Page 61 of Fractured Souls
We don’t have much family up here; most of my family I’ve never met live in Honduras. Maybe he has friends I don’t know about. All I know is that I sure as shit don’t want to be here. For the years he was away paying for his crimes, I didn’t step foot in here. It’s hard. I can’t unsee everything.
If I walk into the kitchen, I see the time he hit me with a rolling pin, or the time he held my hands under scorching hot watersimply because I spilled my dinner on the floor. I see all the hurt I went through while living here.
The lights are off, but I know he’s home, and I know where he’s at. He texted me yesterday, but I didn’t tell Bo.
I make my way slowly down to the basement. As a kid, I’d refused to come down here. I used to believe there were monsters down here when the real ones lived upstairs in plain sight.
As I approach I see a light on. “Dad?”
“Down here.” I walk down the rickety steps. God knows what he’s working on today. I never ask. I do not care. I already know why he texted me yesterday—help disguised as a visit.
My father is on disability, but it pays shit. I don’t blame him for that. I blame him for everything else. It makes me sick, since part of me knows he only keeps this relationship with me because I help him out. He’s my father, my blood. What kind of son wouldn’t help their own father? He knows I will because of some misplaced guilt. It’s what good sons do.
What about fathers who aren’t that good to their sons? What then? What are the rules for fathers who burn, beat, and break their boys? Call them names when they cry and punish them harder? There is no guidebook for that. I simply live with it, deal with it, and carry the guilt inside.
Today I’m too tired to pretend.
This thing with Bo is fucking with my head, in the best way. I don’t know what’s come over me. It doesn’t make sense. I’m just reacting around him. Seeing him this morning . . . okay, it’s a kink of mine. Is it a kink? I don’t know, but seeing the person I’m with wearing nothing but my T-shirt always gets me going.
Bo isn’t mine, technically.
Maybe he could be . . .
I find my father at his work table, working on a birdhouse. One of his many hobbies to keep his hands busy since his recovery.He’s taken his sobriety seriously, and I should be proud, but there’s too much resentment in me. “How much do you need?” My head is too much of a mess to deal with whatever this is today. I never stay long anyway.
His dark brows pinch as he stares at me. I have my mother’s eyes, which I’m glad about. I don’t know if I could take his dark eyes looking back at me in the mirror. “I called to see what you’re up to. How dare you?” I’m done with this. I want to go back to Bo, though he did say he was going over to Jamie and Noah’s for a bit. Guilt dragged me here. It drags me here every time, and I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to expect. It’s like I think things will be different. Like him being okay now will make everything I experienced as a child go away. I don’t even know why I want to talk to him. Part of me does, right? But part of me—most of me—can’t forget the child inside me begging for his parents to love him. I don’t even know if he’s capable of it. He’s never even said it.
Our visits are always brief.
He’ll ask me what I’m doing.
Then I’ll come over, and maybe expect that all the trauma I have will magically go away if he says he’s proud of me or some shit. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. My father shakes his head, going back to the birdhouse he’s building, and I wait. I almost smirk, but part of me is still afraid he’ll hurt me.
That night he broke my arm was the last time he touched me, but I’ve been hurting ever since. It never goes away. “How much?” I push.
He shakes his head, gluing a small dowel on the front for a bird to land on. “I’m just waiting for my check next week. It’s only until next week.” I knew it. Good thing I went to the bank. I’ve started paying half of Bo’s rent and utilities, and I’ve actually saved up quiet a bit since Siena and I broke up. I like staying with Bo.
I knew this was why he’d called me here. Reaching into my pocket, I take out the envelope. I never ask him to pay me back. Selfishly, it helps my guilt if he doesn’t. My father eyes the envelope then meets my eyes. “It’s only two hundred. It’s all I’ve got.” All I’m willing to give him.
“Thanks. Just until next week.”
I doubt it. I can count on one hand how many times he’s actually paid me back, and he knows I won’t ask him to. He’s trying, and I don’t know why it pisses me off that I’m not more pissed. I want to hate him. I don’t know why I can’t. “Anything else?”
Something dances behind his dark eyes. I sometimes wonder if he misses her. They didn’t have a good relationship, I know that now, and thinking about her brings another wave of grief I have yet to deal with. Both my parents neglected me in different ways. She wasn’t ready to be a mom. I know that. She was seventeen when she had me, and my father was the twenty-two year old who’d prayed on an underage girl. No one batted an eye, and I think that’s why it makes me feel sorry for her. She didn’t take care of me, was too out of her mind most days to do so, but still . . . she was a kid too.
My abuela, her mother, was there for me until she passed, in ways I didn’t even realize until I was older. My father has this album on the shelf in the living room, and in it my mother looked so happy when she was younger. Happy and full of life. Same with him. They looked really happy together, despite everything.
Then they had me.
Swallowing back the tight feeling in my throat, I want to leave. I was at the gym longer than I expected and now I just want to go home. It’s getting dark and I don’t know when Bo will be back. He’s been spending a lot of time with Noah lately.
Maybe Bo will leave me too.
Maybe he’s happier hanging out with them.
Why wouldn’t he be? I wouldn’t want to hang out with me either.
“Thank you, Camden.” He looks at his birdhouse with a smile. “Maybe you can come over some day and help me with one of these.”
