Читать книгу Here Lies a Father - Mckenzie Cassidy - Страница 13

CHAPTER 3

CATHERINE WATCHED AS NEIL AND I carefully pushed the orange hatchback into a parking space facing the high school’s main entrance. She sighed and shifted her weight from one hip to the other, crossing her arms and then dropping them to her sides. Neil and I ripped off the extra hunks of rubber from the wheel well, revealing the car’s skeletal metallic undercarriage. Using a rather small jack we attached the donut tire to keep the car as level as possible. In the meantime it would sit alone in the lot, which neither of us were too worried about in a small town like New Brimfield. Once the car situation was settled, we followed Uncle Neil.

He drove a Cadillac. Right on the cusp of being considered an antique, the Cadillac was aged but didn’t possess the hip vintage style so beloved by car enthusiasts. He shuffled us over and unlocked the front door with a long silver key. The car had no power locks and he awkwardly bent over the passenger seat and pulled up the lock knob, breathing heavily and grunting with each movement. The Cadillac was dark purple with a white rubber top—although it wasn’t a convertible—and the rims were twisted shiny spokes like a brand-new bicycle. I wanted to improve Catherine’s mood so I gave her the front seat, yanking the lever near the floor and pushing the seat forward so I could squeeze myself into the back. Catherine sat down and immediately pulled the seat belt across her chest and clicked it into the buckle. I struggled to find the belts in the back. There were no shoulder straps and the buckles had slipped down the cushion cracks long ago.

Once Uncle Neil climbed into the driver’s seat, the Cadillac dropped about a foot and released a metallic groan. He breathed a sigh of relief also, one he’d been holding inside to rally his robust midsection around the steering wheel. The car smelled stale too, like cigarette smoke. I glanced at the dashboard, at the ashtray more specifically, and saw that the small plastic container with a reflective facade of stainless steel was clean and untouched. Smoking in the car didn’t bother me much. There wasn’t a time I rode in the car when my parents didn’t have cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. The reek of smoke stuck to everything we owned, from the clothes on our backs to the bags we carried to school, and our walls always turned yellow from the burning nicotine.

Uncle Neil drove through the side of town Catherine and I hadn’t seen when we first arrived. The nicer houses were near the center of New Brimfield. The neighborhoods reminded me of a cul-de-sac on which my family had once lived. A cul-de-sac was a fancy way of saying dead end. Most of our neighbors were doctors and lawyers—professionals—and I’m certain we were the only ones on the block who didn’t own our house. None of them knew that, of course. Mom kept the house up, planted fresh flowers under the windowsills and mowed our well-fertilized, emerald-green yard. During the holidays, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, Mom sent Catherine and me out with boxes of fudge for the neighbors, or miniature American flags to stick in their front yards. No one had any idea we didn’t belong in that neighborhood, and they certainly didn’t know we barely scrounged up enough money each month to pay rent and utilities. Everything was an act, but for a time, it worked.

Mom said she had no interest in owning a home because she didn’t want to be held down in one place for too long. Her only valued possessions were pictures. She was compelled to always document the good times. Our walls were covered in picture frames of all shapes and sizes, easy to swap out or strike down, based on her mood or fancy. Sometimes she even hung a frame with the stock photo to further an aesthetic only she had in mind. There were pictures she only put out when certain people visited, like her mother, and others she replaced periodically to conceal outdated hairstyles or months when she had put on unexpected weight. For her, the placement of pictures was an art of personal expression, and they each told a story, her story. As the years passed I noticed fewer pictures with Dad. I didn’t know why he had been excluded, but a simple answer would’ve been that he wasn’t around as much.

Uncle Neil drove under two flashing red lights on Main Street and took a sharp right onto a dirt road. Thick forests surrounded the car on both sides. Only the occasional gravel driveway leading to cabins and camping pavilions indicated that anyone else lived in the area. I pushed open the backseat window about six inches, as far as it would go, and breathed in the fresh country air. I caught a whiff of saturated soil, pungent pine needles. We sat quietly and I grew queasy, either from stress or the bumpy road. I took a series of deep breaths, which seemed to help. An uncle I’d just met was driving me to the home of an aunt I never knew existed, to meet an estranged family who was likely as uninterested in me as my sister Catherine was in them. I was journeying into uncharted territory and Catherine was a tether to the only reality I’d ever known. The next two days would be daunting for sure, but something about the situation felt right.

