Brightside, Mark Tullius [philippa perry book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Mark Tullius
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Book online «Brightside, Mark Tullius [philippa perry book .TXT] 📗». Author Mark Tullius
I wasn’t used to Dad’s smell. It was too clean, like he hadn’t done anything at work. Mom smelled more like a man than Dad did. Underneath all that sweet, a light touch of cologne always there, always different.
The water stopped but neither of us asked why Mom needed to wash up before her tennis lesson. I didn’t say it was her second shower of the day.
“So what is it?” he said. “Why were you crying?”
“It’s dumb.”
I pictured the test lady, the one who wanted to do things to me. Awful things. Naked and alone in her office.
Dad jerked back. I didn’t know he was like me at the time, but I suddenly wondered if I wasn’t alone.
He was picturing the test lady, the one he’d never seen.
When my eyes widened, I just heard a hum, Dad’s way of pushing out the thoughts, the things he didn’t want me to hear.
He kept his eyes on me, but started playing with the cube, turning it over in his hand. “Those tests aren’t all they’re made out to be. We shouldn’t have had you take it in the first place.”
“Cuz you know I wouldn’t do good.”
“That’s not true.” Dad turned the cube even slower. “And don’t say cuz unless you want everyone to think you’re stupid.”
“Everyone’s gonna anyways.”
“No one will know about your score unless you tell them. You’re smart and I don’t want you to ever think different.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Don’t you think I’m smart? You’re just like me.”
That almost made the tears come back.
Dad gripped the cube, had it so the yellow side was up. “But being book smart isn’t what’s important and you need to understand that. Scores on tests and grades in school don’t mean squat. Your mom thinks they do, but, between you and me, what you have is more important.”
I thought he meant hearing thoughts and I couldn’t breathe. How much had he heard, what things had I thought about him?
“You’re kind,” he said. “You have a big heart. You’re going to be a good man. You’re special.”
I relaxed a bit, but it was hard to listen. I looked him in the eyes. “You think so?”
“You know it’s true.”
He finished his drink, set it down on the coffee table and wiped his lips. “You got to be careful, though. You have a real gift, but you have to remember who you are. You can’t always tell people what they want to hear.”
“I won’t.”
“You do it all the time,” he said. “And I totally understand it. It feels good for everyone to love you, but sometimes the right thing isn’t going to make people happy. But it’s what you have to do.”
Nodding seemed like the only thing I was capable of.
Dad turned to the cube, acted like it was the first time he saw it. “You solved it?”
I started to say yes, wanted to make him proud, but after what he’d just said, I told him the truth. “I switched the last two stickers.”
Dad laughed, told me I was learning, that he was proud. Mom walked by in her towel and rolled her eyes. She thought Dad was coddling me.
* * *
DAY 66. THE SUN WAS setting and I suddenly had this urge to call Mom. When Sharon suggested I give her a ring, I had no intention of following through, but here, in this room with a closet of weird gifts, I wanted to yell at someone. I punched in the numbers faster than I could think about it.
The phone rang and I tried to remember what she sounded like, if I’d ever had a real conversation with her. Once I’d moved out, I basically only heard from my father. It rang again and I almost hung up.
Mom used the same greeting she used whenever a guy would call and Dad was around. “Who’s this?”
“Uh...”
“Joey?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
The setting red sun filled my window, everything beyond it. I brought the phone back to my ear. “Yeah.”
Like she was sorry to hear it, she said, “Oh my God.”
I realized it was late in Ohio. “Did I wake you?”
“No, not at all. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay.”
She sounded genuine when she said she missed me. “So much, I really do.”
Suddenly, I was three years old again, just happy to hear her voice.
“I hate this,” she said. “I’ve tried to call, but they won’t put me through. I was scared. Have they hurt you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound it.”
If anyone had been listening to the call, they probably would’ve believed her, the way she sounded so sweet. “You know you can call me anytime, right? I’m so glad you called.”
“Yeah...”
“So how you been, Joey? What’s it like?”
I rubbed my temple, tried to quiet the voice telling me to hang up. “It’s different.”
“It seems loud.”
“It’s my neighbor.”
“Oh, what’s his name?”
“Her.”
“Oh. Are they nice?”
I knew someone was listening in, waiting for me to slip up. I suddenly felt trapped, felt the anger building.
“I’m sure you’re meeting other people. Like you. That must be exciting? Just be yourself.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. You’re always smart, sometimes too smart—”
“I thought I was an idiot.”
