The Phenomenon Page 4
She aimed for normal. Her only hope for that was for Dad to stay away. Then we’d find our routines. She’d go to work and we’d go to school. I’d come home, change out of my school clothes, make sure the kitchen wasn’t a complete disaster, and be home by dinner. It was simple, just the three of us.
He’d find another girlfriend and be gone for months. He’d come back and apologize. Mom would think of us in the next room, or look into our faces, and then there’d be four of us again. She couldn’t shake the notion that a boy should have a father nearby. She couldn’t not believe in having a family, even if it were all fouled up and volatile and hurtful. The truth was, sometimes she mourned his absence, for the loneliness that came with it. Dad always had a warm place and a meal when his luck ran out everywhere else, and maybe that was the problem. Of course it was the problem.
Another problem was that Dad was a bully, and Mom, because she so wanted to believe the nightmare would end and didn’t want to be threatened again and also didn’t want to lie in a puddle of her own blood on the kitchen floor, was afraid. She had nowhere to go. She had two boys to raise and protect. She had to be brave. So she prayed the car she heard turn into the driveway wasn’t his.
CHAPTER
FOUR
My father could be a decent, reasonable man. He taught me where the snook were. He put me on his shoulders when he surfed, or out on the front of the board, and we’d laugh all the way to shore. He hit me a lot of baseballs in the backyard.
Life could be OK, you know, from a distance.
Then he’d come home from Little Jim’s, the bait shop and beer joint out on the causeway that would stay open until he was done, and in the time in between I’d gone from “son”—he almost always called me “son”—to “you fat fuck,” and I wasn’t close to getting the worst of it.
I was just a boy, and what could I do? Mom would scream, “Help! Help me!” and I would shiver from behind my bed. I would hear the kitchen drawer open and the blade of a knife slide across the others as it was drawn into the open, and I would hope she had armed herself against the monster in the kitchen. But she would scream again, and I would close my eyes and wish it would end, that he would go away forever, that we could be happy and normal like other families.
I would awaken in the morning like that, curled and hidden behind the bed, and for a few moments, while my eyes focused and the world came back into view, I wouldn’t remember the rage and the threats and the wailing. I felt warm. I felt safe. I was just a boy, after all, and I could convince myself we’d be safe.
She stayed, though. We stayed. And he kept coming around when he felt like it. They never married, and he never acted as though they were, which explained the half-sister—the whole other family—across town. My mother couldn’t leave because she was sure he would find her—find us—and kill her for running, because she was afraid he was always a beer or two from beating her or worse. So we stayed, and he drank, and on the nights when he did come home from Little Jim’s—some of them with me behind the wheel, at twelve years old, because he kept running the car into trees—we would hope he was only desperately mean and not homicidal.
There would be some relief when the DEA agents came. They’d usually pull into the driveway before school, one car followed by a handful of others, their blue and red lights whirling across the house and the trees and the lawn and the neighbors’ houses in the dawn’s gray. By the time the agents knocked on the door and roused my father and explained there was a warrant—it was always drugs, marijuana or coke, smuggling or selling or holding or an old warrant or all of it—the folks next door and the people across the street and the family in the house next to theirs would be watching from behind curtains pulled clear of the front windows.
Then, while I sat at the kitchen table and finished my cereal and thought about the huge bag of marijuana I’d found stuffed behind the VCR, the agents would lead my father out of the house, parade him across the lawn, and ease him into the backseat of one of those cars. He’d be back. But not that day. I’d put my bowl in the sink, brush my teeth, kiss Mom on the cheek, and go to school, like it had all been part of the routine.
My mother—relieved, humiliated, spent—would stand in the corner of the kitchen, out of the way and, for a few hours, safe.
When the cars had pulled away one morning and the neighbors had left their windows, I told her, “I never want to be like that.”
“You won’t, Ricky,” she said. “You won’t.”
She once gathered the courage to try life as a regular, single mother of two. It wasn’t long after one of those mornings when the police came by to drag my belligerent father away, events my mother would call “Jerry Springer auditions,” when the neighbors would come out from behind their curtains and onto their porches to witness the latest episode. She’d be too embarrassed to leave the house for an hour or two, but that would fade into the past embarrassments, and eventually, she’d have to go to work or the supermarket or the bank, so she’d put on her sunglasses and drive off. She didn’t want to be that lady in that house, the loud house that disrupted everything. She hoped they understood that. Still, she avoided eye contact, as much for them as for her. It was awful and it was dangerous and she was sorry for that, but she hadn’t found a way out.
She went on a date during a time when Dad was not around. I might’ve been five. Mom hired a babysitter, a big expense, and a man she knew took her for dinner and a movie. They returned to the house after a few hours at about 9:30, laughing and happy to have had an evening out.
Dad was waiting in the bushes. He ordered Mom into the house and beat the hell out of the guy. She watched from inside, screaming at Richard to stop or she’d call the cops. She did not call the cops. She never called the cops, because eventually they’d leave and she’d be alone and Dad would punish her for it, she just knew it. She waited for the beating to end, then watched her date open the door of his car, get behind the wheel, and drive off. He was headed to the emergency room, where they’d stitch his face up.