When Neil slowed the Cadillac and began turning into a driveway, I sat up and pressed myself against the glass to take a good look. Marie’s house was long and narrow, a manufactured home—not a trailer, exactly—painted a drab shade of gray. The front patio was a later addition, supported by a pile of cinder blocks and covered with a makeshift roof of corrugated tin. The windows were smaller than in typical houses and overlooked patches of dead grass. If not for the white smoke that seeped from the stovepipe chimney and a car parked out front, I would’ve thought it abandoned. We stepped across a muddy driveway and our shoes sank into the bog. I’d have to take mine off to avoid tracking mud across Marie’s house, but my socks felt wet so I’d have to change them too. That’s when I suddenly realized that Catherine and I had no change of clothes, not even a toothbrush. We had never expected to stay the night.

Neil stepped onto the porch, opened the screen door, and knocked. Marie answered, smiling, and ushered us inside, which was surprisingly warm and pleasant despite its rough exterior. The living room had a deep red shag carpet and she asked us to sit down on her blue sectional couch. She even pulled a wooden lever on the side so I could recline and raise my feet.

“Take a load off, everyone,” she said, busying herself in the kitchen. “I’m going to fix some coffee.”

Oak-colored cabinets lined one side of her kitchen while the adjacent wall was plastered in blue-and-white wallpaper with floral designs. She didn’t have as many pictures in her house as Mom did—in fact, no one did—but I saw one of a young man, his wife, and a baby. I didn’t want to ask her because it was none of my business, but I assumed they were her family. Photographs are often unreliable, though. They only capture a moment in time, seldom the truth. Mom toiled over every picture hanging on our walls. They told a story and were displayed in a very specific way. Her personal favorites were from her own happy childhood in Fairfall Valley, a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, even smaller than Wellbourne.

There was no better place in the entire world to grow up, she said. I stewed with jealousy when she described her youth to me and I never stopped to wonder if that was the reaction she had intended. We’d never have it as good as she had—end of story. Her family was poor, yes, but happy. She left town at nineteen for a job waiting tables in Wellbourne, in her own words, “to get away from your grandmother.” That’s when she met my father, Thomas Daly, a well-respected manager of the community’s only hotel. He served on numerous civic and nonprofit boards. Some people said he could’ve run for mayor and won.

Catherine and I spent most of our summers in Fairfall Valley. Mom dropped us off with my Aunt Cynthia, who lived next door to my grandmother. Our stays with Aunt Cynthia felt like days or weeks, but I couldn’t recall precisely. We caught rainbow trout from creeks nearby; they glistened and writhed in our hands. We had to cut our fishing lines with curved shears when snapping turtles attached to the lure. The snapping turtles were also the reason we didn’t go swimming. On breezy afternoons we ran through rows of cornstalks, hot streaks of sunshine boring through the gaps in the leaves, until giant bumblebees stung our legs and cool mud was the only remedy to soothe the pain.

As I stood looking around Marie’s home, I remembered how Mom, Catherine, and I celebrated our birthdays and attended summer picnics in Fairfall Valley, but Dad never came. He didn’t have time, with his heavy work schedule. He worked such long, erratic hours. Those days were tough for Mom, but she never asked for help from anybody. She was too proud. She did what she needed to do to survive. I remembered, once, she told me she’d scrubbed toilets when Dad had to find jobs elsewhere and wasn’t sending any money. That was when he had started taking jobs all over the state, living in staff dormitories for months at a time, rather than commuting back and forth, to save on gas. It was hard for us, but he always came back. Always. I respected him for being such a hard worker and provider, but it had been strange how his growing absence from the family was never questioned.

