Chasing Forgiveness (2 page)

Russ looks at me with a half-smirk on his face, and it really pisses me off. He knows I'm lying. He knows because I'm the worst liar in the history of the world. It's like I've got a lie detector wired into my spine that flashes above my head to everyone “Preston is lying!” “Preston is lying!” There are times I wish I could lie, though. There are times I wish I could believe other people when they lie.

The Ping-Pong ball cuts across the net with a mean backspin. I pull my arm back and smoothly smash the thing. It skids on Russ's side, and his reflexes just can't match my power smash. The ball flies past him before he even swings his paddle.

“Just luck!” he says, and tosses me back the ball to serve.

Inside the house, my parents continue their battle, both oblivious to the fact that I'm beating Russ ten to two. Or to the fact that Russ is over here at all. Or to the fact that anyone and everyone in the world can hear them. Their voices rise and fall like ocean waves, and it's enough to make me seasick.

“They're really great people, most of the time,” I tell Russ, embarrassed.

“I know,” says Russ. “Mine are, too.”

I'm about to say, No, they're not—not like mine, but I catch myself and say nothing. Instead I just lob the Ping-Pong ball back to him slowly, giving him an easy shot for his third point.

No, my parents are very different from Russ's. First of all, Russ's parents are getting a divorce. They can't be all that great if they can't work out their problems without stupid lawyers.

Divorce really stinks. It's like going to the store and buying clothes, wearing them for years and years, then returning them and asking for your money back. That's what I believe. A store won't buy back a pair of used jeans, so how come people can trade each other in, like it was nothing? If your only pair of jeans is torn, you get a needle and some thread, and you sew them up, right? Parents should be the same way.

My parents aren't like Russ's. They're really big on family. “Family this” and “family that.” To them, nothing else matters but the family, and so, whatever the problems are, we can all solve them together. And that's why my parents are great.

But I won't tell Russ that, or he'll start spouting at me all that junk he gets in family counseling. Well, the counseling didn't help much if they're splitting up, right?

Inside I hear my mom start to cry. I want to go to her, but I know I can't. Not just because Russ is here, but because when they fight like that they're on their own little planet, and I can't get through.

There are times when I've heard my dad cry. I'm glad he's not crying now, 'cause it would make me cry, too, and I can't cry in front of Russ.

The Ping-Pong rally goes back and forth until, not thinking, I hit the ball way in the air and it lands on the grass.

“Yes!” says Russ.

All of a sudden I begin to feel like I'm losing my breath, but I haven't been playing hard, so I'm not sure why. My face starts tingling, and I know it's turning red. There's this heavy feeling in my throat. Oh God, I think, am I going to cry after all? How uncool! Eleven-year-olds don't cry. It's a known fact. Not if they want to be taken seriously by friends and teammates. Of course my Grandma Lorraine always tells me that it's good for a boy to cry every now and again—but that's what grandmas are supposed to say. I doubt if she really believes it.

I stop the tears before they come, and I push them down, way down, into another universe entirely. I pretend nothing is wrong, but that lie detector above my head begins to blink again. Russ sees I almost lost it.

“Hey, listen,” he says, thinking he understands completely, “fights are fights, and everyone's parents fight. It's no big deal.”

“I know,” I say, echoing his words. “It's no big deal.” But deep down, I scream, Yes! Yes, it is a big deal! Because they never fought before—not until this year. They never fought, never had anything to argue about. They were perfect
together—like that day when we won on
Family Feud
—and it wasn't just my imagination—I know because I was there.

“Maybe . . . ,” says Russ, “maybe they should split up.”

“No way,” I say, real calmly. “Like you said, everyone's parents fight. No big deal.”

The ball lobs back and forth between us without any power—like we've forgotten all about the match but didn't tell our hands or Ping-Pong paddles. The ball must be very bored.

“Lots of families are better off broken up,” says Russ.

“Not mine.”

“Lots of parents still stay friends afterwards—they just live in different places.”

