Axis of Aaron (49 page)

“Get. Up,” Richard repeated.
 

“We were just … ”
 

“GET THE FUCK OFF MY DAUGHTER!”
 

Ebon’s paralysis shattered. His hand snatched back as if it had been atop a burning stove and found a home in his lap, pushed tight with his other into the hollow below his gut. He snapped to sitting, guilty hands making a show of their passivity. Aimee scrambled to the couch’s other side, similarly bolt-upright, hands also clasped in her lap. A pair of bookends: Innocence on one end and Chastity on the other.

“Dad,” said Aimee, “it’s not
 
… ”
 

“Don’t you fucking lie to me like I’m an idiot!”
Richard kicked the case by his foot as if it
had mouthed off. It struck the base of a table, causing the lamp on its top to wobble. He was a large man, pale, blond hair with red tinges, intimidating, often quiet like a bomb on permanent countdown. Richard Frey wasn’t muscular, but he’d always intimidated Ebon with his adulthood, his scorn, his sheer size, and what Aimee had told him about his wounds, his temper, and his drinking.
Especially
his drinking. Ebon had an uncle who was an alcoholic, and while Uncle Brian had been sober for Ebon’s entire life, dark stories ran below the family’s surface like black snakes in oil. To Ebon, drink was a boogeyman. Something that grabbed people by the throat and shook them hard enough to loosen all their bolts.
 

Ebon sat still, afraid to move. Richard began taking large steps toward his end of the couch. The gin’s juniper scent tinged his outbound breath, and Ebon realized, quite suddenly, that they hadn’t been the only ones lying. For weeks, Aimee had been saying her father was back on the wagon and had picked up a teaching job on the mainland. But as the big man came at him, Ebon saw the truth: Day after day, Richard had never set foot on the ferry. He took his bag and books, said goodbye to his daughter, then parked his car behind the tavern in downtown Aaron, where he lost his days to forgetting. And maybe, from time to paranoid time, where he spent his days imagining what his rebellious daughter would do with the freedom afforded by his regular and predictable “time off the island.”
 

Unless Richard was blind, he’d know she’d explored in the past year or two. He’d see how she’d blossomed, and how the boys’ heads turned when she wore her two piece on the beach. He’d never trusted Ebon. Never liked him. Had always, surely, suspected what he’d just walked in on.
 

Richard yanked Ebon up by the collar. Ebon went slack, almost hanging into his shirt before Richard got him fully upright and moved one hand from collar to throat.
 

“You piece of shit,” said Richard. “I knew it. I knew it all along.”
 

Aimee pawed at her father’s hand. He wasn’t squeezing Ebon’s neck, but the threat was a blade.
 

“Dad! Knock it off!”
 

“You’ve been fucking her all along, haven’t you? Running off. Just wanting to get your tip wet like a dog. I knew it. I knew it, you filthy piece of shit.”
 

“This is the first time we even — ” Ebon began. But it was the wrong thing to say. Going for the lesser of evils only drew attention to the evil almost committed.
 

“She’s seventeen! She’s only seventeen years old!”
 

Ebon wanted to protest that he was only fifteen, but was afraid to make it worse. He was trying to clench, anticipating a blow, afraid he was going to pee himself. Any rebut would only make Richard angrier.
Seventeen isn’t that young. She’s been having sex for a year now. She’s told me about all of them in the letters that, now that I think about it, you have no idea she’s been sending because she’s had to creep into town, secretly, and mail them on her own. Of all the guys she’s had sex with, I’m the least of your worries. I never even got that far. I won’t even get blue balls because they’ve shriveled up, too terrified that you’re about to rip them off.
 

“Dad!”
Aimee screamed.

She scrabbled at her father’s strong hand, but he shoved her away with the other. The push was too hard; her feet kicked the coffee table, and she fell on it sideways, cracking the top and shearing its leg. Despite the hand on his throat, Ebon started toward Aimee, to try to protect her. Pain and anger waged war with betrayal on her face. She needed his help and wanted his comfort. He’d got her into this, even though she’d got
him
into this.
 

It was his fault. She was his to save. That thought was most pressing of all, because with Richard Frey’s light-blue eyes on him, Ebon saw the truth of the past four summers: the raging father, the absent brother, the departed mother, and the shield she wore like a crown.
She’d always been his to save, and now he was failing.
 

 
Ebon put his hand on Richard’s arm, but Richard tightened his grip. The other hand came up, big and swinging, and the world blinked to black as Richard struck him. A moment later he was on the couch again, the side of his face already blushing in agony, Aimee was too close as she gathered her feet. She stumbled, her leg and hip weak where she’d slammed them, and ended up on the cushions at Ebon’s side.
 

Richard was flexing his punching hand, knuckles lacerated, staring aghast at the two lovers as they lay together where he’d beaten them. He’d hit Ebon with a left hook, and it had been too much to take. When he hit again — and he looked ready to, seeing Aimee and Ebon accidentally touch as they tried to right themselves — it would be with his right, which was stronger. The hand he drank with.

“Get off her.”
 

“He just fell, Daddy!”
 

“Get up.”
 

“Because you punched him.
You fucking punched him!”
 

Richard’s eyes flicked to Aimee. She shrank back. His words even and cold: “Don’t you dare talk to me that way. Don’t you
dare
, you little slut.”
 

Aimee blinked. His final word had hit her harder than Richard’s fist had hit Ebon.

“You think I’m blind? You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to? There are wadded-up tissues in the wastebaskets and no one has a cold. There are wrappers in the bottoms of the cans, shoved there as if someone thinks I won’t see them when I take out the trash. And I can
smell
it. You think I don’t remember what sex smells like? I remember just fine. Your mother wasn’t always dead.”
 

