Angry Management (2 page)

Nak’s Notes

first impressions

Transcribed directly from digital recorder

N
AME:
Sarah Byrnes

A
GE
:
18

R
EASONS TO BE PISSED:
Abused by Daddy, abandoned by Momma. Disfigured in a way she can’t hide. Suffered taunts of peers throughout educational career; few if any chances to love or be loved physically.

C
OPING SKILLS:
Defensive, keeps to own self. Mess with her and she’ll kick your ass.

S
IGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS:
Low expectations of others, covers most emotions with simmering anger. Good physical condition. Smart as hell. Possible sense of humor. Truly tough enough to kick your ass.

P
ROGNOSIS:
Dang. Who knows?

N
AME
:
Angus Bethune

A
GE:
18

R
EASONS TO BE PISSED:
Parents and stepparents in well-publicized non-traditional relationship that coils around itself like a bunch of rattlesnakes huddlin’ from the cold, which he tends to defend with a quick punch to the gut. Big guy. Hard to hide. Not much experience with the ladies.

C
OPING SKILLS:
Witty; great sense of humor. History indicates that, past a point, he’s toting a big-time temper.

S
IGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS
:
Likely to speak before thinking. Self-esteem lower than a snake’s belly. Smart as a whip. Funny. Good athlete. Empathetic. Good parents, but man, some of them seem clueless.

P
ROGNOSIS
:
Same.

I
load another thirty-five-pound weight onto each side of the bench press bar and take a deep breath. A girl I recognize waits patiently a few steps away. I sit, smile at her, but she looks away.

“You waiting for this?” I ask. “I have a bunch of other machines I need to use, and they’re in no particular order.”

“Go ahead,” she says back. I can use the breather.”

“You’re Sarah, right? From Mr. Nak’s group?”

“Hard to pick me out, huh?” she says facetiously, pointing to the burn scars on her face.

I slap my forehead. “Yeah. Duh.”

She looks away.

“I’m Angus,” I tell her, slapping my prodigious gut.
“At least as easy to remember as you. They named me after a cow.”

“I can go you one better,” Sarah says back. “My last name is Byrnes.” She pronounces it Burns.

“Jesus, that’s like if they named me Angus Fat.”

“You’re too kind.”

“Duh! Again. I didn’t mean—”

“Sure you did. I’m scarred and you’re fat and that’s why we work out in the relative anonymity of four-thirty in the morning.”

I glance around the large facility, from the free-weight area to the weight machines to the empty treadmills and elliptical machines facing TV screens. If an infomercial plays on a TV screen no one is watching, will someone still buy stupid shit? “There are a couple of guys over there who look pretty good,” I tell her, nodding toward the leg press, “and the girl on the bike could be worse. It isn’t all just us Frankensteins.”

Sarah looks at the cyclist. “You into thongs?”

“Can’t afford to be,” I say. “I never saw anyone in a thong looking for a whale ride.”

She stares at the girl a moment more, plugs her earphones back into her Nano, and shrugs. “Better get back to this.”

I nod, knowing she can no longer hear me, and
mumble, “Maybe you want to get a cup of coffee with me sometime?” I lie back on the bench.

“Maybe,” she says.

I spring up. She waves the Nano. “Between songs,” she says. “Wanna take it back?”

“Nope. Wanna pretend you didn’t hear?”

“Nope.”

“So tell us a little more about this girl. You say she’s been burned?” Alexander says over his salad. My parents and their mates and I are spending the evening, as we do every second Wednesday, at the Extended Family Solidarity Dinner. I rate it: B+ food; zero social value.

“Yeah, a little bit burned. She’s, you know, kind of straightforward—okay,
way
straightforward—but a good personality. Works out.”

“And you’re going on a date?” Mom seems a little too incredulous.

“It’s just coffee, but yeah, Mom, a date. I’m eighteen.”

“And you’ve been on one date,” Dad says.

“Well, if this one works out and I have one more, it’ll be a trifecta,” I say. “Jeez, take a breath.”

“We’re breathing, we’re breathing,” Dad says. His name is Orville. “We just want to know that she’s…you know.”

“Good enough for me?”

“We’re your parents, Angus. We’ll never stop worrying.”

I glance at Bella, sipping from her wine glass, clear of the fray. “What do you think, Bella?”

She smiles. “I think a boy should listen to his mother.”

“Which one of you is my mother again?” I survey the crew, halt my conversation as the waitress sets the He-Man T-Bone before me. “Since kindergarten I’ve been explaining to my very few friends that I have four parents, all gay as court jesters and all living on the same city block.” I rise into falsetto.