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“It's great! You get to have two homes!”

“I said shut up!”

The brainless little Ping-Pong ball pongs on my side of the table, and before I know what I'm doing, I haul off and smash it with all the power my right arm can muster. It flies in a straight line—a white bullet, whistling through the air. In an instant it smacks Russ square between the eyes. I was aiming for his big fat mouth, but I still get my point across.

Russ throws down his paddle onto the table with a hearty bang and flies around the table to me, almost as quickly as the ball flew at him.

“Butthead!” he shouts, and he pushes me, and I push him
back, and he pushes me again, which, I've discovered, is the way friends fight.

Then I hear something, and I have to grab Russ's arms to end our little pushing war.

“Shut up!” I tell him.

“I was trying to help,” he says.

“No, I mean shut up now!” He stops struggling, and I listen. “You hear something?”

“Of course I hear something,” he says, referring to the world war going on inside the house. But beyond that I hear something else. I hear the muffled noise of a car engine, then a car door opening and closing.

Forgetting Russ for a moment, I race off down the alley on the side of the house, toward the front yard.

“What is it?” yells Russ, following close behind.

There, in our driveway, my little brother, Tyler, is being dropped off by one of his friends' parents. He fumbles with his papers and pencil case, with his lunch box and thermos. He has never figured out how to keep it all in his backpack. But then, he's only in kindergarten.

Tyler sees me coming out of the alley. “Hi, Preston,” he says with a big smile. Tyler's a good kid. He doesn't talk much, but he always has this big smile on his face, and most of the time no one notices that he's quiet, because they're too busy trying to figure out what he's smiling about. That's what I like best about him. Everything could be going up in flames, and
he would be smiling as if the whole world was a giant finger painting with a big blue house and a happy green tree and a grinning yellow sun.

Today, I don't smile back at him.

“Around back, Tyler,” I tell him. “Don't go in the front way.”

Tyler sighs, the smile slipping away from his face. “Again?” he asks.

I nod. From here we can see them in the living-room window, as if they are on display. Dad paces back and forth, shaking his head and gesturing with his hands. Although I can hear them, I don't listen.

I wave to the driver who is waiting to see Tyler get safely in the front door, and she waves back and leaves. I turn to see Russ, standing on the front lawn with his hands in his pockets. A little red mark shines on his forehead where the Ping-Pong ball hit him, but he isn't angry anymore.

“I forgot the score,” he says, not too enthusiastically. “Who was winning?”

I glance once more at my pacing father in the living-room spotlight.

“You won,” I say.

Russ nods. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow.” He glances once at my parents, then jogs across the lawn and into the street. “Don't forget to bring your skateboard,” he calls, and then vanishes around the tall hedge.

Alone with my brother, I lead him around to the back. As I open the back door, I help Smiling Tyler shove all his loose papers into his pack before they end up sprawled across the kitchen floor.

“What's for dinner?” Tyler asks.

“Who knows?” I answer. “Probably nothing.”

We get to the hallway, close to the battleground, and I hurry him toward the bedrooms. We don't say anything to each other anymore about the fights. What's the use? Occasionally Tyler used to whisper to me, “I wish they'd stop,” as if he were telling me a big secret. Eventually he stopped wishing it to me, when he realized I couldn't do anything about it. I always tell him to save it for his prayers.

I go into my room, and Tyler follows, since his room doesn't have a TV. I close the door, so now their voices seem farther away. Farther away, but still clear as a bell.

Tyler immediately turns on his cartoons—and laughs at Wile E. Coyote getting blasted by some Acme dynamite. But the cartoon explosions are never loud enough to drown out the voices in the living room.

•  •  •

Today it's Mom's turn to slam the door. And by the weight and direction of the noise, I know it's the front door. I can always tell how bad it is by which door slams. The bathroom door means they'll be talking again by the time the night is over. A bedroom door means somebody sleeps in the den.
The front door slamming means they may not speak for days.

