I summon words. I say, “That sounds awfully fairy tale, Dad.”
He laughs his laugh, the one I grew up with, and says, “I knew this was going to be difficult to explain. I should start by telling you that I’m not who you think I am, that I’m not—”
And I interrupt him, “You can save me the evil-genius speech, Dad. How are you even here? How are you not in a coma right now? How are you, like, almost my age?”
He sits down in the sand, smiles up at me. “I figured out I had an ability when I was just a kid. When I tried really hard and really concentrated, I could send myself out of my body. I could project myself into other people’s heads. See what they could see. Into their dreams and, well, if they had visions of the future or the past or whatever, I could send myself there too.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I stopped long before you were born. To be honest, it was simple: You really don’t ever want to be in another person’s head. It’s not like stepping into a movie. Doing it, you get twisted by the emotion. Bent out of shape and heavy, like you just stepped out of a flat surface into a three-D one. The pain was, is, incredible, but the high…”
I nod slowly, me being the understanding father here. “I know the high.”
“I got pretty ugly. Your mom, she helped me so much, but I needed … I was desperate to get that back.” He lets all his air out through his nose and says, “It’s easy to make yourself believe that what’s in a bottle or a can will make you whole again. It’s not too hard to believe in an easy way out.”
I haven’t talked to my dad like this, well, never actually like this, but we haven’t talked this long and this in-depth since I was old enough to put myself to bed. Honestly, I don’t have time for small talk. Something major’s going down.
I tell my dad that I’m sorry he’s in a coma. I tell him that I’m sorry that for the past really long time I’ve been treating him like he’s basically dead. I say, “Really though, what you did was very, very shitty.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m weak. I was a stupid drunk. Will you forgive me?”
“I’m sure I will. Eventually.”
“Will you visit me?”
“Of course. I have been. I’ve been telling you everything. You never heard?”
“No,” he says sheepishly.
“Not a thing?”
He shakes his head. I can’t tell if he’s lying. He asks, “Can I give you a hug?”
And he stands up, sand sliding down his suit, and I walk over and we hug. He cries. Right there, this ghost version of him, this escape pod version of him, just cries and cries in fits and starts like a bad engine. When he’s done he pulls away and cleans his nose with his sleeve. Says, “Thanks.”
Me, not losing it, I ask, “You need to tell me how to stop it. How to change what I’ve seen.”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you what you’re up against.”
“Okay. And what am I up against?”
“I was unfaithful to your mother. Before your mom got pregnant with you, I had an affair. The woman was bad news. She was sick and she was mean. I have no idea why it happened, but it did.”
I have nothing to say. My dad reads the anger on my face.
The way I’m turning red, the way my fingers bite into my palms, it’s a rage that’s new to even me. I only know that I don’t want to be the pillow my stupid dad cries into right now. I only know that I’d rather see his teeth go flying out of his head.
He says, “You’re mad, I can understand that. But it gets worse.”
I bite my lower lip.
Dad says, “This woman, the one I was having an affair with, she got pregnant. She had a son that she didn’t want. I took off, went back to your mother. She never knew about the affair. We had you and I never looked back. It was over.”
A headache swims up the back of my neck, sinks its fangs into my brain.
Dad says, “The woman died. She drowned. Right here in this reservoir.”
The headache intensifies. It screams at me with a megaphone. Tells me to kick, to kill, to bite, to fight. The headache raging in my skull wants me to scream uncontrollably and crush down my father with my feet. What he’s telling me only happens in bad movies. It’s the end, really.
Dad says, very quietly, “Jimi is your half brother.”
And that’s when I clock him.
It just happens. My fist connects with his jaw between heartbeats. The blood pushes out, I knock my dad to the ground, the blood pulls back in. I stand over him with my eyes fast turning red. My skin is shaking around me. The whole beach feels like it’s vibrating on the same wavelength as my fury.
FOUR
My father, this young version of him, is lying at my feet.
The punch didn’t do much but knock him flat.
It feels good having done it, but still I’ve got this stress wrapped tight around my heart as if it’s bound up with coils of ragged rope.
What he’s told me, it’s impossible.
It’s the worst thing, the very worst thing, he could have said.
Sitting up, wiping at his chin the way boxers do, Dad says, “It’s terrible, I know. I should have told you sooner. Should have seen it coming. But I’m warning you now just the same as I’ve been warning him through your friend, the girl. If you kill Jimi, it will be a stain, a mark, on your soul for the rest of your life. It won’t come clean, Ade.”
Shouting, spitting, I yell, “That doesn’t help me! Tell me something that helps me!”
Dad pulls himself up onto his knees. His arms hanging down like he’s just a puppet put down there, he looks to me and says, “I believe in you. You need to trust your instincts, trust that you can do this even though everything tells you you can’t. Don’t think about the future. Don’t think about the past. Think about right now. About here. You’re already come so far, Ade. Just push further. Push yourself fully awake.”
I close my eyes; try to make the anger fade.
The thoughts stampeding in my mind are hideous. Jimi being my brother makes me want to vomit, to pull myself in half. It makes no sense and yet it makes all the sense in the world. Even though he’s not really, really my brother, not one I’ve ever known or one I ever cared about, my killing him looks even worse now. It’s biblical is what it is.
Jimi is the villain. He’s the corrupter.
I wish, my ears burning, that my dad had never told me this.
“Why?!” I shout at him, kick sand at him. “Why are you telling me this?!”
My dad says, “Because I love you. Both of you.”
“But you betrayed us. Both of us.”
Dad says, “And I’m asking you to forgive me.”
“I can’t stop what will happen. No one can.”
