Brutal (2 page)

“You new around here?”

I turned my head and a guy stood at the waist-high fence separating the yards, his bony hands and skinny fingers resting on the white pickets. About my age, he wore a Kenny Chesney T-shirt with the sleeves cut out, half his white rib cage showing through the armholes, a lump of tobacco in his scraggly lip. His camo shorts and ragged Michael Jordan high-tops showed through the slats of the fence.

I looked at his freckled long face and big ears sticking out under a backwards baseball cap and didn't know whether he'd try to shoot and eat me or pickle me in a vat of vinegar first. He looked like one of God's mischievous little angels had a field day in the cast-off section of the human parts bin, and the expectation I'd had of the teenagers around here fitting more into an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog crumbled. The dude looked straight out of a
Dukes of Hazzard
episode, and I expected Boss Hogg to pop out from behind a tree. “No, I've been here for years. You never noticed?”

He scratched his five-haired scraggly chin, then spit a wonderfully gross stream of brown goo into my dad's yard, tipping his chin up as he did so. “You joking?”

“Yes.”

“They call me Velveeta.”

That got my attention. He drawled like a gunfighter. “Velveeta?”

He smiled, nodding. “Yeah. I like cheese.” He paused. “You like cheese?”

I raised my eyes to the pristine blue sky without even a smidgen of smog in it, wondering why this was happening to me and wishing that I could stop existing just for a little while. That I could wake up in my bed back home and Mom would be two hours gone and I'd have everything I was used to. I didn't belong here. Not in this paralyzed Norman Rockwell painting with an oddly put-together trespasser spitting brown goo all over the canvas. I looked at him. “Do I like cheese? Is that some form of a pickup line?”

He screwed his eyes at me and frowned like I was the biggest idiot in the world, then spit another stream of tobacco juice, this one farther than the last. He looked at where it landed for a minute, nodded at his new record, then sighed. “Shit.”

“Shit what?”

He looked me up and down, then looked himself up and down, his eyes pausing on his arms as he flexed his pasty freckled spaghetti strings. “I got a girl.”

“Cool.”

He nodded, then smiled with half his mouth. An obvious mimic of Elvis, but it reminded me more of a stroke victim. “One-woman man standing here. Sorry.”

I almost laughed, but he was so serious I couldn't. “Shot down, then.”

“So you like cheese?”

“I would guess about as much as the next person.”

“You got a favorite kind?”

I didn't know I'd been transported to cheese world, but I could roll with it. “Swiss.”

“You like Velveeta cheese?”

“Sure. On nachos maybe.”

He smiled, peeling his lips away from buckteeth into a goofy grin. He had the most expressive face I'd ever seen, morphing from one exaggerated freeze-frame to the next. “Good deal.” He moved his hand from the fence and waved. “See you round, then. Gotta take a dump the size of Chicago and it ain't waiting for nothing. Turtle's poppin’, roast is done, Momma come home ‘cuz the prairie dog's barkin’.” Then he walked away, leaving me speechless. Sure, everybody dumps, but they usually don't go around announcing it unless they're six years old. As he reached his porch, he looked back. “You got a name?”

I smiled, liking this guy for some odd reason. I could play the cheese game, too. “Gouda. Gouda Provolone.”

He furrowed his brow. “You German or something?”

I looked at him. Did nobody in this place know what a joke was? “Yeah.”

He nodded, smiling wide. “Well, I'm gonna shit my pants. See ya.”

I watched Velveeta walk into his house and took a minute, staring over the neighborhood. Maybe Velveeta was an apparition. Some sort of hallucinogenic reaction from sitting on a Greyhound bus for so long. He couldn't be real. Nobody says this stuff out loud.

I paused at the front door, uncomfortable with just walking in, then decided that I wouldn't knock. He'd agreed
that I could come, and he was my dad after all. As I closed the door behind me, the silence of the neighborhood followed me inside.

Two pairs of shoes, one the loafers I recognized and another a pair of leather sandals, sat side by side to the left of the entry. I had a jolt of “my dad is a homosexual and I'm staring at his lover's shoes” paranoia but then remembered he lived alone. They were his sandals, and this was a no-shoes house. God, I thought. What if he was gay? Maybe that was the reason he left my mom. I didn't doubt for a minute that my mom could turn a man gay.