My old man was an asshole. I didn’t want him to be. I’d like to think he didn’t want to be. But there we were. Whatever.
He chose. Every day, it seemed, he chose. So the games of catch in the backyard were washed away in those choices, and so were those mornings hunting snook, those afternoons on the surfboard, those evenings watching the Braves games, when he’d take me out back under the dim lights and just for kicks teach me to throw a knuckleball, when I thought he was the coolest thing to ever be, that ever walked in. Which he did sometimes, just walked in like it was all OK. And the way he walked, all proud and full of himself, made a boy like me believe it must be true. That I had to be wrong about him.
My mom must’ve done something to piss him off. I must be a disappointment. The cops must have it in for him. Phil, my brother, who had protected me with his fists more than once, must like the work and be good at it, and Dad wouldn’t ever let him get into trouble. No dad does that, right? So we all went along. For a long time, we went along. I worshipped him and asked myself not to be too disappointed. And I grew harder. And I asked people to like me. Not out of duty or because of a street address or because of my name or because I could throw a ball. Because of me. The alternative was more disappointment. More violence. The alternative was watching Phil go off to jail too, because of the drugs, because of where that started, selling them and using them with the man who should’ve helped raise him and instead made him an accomplice. I was too small, and then I was too afraid, and even when I grew up there remained the notion that to challenge one’s father was to call out the whole universe into the middle of the street to decide who was the better man. And how long would that have lasted? A punch or two? And what would that have cost my mother in bruises?
He’d have beaten the shit out of me, and nothing would change. Or I’d have caught him with fists and anger and youth, and he’d laugh and be back tomorrow. So I kept my mouth shut, and usually I forgave myself for it. I wished
for peace for my mother. I’d lie in bed and close my eyes as tight as I could and wait for the shouting, the screaming, the cries for help to pass. When he left I hoped it was forever, and I knew better. A day later we’d be in the backyard, me and the guy who had terrorized my mother and left her crying again, lobbing a baseball back and forth, talking about the Braves’ rotation, trying those knuckleballs on each other, laughing when the ball would wobble and sail. We’re safe, I’d whisper. Mom’s safe too. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to change.
My old man was an asshole, though, and by the time I figured that out, was old enough to know, he’d already wrecked two of us. That left me. I can’t exactly say where that left me. But I knew I wasn’t wrecked. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He’d have to be a hell of a lot meaner, I told myself. He’d have to be drunker. And now that I’m old enough and big enough, he can’t beat me. Because I don’t care. That’s where I win. Because I won’t even fucking care. You can’t beat a man who doesn’t fucking care.
Maybe he hated his life and hated us for it. I don’t know. I found a better father, anyway, along the way, in a man named Harvey. And then I found a better father in me. It shouldn’t have had to go that way. It did. Over and over. Whatever, man. Whatever. I’d find my own way, and he wasn’t invited.
CHAPTER
FIVE
When I was thirteen, my best friend died. His name was Dennis. He lived a couple blocks over in a single-story house that was small and rectangular, nothing special, really, like a lot of the houses in Fort Pierce. I loved it there, because Dennis was there, and because it wasn’t my house, which was structurally fine but could be emotionally unsteady.
There Dennis and I played one-on-one games of whatever sport was in season, but mostly we played baseball. Our game was simple: I pitched, he hit, and I tried to catch it. Then we switched. The corner of the house, a dirt path, the neighbor’s house, and the telephone line marked the singles, doubles, triples, and home runs, in our imaginations the very dimensions of Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, where the great Dale Murphy played. We chased foul balls into the woods that ran up against his backyard, and sometimes we’d get distracted by something in the woods and not come back until after dinnertime. Even by the shallow measures of good and bad at the age of thirteen, I knew Dennis was good, and I knew we were safe. There was plenty in Fort Pierce that wasn’t, some of it just a couple blocks over.
Sometimes Dennis came to my house, which was fine too, because my father was everybody else’s best friend. Pretty much, you liked my dad and my dad liked you, as long as you weren’t me. Or my mother. But then, eventually, Dennis would have to go home.
Dennis lived with his mother and little brother. His father lived in Boca Raton. I met him once. That was at the funeral. I was a pallbearer.
We didn’t do much without each other. Dennis was left-handed like me, and we both always hit the ball to the right side. So we didn’t need a left field, and those sorts of conveniences seemed important at the time. In my backyard, the trees were over there anyway. He played the outfield and pitched, like me.
We spent the night wherever the day ran out, his house or mine, it didn’t matter as long as the coast was clear, and if I wasn’t home by dark, my mom knew I was at Dennis’s, trying to hit a near invisible tennis ball as far as I could against my best friend. We’d talk about playing for the Atlanta Braves, alongside Sid Bream and David Justice and John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, and we’d imagine what it would be like to win the lottery and have that life instead.
By then, Dennis and I had been like this for going on half our lives—brothers by all but blood. I hated to see him go. Man, he should’ve seen me in my Braves uniform when I was grown up. He would have loved that.
