Obsession

I said, “Welcome to real life. What finally made you ask not to return?”

“Something else happened…oh, Jesus-fine, fine…It was a Sunday, a long weekend-Presidents’ Day, something like that. As usual, Mom was off skiing and Dad and I were home. Off to Mary’s we went, but this time Dad and Mary went to have brunch by themselves. I was nervous about being left alone with Pete but Dad wasn’t paying attention. Pete picked up on my anxiety right away, said, ‘Hey, man, sorry if I grossed you out but I’ve got something totally cool to show you. Something different.’”

His shoulders dropped. “I was relieved. He seemed so jaunty.”

“You were never scared he’d hurt you?”

“I was scared the way you are when you’re playing hide-and-seek and you know someone could be just around the corner. But no, apart from that one time, he never touched me and he was always friendly. I was upset about not spending time alone with Dad. Doing normal father-son things-don’t tell him any of this, he’s tried to the best of his capabilities. His dad mistreated him but he never did that to me.” Deep breath.

I said, “So Pete was jaunty.”

“Stay on topic, Kyle.” Knuckling his brow. “Back to the garage. The ‘different thing’ was another box, full of audiotapes. He said they were bootlegs that he’d learned to splice together to make his own music…He showed me the razors he used to do it, pretty sloppy job. Then he played his homemade cassettes on a boom box. Dreadful, mostly static and white noise and bits of lyric that made no sense. But it was a lot better than looking at his pictures and I told him ‘Cool.’ That made him happy and we shot some hoops, went into the house, had a snack. Cap’N Crunch. Pete drank some wine and tried to get me to try it but I refused. He didn’t push it, he never pushed anything. I trailed him to the garage again like a good little puppy, and he went straight to a refrigerator they kept back there. I’d always seen it bolted with a chain but now the chain was off. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. The only thing inside was a large see-through plastic bag. Inside were what looked like chunks of raw meat. It smelled horrible, despite being sealed. I held my nose, started to gag. He laughed, spread a tarp on the floor-one of those bright blue things gardeners use-and dumped out the contents of the bag.”

His face had gone white. His hand shot to his belly. “Even now, it’s unbelievable…sometimes I still wonder if I dreamed it.” Moments passed. He sucked in breath.

He said, “What he dumped out was animal matter, all right. But not beef or pork.”

Another inhalation.

“Body parts. Guts, limbs, fur, bones, teeth. Heads, too. Squirrels and rats and I think I saw a cat. I just lost it, out came the Cap’N Crunch. Pete thought that was hilarious. Got up and grabbed a fork from a barbecue set they kept out there and used it to push gobs of the stuff around on the tarp. As if he were stir-frying. All the while, he’s laughing. ‘Time for dinner-no, it’s breakfast-no it’s brunch, hey dude, we can have our own brunch.’ Then all of a sudden, he speared a forkful and jammed it right up against my face. I jumped up, still barfing. I tried to get out of the garage but couldn’t. The door was shut, one of those metal rolling dealies, I had no idea how to open it. Pete kept waving the goop, offering it to me, making gross jokes. It reeked beyond belief.”

“Disgusting,” said Milo. Meaning it.

Kyle placed his palms on the rug, braced himself, as if ready to levitate. “I’m screaming and barfing, begging him to let me out. He keeps advancing on me, then he stops, leans against the fridge. Opens his fly and whips it out and takes a gob and puts it there. And touches himself. It didn’t take him long. He was turned on.”

He excused himself to go to the bathroom, came back with damp hair and raw eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I said, “How’d you get out of the garage?”

“He finished, let me out, ignored me for the rest of the day.”

“How much contact did you have with him after that?”

“None. I never saw him again.”

“Family obligations never got in the way?”

“What are you talking about.”

“You don’t know?” I said. Wondering if he really didn’t.

“Know what?”

“Lester Jordan-”

“Is his father, yeah, yeah, technically he’s my cousin, but not functionally. There was absolutely no contact. And I didn’t find out about the relationship until years later. Hell, with all of Dad’s running around, I could have cousins all over the world.”

“When and how did you find out Lester was Pete’s father?”

“I was already living in Atherton, it was a couple of years later. I came down to spend time with Dad and he wanted to go see one of his girlfriends. This time I asserted myself and said if he didn’t care about spending one- on-one time with me, I’d go to a museum. He got really apologetic, started beating himself up about being a shitty dad. So of course, I consoled him, told him he was a great dad. Somewhere in the midst of that, the subject of Lester and Pete came up. I believe he’d gone off on a speech about bloodlines, how any good genes I’d gotten were from his side because Mom’s side was a bunch of losers. After the divorce, both of them were doing that to me- bad-mouthing each other.”

I said, “He used Lester as an arguing point.”

“Exactly. Then he dropped in the nugget about Lester being Pete’s father. Made an apple-not-falling-far kind of comment.”

“Sounds like he knew Pete had problems.”

“I guess so.”

“But he didn’t ask if Pete had ever mistreated you.”

“No,” he said. “Dad’s curiosity only extends so far.”

I said, “How’d you find out about Pete’s learning disabilities?”

His eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

I said, “You told Tanya you had a cousin who’d been put on medication to little avail. Or were you referring to someone else?”

“I…no, that was him. I guess I did call him that. But not because I really consider us kin. Tanya and I were having a theoretical discussion. I didn’t think I was going to be parsed.”

“How’d you find out Pete was on meds?”

“He showed me his pills. Mary let him keep the bottle on his nightstand and take them unsupervised. He told me he popped when he felt like having energy.”

“Ritalin?”

“I never read the label, he just called them energy pills, said they’d been prescribed because his school was trying to control him. He said they made him feel good but he still wasn’t going to do any work because school sucked.”

Milo said, “Ever see him take any other drugs?”

“He had a Baggie of weed right out in the open, next to the pills. I saw him roll and smoke a few times. He was also into wine, whatever he’d steal from Mary’s stash.”

“All that and animal guts.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Why’d you contact Tanya?”

“When Dr. Delaware dropped in here and talked to me about Ms. Bigelow, it got me remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

“That whole period of my life, Lieutenant.”

I said, “Seeing Tanya in the garden.”

“I wasn’t spying, it was nothing weird, she was just there. Mom and Dad were still married but living apart and I was being shuttled back and forth from Atherton. Grandpa was pretty much vegetative. No one had time for me except Patty Bigelow. She’d ask me how I was doing, fix me a sandwich. Tanya and I never spoke a word. She says she noticed me but I couldn’t tell. After you came here, I looked her up on Facebook, saw how pretty she’d become.