Dad says, “You can try. You have to try. You can save Jimi.”
“Not from me.”
Dad says, “From himself. Don’t let him make you do this.”
I want to tear the stars out of the sky, to bury them in my dad’s eyes. I want to rip up the beach and pull Jimi’s mother’s bones out of the water and beat the world with them. This anger pulses and thrashes away inside me like a lizard. Standing here, in never-never land, I know I need to calm myself down. I know that if I don’t pull back now, I’ll lose control.
I think about Grandpa Razor, about Dr. Borgo, standing over me watching my eyes run crazy under the lids. I think about them shuffling their feet in anticipation. But mostly, I think about my poor mother and about Vauxhall. I remind myself of why I stopped the concussions. Why I decided to go clean.
And I feel the anger slip.
I step back from my dad, turn to the water, and I put my hands on my head and press down hard to press the pain away.
And little by little I can sense the fury trickling out.
Little by little it gets smaller.
Clipped away just like that orange monster Bugs Bunny shaved down to shoes.
It’s hard pushing my hate away, but it works. I take long, deep breaths, slow it down, and I’m able to cool it. I count a few stars, focus on the spaces between them, and then look back at my dad and ask him if this is going to be a regular thing.
“Should I ever expect to see you again?” I ask.
Dad shrugs. He stands up and puts a hand on my shoulder. This move, the one he’s doing here in the moonlight, it’s as old and established as anything else dads do. It’s nice. He says, “I certainly hope so.”
“How come you never did it until now? You’ve been in a coma long enough.”
“I’ve tried. For years I’ve tried. At first the door was just locked, like you hadn’t discovered your abilities. And then, I could just see from the outside. Like looking in at a diorama. The addiction kept me out. I don’t know why. It was like there wasn’t room for me in your mind.”
“What’s it like in there, Dad? Asleep like that.”
“It’s like nothing. It’s like a waiting room.”
“I hope you do visit again. I like this.”
“Me too. Just, no punches next time, ’kay?”
I agree.
We walk down the beach to where there’s a lawn chair I didn’t notice before. Dad sits down in it and takes a cold glass of water from out of nowhere and sips it, the ice chiming. Then he crosses his arms and looks over at me and says, “You turned out wonderful.”
Then, standing up with a huff, the chair and glass vanishing behind him like they were smoke, my father says, “You can’t trust Grandpa Razor.”
“How do you know that?”
“I met him, once, long time ago. Back when I was doing my thing, there was a group of them. We used to, well, when I was with this woman, Jimi’s mother, there was a wild scene going on in Denver. It was the late eighties and people were funny then. There was this punk rocker kind of guy, Bob, I think his name was—”
“Slow Bob?”
“Right, so you’ve met him too? Well, he kind of put together this group of people with similar talents. It wasn’t anything but a feel-good club, an opportunity to talk and drink and get our respective highs in a private place. Things, of course, got bad fast. Excess always leads to, well, regression. Deep down, people really are just animals. Grandpa Razor, he was the worst animal of all. What I’m saying is, be very careful around him. Be strong.”
And with that I’m pulled out of the vision the way a stuntman on a bungee cord is, just snapped back up into the sky and into the night and back behind my eyelids.
FIVE
Before I even open my eyes I know something is wrong.
I can hear it.
The room is silent the way a cat is silent right before it jumps on an insect. I open my left eye first, just a crack, just enough to see through the haze of my eyelashes that the lights are still on and there’s no one standing over me. Then I open the right eye. Again, just a crack. I move it around, open it just a tad wider, and see a shadow to my right, in the corner. A cat ready to pounce.
I roll to my left and I do it fast.
I fall off the futon onto the floor and then stand up quick, both eyes wide open.
Grandpa Razor’s the cat; he’s standing on the opposite side of the bed with a syringe filled with red liquid. He looks surprised, but it’s hard to know ’cause his eyes are so heavy-lidded.
I back away from him, my fists up like I’m a boxer.
“What’s the deal, Gramps?” I ask, pushing back my fear.
He says, “Seriously? You weren’t supposed to wake up so soon.”
I notice a pile just under the table; it’s Dr. Borgo. He’s lying there pretty jacked but he’s breathing. Has a big lump on his head. Pointing at my shrink, I say, “You sure get around with that billy club. I hope that right now he can see the future and I really hope he’s enjoying a nice screening of me kicking the shit out of you three minutes from now.”
Grandpa Razor doesn’t laugh like I expect him to.
If anything he looks more determined and jabs his syringe around.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask, summoning up my new angry mode. Trying out my new angry voice. It sounds very effective.
This gets Grandpa Razor talking. He stops moving at me with the needle and he says, “You have no idea what you’ve gotten into, Ade. Wasting your gift, throwing it all away to try and…” He shakes his head in frustration. “You need to accept what the gift brings. There should be no debate about it. And if—”
I cut the slob off. “If you believe this rules business, then you couldn’t stop me. Doping me up here or OD’ing me wouldn’t do anything, right? If destiny is destiny, then why the hell are you trying to inject me with that?”
“This isn’t what you think it is,” Grandpa Razor says. “Regardless of what you saw, what Jimi’s father told you, you still don’t know what’s really happening. You’re still just as clueless, and what Janice told you, it’ll happen, and I’ll be there just cheering them on—”
He stops right there.
He stops because my rage boils over and I kick him full in the jaw. He goes back fast and he falls down hard, crushing a chair. There are teeth on the table and I see blood, but it doesn’t stop me. I jump on top of Grandpa Razor and just start whaling. After a while my knuckles hurt and they look ugly and I take a breather, but then I just go back to it.
At least until Dr. Borgo stops me.