The Memory Thief (18 page)

I stood. I breathed. I shook. And then the coldness came over me again and I laid it out.

When J. C. got what I was trying to tell him, he didn't say one word. He just stared at me, like he was trying to read my mind. And then he said, “A. J., don't do it. You can't go up against him over this. He'll kill you.” I thought he was probably right, but it didn't matter, I was that furious. I stood in the middle of his parents' living room, where we'd broken the statue, wrestling. It seemed like a hundred years ago. And I said, “I don't care what he does to me. He's a hypocrite and a liar and I'm sick of it. He's stepped all over our family for the last time.”

I remember that moment so clearly. I stood there, listening to J. C. try to talk me out of doing something crazy, and I thought: If my mother won't stand up to him, then I'll stand up for her, one last time. I'll stand up for my sister, and for myself. I'm not a child anymore. I don't owe him a damn thing. He made his choices. I will make mine. And I won't look back.

I went home to wait for my dad. I had to wait a long time. He didn't come home for hours, not until after midnight. I sat there and I watched the clock. My mom tried to get me to eat, she tried to talk to me, she tried to get me to go to bed, but I couldn't say one word to her. I was too ashamed. I sat there in the dark and I watched the numbers turn over on the clock and I waited for him to come home. And she and Ella went into their rooms and locked their doors.

I sat and I waited, and eventually I heard him come in. I stood up, and I said, “Semper fi, motherfucker.” I hit him so hard he bounced off the wall and landed on the piano. It made an awful noise, and he came up swinging. And then it was on.

He was the one who taught me to fight, and I did him proud. I broke his nose. I tore all the pictures of him in his dress blues off the wall, shaking hands with politicians and getting his medals, and I smashed them over his head. I said terrible things to him, and he said some things right back. I didn't care what he said. I just kept coming. He broke my arm, he broke my jaw, but I didn't give a crap. I think maybe I would have killed him, if I could. But my mom called the police and they came and broke it up. They hauled me off him kicking and cursing. It took four of them to hold me back, I remember that. They stuffed me in a squad car and took me to the hospital. While they were putting me in the car my dad came out and he said, “Don't come back here. You're no son of mine.” In the ER they told me he'd decided not to press charges, which made me laugh. And that was the last time I spoke to my father.

“That's quite a story,” is all I can think to say when Aidan finishes speaking.

“So, do you hate me now?” he says, pushing himself up on his elbows and looking in the direction of the river. I can hear it below us, tripping over rocks and tumbling against the banks. He tries to sound casual, but he can't quite pull it off. It's as real in the dream as it was that night: the feel of the grass under my bare feet, the rush of the water, the brush of the wind against my skin. I feel the coming darkness like a weight.

“You're not the one who did something terrible,” I say to Aidan, like I did then. “Your father is. Why would I blame you?”

“Because, Maddie. What if I'm a horrible husband? What if I'm just like him after all, underneath? I sure as hell was, that day. And you know the worst part? After all those years, there was something liberating about losing control like that. I think deep down … I liked it.” He drums his fingers on his knees so fast they are a blur.

“But nobody's perfect, Aidan. And what your dad did, it was inexcusable. What were you supposed to do? Smile and go on like everything was fine? Not be mad at your dad for screwing over your entire family? Why wouldn't you be upset with your mom, anyhow? She knew, and she did nothing. She didn't even tell you the truth.”

“What if I'm no good?” he says, as if he hasn't heard a word. He sits up in the grass and wraps his arms around his knees.

I shoot him a quizzical glance. “You're good to me. Sure, you screwed up big-time once, but I'm not going to hold that over your head forever. Just because you made a couple of mistakes, that doesn't make you a bad person.”

Aidan is uncharacteristically silent and still, and when I look at him again, I see tears running down his cheeks. After a minute he puts his head down on his arms to hide his face.

I scoot a little closer to him and stroke his hair. “Hey,” I say. “It's okay.”

He shakes his head under my hand.

“Everyone's got some crazy shit in their past, Aidan. Maybe not quite as dramatic as this, I'll give you that much. But everyone has something. You're not responsible for what your family does. You're just responsible for you.”

He makes a noise into his arm, like a laugh gone wrong. “Clearly you didn't grow up in the military. You're only as strong as your weakest link … which at the moment seems to be me. I've cried more since I met you than I have in the past ten years.”

Silence seems like the best policy, so I peer into the dark, petting his hair like he's a small boy in need of soothing. There's something hypnotic about the sound of the water crashing over the rocks, like it has for centuries or even millennia. It makes whatever's going on between me and Aidan, whatever happened to him years ago, seem inconsequential. It gives me perspective.

“Tell me the rest,” I say after we've listened to the river for a while. “You said the cops took you to the ER, and your dad decided not to press charges. But then what happened?”