Beyond the Persian rug runner I stood on, the house sprawled out with dark hardwood shiny enough to make it look like ice coated the floor. To the left of the entry were French doors, open, leading to a formal dining room with six chairs. Another rug, dark and rich colors to match the floor, lay centered in the room. To the right of the entryway was a sitting room with dark brown and brass-studded leather sofas and claw-foot chairs facing each other. Book shelves (not the kind you buy at Target) lined the walls, and brass lamps were set tastefully around the perimeter.

Contrary to my dad having zero sense of clothes fashion, I realized uncomfortably that this house was blue-ribbon material. Just like his car. And yard. And neighborhood. And town. It could be in a magazine displaying the masculine side of perfect interior decorating, and now I was living here.

Mom's taste in décor was just like her fashion sense, and her fashion sense was just like her personality. Clean, no-nonsense, utilitarian, and spare. She owned fourteen black dresses, three red ones, eight gazillion pairs of shoes,
and six business suits as sharp as her scalpel. The one piece of art, above the mantel in the condo, depicted a single long-stemmed rose in a clear glass vase. Of course it had thorns. That was my mom for you.

This house was middle class, but single-guy-living-alone middle class, which meant upper middle class. My mom had paid thirty-seven thousand dollars for the sofas in the living room. I'd never seen her sit in them. As I glanced around this place, it was immaculate, but it all seemed lived in. Comfortable to a certain extent.

Straight ahead of me was the main hall with a staircase branching off and going up. The hall continued to the kitchen. I peeked in the sitting room to see if my dad was anywhere and saw another set of open doors, these solid wood, leading to a study, a mahogany desk with a laptop sitting on it inside. David sat behind it, intent on the screen.

I walked through the sitting room and he looked up when I came to the door, then closed his computer and smiled. “I see you found your way in.”

I nodded. “I met your neighbor.”

He brightened. “Victoria? Very quiet woman. Al most antisocial. She has a nephew about your age living with her.”

“Not her. The guy. Velveeta.”

His smile disappeared. “Yes. He is somewhat new to Benders Hollow, too. Last year.”

“He told me he had to take a dump the size of Chicago.”

“That would be Andrew.”

“That's his name?”

“Yes, but he does go by Velveeta.”

I looked around the room. Darkly lit with paneled walls, more bookcases, a leather reading chair off to the side, and a lamp on a mahogany occasional table that matched the desk. I liked it. “This is a nice house.”

He stood. “Thank you.” He came around the desk. “Here, let me show you your room. I put your bag there if that's okay?”

“Sure.” I followed him out and around to the main hall, then up the stairs. He pointed to a room at the end of the hall, explaining that was his room, the next door was a closet, the next my bathroom, and the door at the other end of the hall was my room.

He opened it and I followed him in. He took a breath, clasping his hands. “I hope this will do. There's another bedroom downstairs off the TV room that you're welcome to, but I thought you'd like this because it's bigger.”

I looked around. I had a queen-sized pedestal bed with a real headboard, and even if the comforter was flowered and definitely not me, I didn't care. “It's fine. Thanks.”

He brightened, then walked farther in. “I took the liberty of a few things like the dresser and computer for your schoolwork but decided it would be best for you to decorate how you saw fit.”

I looked to the computer near the window. “You bought me a computer?”

He nodded, excitement in his eyes. “I didn't know what you'd be bringing, but figured a new gadget or two would be a nice housewarming gift for you.” He paused, looking at me. “I want you to make yourself comfortable here, Poe. This is your home.”

I didn't know what to say because I knew what this
was. The age-old buying-my-acceptance gig. Get her a bunch of crap so she'll stay out of the way and won't cause trouble. But the light in his eyes told me different. He reminded me of a little boy giving a surprise. It sucked, because I wanted to think it was fake. Every time my mom bought me something, it was to get something. Usually forgiveness, but always something. “Thank you.”

“As I said, I waited to buy bedding and such until you got here. We can go tomorrow afternoon and find what suits you.”

I looked at the hideous comforter. “It's fine. Really.”

He smiled. “Honestly, I had no idea what to expect before you arrived.”