Ebon stood, putting himself between Richard and Aimee. The move was bold, but he immediately relented. “Look, Mr. Frey, we didn’t even … I mean, she’s not … ”
 

Richard hit him again, this time in the stomach. Wind fled Ebon. He fell over the same coffee table, then into a wall, where his impact teetered a framed painting dangling from its nail by the corner, now almost sideways. For an impossible, terrible time, Ebon couldn’t breathe. He tried to gasp, but his diaphragm had been knocked up against his lungs like paste. He felt his vision swimming in a world of pain and panic. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, his legs. He could only see what was directly in front of him as he tried to hang on, to make it to the next second, sure he was about to suffocate and die. There was a loose nail in the baseboard, its head small and brown. There was a marble under the TV cabinet. He put his hand on the wall, where there was a knot. And waited.
 

“Stop it, Daddy!”
Aimee was a trumpet at the end of a long corridor. Light threatened to leave the world at its end.
 

Ebon caught his first small gasp, saw a spark of color resurge in front of him as oxygen found his brain. His hollow, scraping bray was so undignified, so embarrassing, so impotent. He was on his hands and knees, trying to hold onto the world as the gasps became bigger, more substantive. He saw Aimee crying, grabbing at her unseeing father. He smelled drink, felt fury in the air. Richard was coming, his face set. Something hard struck him in the ribs, and Ebon rolled away, trying to curl inward.
 

“Stop it!
You’re going to kill him!”

“You want to fuck my daughter?” Richard bellowed, kicking him again. “At least be honest about it! At least act like a man!”
 

“He’s only fifteen, Daddy!”
 

That hurt Ebon, in his ocean of pain, as much as the blows. To Aimee he was still just a kid.

“I knew it. I saw through you from the start. Always coming around to ‘hang out’ like beach buddies. Always trying to play the innocent. Mr. Frey this and Mr. Frey that. ‘Good morning, Mr. Frey!’ Such a lying, sneaking little shit. You with your fake politeness and your idiot’s jokes. You just kept trying to worm your way into her panties. How long ago were you doing it? Since she was fourteen?”
 

“No!” Aimee yelled. “This was the first time! The
first time,
Daddy!”
 

Richard gave a growl and kicked Ebon again, this time in his back. Ebon heard him spin on Aimee and, wheezing, turned to look. The big man was advancing on his daughter, making her tall form seem tiny.
 

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he said, his voice suddenly softer, more penitent. “I left you alone. We never had the talk. We had
talks
, but not that one. Not the important one. About boys. About how they are. You can never know, Aimee. They’re all predators. All of us. We only want one thing.”
 

“That’s not true!”
 

Richard spun. “Yes it
IS!”
On the final word, he kicked Ebon again. Aimee gave a sob, tried to come forward, but he pushed her back. “Yes we
DO!”
Another kick. Above Ebon, Richard’s pale, freckled face was contorted with confused rage. “I’ve tried to protect you from this kind of
THING!”
Another kick for emphasis. “But I haven’t, have I? I failed you like I failed your mother. And I lost her. Oh God, Aimee. I just want the best for you. I just want you to be safe.” Ebon heard Richard start to sob with remorse — not for what he’d done to Ebon, but for untold wounds with Aimee — and wondered if it was a good turn or something worse in waiting.
 

The screen door was within crawling range. Maybe he could make it. He looked back, tasting the copper of blood in his mouth. He knew only pain and the crunch of bones with each small motion. How it hurt to breathe. And the door, the way out.

“I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?” he said. “Like I did with Corinne. Like I always do. It’s true, isn’t it?”
 

“You’re drunk!”
 

“I don’t drink!”
 

Tears mingled with Aimee’s words. Ebon heard them behind him as he made a half foot of progress. The door was at least fifteen feet away. He was never going to make it.
 

“You asshole! You son of a bitch!”
 

“I just want you to be safe,” he sobbed. “You’re all I have left of her.”

“Goddamn you!”
 

“Do you love him?” said Richard. “You do, don’t you?”
 

“No! We were just … being stupid!”
 

“I’m so sorry, Aimee. I’m so, so sorry…”
 

Ebon looked back. Maybe he didn’t have to crawl after all. His heart broke as he saw Aimee sit beside her father and take his hand.

“You were going to … ” He sighed. “It’s not my business. You’re old enough now. I can’t control you. I shouldn’t try.” Another sob. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
 

“We weren’t going to do anything.”

“I saw you.”
 

“We were just playing around, Daddy. We’re … just friends.”
 

Ebon looked up. He couldn’t believe his ears. Aimee was comforting her father, completely having abandoned the idea of comforting Ebon. But then he remembered that there was a lot here he’d never witnessed — that she’d never shown him, never talked about … that he’d never
wanted
to witness. This was more intimate than sex. This was blood on blood, and maybe bringing him down was the only way out.

“I didn’t want this for you. To let boys like
him
in.” He gripped her hand suddenly, desperately, with both of his own. In his bear’s grip, Aimee looked tiny. “If you do love him, Aim, don’t just … don’t make it trashy. Don’t give it up. Don’t give him what he wants so easily. He’s … ”
 

“It’s not like that.
Shh.”

“It’s one thing or another. You can be in love, or you can be like … like you were going to.” Richard wiped his eyes. “You’re too young. That’s why you need to wait. One or the other, Aimee.”
 

“I know.”
 

“You’re my little peach. You know I love you, don’t you?”
 

Aimee’s eyes flicked to Ebon, trying to send him a silent message. “I know.” She draped her arm around her father’s neck, nestling his head. Impossibly, she began to pat it.
 

“I’m so sorry, Aimee.”
 

Ebon stared. Wheezed. Bled.
 

Aimee laid her head atop her father’s as he cried. “I know you are.”