My mom and dad and I went away one weekend. I was playing in a baseball tournament in Sarasota, which was kind of a big deal, because it was all the way across the state and we’d stay in a hotel. Only, when it came time for the game, Mom wouldn’t leave the room, and she seemed upset, and after the game, we picked her up at the hotel and drove three hours home in a very quiet car.
Once in the living room, having hauled in my duffel bag and two days of dust and sweat, I announced, “I’m going over to Dennis’s.” Something caught in my mom’s throat. I was half out the door when she said, “Honey, wait a minute. You can’t go.” She handed me a newspaper clipping. There’d been an accident, it said. A bunch of kids were in a car, and it crashed, and Dennis was in the front passenger seat. His name was in the paper. He’d died in that car while I was off playing baseball.
In that moment, I swore that nothing would ever hurt me that badly again. It was bigger than the sadness I felt. The loss I felt. The anger that bit my cheeks. It was bigger than all the friends I would ever make again and the people standing in the living room with me. If that car was going to flip over and take Dennis, then it would take parts of me too, and I didn’t care. That’s how I wanted it, and that’s how I would keep it.
I went to Dennis’s house anyway. I stood in the street and didn’t knock on the door or go in. In some ways, it was my home too, and that was my family in there, and I cried for what they’d lost and I’d lost. I cried for what we’d lost. Us, together. But I didn’t go in.
In the weeks, maybe months, that followed, I’d walk the couple blocks, stand in the road, and stare at his front door. I didn’t want to believe it, I guess. I wanted him to walk out the door, nod, and say, “Hey, Ricky,” like it had never happened, and then I could pretend it had never happened, and we could go back to dreaming again, and we would be safe again.
I thought a lot about being safe then.
CHAPTER
SIX
In my teens I could pretty well distinguish between right and wrong. Wrong, you see, stumbled into the house plenty of nights. Wrong dragged my older brother, Phillip, along with it to run drugs. Wrong got hauled off in handcuffs, sometimes with Phillip, wearing a matching set, a few steps behind.
Right killed the summer nights playing ball in the Florida heat. Right maybe sneaked a beer or two from somebody’s dad’s supply, but it never did any harm.
On the night before an Independence Day in Fort Pierce, five of us drove over to White City Park. I was thirteen, hanging out with some older kids. Our honest intention was to play a game we’d dreamed up long ago on one of these same boring nights, not much else going on in a sleepy beach town for young men who sort of knew right from wrong.
We had a Wiffle Ball and bat. The rules were loose. The game usually was fun enough for a few hours anyway. We played on the tennis courts, and on that night we pulled open the fence door, laughing and dogging each other on who was gonna take who deep. We fed a quarter into the slot over the knob that would turn on the lights. No lights. Another quarter. Nothing. We shook the coin box and wrestled the knob and listened to our lonely quarters rattle. We looked at each other.
And, well, it’s funny how the smallest of inconveniences can become the biggest of messes. How, exactly, I ended that night sprawled in a police-station parking lot, my hands bound behind my back, my father standing over me, was a lesson in dumbness and idle minds. While it was indeed my father who accounted for my skidding, knee-scraping, concrete landing, that accounting for the final few feet of a poorly conceived evening, it was one of our few father-son moments in which I looked up at his glowering face and granted, “Yeah, I probably had that coming.”
Of course there was some hypocrisy in his being mad at me for running up against the law. Maybe he had a moment of clarity, of regret for the example he was setting for his son on the streets and waterways around Fort Pierce. Maybe he was pissed because he’d had to leave the bar to come sign for me.
Anyway, by the time he reached into the backseat of the patrol car and chucked me onto the pavement, I was far less concerned with what the cops and courts were about to do to me than I was with what my dad had in mind.
“Sir,” one of the policemen said
to my father. I recall being surprised he didn’t know my father’s name. “You’re going to have to wait until we’re done with him.”
My father looked at me and growled, “You better hope they keep your ass.”
Which was not particularly comforting.
No, I was going to pay for the previous couple hours, and I was going to remember them for a long time, and I wasn’t ever going to find myself on the wrong side of the patrol car’s cage again if I could help it.
Sitting in the darkness at White City Park, one of the guys had gotten to talking about this car he wanted to buy, which made little sense because he didn’t have any money, but a young man can dream. We decided this car he couldn’t afford was going to need a stereo and some other accessories, which of course he couldn’t afford either, which was what led us to a couple car dealerships and parking lots in town. By the time we were done that night, the trunk of our car was loaded with stereos and speakers. As I recall, a half-dozen squad cars stopped us as we were leaving the bowling alley, the scene of our final caper. I knew they’d find the sound equipment, and so did they.
I considered running. In fact, we were apprehended along the route I would run home from dinner, so I knew I could cover it with ease. But there were so many of them. Their lights were everywhere. People were slowing down to witness the spectacle. And the cops looked serious. My heart hit my stomach. Damn, I didn’t want to be involved in this. That’s not me, I thought. That’s him.
Two of us in the back of one police car and two in the back of another, off we went, and when our car stopped at a gas station, my buddy leaned forward and asked, “What, we stoppin’ for donuts?”