a kind of informal review where the opinions and testimony of administrators and guards came into play. An inmate was required to achieve Level 6 before he would be considered for release. Chris was now at Level 4. His progress was encouraging to Amanda, and the news of it seemed to brighten her outlook. To Flynn, she looked younger than she had in a long while.
Thomas and Amanda continued to see Dr. Peterman. One cool day in late March they made the familiar drive to his office, complete with Flynn’s running commentary on Dr. Peterhead, the watercolors, the books in his office, and his fees. Amanda did not mind. She was just happy that Flynn was cooperative and coming along.
As he did with every visit, the doctor returned to the issue of the gulf between father and son. For his part, Flynn contended that Amanda was too soft on Chris. Flynn said that while he disagreed with her, he understood Amanda’s approach and that someone, he supposed, had to continue to nurture their son, but he could not bring himself to do it. Eventually he admitted that he was too wounded by Chris’s attitude and actions to speak to him in a loving way. And then, perhaps because he was embarrassed by this admission, Flynn claimed that his hard-line stance was part of a larger strategy.
“Somebody’s got to show him the iron fist,” said Flynn. “Let him know that what he’s done has been unacceptable. Amanda can be the one to pour juice into his sippy cup and give him hugs.”
“Oh, please,” said Amanda.
“I’m saying, you’ve got your role, Amanda, and I’ve got mine.”
“Why don’t you switch roles?” said Dr. Peterman. “Amanda can adapt a bit of a tougher stance and you can do the nurturing.”
“What,” said Flynn, “you want me to wear a skirt?”
Dr. Peterman smirked nervously and blushed a little. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
Flynn looked at his watch. A quiet settled in the office and they all knew the session was done.
Flynn and Amanda walked over to the Dancing Crab and had lunch and a few beers. Amanda called Flynn a Neanderthal but laughed about his comments in Dr. Peterman’s office, and in her eyes he saw light and youth. That afternoon, they made love in the quiet of their bedroom. She fell asleep as the sun streamed in through the parted curtains. Flynn stepped over their Lab, Darby, who was sprawled out and napping on his cushion, and got dressed and left the house.
He drove down Bingham Drive into Rock Creek Park and stopped at a turnoff lot, where he cut the engine, his van facing the water. He and Amanda had come here one day as teenagers after they had eaten mushrooms from a plastic bag. Their spot was a beach of fine pebbles and sand, and they had lain down upon it. Tommy Flynn had taken Amanda’s shoes off and massaged the balls of her feet and her toes, and as the psilocybin kicked in, they laughed without reason and uncontrollably for what seemed like a long time. Flynn could barely imagine having so little responsibility again, so little weight on his shoulders. To look up and see no clouds blocking the sun.
I’m just disappointed, thought Flynn. That’s all it is. I’ve been a failure as a father, and there’s nothing ahead of me that looks promising or new.
In one of their sessions, Dr. Peterman had looked straight at him and said, “Why do you think Chris has gone down this road, Thomas?” And: “Is it possible that Chris was trying to please you or emulate you in some way? By your admission, you were a pretty tough kid. Did Chris feel he had to be that way, too, in order to garner your respect and your love?”
Flynn had taken no offense. Peterman was smart and he was onto something. The doctor knew.
Flynn tried to think on his early years with his son. How he had continually emphasized the physical over the intellectual with Chris. John Wayned him up with instructions to never show weakness and “step aside for no man.” He had taught his son how to fight but never shown him the value in walking away from one.
Pivot your hip, Chris. Aim for two feet behind your target and punch through till you get there. If you’re going to throw it, make sure it counts.
While other fathers were reading books to their sons and pointing out countries on the globe, Flynn was showing Chris how to shoot a gun in the woods and teaching him the police ten codes. It became a kind of shorthand between them. Chris would fall down and scrape his knee, and he would reassure his father that he was 10-4. Or Chris would call his father on the car phone, wondering where he was, and ask, “What’s your ten-twenty?” The code 10-7 meant out of service, but Chris learned from Flynn that to cops it also meant dead. So when Flynn buried Chris’s deceased hamster in the backyard, Chris said, “Mr. Louie is ten-seven.”
Flynn had taught his son that an off-the-ten code for an officer in serious trouble was a Signal 13. In elementary school, when Chris was just beginning to act up, he would come home and tell his father that he had been sent to the office, but that the offense was minor and nothing to worry about.
“It was no Signal Thirteen, Dad.”
“That’s good, Chris,” said Flynn with a smile.
The boy had spirit and fire, character traits that annoyed teachers but would serve Chris well as an adult. That’s what Flynn had always believed. But in this, and in everything else pertaining to the raising of his son, he now felt that he’d been wrong. Chris had been headed for serious trouble for a long time, and Flynn had missed the signals. It was as if he had been watching his kid drive a car, in slow motion, straight into a brick wall. Watching it, letting it happen, without so much as a shouted warning.
It’s not Amanda’s fault that Chris is what he is. It’s mine.
Speak to him.
I should try.
SEVEN
How’s it going?” said Thomas Flynn.
“It’s goin all right,” said Chris.
Chris had just seated himself at the table across from Flynn. Chris’s eyes were cool and he sat low in his chair.
“Where’s Mom at?”
“She wanted to come.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“I talked her into staying home today. Thought it might be good for you and me to see each other alone.”
Chris sat back and crossed his arms. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“Talk, I guess.”
Chris looked around the room. A couple of other boys, one in a black polo, one in a forest green, were being visited as well. The boy in black had a male visitor. Chris took mental note of this because it was rare. He returned his attention to his father.
“I’m not trying to be hurtful,” said Chris. “But, really, I don’t have all that much to say.”
“You say things to Mom.”
“Honestly? Mom doesn’t tell me to shut the fuck up. Mom never called me a piece of shit.”
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” said Flynn. “I was wrong.”
“How did you expect me to respond to that, Dad?”
“I didn’t think it through.”
“It sure didn’t make me want to change the way I was.”
“I know it.”
“It didn’t make me want to put my arm around you or get on my knees and beg you to forgive me. It just made me feel nothing. It was like you weren’t trying to be my father anymore and you didn’t want me as your son. I felt like, so be it. You know?”
“Yes, I do,” said Flynn. He looked down at his hands, tented on the table. “I took everything that happened… I took it too personally, I guess. I let my emotions get the better of me.”
“So what you tryin to tell me now?”
What are you trying to tell me? thought Flynn. He bit down on his lower lip. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry about the way I reacted.”
