Chasing Forgiveness (16 page)

•  •  •

We protect Dad from kids at school.

Dad picks me up after track practice one day. I can see him waiting by the edge of the field watching me finish up my last few laps. I think about my friends. Jason likes my dad—the three of us always play basketball in my driveway.

“If they let him out of prison,” Jason once told me, “then they must have had a good reason to, so it doesn't bother me.” Most of my friends think that way. But not everyone in school is my friend—and as I look around, I can see that all the other
sports are letting out at the same time. Some of these kids know, or might figure out, that this man is my father. I know some kids who would keep their distance and yell nasty things at him and snicker—like they used to do to me.

So I leave practice straight from the field, without changing in the locker room.

“You should shower, Preston,” Dad says.

“Showers are broken,” I tell him. “I'll shower at home.”

“How about your books?”

“No homework.”

We get into the car and get away from that school as quickly as we can.

•  •  •

We protect Dad from women in church—the single or divorced women who see Dad as an attractive man all alone with two boys and think he's “available.” He needs protection from them, too—no doubt about that. Dad's polite when he talks to them, but we make sure it ends there. He knows Tyler and I never want another mom.

He's not available. Period.

At one church gathering, a woman with skinny legs and hair that's too short slithers through the crowd toward my father. I spot her coming a mile away. Dad stands nearby, alone and vulnerable.

Next to me Grandma talks with one of her friends who is complaining about back pains. Thinking quickly I turn
to Grandma's friend and say, “My dad knows exercises that would be good for your back.”

Dad turns to me and chuckles. “I do?”

“Sure,” I say. “You lift weights, right? You know all about exercises and stuff.”

Dad seems baffled, but Grandma's friend looks toward him for some serious advice, so he fakes his way through it.

Meanwhile the skinny-legged woman lingers on the sidelines, patiently sipping a Coke, waiting to pounce as soon as Dad stops talking.

I “accidentally” brush past her, and her Coke spills all over her too-skinny dress.

“Excuse me,” I say, then turn back to see her heading toward the ladies' room and away from Dad.

•  •  •

We protect Dad from family get-togethers—and that's the hardest interference play to run.

On Easter Sunday, Tyler and I conspire to play a game called “Where's Uncle Steve?” It's a game I think we'll have to play for a very, very long time.

The game goes like this: the whole family comes over to Grandma and Grandpa's. We must know where Dad is at all times. We make sure that no one is talking about Mom in any room that my dad might enter. We make sure our younger cousins—who don't know any better—don't say anything stupid.

And we keep Dad away from Uncle Steve any way we can—because I know that if Uncle Steve and my dad as much as looked each other in the eye, there'd be a nuclear explosion that would obliterate our entire town, lake and all.

“You took him into your home?”
I remember Uncle Steve screaming when he heard about Dad moving in with us. Uncle Steve never screams. He's the quietest guy I know. “You took that killer into your home and let him live with you—eat your food?”

Grandma and Grandpa both had to talk him down. This is the same man Dad used to take fishing when Uncle Steve was “Piggy Poodle” and only ten years old. Dad was like a big brother to him. But none of that seems to matter anymore.

“How can I forgive him?” yells Uncle Steve. “He stole my sister from me—your daughter. And how did he pay? He spends a couple of years in jail, and now he's out, and life's wonderful? Is that it? Everything can be the way it was before—is that what he thinks?
Well, it can't be.
He has no right to think it will be, and you have no business trying to make it like it never happened.”

I have nightmares when I think of what might happen if Uncle Steve actually ever spoke to my dad.

For the first part of the long Easter afternoon, Uncle Steve sits in the living room, making conversation, so I challenge Dad to a game of one-on-one on our driveway basketball court. When Uncle Steve comes out front to have a look
at Aunt Jackie's new car, Tyler lures Dad into the backyard to watch him do flips off the diving board. When it's time for dinner, and Dad may actually have to pass the potatoes to Uncle Steve, I insist on eating at the big table—because I know there's not enough room.

“Daddy, can you eat with us?” asks Tyler, clinging onto Dad's arm and pointing at the kitchen table that is reserved for all the kids, and the problem is solved. Dad agrees, and eats in a different room from Uncle Steve.

It's after dinner, during the final quarter of our “game,” that Tyler and I begin to get sloppy. We are full of food, and we're lulled into a false sense of security as we listen to Aunt Jackie and her rich fiancé, Gary, talk about how well Jackie's interior-decorating business is doing and how, when they get married, he's going to build her a dream house that she can design and decorate. They talk about their dreams together, and I get all caught up in it because I think it's the same fantasy Mom always had—a successful business of her own and a husband who loves her but is also rich. If Mom were still here, she and Aunt Jackie might have gone into business together, and then they would have finally gotten over their little jealousies. It was silly, but Mom always thought that Aunt Jackie was more successful than her, and Aunt Jackie always thought that Mom was prettier.

Then I suddenly come back to earth and realize that no one is keeping track of Dad and Uncle Steve.

It is now that Tyler and I realize that they didn't need us to play the game for them—they play it fine all by themselves. When my dad walks into a room, Uncle Steve stops the conversation and walks out.

Then when Uncle Steve walks into a room, Dad disappears, silently dissolving into the woodwork.

Uncle Steve looks at Dad only once during the whole day—almost by accident, on his way out the door with his family. Dad happens to step into the foyer as they're leaving, and Grandma takes his hand, as if to reassure him he's still part of the family. That's all fine and good, but now Dad's stuck there in the same room as Uncle Steve. Uncle Steve says good-bye to everyone, except my father. Instead he throws my father a gaze that's both burning hot and icy cold at the same time. Then he looks at Grandpa once and turns to follow his wife and kids out the door.

I know what he was thinking when he looked at Grandpa—it's the same thing he was thinking the last time he was over.