Mom sounded a lot more like the woman I remembered, when she said, “I never once called you that.”
“You thought I was stupid.”
“Joey...”
“You did. I was there. I got a ninety-one on my IQ test. And you thought I was an idiot.”
I opened my eyes, looked out the window, everything red.
Suddenly, I was five years old coming home from the snowstorm, hating my mother. I said, “It wasn’t my fault. The stuff she was thinking made it so I couldn’t think.”
“Who?”
“The test lady. She wanted to hold me, feel my skin on hers. She wanted to breathe in my hair.”
“You didn’t tell us.”
“And say what? I’d been hearing thoughts my whole life, knew damn well you hated me?”
“Don’t you ever say that!”
“Why? Should I just think it? Does that make it better? Does it make it any less true?”
“Stop it, Joey. Stop it right now.”
I did. But only because I was done. I heard the hurt in her voice, even if it was barely there. That would have to be enough.
“Is that why you called? To accuse me? Point fingers?”
I thought about it a minute, loved not having to hear what she was thinking. Imagining her heart being crushed. “Closure.” Sharon’s word flying out of my mouth.
“How do you think I feel?” Mom said, “You don’t think you owe me an apology? Listening in to whatever you wanted.”
I took my time to answer, chose to speak the truth. “I guess I do owe you an apology. For the time when I was six and you were fucking Brian’s stepdad.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
“When all you could think about all day long was how much you loved him. How you wanted to fly away, how it’d be so much better.” I looked at the sky, wishing I could turn back time, put her on that plane. “How he was going to send you to New York, you’d only have to see me when you wanted to.”
“Joey, I always loved you.”
“I’m sorry for giving you the guilt trip. I should have let you abandon us. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up.”
“You make it seem like I thought bad things all the time,” Mom said. “What about all the good thoughts I had? Don’t those count for something?”
“Should they?”
“Don’t you dare tell me there weren’t times you hated me. I listened to you scream you wished I was dead.”
I kept quiet.
“It’s natural to have bad thoughts every once in a while. It’s natural to be upset and tired and cranky. It’s natural to not be satisfied, to want something more.” She paused like she had something important to say, then I heard the sobs. “You think it was easy living in that house with you and your father, leaving nothing inside my head. Ripping it out whenever you wanted. I could have left. I thought about it. And yeah, I took comfort in the arms of other men. But I deserved some time to myself, away from you and your dad.”
“Poor you.”
“You have no idea what it was like.”
“Just put Dad on the phone.”
“He’s not here.”
“Then I have to go. I only have a certain amount of minutes.”
“Joey, please. I don’t want you to hate me.”
“Well, I do.”
“How can you say that?”
“You know, it wouldn’t even surprise me if you were the one who turned me in.”
I pictured Saul, that douchebag making the call. I pictured his fat fingers and that shit-eating grin.
Then everything changed.
“I would never turn you in, Joey. Never. And when I found out your father did, I felt like I was going to die.”
My stomach churned acid. “You’re sick in the head.”
“I don’t know why he did it. I’m so sorry...”
I don’t remember letting go of the phone, but I heard it crack against the floor, my mother sounding like she was screaming from the bottom of a well.
My foot stomped down on the phone, cracking it, shattering her goddamn voice.
Dad turned me in. Just handed me over.
I saw the closet. Opened it. All those fucking gifts. I flung them from the closet. Ripped them open. The little swan figurine, I smashed it against the wall. The fishing pole, I snapped in two. Everything obliterated. Tiny pieces flying across the room, sliding under my bed, cracking against the window. I destroyed it all and collapsed. My own father. The man who would never give up on me, told me he’d always be there. No matter what.
Through my tear-bubbled eyes, I saw a tiny piece of metal. Curved, shiny. Resting right in front of my face on the floor. My hand reached out. I held it under the light. So small and hard and silver, and it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. Felt it pressed against my finger as a kid.
No...
Frantically, I crawled across the floor, sifting through all the broken bits, the tuning fork that wasn’t really a tuning fork. The fishing pole snapped in two, the bottom part hollowed out. The metal picture frame with the strange spring.
Everything coming into focus.
My hands putting it together. Dropping the bolt slide into place like Dad showed me. Screwing the barrel.
In ten minutes, there it was.
Eight pounds of power. American metal. The shotgun Dad got when Grandpa decided a mouthful of buckshot
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