“So, like, Angus, one of those guys is your dad and he’s, like, kind of married to the other guy? What do you call
that
guy?”

And in an altered falsetto, my own younger voice, “‘I call him Alexander.’

“Yeah, but what do you
call
him, like your step-homo?’

‘“I call him Alexander, asshole,’” and I smack my fist into my palm.

“I do seem to remember you explaining our situation with your fists on occasion,” Mom says.

“My point,” I say back, “is that I have a Ph.D. in
observing exotic relationships, so I guess I can be trusted to pick one strange enough to keep you all happy.”

“My god,” Dad says. “You’re serious about this girl. What’s her name?”

“Her name is Sarah, and I’m having
coffee
with her. Tap your helmet, Dad.”

Mom says, “Well, it’s about time, that’s all I can say.”

If only that were true.

“Worst thing that ever happened to you.” Sarah adds nonfat milk to her coffee, removes a scone from that tissue-y paper bag they give you. She looks around the rustic coffeehouse that is Rocket Bakery. “Beats Starbucks.”

“Worst thing. Lemme see.” I pull out my frosted pumpkin scone, place it next to my banana bread. “They hoisted my undershorts up the flagpole during gym class in junior high. Totally blotted out the Stars and Stripes. Probably not the worst thing, but it comes to mind when I’m asked that. Guys used to leave bras in my locker, but that wasn’t so bad. I just took them home and…never mind.”

“If we’re going to be married, I have to trust you,” Sarah says.

“We’re getting married?”

“We’re on a date, aren’t we? You know what that leads to. So, if I’m going to trust you, you have to tell the truth. Worst thing, not worst funny thing.”

“You drive a hard bargain. You have, like, our dishes picked out?”

“Worst thing.”

“Maybe sitting with my mother when she was so depressed she couldn’t move. You know, trying to cheer her up when all she could do was sit and stare; tears she didn’t even feel streaming down her cheeks.”

“What was going on?”

“Ah, you know. Junior high. I was getting into it on a regular basis when some kid would call my parents queer or faggots or whatever. If I’d have just told the teachers, the other kid would’ve gotten in trouble, but I liked to avoid the middle man back then; I
hurt
some guys. So Mom and Dad came to school for this big meeting. Two teachers, the principal, two kids who still had black eyes, with their parents, and them. I got labeled armed and dangerous. Dad kept telling them school was supposed to be a safe place for me, and they said it
was
safe if I’d just report what was happening instead of taking the law into my own hands. The parents of wounded Thing One and Thing
Two said what about
their
kids’ safety, and I took the opportunity to let them know exactly how their kids could keep themselves safe.”

Sarah almost spits her coffee.

“Guess I should have practiced the delivery, because when the meeting was over I was on two months in-school suspension and the other
parents
were calling mine faggots and queers.”

“Sounds like a meeting or two I’ve been in.”

“Yeah. So my mother talks all the way home about how their lifestyle has ruined me and how she and Dad should have stayed in the closet until I graduated from high school. Dad gave her his Hallmark bullshit about the truth setting us free, and she got quieter and quieter. Dad went home to Alexander and Mom went home to Bella and everyone warned me not to kick any more asses, which I promised I wouldn’t—just like I promised every time—and Mom started the Big Retreat. I would come home after school and sit with her and try to convince her she hadn’t fucked up my life. It was like talking to a bag of rocks. She just kept sinking.”

“So what brought her out of it?”

“Time, I guess. As much as I wanted to save her while I sat by her side, that disappeared when some kid would turn the crank on my temper. So I turned out for
football in high school and started taking out my rage on unsuspecting offensive linemen and running backs. I was pretty good; made a few friends. Mom finally figured out I’d survive, and they went on living their lives.”

Sarah says, “That’s more like it.”

“More like what?”

“Truth. I asked for the worst thing. That was pretty good.”

“That’s off the top of my head. Let me think about it a while; maybe I can top it.”

“That’s good enough for now,” she says.

I walk to the counter for refills and order two thick slices of banana bread and two more scones, remember my manners, and turn back to her. “You want anything else to eat?”

She looks at me pitifully, shakes her head, and pats her stomach.

“I like that,” I tell her when I sit back down with my goodies. “Keepin’ your girlish figger.”

“Like that’s ever done me any good.” She stares in mock wonder as I lay out my repast. “What’s your cholesterol count?”

I count. “Two banana breads, two scones. Four.”

“You’re my second fat boy.”

“Seriously? Awright! You’ll know how to treat me.”

