Mom was frantically trying to protest this couldn’t be possible, and Dad was staring at the funnel and measuring cup. Again, the trooper asked who Hamilton was, only this time in a tone demanding an answer.
“Hamilton is my younger brother.” I picked up a family picture off an end table. “Was this the person you saw?” I said, pointing at my brother.
Mom tried to snatch the picture away, but Dad was in the way. The trooper, whose nametag said ‘Johnson’, admitted he couldn’t tell for sure, since whoever it was had been wearing a winter coat. “Green and yellow?” I asked.
“It might have been.”
“This is crazy! Officer, you must be mistaken. I’m going to have to ask you to leave!” interrupted my mother.
Dad kept between my mother and the rest of us. She was squawking incoherently, and I was telling Trooper Johnson I wanted the criminal found and sent to jail. Just then, we all heard the back door open. The master criminal had returned without ever checking to see if the cops were still around.
Mom whirled out of Dad’s arms and ran to the stairs. “Hamilton, go to your room, right now!”
“Like hell!” Dad stormed down the stairs and dragged my brother up, still wearing his green and yellow winter coat.
Mom was screeching for the cop to leave, but he stood there for a moment and said, “That’s who I saw.” Mom started crying at this, and my brother actually peed his pants; you could see the stain form and run down his legs. My father was disgusted with them both, and sent them both to their rooms. He came back to the living room and crossed his arms, waiting for somebody to say something.
The trooper looked at me. “Officer, let me ask you a couple of questions. Will you be writing a report of this up tonight?”
“Wait a minute…” interjected Dad.
I held my hand up to stop him, and looked the trooper in the eye. He glanced at Dad, but said, “Yes, I will.”
“Does what you have seen tonight constitute enough evidence to have my brother arrested?”
He shrugged at that. “Arrested, yes. Convicted, who knows? He’s underage, anyway.”
“Can I pick up a copy of that report tomorrow?”
I got a sharp look at that. “Yes, I can make one available. Why?”
“And if I decide to press charges, how long will I have to do that in?”
Dad started squawking loud enough now that I really missed the answer, but I just didn’t care. If I couldn’t manage my plan now, it wouldn’t matter. I thanked the trooper and sent him on his way.
Once the trooper left, Mom tried to come back downstairs, but Dad angrily ordered her back to her room. We settled into the armchairs. “Well?” he asked me tiredly.
“I can’t live like this. Do you have any idea how much a new engine would have cost? Were you going to pay for it? He certainly doesn’t have any money. What’s next, slashing my tires? Bricks through my windshield? I’m already living with my stuff under lock and key, and sleeping on the couch. What’s next?” I asked.
Dad rubbed his face. “I don’t know, Carling. I just don’t know.”
“I’m moving out, Dad. As soon as I can find a place, I’m moving out.”
“You can’t do that. You’re only sixteen.”
“So what? If I stay here, I won’t live long enough to grow old enough to move. Do you honestly think he’s going to stop? Honestly?”
Dad looked like he was going to cry. I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way when Alison was diagnosed as learning disabled.
I had to keep pushing. “Dad, either I do this with your help, or I do it on my own. If I have to, I will load everything into the car and just leave, and you will never see me again in your life. Do you really want that? Do you only want one child you can call a son?”
“No. We’ll do this tomorrow.” He looked defeated by it all. All my life my father had been bigger than life, but not tonight. I made myself dinner and ate it in the family room, by myself.
It might seem very unusual that the State Police would be making patrols through our residential neighborhood, but actually it was fairly common. Ridgefield Road was the main thoroughfare between York Road and Dulaney Valley Road without getting on the Baltimore Beltway. People used to whip through the neighborhood at sixty plus miles an hour! At least once a month somebody would have a fender bender somewhere on the road, and at least three times I knew of accidents with people slamming into school buses. It got so bad that by the Eighties, the County actually blocked off the entrance to York Road, eliminating the craziness. You had to go up to the end of the road and then go another block out of the way up to Greenridge to get into the development.
I remember one time when we were kids, Ray and Joey Bravo and I were throwing snowballs at cars from the hillside across from our house. I nailed this one car a good one, right on the windshield. Then I noticed the bright red star on the license plate — I had just hammered an unmarked trooper! I don’t think the three of us stopped running until we hit the Pennsylvania line!
I slept in the family room again that night, after locking Hamilton in his room. The next day I unlocked his door when I went out running. Mom ignored the entire situation, as if it was all just a bad dream, so I ignored Mom. It was a real shit sandwich as far as my parents were concerned. Back on my first run through, even then I knew my brother was fucked up, but who listens to a kid. I got out before he lost it. Now, he was losing control early. The more successful I became, the loonier he became. Worse, the social stigma to having a crazy kid was immense. You didn’t send somebody to a shrink unless they were foaming at the mouth, and maybe not even then.
Dad came down to breakfast to find me going through the classified ads. He looked over my shoulder and saw me going through the section for apartments. He sat down next to me. “You’re serious about this?”
I looked up at him. “I have to. It’s the best way, Dad.”
“Your mother will never allow it.”
“She will if you tell her she will.” This was true. The one person in the world Mom would always listen to, no matter what, was my father. Their love was straight out of the books. No matter what, they would be there for the other. Dad still didn’t look convinced. “Dad, there are very few good ways for this to end. Choice One — I stay here and Hamilton keeps on being crazy. Sooner or later one of us is going to kill the other one, and I am not being humorous. Either he will kill me, or I will kill him while defending myself.” Dad grimaced at the thought, but didn’t argue.
“Choice Two — you and Mom do nothing and I decide not to put up with it. I leave. I don’t care what you think you can do to me, but short of chaining me in the crawlspace, I will leave. You can take my car, my possessions, my money, whatever. I will still leave and you will never see me again in this lifetime.”
“Or Choice Three — I move out. I’ll pay for the apartment. You keep me on your medical insurance. You sign away all rights to my brokerage accounts. I don’t sue for emancipation. And we stay some semblance of a family. It’s your choice.” I leaned back in my chair and looked at him. The emancipation was a long shot at best. Short of physical or sexual abuse, it is practically impossible to pull it off in Maryland without a parent’s consent.
He didn’t say anything for a minute, but then picked up the newspaper. “Just what did you have in mind for a budget?”
I shrugged. “Maybe a couple of hundred a month. I don’t need much. I just need a one bedroom place for the next couple of years. Not even that, actually. I would appreciate your help.”
“Spend a bit more and get a furnished apartment.”
I nodded in agreement. We looked through the listings for furnished apartments in Towson and Lutherville. Some he knew about and warned me away from, either from the neighborhood or the landlord. A few others he circled on the page, for a call later. After lunch we made some telephone calls. He took point, since it makes a world of difference when a father is looking for an apartment versus a teenager is looking for an apartment. He simply would tell people that I was looking to start at Towson State in the spring, and would leave out my age, or the fact that I was also still in high school.