“It's an awful thing you're doing, taking him in like this,” he told Grandma and Grandpa. “It's awful.”

Once he is gone and the door is closed, I breathe a sigh of relief.

•  •  •

I can't stay in that house after Easter dinner; I have to get out and away from all the bad feelings. I hurry down the street, my walk becoming a jog, and my jog becoming a sprint. I can
feel dinner bouncing up and down in my stomach as I run. I get to my school as fast as I would have if I had been on my bike. And once I'm there I begin circling the track, trying to purge my mind of Dad and Uncle Steve.

It's an awful thing you're doing.

My lungs feel as if they're going to burst, but I push harder, and harder. There are no hurdles out on the track, so I imagine them. I start to leap the imaginary hurdles, but all I can see are the hurdles falling as my foot bangs into them.

Your daughter is rolling over in her grave.

I leap higher and higher, but in my mind the hurdles continue to fall.

Life would be so much easier without people telling us what we're supposed to feel—what we're supposed to do. Life would be so much easier if everyone left us alone.

But now I
am
completely alone. There is nothing but the track, and that's the way I like it. And I keep bounding over the hurdles until I clear them and they stop falling down.

The gunshot rings in my ears.

I explode from the starting blocks with controlled fury. I hold nothing back. Just because I am the favorite to win doesn't mean I can't be taken.

Nothing but the track. Forget the cheering crowds; forget everything but the hurdle looming up in front of me.

The runners—who all began staggered twenty feet ahead of each other to make up for yards lost or gained in the turns—are closing in behind me as I close in on the ones in front of me.

I throw my right leg out and leap. The hurdle sails beneath me and rocks slightly with the wind of my passage. My foot makes contact with the ground once more. I pound through the dirt to the next hurdle and fly above that one as well, and the next, and the next.

Now we are in the straightaway. I am neck and neck with the star hurdler from the other team. It's him or me.

So far today I've won both the 200-meter and 400-meter sprints. I won't lose this one.

I turn on my second stage and blast in front of him, leaving him far enough behind so that I can't even hear the pounding of his feet. Only my own.

I cross the finish line but don't slow down even though I know I've already won.

•  •  •

Grandpa Wes, who has been my private coach and trainer this year, is already on the field to congratulate me.

“Fine run, Preston,” he says, patting me on my sweaty back.

“Thirty-nine point two seconds—that's your best time this season.”

I shake my head. “Not good enough. It should be down to thirty-nine flat by now.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself,” he says. “You're only fifteen—you've got time.”

“You're my coach, Grandpa—you're supposed to
push
me,” I tell him.

He laughs. “Preston, you're the fastest hurdler on the team and you're only a freshman. What more do you want?”

I smile at him. “The hundred-meter dash.”

•  •  •

When the meet is over, the magic fades from the field, just as it does after a football game. The cheers of the crowd are replaced by thinning murmurs as everyone leaves. My stubborn single-mindedness is replaced with all those thoughts and feelings I can get away from when I'm running. Like the fourth anniversary of Mom's death less than a month away. Thursdays in March hang over me each year like the blackest of clouds. That day never seems to get any farther away or any less painful.

My teammates' families filter onto the field. Mothers hug their sons, and my teammates, feeling too old for that, squirm out of the embraces. They don't know what they have.

I, on the other hand, have my grandma and grandpa, my dad, and my little brother. It's wonderful to have that, but still I'd rather be like my friends and have a mother. I don't think I'd take her for granted.

Grandma grabs me tightly and kisses me, smearing lipstick on my cheek. “Oh, we're
so
proud of you, Preston,” she tells me, like she always does. Dad hugs me next, and Jason, who is still the most loyal friend in the world, stands back, waiting for the affection to end. Jason's grown quickly and is taller than me now, but I'm much more solid.

Grandma takes my one second-place and two first-place ribbons from the day and puts them in her purse for safekeeping. “You've got so many of these, I don't know where you're going to put them.”

“Maybe you can give them to me,” says Tyler. I tell him that he'll have his own one day, but it's not much consolation. Tyler just smiles, like he always does, and quietly accepts it. Maybe I will give him one.

As we walk off the field, Grandpa turns to me and asks, “Where will you be sleeping tonight?”

Dad answers before I do. “At home,” he says.

“Oh,” says Grandpa, “at
your
place, then.”

I suppose Dad's place is home, but I sort of have two homes. I'm not sure which one is my
real
home.

The apartment Dad, Tyler, and I moved into last summer wasn't home at all—it was too small, and we all spend most of our time at Grandma and Grandpa's anyway—after all, they were just down the street.

Then Dad bought a townhouse a little farther away. That was my real home for a while, until Grandma and Grandpa bought the townhouse right next door.

It's funny, but it seems Dad just can't put any distance at all between him and my grandparents. Not that he'd ever want to.

My room in Dad's house is just on the other side of the wall from my room in Grandma and Grandpa's house. Jason jokes that I can bang on the wall if I hear myself playing my music too loud.

“Get to bed early tonight, Preston,” says Grandpa as he and Grandma leave. “If you want faster times, you need a full
night's sleep.” Then he turns to my dad. “You make sure of that, Danny,” he says. Dad nods, taking his orders cordially.

Dad's very good about doing what he's expected to do. He works long days and comes home to spend all his evenings and weekends with Tyler and me. He's a model father and very “morally upstanding,” as Grandma would say. He had better be, because he knows that if he weren't, Grandma and Grandpa might take Tyler and me away from him. Although no one ever talks about it, we all know that Grandma and Grandpa are still our legal guardians. We only live with Dad because they give us permission to.

On the way off the field, I pat Dad on the back, preparing to head off with Jason. “We're going to get pizza,” I tell him. Dad is not pleased.