and someone dead and laid out under a sheet popping up like Hazard had spoiled a good nap. Sweat burst out in tiny hot points across his forehead, under his arms, down his chest. He was just going to turn around, go back downstairs, and make sure.

  He rested one hand on the handle, turning and pushing in just enough to call out, “Hello?” With the other hand, he knocked. Hospice smell wafted back: something mentholated, probably a liniment, and underneath it, unwashed skin and hair, and something else that Hazard couldn’t quite describe except as the smell of bodies failing. “Anybody awake?”

  “Of course we’re awake,” was the reply in Frank Hazard’s harsh voice; then a fit of coughing cut him off.

  Hazard pressed into the room, which he was relieved—realizing only then that he had worried—to find was a single. Frank Hazard was propped up in a hospital-style bed near the window. He was bent double with bad coughing, a handful of tissues over his mouth. Hazard stared, recognizing his father but not quite comprehending: Frank Hazard was big like his son, but over the last twenty years, much of that size had changed from muscle to excess weight. Now, even the weight was gone, and Hazard found himself watching a scarecrow cough up his lungs.

  “Honey,” Aileen Hazard was saying, jiggling a plastic cartridge in one hand, “Frank, honey, let’s try the inhaler.”

  It took what felt like a long time for the coughing to slow enough for Frank to suck on the inhaler, and in that time, Hazard could only stand there, hands curled at his sides, and watch it happen. He traded glances with his mother. As a child, a very young child, he had once tried to interrupt a fight between his parents by singing a song he’d learned in school. He hadn’t particularly liked attention; even then, he’d preferred to observe. But the sound of their voices rising higher and higher had filled him with a k
ind of wild helplessness, ratcheting up every minute until he’d tumbled into their bedroom singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It hadn’t stopped the fight, but it had caused a kind of swerve, with Frank Hazard veering away from the fight long enough to slap Hazard back into his room—chasing him with the blows until Hazard fell through the doorway and Frank Hazard told him to stay the fuck out of the way. Now, here, he was singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in his head.

  But the inhaler worked, and after a few minutes, Frank eased back onto the bed. He was gray under the fluorescents, with black smudges under his eyes. The tissues in his hand were spotted red.

  “Bunny,” Aileen Hazard said, making her way around the hospital bed to hug Hazard and draw him forward. “Thank you for coming.” Then she paused, pulled back, looked up to study him. “What’s wrong?”

  Hazard shook his head once.

  “Come sit down,” she said, guiding Hazard to one of the chairs near the bed, the weight of her hand on his shoulder very light, barely anything at all, but it made Hazard’s knees buckle so that he fell into the seat. “You’re exhausted,” she said, touching his face. “You worked all day and you drove all the way here tonight. You have a good visit, and then I’ll give you the keys and you can go get a good night’s sleep at the house. Have you eaten?”

  Had he eaten? Hazard couldn’t remember. But it was intoxicating, after the horror of the last few days with Somers, after that short, cataclysmic fight tonight, to have someone worry about him, fuss over him. He let himself enjoy it for a minute, nodding and shaking his head to various questions, until the front part of his brain woke up.

  “Mom,” he said, interrupting her question about Astraea. “When was the last time you got out of here?”

  Aileen Hazard was a slight woman—tall but willowy, with thick, dark hair that had wires of gray running through it. Her features were elegant and refined, and when she smiled, her whole face lit up. Exhaustion was scribbled all over her features, as thick as if someone had used a grease pencil, but she smiled now. “Stop it, muffin.”

  “It’s a legitimate question. When was the last time you slept in your own bed, had a shower in your own bathroom, ate something that didn’t come from a cafeteria?”