Marie finally stepped out of the kitchen holding three mismatched coffee mugs. On the coffee table she set down a dented tin of sugar, a couple of soap-spotted spoons, and a white porcelain dairy cow full of fresh cream. She also set out some leftovers, trail mix, and bags of potato chips, but no one was hungry. The mug I lifted was white and brown, its handle the thick head of a Great Dane. I only added a few drops of creamer into my coffee and a quarter-spoon of sugar. Catherine sat beside me on the couch, her purse occupying the space between us. Neil kept his coffee black and leaned against the wall jutting into the living room. I realized that the only person missing was Carla. I wondered if she was avoiding us.

Marie sat in a vacant recliner, took a big sip of her steaming black coffee, her hands wrapped around the mug, and rocked herself with a smile. “This is simply wonderful,” she said, looking around the dim room. “For the longest time I asked Thomas to let us all meet, but it just never seemed to work out. And look at us now!”

“Yes, look at us now,” repeated Catherine vacantly.

“How has your mother been doing through all of this?”

“It’s been rough on her,” I said. “I think that’s why she chose not to come with us.”

For any wife, losing a man with whom she’d spent a quarter of her life would be crushing. Such a reaction made perfect sense. While speaking to Marie, I had simply communicated how I felt my mother was most likely feeling, how any wife would feel in this situation. I didn’t know if that was the true reason Mom stayed home, and besides, she didn’t share her thoughts with me. I had been with her the day Dad died, or at least the day when the news was delivered to us, and she hadn’t seemed very upset. She may have been in complete shock.

“When you see her, please give her my condolences,” Marie said. “Thomas’s former relationships were shaky to say the least, but people change and it sounds as if, with your mother, he found the person who was meant for him.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” interrupted Catherine. “Before he passed, my father was alone in Albany. My mother got the ridiculous idea in her head to move us all down to Florida, but she got bored again after two years. She came back with Ian first, about six months ago, and my father never rejoined them. They were separated.”

I laughed nervously.

Catherine obviously hadn’t understood the situation. Mom and I had returned to Wellbourne first so she could arrange for a new job and place to live. The next step of the plan was for Dad to join us when he was ready, after he had resigned and settled any debts in Florida. Catherine knew, as well as Mom and I, that he was in Albany making the important connections needed to secure a job. His absence was no different than the summers he spent working at the resorts on the other side of the state. Sooner or later he always came back.

“Really? Separated?” Marie asked, stunned from the revelation.

“Is it that surprising, Marie?” said Neil, taking a sip from the coffee he’d been balancing on his potbelly throughout the conversation. “The man was married twice before.”

“Tragic nonetheless, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Honestly, though,” I chimed in, “I wouldn’t say separated. They weren’t living in the same house, but it wasn’t like they were getting a divorce. A lot of families live apart, especially if their jobs are in different places. It’s not like it used to be, you know. It’s not the 1950s anymore.”

The room fell silent, as if someone had just made an offensive remark, and everyone avoided eye contact with me. They took sips of their steaming coffees instead.

“So, Ian, tell us about your life,” Marie finally said. “What do you like to do for fun?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Oh, that’s not true. A boy your age, you must have a million interests and hobbies. Video games, sports, girls?” She chuckled. “Do you play any sports at school?”

I hated when people asked if I played sports. Blood pumped like a bass drum through my jaw. This tingling warmth crept up the surface of my face and I felt like shaking. Old men were the worst when they asked me about sports. They stared at me in disbelief when I said I didn’t have a favorite team and never watched any games, like I was a freak or a leper, like there was nothing more that could be done for me. I was a lost cause; better to be left alone. They were members of an exclusive club and I’d never be invited. I could only watch from a distance, through the chain-link fence.

Dad and I never watched sports together or discussed teams. I think he was so busy with work he didn’t want to disappoint me by promising something he couldn’t deliver. Mom said sports were for knuckle draggers anyway, a big waste of time, so my interests unfolded elsewhere. Since we’d come back from Florida I had been training regularly at an amateur boxing gym in Wellbourne. The workouts were intense and grueling, but I looked forward to the agony. I never talked about it because I didn’t want anyone to roll their eyes at my ridiculousness or think I came from a bad family. Besides, the idea of me fighting was laughable. Troubled boys with criminal records and violent fathers went into boxing, not docile, ineffectual teenagers like me.

