The Haters (17 page)

“Dad Junior is never going to bite anyone,” I promised them, shaking my head, desperately trying to keep my eight-year-old shit together.

“You can just never
know
that, Wessie,” said Mom kind of quietly.

“I do,” I told them. “I do. I really do. He'll never attack you. I promise. He'll never attack anyone. I know him. I really, really know him.”

I remember just losing it. I remember the smell of the food and the weird sitarry music and the red fake-leather seat cushions that I was pushing my face into and just completely losing it with sadness and powerlessness while my dad tried to explain that when a dog attacks you as a kid, you can never relax around dogs ever again, and so this has been bad for your mom's health, Wes, and that means bad for the baby's health, too, all this stress and anxiety. Meanwhile, I was crying so hard that I got to the point of getting outside my own body and looking at myself and thinking,
It is somewhat fucked up that you need to cry this much
.

Eventually, my mom said, “Could he become an outside dog?”

I knew deep down that he couldn't. But he did, for a little
while. We put his bed outside on the back porch and put all his toys out there, and I spent as much time out there as I could. But he was bummed out. He just wanted to be inside. It wasn't even that he wanted to be with us. He just liked it better inside where it was cooler and cozier and there was more stuff to sleep on.

And so, after a few days, he ran away.

One morning when I raced out of bed to go play with him, he just wasn't there. The side gate had claw marks on it, so we guessed he had probably jumped over it.

I ran out into the street yelling for him like a maniac. He did not appear. I spent the morning sprinting around the neighborhood, frantically looking for him, and then the afternoon, and then the evening, and part of the night.

For weeks I put up signs everywhere, went knocking on people's doors, called all animal rescue shelters, wandered the streets and parks for hours saying his name, learned how to post to Craigslist and flooded it with
MISING DOG POSIBLY STOLEN
posts to the point where I got flagged for spam and none of it worked. He was gone. Every night I dreamed I had found him, and waking up from those dreams was the worst thing in the world.

Mom did not help look for him. Dad did, a little. But you could tell his heart was not in it. And he was sad for me, but he was a little relieved at the end of every trip that we hadn't found Dad Junior, and I knew he was relieved, and I hated him for it.

And obviously I hated both of them for making Dad Junior an outside dog. Because that was why he ran away. Or at least that was part of it. He was never going to run away if he could sleep on my bed.

But I think I hated them most of all when they asked me if I wanted to talk about the baby that was coming, and if maybe that was
really
what was making me so upset, because how could they possibly have gotten me so wrong.

Mom lost the baby not long after Dad Junior ran away. She was about five months pregnant. It was because of whatever medical condition made it so hard for her to get pregnant in the first place, which is what made them decide to adopt. I still don't know what that condition is. They never described it to me and I've never asked.

As a family we then went through a pretty terrible period, where Mom was home sick the whole time and Dad would whip back and forth between these two moods:

a) Overly Polite and Formal with Me Considering I Am His Son

b) Way Out-of-Proportion Angry and Impatient about Some Small Thing

It was especially the second mood a few days after the miscarriage when I asked Dad to drive me around again looking for Dad Junior. That was really the first time I can remember him raising his voice at me. But actually it worked, because afterward he apologized in that same overly polite and formal way and promised to make more of an effort to look for Dad Junior, especially on the Internet.

And sure enough, a day or two later, we found him.

Dad Junior had trekked back to his old family way out in the suburbs. He missed them so much that he jumped out of
our backyard and ran all the way home. We went out to visit him, and this time the bald, stressed-out, middle-aged guy told me they were going to keep their dog, whose name was actually Henry. They'd made a huge mistake that first time, and they were never going to do that again. He and his wife seemed to think it was all pretty hilarious what had happened. Their two sons understood a little bit better that it was not hilarious and instead incredibly fucked up.

I was watching this dog named Henry gaze with intense loyalty at the older son, and I was realizing I couldn't blame Mom and Dad for what had happened. My dog hadn't left because we made him an outside dog. It was because he was never my dog in the first place. He didn't want to be adopted by me or given a name that wasn't his. He just wanted his old family, because that was where he belonged.

I was watching Henry as we drove away and he was looking at us the way he looked at every car. He was sizing us up like, if he was in better shape, he might chase us, but he wasn't and we all knew it.

I could have asked for another dog after that. But I didn't. In part because I knew I just couldn't handle it if my second dog didn't want to be adopted by me, either. But mostly it was for Mom and Dad's sake.

They were sad in a way that felt like they might never be happy again, and the entire house just seemed to be full of dark heavy air that wouldn't leave.

Of course, I was sad about not having a brother or a sister,
too. But I wasn't nearly as sad as Mom and Dad. But actually, that was something to be sad about, too. It was some connection with Mom and Dad that I was failing to have, because I wasn't them, or maybe because I wasn't theirs, in some way that couldn't be fixed. So maybe I did almost get to where they were in terms of sadness.

I mean, I know I didn't. But I wasn't as far away as you might think.

But the sadness did start to fade bit by bit. And after a month or so everyone was doing a little better, and we went out for another dinner at that same restaurant, and they told me they loved me and I was all the son they ever needed, and they told me this was a very sad and difficult episode but it made them realize they had exactly the family that they wanted, and they weren't interested in expanding the family anymore. And we did a thing where each of us went around the table and told the other two about our love for them, and Dad told me that I brought him immeasurable pride and happiness every minute of every day, and Mom told me I was her beating heart, walking around outside her body. And I don't remember what I told them but I don't think it was as good as that. But it still made everyone get teary-eyed and close and happy, at least in the moment.