“With great disdain. His name was Moby.”

“Like the whale. Does he fit in on the question
you
now have to answer?”

“What question is that?”

“The worst thing that ever happened to you.”

“Indeed he does,” she says. “Sure you want to hear this?”

“Not if you’re going to tell me you’re going back to the other fat guy.”

She laughs. “Actually, he’s not fat anymore; at least not
way
fat. And I was never
with
him. He was my friend, and he probably saved my life.”

“That’s fair.
Way
fat, huh?”

“I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah you did,” I say, taking in the carbohydrate circus in front of me. “Maybe I should get to know this guy.” I put a napkin over the food. “Let’s see if I can get through your story without scarfing these.” I sit back. “Okay. Worst thing.”

This
has
to be about her scars, and I’m not sure I want to hear it. There’s something beguiling about this girl. She
is
disfigured, and as much as I’d like to be bigger than that (hell, I’m bigger than almost everything else), I’m not sure how it affects me. Without my glasses, which I only wear when I
need
to see, she’s blurred at
the edges, and I see a beauty, a femininity that doesn’t hide behind her toughness, probably because she doesn’t know it’s there. And I gotta tell you, I know what it’s like to not quite pass muster on looks.

“I don’t know how much I remember and how much I imagine,” Sarah says. “I was young; three or four. Pretty, everyone says. I remember being so scared of my dad. I’d see him through the window coming home from work and I’d stand just around the kitchen entrance and wait to see if he was dangerous that day. I’d watch my mother. I could tell how he was by her shoulders. If he was in a good mood—and good is relative here—her shoulders slumped and I could
feel
the relief; if he was mean they would pinch up high around her neck. When they slumped, I’d come around into the kitchen and wait to see if I got a hug. It wasn’t much of a hug, like nothing to
sustain
you, but if I got anything, we were safe for the night.

“Then it seemed like the slumped shoulders and hugs just disappeared. When I look back, I know he was drinking more, because we’d have to wait longer for him to come home to dinner. You didn’t eat
anything
before he got there.”

It scares me even to hear it. “How crazy was this guy?”

“As crazy as he still is,” she says. “But don’t judge him yet. It gets better.”

“I thought so.”

“My mother would cook dinner so it would be ready when he got home, and he’d come late and fly into a rage because dinner was cold. So she’d wait for him, and he’d fly into a rage because dinner wasn’t on the table. I remember it because every night she would ask me what I thought she should do. I wouldn’t know, so I’d make a guess and she’d do it. It was like living your life at a roulette wheel with no colors or numbers. You couldn’t pick a winner because even when you did time it right, the food still had to be something he liked.”

“I’ve played roulette,” I tell her. “There’s almost no chance to pick a winner when there
are
numbers or colors.”

“Well, you had a hell of a lot better chance than we had. And losing
really
sucked. Swear to god, my clearest memory of my mother is the smack of his hand against her head.”

“Why didn’t she just take you and leave?”

“Looking for the answer to that question will keep therapists in work for eternity. Anyway, one night the stars lined up exactly wrong. He was at the door and then he and my mother were screaming and then he had
her by the hair and the water was running in the sink and he was pushing her face into the water, ‘You can’t talk if you can’t breathe, bitch,’ and I was scared but I was
mad
and I ran at him and started bashing his legs with my fists, screaming at him to leave her alone and then I was in his arms and the potbelly stove was coming right at my face and then this awful, like,
searing
pain and I was screaming and then we were back in the kitchen. He pushed me at her and said, ‘There’s your pretty little girl for you.’

“Next thing I remember, I
think,
was pitch dark, because my face was covered with bandages. Hands, too, where I put them out to stop the stove. I heard my dad telling nurses I had pulled a kettle of boiling spaghetti over on myself when my mom wasn’t looking. I still don’t know how in the world anyone bought that bullshit because a scalding burn and a dry burn are
way
different, but it was a small town and people don’t get into other people’s business, even doctors, and no one ever called child protection. I don’t even know if there was suspicion. My dad was meaner than a snake, but he could turn on ‘earnest’ anytime.”

I am glued to her.

She sips her coffee. “Like I said, I’m not sure how much I remember exactly and how much I made up.
Some of it I heard again at my dad’s trial last year. I was
young.
For a long time I believed the story about the spaghetti, because he told it over and over and so did my mom. It was easier to believe than the truth. But when it came back, it was like it was happening right then.”

“Jesus, my worst thing would be your best thing.”

She smiles. “I’m not to the worst thing yet.”

Jesus.