I had waited too long to answer Marie’s question and she regarded me with concern. Given the extraordinary circumstances that brought us to New Brimfield in the first place, I decided to break normal protocol and provide a straightforward, honest answer to her. I’d never see her again anyway.

“I’ve been going to an amateur boxing gym,” I said. Air escaped my mouth rapidly like I had been holding my breath.

Marie set her coffee mug down on the coffee table, a Las Vegas mug with a giant set of colorful dice printed on one side, and she smiled. “That is so fascinating,” she said. “What made you decide to start doing that?”

“Nothing, really. I don’t go much,” I said, trying to downplay it.

“Is that where you got the black eye?”

I reacted without thinking, bringing my hand up to my face. “Oh, it’s still noticeable?”

“Well, faintly really, but I can see where you had one recently. Did you have a fight recently or something?”

I stammered and tried to think of an excuse. “Well, no, of course not. I’m not very serious about it. But, sort of, I mean, it was from all that stuff, so, yes.”

She looked confused.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell her the real story behind my black eye. “I only do it once in a while. Not every day or anything. It’s not a big deal.”

Before my first night at the Wellbourne Boxing Club I’d been carrying the flyer in my pocket for two weeks straight. I couldn’t initially muster the courage to go. The gym was housed in the back of an office building at the local fairgrounds, vacant year round until the traveling carnival came to town each summer. Crumpled pieces of wax paper, remnants of giant pretzels, and fried dough rolled across the grounds like tumbleweeds. A large wooden grandstand was occasionally used for cattle auctions, rodeos, and demolition derbies, but otherwise it sat like a creepy ghost town all year long. The sun had set when I first arrived by foot, but an eerie purple and orange glow made the clouds resemble the sky of some faraway planet.

I stood in front of the entrance and weighed my options.

I wasn’t big enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t tough enough. I wasn’t coordinated or athletic enough. I had quit everything I’d ever started. I didn’t know anyone at the gym. They would all laugh at me. Everyone at school would make fun of me when they heard about it. I would break my nose, and Mom would get spooked and ban me from leaving the house ever again. But something in me, maybe a sense of destiny or adventure, forced my hand to reach for the door. There had always been an instinctual side to me, yearning to be dangerous and uncharacteristic, yet I had learned to bury it deep.

I took a breath, exhaled, and pulled open the gym door, plowing a thin pile of snow flurries to the side of the walkway. I couldn’t open it all the way, on account of it being wooden, warped, and old, but I managed to squeeze myself inside and saw three people standing around, two teenagers and an old man. They looked bewildered and I realized they probably didn’t get many new visitors.

The old man turned as he heard the creaking of the door. He smiled. “Hello,” he said, stepping up to me. “My name’s Bud Johnson. Are you here for the club?”

What a strange question—what other reason would I have for entering?

Bud Johnson and I were about the same size, but his cheeks were flushed and his round belly filled his faded sweatshirt. His gray hair was carefully barbered and brushed to one side. His most pronounced feature was the flatness of his nose, like someone had used a roller on it, and I realized it was from years of getting punched in the face.

“Call me Bud, by the way. For tonight, just do whatever you see everyone else doing until you start to pick up the basics. There is always one thing I tell new recruits, whether they last one night or one year, and that is: you get out of it only what you put in. If you’re prepared to work hard, you’ll see the fruits of your labor. If not, then you only have yourself to blame.”

I nodded in understanding, but really I had no idea what he was talking about.

Inside the gym there were four heavy leather bags covered with gray duct tape, hanging from long chains attached to metal beams in the ceiling. They looked like giant, dusty cocoons. The gym was narrow. A homemade boxing ring, four feet high with three wooden steps, fit snug in the far corner. Beside the ring was a rickety card table full of musty gear: gloves, headgear, jump ropes, and pads that you put on like underwear to protect your groin. Some of the gear was decades old.

