Those nights I just go blank, like I could tie every bad thing inside me to a balloon and let it float up into the sky, disappearing beyond the clouds. And I think nothing can ever get to me because my secret is I’m different and nothing bad will ever happen to me. I can fly if I really want to and we don’t need the things other kids need because we’re special. We were alone in the School like an orphanage and we know how to take care of ourselves even if it means taking care of Mom too.
Derek’s mom says we’re like wild dogs running through the street.
We don’t know if that’s true because we don’t know if anything is true like space travel or Martians or the tooth fairy or Reaganomics. It’s all part of some big dusty book that we’re too young to read. The rules are so different in the World Outside Synanon. The answers come in pieces, bit by bit as we explore the neighborhood around the house on Breys Avenue: bullets explode if you hit them with a hammer, there is no Santa Claus, do not cry in front of other boys, cats land on their feet no matter how close to the ground they are when you drop them, dog food tastes bad, don’t say what you’re thinking, kids can buy cigarettes from vending machines, gasoline will burn on water, candy bars can be stolen, Mom has read over a thousand books, a Labrador can beat a German shepherd in a fight, parents are supposed to protect you, bullies are mean, we’re bad at baseball, we’re good at reading, we’re latchkey kids, we’re poor, we’re special, we’re smart, we’re different, we’re alone.
* * *
WHEN I’M IN the tub, I let the warm water fill up all the way to the top edge and fall under, holding my breath and listening to my heartbeat. When I come up for air, Mom is sitting there, her hips pressed against the white plastic of the bathtub in her blue jeans, her now long hair falling past her shoulders, her hand extended for me to hold.
I feel a crowding, like my body is not my own. I want to tell her to leave but I don’t have the words, the words can barely form in my mind, like the connection between my brain and the place where words are made runs through her.
The woman I’m told to call Mom is saying something but I let the water cover my ears to drown the words. Her hand closes around mine and all that’s left is a blankness, as white as the walls of the tub. I know she thinks this is a close moment. “Hey, I’m your mom. Don’t I have the right to sit here with my son?” she says. And I know it’s my job. Let’s hold hands and chat, honey. There’s nothing I can say to her. It feels like I have been taken from somewhere warm to somewhere cold and this new place has a new bargain like we are bad if we don’t act how she imagines little boys are supposed to act.
After all, she did us a favor and it is now our job to repay her. We are close and “close” means whatever she needs it to mean, whatever she thinks it means, even the days she lies in bed for hours with the deep-russian, even on the days she’s crying in a heap on the floor, she knows what’s real and I don’t because even then she tells me, “You’re going to grow up and do something great, something that will change the world.” So it feels like a ladder I must climb up into the clouds to get away from this emptiness, to be somewhere warm. Except every time I climb it, when I get to the top, there’s nothing there but quiet and cold and another ladder to climb.
Another night she calls me into the bedroom and she is lying facedown on the bed with her pants pulled down to the top of her behind. Next to her is a small jar that smells like peppermint and a slim white plastic object the shape of a rocket. “My back hurts, sweetie. Take some of that ointment and put it on my back.” I grab the jar because I know it is my job to do whatever she asks because she is the reason I was born and so I rub the sticky ointment on her back. She grabs the little white plastic rocket and twists the bottom and it starts to make a buzzing sound. She hands it to me, “Now hold this on the skin.” It shakes in my hand, making my fingers go numb as I place it on her back. I don’t know why her back hurts or why this helps. And I don’t know why I feel like I want to jump out of my head, like I am not a person at all but a ghost or a tool like a fork or the pliers Paul leaves under the sink. I am two inches tall of empty invisible nothing.
Whenever she asks me to do things like this, I don’t know how to tell her I don’t want to because it’s like the idea doesn’t exist in her mind. I’ll say, “Do I have to?” Then she gets mad or worse, she turns in on herself with her mouth all scrunched up like she’s about to cry and I know I’m being an Ungrateful Son.
When I tell Tony about it, he says the white thing is called a vibrator and I’m too young to know what it’s for. “It’s for her back,” I say. He gives me the look he gives me to tell me I’m a dumb little kid and the next time Mom asks me to hold it on her back I tell her I don’t want to. She tells me to stop being such an Ungrateful Son so I hold the tiny rocket on her back and feel myself slip through the ceiling to a space behind a wall fifty feet thick. From this place I can decide to be whatever I need to be for the world. I can be the Good Son who will act precisely as I am expected to act. I can disappear.
I’m just too small next to this mountain of reasons.
Because the reasons are endless and I know every one by heart: that we are a close “family” now that we left Synanon together and I am her special smart boy who will take care of her and make sure she’s not lonely and it’s my job to grow up to be special enough to explain to the world all the sacrifices she made for me, to dance with the quiet ones whether I want to or not, to be the cowboy who never leaves, to be her revenge on the cowboys who did.
CHAPTER 7
WALKING THROUGH YANKEE STADIUM WITH BABE RUTH
And then on the morning of my sixth birthday, just days after Mount St. Helens erupted, spewing fire, mud and ash over the entire Pacific Northwest, ash that traveled through the air and landed in the gutters in front of our house on Breys Avenue, ash that we collected solemnly in small jars and placed in secret spots for safekeeping, there is Dad, sitting quietly on the edge of my bed with his hands in his lap. I rub my eyes to get a good look. That curly black hair, that thick gold necklace, the faded jeans, the brown café leather jacket, the cowboy boots, the deep laugh lines around his hazel-green eyes as he smiles with that tan, weathered face that looks like it’s been dragged behind a truck for a thousand miles.
“Hey, dude. Happy birthday.” I jump up and throw my arms around his neck. He smells like Old Spice and skin lotion. Dad. Da. Pop. Poppy. I don’t understand. How does a blur come to life? How did he find us here in our hiding spot on the other side of the mountains? Did he ride his motorcycle? It’s too fantastic to imagine.
Tony wakes up in the bed across from mine. “Dad!” He jumps up and throws his arms around him, burying his face in his shoulder.
I can hear Tony cry and I don’t know why but I start to cry too and then the three of us just sit there, two blond heads buried into the broad shoulders of our dark Italian father. A blur come to life in jeans on my bed.
He says, “I missed you guys.”
“How did you get here?”
“I flew on a plane.”