For the first time in a long time, I felt self-conscious about what I was wearing, and it made me mad. I looked down at my ripped fishnets and black boots. “I suppose you were hoping for a normal person?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. I made no assumptions. A lady friend told me that the biggest mistake a man can make is picking out clothing or bedding for a lady, so I didn't. You'll have to excuse my ignorance.”

Now I felt like an idiot for being a jerk. I covered it with a smile. “Tomorrow sounds fine.”

He scrunched up his nose, looking at the bed. “Is it that bad? It's been in the closet for years.”

I laughed. “Pretty bad. I'm not a flowery kind of girl.”

He nodded. “Very well. Tomorrow it is, then. I'll leave you to unpack and get settled. We'll eat dinner at seven?”

I unzipped my bag, glancing at the clock on my bed stand. Five-thirty “Sure.”

I looked at my bag, then thought better of un packing and
flopped on the bed. Soft heaven. Some things a girl likes, even punker chicks with black fingernail polish and eyebrow rings, and a nice bed is one of them. This thing alone was almost worth coming to Benders Hollow for.

I woke up to knocking on my door. “Poe?”

I looked at the clock. Seven-thirty Shit. I scrambled off the bed and opened the door, checking my cheek for drool. “Sorry, I was sleeping.”

“Long day, yes?”

I nodded.

“Are you hungry?”

I could tell he was irritated from the tension around his mouth. This was great. First day and I already screwed up. “Yeah. I'll be down in a sec.”

I came downstairs a few minutes later, and the table was set for two in the formal dining room. Dad rose from his seat until I took mine, then sat down. I looked at the meal. A fresh salad, baked salmon with lemon slices and purple onion, and some kind of pasta I didn't recognize. “Wow. You're a cook?”

He waved it off. “A hobby.”

I sighed, feeling rotten for being late. “You didn't have to do this, really. I'm used to TV dinners and soup.”

“I enjoy cooking. Most times it's for one, so this is nice.”

“Are you mad? You could have come and got me earlier.”

He put his napkin in his lap. “I'm afraid I'm not used to anything but my schedule of things. Living alone has a tendency to create intolerance for other people's way of doing things.”

“You sound like a counselor or something.”

He looked at me. “I am.”

I froze. “You are?”

He nodded. “I take it your mother hasn't talked much of me.”

“Nothing.”

He took a bite, chewed, laid his fork down, and con tinued. “Yes, I am a counselor. At the school you'll be attending.”

My stomach went queasy. “At my school?”

“Yes.”

“My counselor? For my grade?”

He nodded. “The high school here is small. Six hundred students. I'm the counselor for all grade levels.”

I ate, suddenly finding a great interest in studying my fish. Wonderful. I had a shrink for a dad, and he was going to be with me all day. “When does school start around here?”

“Next week. Tuesday.”

“That's like two weeks earlier than back home.”

“You're concerned about me being there? As a counselor?”

I kept my eyes on my plate, my anger building. This
was all fitting together now, and I could imagine the phone conversations Mom had had with him. The last thing I wanted to do on my first day was get heavy with him, but I felt suckered. “I don't need counseling.”

He cleared his throat. “You're being defensive, Poe, and there's no threat. Really.”

I met his eyes. “I'm not screwed up. I'm not here because of me, I'm here because of my mom. No matter what she told you.”

“I told you what she talked of, Poe, and it wasn't bad.”

I put my napkin on the table. He was full of shit. I knew my mom well enough to know what she said. She'd blamed it all on me just like she blamed every other crappy thing in her life on other people. I stood. “I know my mother, so you might as well stop.”

“I know your mother, too.”

That stopped me. He'd just opened a door he shouldn't have, and I could feel it building in my gut. I'd been set up. By him and Mom. I could just see her on the phone, using her diplomatic and caring voice.
Oh God, I'm so concerned about her. It's like I don't know her anymore—she's changed so much. With the black outfits and the way she talks negative about everything, I'm at a loss. Hmmm. Maybe you could help her out, David? Get her back on track? I mean, that's what you do, right?
I knew this deal. I wasn't to blame for our retarded mother daughter relationship. She just didn't want to be a mom anymore, and they'd both played me. I didn't fit into her perfect elitist life just like I didn't fit here eating salmon with a guy I'd never really ever met. The venom bubbled. Nothing was worse than having somebody look at you and knowing what they were thinking.