We started stretching and warming up. I saw my breath as I did jumping jacks. Bud could tell I was nervous and he smiled encouragingly. I wore a ratty San Francisco 49ers T-shirt, even though I didn’t watch football, and hoped he wouldn’t ask me if they were my favorite team because I’d have to lie. Below the waist I sported a pair of baggy, worn-out sweatpants that looked like pantaloons. My clothes had been graciously donated secondhand from my cousins in Fairfall Valley, including a pair of old soccer sneakers to cushion my feet. Mom insisted everything was as good as new and that we didn’t have the money to purchase new anyway.

Bud asked me whether I had hand wraps or a mouth guard. I shook my head.

“I didn’t think so, but we have some extra just in case,” he said, pulling a dusty cardboard box from under the ring and slamming it down on the tabletop.

He dug around inside the box for a moment and pulled out two bright-yellow hunks of cloth. He unrolled them like toilet paper and they reached the other end of the gym. He lifted my left arm, which had been resting on my side, to begin rolling the cloth across my wrist and palm. I had to spread my fingers out wide as he circled the cloth over and over so it was snug but not too tight. He systematically wrapped it around my wrist, over my thumb, and around my knuckles until a thick padding covered my hands.

“Always wear these when you train,” he said. “They protect your hands from being broken or sprained. You won’t have to worry about those injuries as much once you get the proper form down, but wear the wraps anyway to be safe. They’re important. Got it?”

I nodded blankly.

He placed two swollen gloves on my wrapped hands and led me to a dangling red heavy bag. I tried to recall whether I had consented to the class in the first place, but now it was too late. He led me around the room like a timid puppy.

“The only thing you need to worry about right now is the jab,” he said.

“The what?” I asked quietly so the two teenagers wouldn’t hear me.

Bud brought his fists to his cheeks and threw a straight left into the air. “Like this. Keep your hands up at all times and throw your left straight into the bag. Master that and we’ll go over more later.”

“Just this one punch?” I asked.

“That’s it,” he said. “One step at a time.”

Practicing one punch at a time didn’t seem difficult. When I tried baseball or football they expected you to be the best on the first day, but now I got to learn and master techniques step-by-step. I swung my arms around like a propeller to loosen my shoulders before I started throwing punches. Bud set a digital timer for three minutes and stepped into the ring with one of the teenagers, an Italian boy, to work the mitts. Bud wore pads over his hands so the boy could focus on sharpening his skills on smaller targets.

There seemed to be an unspoken rule that you didn’t get to do the mitts until you showed enough promise not to waste Bud’s time. It was only my first day and I didn’t want to waste his time. I so badly wanted to be hitting those pads. I wanted to be a part of it all. The bell rang and the Italian boy shuffled up to Bud, started bobbing, weaving, and striking the mitts like it was choreographed, but it wasn’t. Seeing Bud work with the Italian boy inspired me and I threw a couple of feeble lefts, the first of which resembled someone swatting a fly, and the next bending my wrist the wrong way on impact. I grunted in pain and looked around to make sure nobody had seen me.

The round ended and Bud stepped outside into the parking lot. The Italian boy came down too, glistening, and undid his gloves with his teeth. He stood next to me like a person who wants to start a conversation but can’t think of what to say.

“Hey,” he said after a moment, holding out his hand. He wore a black tank top showing off his large shoulders. His biceps looked like someone had shoved baseballs under his skin.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I took his hand, damp with sweat. “Where did Bud go?”

“Oh, he went out for a smoke. Funny, isn’t it? A boxing coach who rides us about healthy choices, but grabs two smoke breaks a night. Good job on the bag tonight.”

I didn’t know why he said that. Either he was being sarcastic or he didn’t want to crush my feelings on the first day. But the longer I studied his face the more I realized he was genuine. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was afraid to declare his true feelings on any subject. If only I had been like him, instead of some clumsy, worthless liar. He was the kind of guy I would’ve despised for being so good-looking and charming. My initial assumption was that he treated everyone like garbage, but I was wrong. I would come to learn that he didn’t care what anyone thought about him and he wasn’t an ass. I’d never met anyone like him before.