His hand tightens around mine. “I told you he broke my arm and my jaw. That took a while for them to fix up. My mom, she never came to the hospital. I was a minor, and she gave them the release over the phone. J. C.'s parents came and got me, and they took me home. I lived with them until I graduated. I bet they wouldn't have let me, if they knew what they were getting themselves into.” He gives a caustic little laugh. “I was a mess. I drank all the time, I started failing my classes, I slept around, I got a motorcycle and took some idiotic risks. J. C. tried to talk to me, and I blew him off every time. He would've been justified in throwing me out on my ass. But he was patient with me, him and his parents both. They saved my life, I guess.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but I can tell he means it.

“So after a while you just … put it behind you?”

Aidan shakes his head, running his fingers back and forth over my knuckles. “Not exactly.”

“What happened, then?”

He is silent so long that I think he isn't going to answer. Then he says, “My mother came to see me.”

“You hadn't talked to her either, since … since that night?”

“Oh, I'd talked to her, but real utilitarian, you know. I'm staying here, J. C.'s dad will be coming by to pick up my clothes and my toothbrush, that kind of thing. I told you she didn't come to the hospital, and she hadn't come to see me the whole time I was at J. C.'s., which had been about six months by then. My dad told her not to, and you didn't go against my dad.”

He picks up a rock and tossed it in the direction of the water with considerable force. As usual, his aim is true, and a moment later I hear it hit. He searches around for another projectile as he goes on: “I acted like I didn't care, but inside it was tearing me up. I mean, she was my mother, for Christ's sake. I stood between him and her all those years, I stood up for her. He was the asshole, not me. I'd been a good son. Sometimes I felt like I'd spent my life taking care of her, instead of the other way around. But he gave the word, and she cut me off like I was nothing. I was angry, all right. And hurt, more than anything, not that I would've ever said that to her.” Another rock hits the water, this one larger than the first.

“One Sunday morning, I was still hungover from the night before. I hadn't gone to sleep. And the more I drank, the madder I got. By ten o'clock I'd worked myself into a fucking frenzy. I got it in my head I was going to go to church and shame the hell out of both of them. J. C.'s mom did everything but lie down in front of the door to stop me. At least sober up, she said. At least put on some clean clothes. But I got on my bike in my shorts and my T-shirt, drunker than Elvis, and I took off down the road.”

“Oh no,” I say. Whatever happened next, it couldn't have been good.

He gives me a sidelong glance. “
Oh no
is right. Looking back, it's like one of those horror movies where the whole audience is screaming
Stop, don't open that door,
but the moron goes ahead and does it anyway. And then the monster eats him.” He snorts. “God, I must have been a sight. I'd let my hair grow out, and I hadn't shaved, and I was wearing these crazy skater shorts and a ratty-ass shirt. I was drunk off my ass, and righteous with it.” He grins at the memory, and it isn't a happy grin.

“I pulled my bike up out front and I revved the engine. J. C. and his dad had followed me in their car, and they got in my face and started hissing like a couple of pissed-off cats. But I had it in my mind that I was going in, and you know me. I remember saying to J. C.'s dad, ‘I appreciate your concern, Mr. Cultrano, sir. And maybe you ought to go home right now, because I think I'm about to make a scene.' We had a good laugh about that one, later.”

“Did they leave?”

Aidan snorts again. “Oh, hell no. They looked at each other for a while, and then Mr. C. said, ‘Son, if you're going to church then I guess we are, too. Too bad we're not dressed for it.' And in we went.”

“Uh-oh,” I say. The wind gusts then, as if for dramatic effect, and I brush my hair out of my face with my free hand. Aidan is so involved in his story, he doesn't react at all. I have the feeling that the entire riverbank could slide into the water and he'd keep going, treading water all the while. Or maybe he's just afraid that if he ever stops talking, he won't start up again.

“We stood in the back,” Aidan says, “and we were early. Hardly anyone was there except the priest, and he looked like he had a few choice words he wanted to say to me. You gotta understand, church was really important to my family, growing up. I was raised Catholic. I was an altar boy.”

“You never told me that,” I say, trying to imagine Aidan in church for hours on end, doing whatever it is that altar boys do … carry candles around, maybe? Dress up in funny robes? I can't picture it.

“Yeah, we went every Sunday, no matter where we lived. My dad liked to parade us around, his goddamn perfect family.” He lets go of my hand, lights a cigarette, and then goes on. “I was looking for my father, mainly. I figured no matter what he'd done, he was still showing up at church like the hypocrite he'd turned out to be. And sure enough, I was right. We waited about five minutes, and in marched the brigadier general with his shiny little family right behind him. My mom and my sister had their game faces on, just like I used to.” He chucks another stone at the river.