In a moment I hear Mom's Cadillac start up and drive away. She'll go to Aunt Jackie's, I think, or Grandma and Grandpa Pearson's. Maybe she'll come back late tonight; maybe she won't come back till morning.

Tyler fell asleep without having dinner, lying on the floor, with cartoons dancing across the television. I turn off the TV and the lights and lie back, trying to fall asleep as well. Downstairs I can hear Dad busily working to keep his mind off Mom. I can smell frying meat, and it makes me hungry, but I don't feel like eating. I don't feel like leaving my room. Dad's always been a good cook, but over the past few months, it seems he's been having to cook for us a whole lot more. Not just cook, but also do a lot of other things that Mom used to do. It's like Mom suddenly got too busy at her job at the bank, or too upset, or just lost interest.

What I don't get is that Mom always says she would rather stay home and be a full-time mom than have to work. That's what she says, yet when she's home with us these days, it's almost like she doesn't want to be there either.

The door creaks open slightly, and a bar of light cuts across the dark room.

“Preston?” says my father. “You all right?”

“Shh,” I tell him. “Tyler's sleeping.”

“Dinner's ready,” he whispers. “Cheeseburgers.”

“Maybe later,” I say.

Dad slips quietly into the room and closes the door behind him. I scoot over on my bed so he can sit down next to me.

“It's no fun having to hear us fight, is it?” he says.

I shift positions, leaning my head against his chest, as if to say it's all right. He begins to rub my hair and scratch my head like he did when I was really little and had a fever. It feels good. I squint my eyes like a cat being petted between the ears.

“What's the big problem?” I ask. “What does Mom want?”

Dad sighs, rubs his eyes, then says, “Don't blame her, Preston. This is my fault, not hers. I fly off the handle too quickly. I don't listen to her. I don't spend enough time with her.”

Maybe he's right. Dad is kind of hard on Mom. He sets rules for her like he sets rules for Tyler and me. Dad's “old-fashioned” that way, and Mom must hate it—if I were her, I'd probably hate it. Maybe their fights aren't just about money after all.

But that's between them, and just because Mom has a reason to be upset with Dad doesn't mean that I do. Dad talks to me, he listens to me, and he spends lots of time with me. It's great, because I'm so much like him and we like to do the same things. We're always playing ball together, always fishing on weekends. Always racing each other. That's my favorite thing—racing my Dad. I'm the fastest runner in my age group, but Dad can always outrace me—only barely though. We race each other on the track, in the park, on the beach, any chance we get.

Although I'd never tell him this, or anyone else for that matter, I'd have to say my dad is kind of like my best friend.

It's too bad he's not Mom's anymore.

“Things are going to change, Preston,” Dad says as he sits here on my bed. “
I'm
going to change. And then everything will be okay.”

“I know it will,” I tell him.

He smiles at me and brushes some hair out of my face. He gets up, then bends over, gently picking up Tyler. Tyler complains with a tiny groan, but his eyes stay closed and his body limp. Dad kisses Tyler on the forehead and carries him gently into his own room.

When I'm sure that Dad is back in the kitchen, I sneak out of my room and into his and Mom's.

Their bedroom is a big room, with lots of antique furniture. Some of it Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Wes gave us; the rest of it Mom bought at all the antiques shops she loves to browse through. The carpet is thick blue, and on the walls are works of art and family portraits—just enough to fill the walls and keep the room feeling warm and homey.

I dive onto the bed, lying diagonally across it. The bed is so big and so soft, I could get lost in it. When I was little the bed seemed twice as big, and it was that much easier to get lost in—like when I would curl up in it on stormy nights or Sunday mornings. That was before Tyler was born. There was just the three of us, and we would talk and talk about
anything and everything in the world—Mom, Dad, and me.

Of course, I don't do that sort of stuff anymore, now that I'm eleven.

But given the choice, I'd rather be five years old and lost in the giant safe bed than be eleven and in the line of fire between Mom and Dad.