CHAPTER TEN
When John was a little kid, he had loved playing in the dirt, building things with his hands then tearing them apart chunk by chunk. His mother would see him walking up the street, the mud on his pants, the twigs sticking out of his hair, and she’d just laugh and grab the hose, making him strip off his clothes in the backyard so she could squirt him down before letting him into the house.
At night, he slept hard from his busy days. John wasn’t the type of kid to do things halfway. He was scrawny for his age, his chest almost concave, but he made up for it with sheer willpower. If there was any kind of game in the street, he was there, and despite his size, he was never picked last for any team. Stickball, baseball, dodgeball-he loved moving. Football was hardly a natural fit for his small frame, but he did all the leagues as soon as he was old enough to qualify. By junior high, he’d grown taller but his body was closer in proportion to a rubber band than a jock’s athletic build. Still, the football coach had been impressed with his drive and John’s first week of junior high found him on the field sweating his ass off, every muscle in his body screaming with joy at the prospect of playing with the big dogs.
In high school, he found out that you weren’t allowed to play football when your grades sucked. He was more upset than he thought he’d be when he got dropped from the team. In a sudden burst of anger, he had thrown his helmet at the wall, punching a large hole into the Sheetrock. He had started walking around the neighborhood after school because he knew if he went home, his mother would ask him why he wasn’t at practice. He had trashed the note the coach sent home and paid for the damaged wall with money from his illicit drug sales. He figured his parents would know soon enough what had happened when report cards were in and he wanted to enjoy his freedom as much as he could before Richard came down on him like the wrath of God.
Even after the rest of his life started falling apart, John still liked to walk. That first time he was suspended from school for the pot in his locker, he spent most of the day strolling around the neighborhood. After the cassette tape theft, his father grounded him for six months and except for his mother’s kind heart (“Be back in an hour and don’t tell your father”) John probably would have atrophied in his room. Sometimes, he thought that was just what his dad wanted. Let the bad son fade away on his own; out of sight, out of mind. Dr. Richard still had Joyce, after all. He had one good child left.
John liked being outdoors, seeing the trees sway in the breeze, watching the leaves sail to the ground. He never got high on his jaunts. He didn’t want to spoil things. Besides, the allure of coke was quickly fading. The visit to the emergency room, waking up feeling like his head was on fire, blood streaming out of his nose as he puked up the charcoal they had forced into his stomach, had been somewhat of an eye-opener. He had decided then and there to stick to pot. Nothing was worth dying for. Woody would give him shit for it, but John wasn’t going to kill himself because he couldn’t stand up to his cousin.
The night of the overdose, John’s father had come to the hospital, shirt hastily thrown on, buttons done up wrong. The nurse had left John alone with his dad, thinking they’d have a bonding moment or something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Richard had demanded. He was beyond angry. His voice was strained like it was going through a sieve and John’s ears, already buzzing from being sick, could barely comprehend what he was saying.
Richard liked his quotes. He kept some of them taped to the wall of his study, and sometimes when he’d pull John in to talk to him about his son’s latest fuck up, he’d just point to one of the sayings. “Stupidity is a learned behavior” was one of his favorites, but that night at the hospital, John knew that the days of his father pointing to faded pieces of paper in the hopes of giving him guidance were over.
“You are not my son,” Richard said. “If it weren’t for your mother, I would toss your useless ass onto the street so fast your head would spin.” He slapped John on the side of the head as some kind of illustration. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was the first time since John was six or seven that his father had raised a hand to him, and he had never, ever hit him anywhere but his bottom.
“Dad-” John tried.
“Don’t ever call me that again,” Richard commanded. “I
“Do you know who does this shit?” his father had asked, pushing away from the bed. “Worthless junkies, that’s who.” He paced along the length of the small room, hands clenching and unclenching. He turned around and gave a single nod of his head like he had decided something and there was no going back.
John tried again. “Dad-”
“You are not my son,” Richard repeated as the door closed behind him.
“He’ll get over it,” his mother said, but John knew otherwise. He had never seen that look in his father’s eyes. Disappointment, yes. Hatred… that was something new.
John was thinking about that look as he walked around the neighborhood the day after his father’s confrontation in the emergency room.
“Just an hour,” his mother had said, but she hadn’t added, “Don’t tell your father,” because they both knew that his father didn’t care. As if the hospital scene weren’t enough, Richard had come into John’s room that morning and told him point-blank that he would feed and clothe him until he was eighteen, and then he wanted John out of his house, out of his life. He rubbed his hands together, then held them palm out to illustrate. “I wash my hands of you.”
The breeze picked up and John pulled his jacket around him. Despite nearly dying the night before, he wanted a bump of coke, something to take the edge off. He wasn’t going to do it, though. Not for his dad or his mom, but because he was scared. John didn’t want to die, and he knew the coke would kill him sooner rather than later. He’d only snorted it a handful of times anyway, right? It shouldn’t be hard to quit. Still, no matter how much pot he smoked, the craving ached inside his body like he’d swallowed a razor. God damn Woody and his stupid parties.
Hey.
John looked up, startled out of his thoughts. Mary Alice Finney was sitting on one of the swings in the playground.
His hatred of her sparked like a flash fire. “What are you doing here?”
She said, “I didn’t know you owned the playground.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I skipped.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, snorting a laugh that made him taste blood in the back of his throat. “Shit,” he said, putting his hand to his nose. Blood was coming out like a faucet had been turned on.
Mary Alice was beside him. She had a tissue in her hand-why did girls always have these things?-and she pressed it under his nose.
“Sit down,” she told him, leading him over to the jungle gym. He slumped on the bottom bar, his bony butt feeling the cold through his jeans. “Tilt your head forward.”
He had his eyes closed, but he could feel her hands on him: one on the back of his neck, one holding the tissue to his nose. You were supposed to lean back when your nose bled, but he didn’t care as long as she was touching him.
She sighed. “John. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
He opened his eyes, watched blood drip onto the sand between his feet. “Did you really skip school?”
“I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment, but my mom forgot to pick me up.”
John tried to turn his head, but she wouldn’t let him. Mothers didn’t miss doctors’ appointments. It just didn’t happen.
“Yeah,” she said, like she could read his mind. “My parents are getting divorced.”
John straightened up quickly, seeing stars for a moment.
She was embarrassed. She clutched her hands together, the bloody tissue between them. “My dad’s been seeing this woman at his office.” He could see the tight smile on her face. Perfect Mary Alice’s parents were
