Do You Think This Is Strange? (28 page)

After that, whenever things got worse, I remembered this.

Someone is named Sue, I thought.

So what?
said the threads.

—

I opened my eyes, and my father sat across the table from me, and a thread spoke to me.

Freddy
, it told me.
It's you.
You
are Sue.

“No, it's not true!” I shouted, stood up, and turned the table over on top of my father. He fell off his chair and crashed against the kitchen cupboard. I walked deliberately over to him, to stand over him, to tower over him. To glare righteously.

Or to try and glare righteously. Having never been angry before, I wasn't sure how to be angry. But I had seen it enough times that I knew the range of typical angry steps involved.

“Are you kidding me!” I shouted down at him.

His foot shot out like a piston, driving into my ankle. I tumbled to the floor.

“Goddamn it, Freddy,” he roared, kicking me in my hip, then standing up. “What the goddamn bloody hell are you—”

I grabbed a chair and slammed it into his thigh. As he staggered back, I leapt to my feet and stood, knees bent, in a perfect stance. We were two arm's lengths apart. I knew how to close the gap quickly, where to step if he threw a punch at me, and where to strike when he missed.

But before I could move toward him, his arms swept the two glass tumblers from the counter at my face. As I threw my hands up to protect myself, he launched himself at me. Before I could register, he was upon me and drove his fist straight into my cheekbone. My vision exploded. Bright flashing lights blinded me and I fell back against the fridge, and he pinned me there, his hands closing around my throat.

I smiled.

I heard music.

There are foolish things people can do to me. One of them is to grab me with both hands. It means that they have left themselves undefended.

As my father pressed me against the fridge, leaning into me, clamping down on my windpipe, I brought both my arms under his and wedged my hands up between the insides of his elbows. Lifting up, I forced his arms apart, forced his elbows to bend, and pulled him closer to me.

I smashed my forehead into his nose. He stumbled back, and I hit him several times in the face, left and right, left and right, until one fist found the sweet spot where the first knuckle strikes the middle of the mandible, at the precise angle, the doorbell to the brain.

Hi
, my fist said.
I'm here.

My father slumped back, his eyes fluttering, and his hands released me. I pushed back from him, dragging in my breath. He staggered and tried to regain his feet.

Still gasping for breath, I stepped forward and lay on him like a hammer on a nail.

I opened my eyes
and I was seven years old.

The night before she left for the last time, I heard them arguing downstairs. His voice was slurred, dragging out the soft consonants.

“It's time for me to move on,” she told him. “It's time for
us
to move on.”

“Move on to where,” he wondered.

“Not
to
where,” she said. “
From
where is what you should be asking. Look at us. Is this who we want to be? Is this where we want to be? I'm tired of beer in the fridge. I'm tired of a recycling bin full of wine bottles.”

Silence.

“I've been talking to people,” she said. “I think maybe you—”

“Oh, good Christ,” he muttered. “Here it comes. This is just great.”

“When I say move on, I don't care
where
we move on to. I just care that we move on from
this
. But right now, I'm trying to move on, and you're still there, and I'm moving on without you.”

He made a spitting noise. “We do pretty good. We got a house. We got a good life. You like it here. I like it here.”

“Does Freddy?”

“What?”

“Tell me, Bill,” she said, her voice rising. “Do you think Freddy likes it when we're hungover Saturday morning and he has to watch
TV
for hours? Do you think he really likes it?”

“Hell, yes. He loves it.”

“Don't you think he'd rather be hanging around us?”

“Flapping his hands and staring at nothing? He'd rather watch
TV
. He'd rather watch it all day.”

“And do you think that would be good for him?”

“Maybe.”

“Bill?”

“You're not making sense. How did we get from drinking to you accusing me of giving him too much
TV
?”

“Not you.
Us.
Every time we do something to ignore him. Every time we can't crawl out of bed to spend time with him. Every time we forget we promised to take him for a walk. Every single goddamn time, Bill. We're crushing him. Any chance he's got, we're wrecking, because we won't stop.”

“Fine,” he said. “You want to stop? Great. Let's just stop. There. Done. We've stopped. Okay?”

Silence.

“We both know how that's going to turn out,” she said. “We both know how it
always
turns out.”

“Well then what the FUCK do you want?” he yelled at her. “Stop drinking! Don't stop drinking! Make up your mind, for the love of Christ!”

Silence again. Then, “I have, Bill,” she said. “I have.”

I opened my eyes
and I was seventeen, and my father bled before me.

The house was quiet, except for the low-throated humming of the furnace blowing slightly warmer air into the room. Outside, the wind abated. The trees no longer tapped at the window.

What did you do?
they asked and their branches rattled like bones.

My father lay on the floor. His face was matted with blood. His breathing was ragged. His cigarette, discarded, smouldered under the table.

I pulled him to a sitting position and leaned him against the cupboard under the sink.

I looked him in the eye. “My mother never left me,” I said.

He didn't reply. He just licked his lips and looked away. I pulled his face back to me.

“Look at me,” I said, and he did. “My mother never left me,” I repeated.

“No,” he whispered. “She never left because of you, Freddy.” Blood trickled from his right ear. “Your mother left
me
,” he said. “Not you.”

My throat felt like it was closing. “She left because of you?”

He nodded slowly. “I was certain she was coming back. She always did. Maybe she was gathering the courage to leave me, I don't know.” He looked away. “But she always stayed because of you. She always left because of me.”

“Did you make her angry?” I asked.