And that was the only time Mom ever got pregnant, and the only time we ever had a dog or any kind of pet, and that was the point when they really started letting me do what I wanted. That was the moment where ever since, they've given me a ton of trust and independence and let me for the most part take care of my own shit. And in retrospect that seems crazy, because I was eight and a half, but at the time I felt like I deserved it, and I guess they
just knew they had a kid on their hands whose biggest motivation was to do the company proud.

ASH: it's a little fucked up that you think of your family as a company

WES: it's just a turn of phrase

ASH: no i get it

WES: i mean you're not wrong, it is fucked up

[
it is four in the morning and ash is looking at wes in a way that he can't figure out
]

ASH: can i sleep here?

WES: yeah

ASH: i just want to sleep here. no sex or anything

WES: yeah no of course not

ASH: not “of course not” but just not tonight

WES: okay

She smiled and very quickly took off everything except her underwear and got under the sheet, and I stripped down to my boxers and got under the sheet, too, and I lay kind of rigidly on my side of the bed but she scooched over and kind of nestled into me from the side, and we lay like that the whole night.

She was asleep pretty quickly but I got no sleep at all, and forget what I said about the happiness of the sushi dinner back in Shippensburg, those three or four hours were definitely the happiest I will ever be.

20.
HOW TO ESCAPE FROM A FAMILY THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS COOL WITH YOUR FREE-SPIRITED ADVENTUROUS LACK OF PARENTAL CONSENT BUT IS ACTUALLY CONTACTING THE POLICE IN FIVE EASY-TO-FOLLOW STEPS

Step One. Be awake when the woman who invited you to stay at this house in the first place contacts the police

This is going to be around seven in the morning. You're going to be lying in bed with your guitarist/lead singer, and you're going to be awake because of the boner that you've had for the last three hours. At this point the boner has nothing to do with being sexually aroused. It's more of an athletic boner, if that makes any sense. It's more like your dick is seeing how many sit-ups it can do. Okay. You're lying there in the childhood bed of a dude named Quincy and your guitarist/lead singer is quietly snoring into your face, and from downstairs you're going to hear this woman, whom you thought you could trust, shamelessly betray you to the police over the phone. “Could I please speak to Officer Whaley,” you will hear her say. “John? Is that you? John, I have three children staying over at my house that I believe ran away from home,” you will hear, and it will be like a punch to the gut. “Well, don't come
too
much later because they might be up soon. All right. Thank you, John. All righty then.”
Oh shit
, you will think.
Charlize, what are you doing. We trusted you. Shit. Okay. What do we do now
.

Step Two. Wake up your bandmates

Okay. Pull on clothes, accidentally smash your toe on something, try not to hop around, and wake up your guitarist and tell her you guys need to get out of there immediately. Then tiptoe out into the hall and wake up your drummer. He has barfed a little bit again in the night, or maybe you just didn't do as good a job cleaning him up as you thought. Anyway, it's immediately going to be clear that he will not be the most helpful part of your team. Meanwhile, your guitarist is in the bathroom and won't get out. So everything is already all going straight to hell.

Step Three. Take matters into your own hands

What you need to do is get the instruments packed into the car and ready to go before the police get there, but once you go downstairs and start packing up the car Charlize is probably going to call the police back and tell them to hurry up, so maybe your first task is making it harder for her to call the police. Okay. You're going to take an upstairs phone off the hook and put it under a pillow, and then you're going to very slowly and carefully tiptoe downstairs, where fortunately no one is in the living room, and you're going to spend a few minutes creeping around the first floor like a cartoon burglar, and eventually you're going to spot Charlize through the window, working in the garden. Her cell phone is on the kitchen counter. Awesome. Put it in the fridge. And then just to be super sure she can't call the police you're going to go down into the basement and find the fusebox and flip the Main switch and shut off all the power to the entire house.

Although, this actually is sort of a tactical error, because from
outside you hear Charlize go, “Oh,
now
what,” because she has noticed that her radio plus all the lights in the house have suddenly shut off, and you hear her come inside and yell, “Ed! Wake up and check the power.” So it is safe to say that you've lost the element of stealth, and your only remaining asset is, probably, speed. So run back up out of the basement past Charlize, who upon glimpsing you immediately assumes the worst and screams, “ED! HELP!! ED.” Christ. Okay. Run outside to where the drums aren't packed or anything and just pick up a chunk of the drum set and carry it to the car, except the car is locked, so bellow the names of both of your bandmates and run back inside and up the stairs. Corey is just sitting on his bed squinting at nothing. Oh my God. Corey, get your shit into the car, we need to leave right now, the police are coming. Ash, let's go. The bathroom door opens and Ash sullenly exits a bathroom that definitely still has unflushed poop in the toilet. Wow. All right. Just grab the car keys from Corey and hustle back down the stairs with as much of everyone's stuff as you can get, and open the car, and just start cramming shit in there. Amps, drums, the guitars that the church dudes very thoughtfully put back in their cases. Patch cables. Ash is helping you. Eventually, Corey shows up. Meanwhile, Charlize is glaring at you guys from a safe distance and scribbling your license plate onto an envelope. “I'm really, really sorry,” you tell Charlize. “We just can't go back home yet.” “ED,” she just keeps yelling. “ED. EEEEEDDDDDD.” Neighbors are excitedly filtering out of their homes to watch what is happening. Okay. You're all packed up. There's no room in the backseat but you'll make it work. “Charlize, your phone is in the fridge,” you say. “Thank you so
much for hosting us and also saving my life, and please don't call the cops again,” and you're about to all squeeze into the car when there suddenly is Ed, on the front porch, in a white shirt and tight white underwear, holding a shotgun, blinking away the sleep from his eyes.