Authors: Paige Farmer
He walked over to Nan and she saw the look of concern in his eyes. Not wanting sympathy, but not minding his company, she invited him to sit. He accepted, pulling a Camel out of his shirt pocket. He lit it and sat shoulder to shoulder with Nan as they watched his smoke mingle with hers.
“What are you drinking?” he asked, nodding toward the jelly jar. She picked the bottle of champagne off the floor to show him.
“No more cups, but we can share,” Nan said and handed him the glass. He took a couple sips and gave it back. Nan finished it off and poured another.
“I’m so sorry about your dad Nan,” Charlie started. “I know it was rough at times and all, but deep down inside I really think he was a decent guy, you know?”
Nan didn’t say anything and Charlie went on.
“When we were kids, before it got
so
bad with the booze, he made such a big deal of setting up the tent in your backyard every summer. And every summer, he’d force your brothers to wait ‘til I got there to start. Buddy gave me a lot of shit for that you know, making him wait and all, but your dad seemed to realize that it meant something to me. My dad? He wouldn’t have given a damn. In fact, the only thing my dad and I have ever done together is pick out my mom’s casket. And even then, he didn’t buy the one I wanted. Said it was too expensive.”
Nan looked at Charlie, remembering that he too had lost a parent. His mother died before he’d moved to Portsmouth and Nan hadn’t ever really stopped to contemplate the impact of it on Charlie’s life. He never talked about it, and it occurred to her that the two of them now shared an important loss.
“I know he tried to be a good guy,” Nan told Charlie as a fresh spill of tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t really care that he drank. I don’t care at all. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like he was a whole lot happier when he was drunk. When he was sober, like first thing in the morning, he was always so quiet and sad. Why do you think that was, Charlie?” Nan asked him.
“I don’t know, Nan,” Charlie sighed, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Maybe something chased him, you know?”
At first Nan imagined a shadowy figure, arms raised high above her father’s head, but she immediately dismissed the childish notion. It was replaced by something much more pragmatic and much more disturbing. What if it had been she and her brothers that caused her father to run away from himself? It wasn’t their behavior that concerned her as they didn’t act any worse than most of their friends. No, what was dawning on her was the idea that
providing
for them had been too much for him. What if Sam’s alcoholism was an attempt to drown the torment of failing his children? Years of her mother’s sneering voice echoed in her ears and Nan couldn’t imagine what it might have done to her father.
This had to be the biggest fucking God gotcha’ ever.
“Charlie, do you believe in God?” Nan asked, spitting out the word.
Charlie shifted uncomfortably.
“Yeah, sure,” he answered.
Nan turned to look at him.
“You don’t sound so sure,” she said.
He stared at her for a minute.
“Why are you asking?”
“Because
I
think it’s a big fucking joke,” she said. “I think the whole thing is a trick people play on themselves to feel better about dying.”
Charlie looked less surprised than troubled by the vehemence in Nan’s voice. He turned away and took another drag from his cigarette before speaking.
“Okay. I think I believe in
something
. But I don’t know if it’s God exactly.”
“Well tell me Charlie, do you think my father is sitting on a cloud somewhere strumming a harp and singing hallelujah?”
The image made Nan want to laugh and cry at that same time. Even in her imagination, she couldn’t see her father in anything but his customary workpants and flannel shirt, a five o’clock shadow thick on his chin, and a Marlboro dangling from his lips.
Charlie sighed.
“Yeah, I guess it seems pretty sugar coated. I think it’s because we don’t have the ability to comprehend what it might actually be like.”
“Sugar coated?” Nan asked derisively. “It’s cotton fucking candy Charlie.”
“Some of it, maybe,” he replied, seemingly unperturbed by her coarseness.
“Which parts?” Nan asked. “How much of it is bullshit? I mean, if angels and heaven are all a bunch of crap, how about Adam and Eve and Jesus? Seven days and let there be light, my ass. My dad was right. Religion is nothing but man’s way of wiping shit off his shoe.”