“Sometimes.” He shook his head. “Other times she made me angry. But it wasn't anything horrible. People make each other angry all the time. Then they get over it. We just stopped loving each other.”

“Mom never made me angry,” I said.

“She never did, Freddy,” he answered. He reached to the table, pulled a cigarette from the open pack, lifted it to his lips, and lit it. His fingers trembled. He took a drag, coughed, and flicked the ashes on the floor.

“No one ever makes you mad, Freddy,” he said. He smiled slightly. “Until now, I guess. But that's it. You can handle people. And that's a blessing I wish we all had.”

He sat and smoked his cigarette. I watched the smoke rise from the burning tip. I asked, “Why didn't you tell me she was dead?”

He stubbed out the cigarette. “I did, Freddy,” he said. “I've told you so many times.”

Then a memory.

—

I opened my eyes
and people moved slowly, single file, eyes downcast. A song by
U
2 played softly in the background. A song she sometimes danced to in the living room.

I want to run, I thought. I want to hide.

I sat on the aisle chair of the first row and people shuffled by. Some of them touched my shoulder, because that's all they knew how to do.

“She's in a better place,” someone said.

I brushed his hand away. “I don't know you.”

My father sat to my right, wearing a black blazer, black tie, white dress shirt. His hands were clasped together in his lap, flexing. Clenching until they were white. Releasing until they were red.

I turned to him. “Where's Mom?” I asked.

He didn't answer. After a moment, I turned away and stared straight ahead.

There were flowers on the coffin. Orchids.

—

I opened my eyes
and I was seventeen one more time, and my father leaned against the kitchen wall and coughed. He spit out blood.

“I used to tell you all the time, Freddy,” he said. “It never took root. A few days later, you would come back and say, ‘Where's Mom?' I'd tell you all over again. Sometimes that's all I needed to do. Other times, it drove you berserk and you'd start throwing things.

“And then one day, after a few years, I told you she left us,” he said softly, looking down. “It wasn't planned. It just came out. But after that, you stopped asking where she was. You didn't have your tantrums. After that, you seemed to accept where we were.”

“Where were we?”

“We were left behind,” he said. “We were alone together. You and me.”

I stood up.

“No,” I said. “Not anymore. Just you.”

I opened my eyes
, and Linda Stiles stood inside her door, the chain still on.

“Why are you back here, Freddy?” she asked

“I know something about John Stiles,” I said.

“That's very nice,” she sighed. “Go home.”

She began closing the door, but I quickly said, “He wasn't leaving you.”

She stopped and stared at me for a moment. The wind pushed the rain against my back.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“He was driving my mom to a shelter. He was taking her there because she was leaving my father.”

She continued to stare at me. Her eyes wide. “Why didn't John tell me that?” she said quietly. Her fingers rubbed against the side of the door.

“I don't know,” I said. “He never told me.”

“Then what did he tell you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “He told me to put on my seat belt.”

“Ten years,” she said slowly, distantly. “For ten years, I've lived with that. Did you know that, Freddy? Ever since the day he died, I thought he was taking Saskia and leaving me. Did you know that?”

I said nothing.

“For ten years,” she said softly.

She looked me in the eye. Strangely, it didn't hurt.

“Where's Saskia?” I asked her.

What are you doing?

i'm waiting

Do you want to know something?

yes

I'm going somewhere.

are you going swinging

No.

are you going for ice cream

No.

where are you going

where are you going

I'll take you there.

—

There is a web between people. The strands are the bonds that they make with each other. The stronger the love for another, the stronger the bond and the stronger the thread.

Two people with a strong bond have an advantage over those without one. The closer they are together, the more they love each other, the more they understand each other. The more they understand each other, the more they can read each other.

The bond allows them a new level of communication, because they can read the language of each other's bodies. Where once there were only two eyes, now there are four.

The bonds of a culture are the threads of the metaphorical web that people build among themselves. It locks them into a community. Sometimes a bond will weaken and disappear. Sometimes it will grow anew with someone else. Sometimes it will stay, locked there forever, like a limb on an oak tree.

The strands of the web tell the story of the family. The strands of the web define the family.

I have no strands.

People who say they feel no love tend to be overly dramatic. The inability to feel love is a developmental delay at best and a pathological condition at worst. You're either delayed or a sociopath.

Love is a set of physical characteristics: a racing heart, a nervous tightness in the pit of the stomach. An ever-present sense of anticipation. People in love feel the same general physical symptoms. I have felt those symptoms in the same combination. Therefore, I am “capable” of love.

There is a difference, I believe. Most people are unable to distinguish love from symptom, so they call it love. I am unable to distinguish symptom from love, so I call it symptom.

I stood at the edge of the park at the end of the field, under a tree. The air was still, and the rain gone. Clouds above were thinning, and the promise of blue elbowed between them.

I saw Saskia at the far end of the field, sitting on a swing. She rocked, kicking at the cedar chips that blanketed the playground.

I texted her.

Did you know?

i dont know

I remember.

you remember?

I remember. I remember the car accident.

She lifted up her phone and put it back down in her lap. She lifted it up again and put it in her pocket.

You were in the back seat. We were in the back seat.

She took her phone from her pocket. I could hear her grunting, as if she was trying to say something she had no idea how to say.

At last she texted me back.

i said daddy wake up

I know.

he was mad at me

i kicked his seat

He wasn't mad at you.

he wasn't mad at me?

He only wanted you to stop kicking his seat.

dad i will never kick your seat again

He knows.

he knows?