Page 48 of Hot Mess Express
“Heard Tony’s got a hard-ass dad, too. Or used to, before Trey worked his counseling magic on them.” He swats away a June bug from his face. “Maybe you two have some trauma in common or something. Y’know, daddy issues.”
“It’s Anthony, not Tony.”
“See? You’re already defending your boyfriend.”
I roll my eyes and glance back at the house. Cody has returned from the bathroom to join Trey and Anthony in the kitchen. The three of them are laughing. Anthony. Laughing. I haven’t seen it before. I didn’t know he’s capable of any positive emotion at all. Maybe it’s just made more possible with him stillbeing buzzed.
Seeing Cody in there pulls my mind somewhere else. “So what was that between you guys earlier?” I ask Pete. “You and Cody?”
Now it’s he who’s put on the spot. “Huh?”
“At dinner. Before Anthony chimed in with his … wisdom, I guess we’ll call it. Cody brought up the IED incident. You got weird about him saving your life.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Like you were implying he shouldn’t have covered you. That he did the wrong thing.”
“Dunno what you’re talking about.” He moves to the opposite side of the porch, swatting at the air. “Fucking bugs, too naïve to figure out the light bulb isn’t the sun or moon, it’s a damned lie.”
“Is that what this is?” I ask him, grasping at straws. “A lie? Are you a bug flying toward the light? Help me get what’s going on.”
“Nothing happened at dinner. Everything was fine.”
I come over to him. “What about that talk we had in the car ride here from the hotel? I thought you saw Cody as your savior … your hero. Now you’re acting like he’s not.”
“I’m not acting like anything.”
“You guys have been so chummy since we got here, like long-lost brothers. What’s changed? Do you resent him or something?”
“The fuck you going on about? I’m getting a beer.”
“Pete …” But he’s back inside. I watch through the window as he joins the others in the kitchen. Soon, all of them are laughing again. Even Anthony. A June bug buzzes past my face, smacks into the window, then drops dead on the ground by my feet.
The last and final time I stood up to my father, it was just before I enlisted, and I got right up in his face and told him he was never gonna raise his voice or a hand to my mom again. He held a glass of whiskey. I can still hear the ice clinking around in it as he staggered to the left, to the right, like it was the hardest thing for him to keep his eyes on me, as if I was a target that wouldn’t sit still, like a June bug, like a moth. I stared him down, and despite the brave front I put on, I was scared shitless, shaking inside, my mom and younger brother tucked behind me by the mantle of the fireplace, protected.
And then at once, my father broke down and cried. Sobbing. Inconsolable. Blubbering on and on unintelligibly, not making any damned sense. I just stood there and watched as he fell to pieces in front of me, unable to move, unable to even trust his tears. Even my mom, wrung out emotionally as she was, stayed right behind me, watching him as if he was nothing but a show on TV, detached and unreal, a scripted thing that was about to end.
I wonder if the words he was trying to form were an apology.
I’ll never know, because the next day, he left, and I never saw his sorry ass again.
I told my mom I didn’t feel right leaving then. She would be all alone. My brother was still in high school. Everything felt broken and uncertain. I feared Dad might come back.
But she told me: “I’m stronger than I look. And so are you.”
Those words have stuck inside me all these years. And every time I see my mom, how far she’s come, how confident she is now, I hear the words again, and I wonder if I’ve come as far as she has.
Or if I’m just another bug navigating its way around a patio light, confused every time my skull bumps into the bulb.
It’s by complete coincidence that I find myself in the kitchen just when Anthony is bent over fishing out another Dos Equis from the fridge. He slaps shut the door just as I appear, startling him.
I lift my eyebrows. “Another drink?”
His expression sours. “What? You keepin’ tally?”
“No. Just an innocent question.”
“There ain’t nothin’ innocent about you.” He cracks open the can and kicks it back.