“Your dad had a lot of good lines,” Charlie responded, chuckling.
Nan smiled in spite of herself.
“I’ll tell you this Nan, I don’t have any good answers for you. Believe it or not, I have all the same questions.”
It looked like Charlie was weighing whether to say more. Nan wanted him to keep talking, so she asked him a question.
“Do you pray?”
He stared at her a good minute before answering.
“You know, there were times when I was a kid that my dad would…lose his temper with me. I was pretty used to it, and it was usually quick. A jab or two to the face and done. But there were a few times that it got out of hand. Times when I though he might actually not stop until I quit breathing. I prayed then. You bet I prayed. To Jesus, to God, to anyone that would listen.”
Charlie’s breathing had picked up a bit. He leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette, taking as long as he could to make sure each and every spark was snuffed. He sat back.
“Anyway,” he went on. “There was this one time and it was the worst. It was my mother’s birthday the year after she died. We had just moved here a couple months before. My old man started drinking at breakfast and by lunch he was passed out in his chair. I thought he was down for the count so I left. Went and found your brothers, in fact. We played ball at the field until it was pitch black out. When I got home, my dad was awake. He was on his knees with a broken picture of my mother in his hands. He’d been crying, you know? He had snot and tears all over his face. For a second I felt bad for him. He looked so…I don’t know…shattered. I wanted to hug him and try to make him feel better.”
Nan was unnerved by the catch in Charlie’s voice.
“Charlie, I…” Nan wasn’t sure what to say. Part of her wanted to beg him to stop. Another wanted to hold him tight.
“So anyway,” he continued. “I think about hugging him, but before I can, he’s on his feet and starts screaming about it being so late. He asked where the fuck I’d been. Was I so fucking selfish that even on my mother’s own birthday I couldn’t stop thinking about myself for one miserable second? I thought about running. Even calculated how long it would take me to get out the door. Something about the look in his eyes scared me more than any time I could remember. Before we left Massachusetts my dad dragged me off to a dog fight in Worcester, and I swear Nan, his eyes looked just like the dogs’ did before they were let off their leash. It made me feel sick.”
Charlie leaned forward to grab another cigarette, and without asking, handed Nan one as well. He lit hers and then his. The rain had picked up and it was dark as dusk outside. Nan thought about what Charlie was telling her and wondered how it would end. He was here, sitting next to her now, so she knew he survived it. But the shaking in his voice as he talked seemed to pull them both into a moment where that still remained to be seen.
“He came at me then and it was like all of the times before had been rolled up into this one. It felt like hours, but I know it couldn’t have been. If it had, I’d have been dead. There’s no
way
I would have survived. I was on the floor, trying to cover my head and ribs while he kicked me over and over again. Next thing I know, I hear a voice in the room with us coming from behind my dad. I thought for a second it must be Jesus himself. But it wasn’t. It was Mr. Steiner from next door.”
Nan pictured the hunched over man that lived a few houses down from Charlie. His yard was filled with the most beautiful rose bushes and the fragrant smell in June wafted almost all the way to Nan’s house more than a block away. Mr. Steiner was frequently outside tending the flowers and always waved hello to the kids as they passed. He never minded when Nan’s brothers picked handfuls of reds and pinks for Elsie as they walked by.
“You take what you want,” he would call. “All the world should have such beauty, no?”
“I remember him,” Nan told Charlie.
“He saved my life that night Nan. I’m sure of it. He pulled at my dad’s shoulder. I heard him say ‘Hey, hey. Here now. You going to kill your boy, Mr. Parker. Come now, you must stop.”
Charlie paused, put his cigarette out and continued.