“He saw me, all right, and he wasn't happy. J. C. and his dad put their hands on my shoulders, like they thought I was going to jump the pew and start beating on him, right in front of God and everybody. But you know what? They didn't even stop. Ella started to come over to me, but my mother grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. And the way my mom looked at me, it broke something inside of me. It was like she was an animal caught in a trap.” His voice trails off, and he swipes the back of his hand across his eyes, wincing as his fingers encounter the bruised flesh.

“Sorry,” he says after a minute of silence. “Talking about this freaks me out more than I thought it would. It was so long ago, you'd think it wouldn't bother me anymore.”

“Tell me the rest,” I say in reply.

“It's a pretty short story. I saw them, they ignored me, I left and rode around on my bike for a while. Pretty anticlimactic for J. C. and his dad, I guess. I wound up in front of the address that Oliver had given me, where he and his mom lived. It was pretty nice, a cute little brick ranch. They had the blinds open and I could see in, but the way I'd parked the bike, they couldn't see me. I saw Oliver, and I saw his mom. She didn't look anything like my mother. She had brown hair and she was short and curvy. They looked happy.”

“Did you go in?”

“No way. I'd seen enough. I didn't want to know anything else. I was just … done. I hated him, and my mother … I felt like she'd sold me out for his sake. I bought a six-pack, which was not easy to do on Sunday by the way, especially because I was underage, and I rode out to the beach and drank it, and then I bought another one and I drank that, too. I felt lower than dirt, like I was worth less than nothing. Like no one had ever cared about me and no one ever would, except for maybe J. C. and his family, and they probably just felt sorry for me, right? Because I was pathetic. I felt wrecked. And I promised myself no one would ever make me feel like that, no one would ever hurt me like that again. I wouldn't let it happen. I would keep moving.” He leans back, bracing himself on his hands. “And I have, until right now. Until I met you.”

“All those women,” I say, almost to myself.

“Yeah, all those women. And Kate,” he says, shooting a glance at me. “You scared the crap out of me. Hell, I ran halfway around the world to get away from how I felt about you.”

I try to get us back on track. “You said your mom came to see you.”

“Yeah, a couple of days after the whole church thing. She just showed up at J. C.'s house, like she thought I wouldn't have agreed to see her if she called. And she told me he'd left. She asked me to come home. Begged me, more like.”

“And you said …”

“I said no,” he says, staring up at the stars. “I wouldn't have lived in that house again if she'd paid me a million dollars. But we had a long talk that night. We worked it out the best way we could. At least my dad was gone, anyhow.” He pulls up a handful of grass.

“And here I was wondering why you never took me home to meet your family,” I say. I'm kidding, but he takes me seriously.

“J. C.'s folks have been more like family to me than anyone else, and I will take you to meet them, one day,” he says. “If it hadn't been for them, I never would've gone to college, for sure. They took me to look at schools, they gave me money when I didn't have any. I almost dropped out about forty times. All I wanted to do was climb. But they wouldn't let me. Just hang in there, they said. And so I did. I busted my ass, for them. They came to see me get my diploma, and I thought Mr. C. would have a stroke, he was cheering so loud. But my dad … nothing. And after a while I found out they'd stationed him overseas. He divorced my mom and married Olivia, and last I heard, they'd had another kid.”

I adjust my position. My butt is starting to fall asleep. “No wonder you got so angry when J. C. accused you of being like your dad.”

“He was just trying to get under my skin, so he said the one thing he knew was guaranteed to make me lose my shit. But he should've kept his hands off of you. I don't know what he was thinking.” He sighs. “Well, yes I do. But he shouldn't have been thinking it, even if you are pretty damn irresistible.”

“Ha ha,” I say uneasily. No one has ever described me as irresistible before. Smart, yes. Good at my job, sure. Pretty, even. But irresistible? Not so much.

“You are irresistible, at least to me,” Aidan says. He leans toward me then, one hand on either side of my face. “I would do anything for you,” he says. “When I'm with you, everything makes sense. I feel like … like you see me.”

He is looking into my eyes with that piercing gaze that made me so nervous the first time we met. It still has the same effect; I feel like a butterfly pinned to a piece of cardboard, and I squirm to get out of his grasp. He won't let me. He braids his hands into my hair and holds me still.

“Of course I see you, Aidan,” I say at last, irritated. “How could I see anything else? You won't let me move my head.”

“Very funny,” he says, but he doesn't relax his grip. The familiar confidence has crept back into his voice. Here is the Aidan I know. “I won't let you down, I swear to God,” he says, his face coming closer and closer until it fills my field of vision. “I'll be steadier than a rock. I'll be anything you need me to be. And if we have kids, I'll learn how to be a good father. I'll call up J. C.'s dad and ask him to give me lessons. Please, honey. Please say yes.”