“My dad stops and I think for a minute he’s going to cold cock Mr. Steiner. But he doesn’t. He drops his fist and says to the old man ‘you’re right’. He didn’t look ashamed exactly, but he realized that what Mr. Steiner said was true. My father went and locked himself in his room. Mr. Steiner helped me to the couch and got me ice for my ribs. I know he talked to me, but I can’t remember a thing that he said. I was trying so hard not to cry, Nan. That’s what I was thinking about. Nothing else. I was eleven, you know? Eleven year old boys don’t cry, at least that’s what my dad tried to beat into me. To this day, I swear that’s why he lost it so bad that night. It was because I saw him crying. That was worse to him than if I’d walked in on him with his pants around his ankles.”
Nan wanted to say something, but nothing seemed right. She knew, they all did, that Charlie’s dad beat him up pretty regularly, but she never imagined anything like he just told her. Plenty of boys in the neighborhood were knocked around by their fathers’, sometimes to be taught a lesson, other times for not much at all, but nothing compared to the brutal beating Charlie described. Her father had never more than tapped their asses, her brothers included, even at his most despondent.
“You want to know the most ironic thing?” Charlie asked in a voice harder than Nan had ever heard him use. “As rotten a fuck as my dad was, still is really, but I’m too big for him to beat now, he trots his ass off to church every week without fail. He’s never missed confession that I know of and is always at the front of the line with his mouth hanging open when it comes time for communion. Now, think about that a minute, will ya? He goes to confession, takes the blessing every week. I don’t know what he might or might not tell Father Patrick, but I do know that he gets a handshake and pat on the back after every service. So, my dad can leave his sin at the door of the church and when he finally drops dead, off to heaven he goes?”
Charlie’s expression was filled cynicism.
“But Mr. Steiner, he’s Jewish. Did you know that? And because of that, the same church that absolves my father says
he,
Mr. Steiner, doesn’t get in. That man saved my life from the one who tried to take it, and he’s damned for eternity. When I really think about it, it doesn’t make any sense to me. So Nan, when you ask me about heaven and God and all that, fucked if I know.”
“Charlie, I’m so sorry,” Nan said. Her chest hurt and her eyes were watery again.
“Look, it’s me who should be sorry,” he replied after a minute. She could tell he was embarrassed. “You didn’t need that shit on top of everything else you’ve got going on. I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone when you wonder what’s true. What’s real. Maybe that’s what life is all about. You know, for figuring it out and finding the answer.”
“Don’t be sorry Charlie. I just feel so awful that you had to go through it. I can’t believe that we were around you all the time and didn’t know bad it was.”
“Eh, what could you have done? You were only a little girl,” he said. “Where did that little girl go, by the way? It seems like just yesterday you were tagging along, bugging your brothers and me.”
Nan wanted to tease him back, but still felt such sorrow at his story. He had revealed to her what must have been one of the most awful events in his entire life. She knew this was not something you shared with a child. And the way he was looking at her this moment made it clear to Nan that Charlie by no means mistook her for a little girl.
She nervously leaned forward to fetch another cigarette from the bowl and tried to still the unexpected fluttering behind her belly button. As she searched for one of her own brand, Nan felt Charlie’s fingers graze her back an inch or so below her bra strap. She shivered when he touched her.
Sitting back, she searched his face. Who was this person? Was this the boy she’d known forever? The friend of her brothers’ who helped her up from the ledge years before? He seemed so different beside her here in the gloom.
“Charlie, I…”
He leaned in before she could say anything else. Cupping her face in his hands, he let his lips graze hers, as light as a breath, before moving them back to center. As he kissed her, Nan let her hand steal up to trace Charlie’s jaw with her fingertip. She jumped when he moaned and pulled her closer. Nan was only fifteen, but the feelings about Charlie coursing through her this moment were very, very adult.
Suddenly, from behind closed eyes, Nan saw white. It was followed by the loudest crash of thunder she’d ever heard. The sound caused her to leap up and land fanny first on the floor.
Nan stared up at Charlie, eyes wide. He laughed out loud and reached down to help her.