Speaking of bad intentions: Luke still resides at a mental health facility about forty minutes from The Hollows where I visit him every other week. And today is visiting day.
Beck has already left for class. So I shower and get dressed. She was angry with me this morning, picked a fight over who was supposed to stop at the store yesterday and get the coffee. We were forced to drink the dregs from yesterday, because whoever it was (Beck) forgot to run the errand. She’s always mad at me on visiting day, consistently creates some kind of drama. She doesn’t want me to visit with Luke, and she hates that I consider it an obligation.
He’s my brother, Beck. Who is left to care for him?
Um, his father.
My father can’t even care for himself.
Why is any of this your problem? Your brother tried to kill you. Your father might as well have murdered your mother even if he wasn’t the one to push her. This is nuts. How are we ever going to have a normal life?
We’re not, I told her. Nothing about our life will be normal. Ever. If you wanted normal, you picked the wrong guy.
She left in anger, which she had promised before that she would never do again. But we break our promises, don’t we? All the time.
I head downstairs, hop into my new hybrid, and putt-putt out of town. I wanted a muscle car, one of those new Chargers, to connect with my newfound maleness. But I guess, ultimately, I’m too crunchy, too concerned about the planet. Beck and I shopped for a hybrid and wound up with a Prius, which looks more like an orthopedic shoe than a car. But, fine. See, I told her as I signed the paperwork. This is normal. We’re buying a car.
Fuck off, she said. But she smiled. Who knew that beneath all the tats and piercings and bad attitudes, my girl just wanted the things all girls are supposed to want. She wants to be loved, to be safe, to have a home and a car. And she wants those things with me. I can give her some of it.
I cross the town limits and wind through the outlying suburban developments. Eventually, those give way to farmland. Then I’m heading through a thick, wooded region. And the trees around me are starting their show of gold, orange, red, and brown.
I wish I could say that the sight of it fills me with joy, a sense of peace or renewal. But that’s not how I feel. Let’s face it, not that much has changed. I am still in therapy, still need medication to control my various problems. Beck and I… well, our relationship is exactly what it has always been. It’s intensely loving, but we still have the same degree of heat, the same arguments that escalate instead of wind down. My coldness sometimes makes her cry.
I think of her parents’ relationship, stormy, on-again, off-again. I think of my parents, often resorting to violence. How will Beck and I learn to love each other differently? We both know we have to try, and we are trying. But it’s not all hot sex and hybrids.
At least I’m whole, fully realized, as Dr. Cooper is quick to remind me. I’m not hiding. I’m not lying. And I have made my home in The Hollows. I feel like it has closed around me, ensconced and protected me. I feel like I can live a real life here. Untethered from the past, I can walk into the future.
I approach the grounds of the juvenile facility that houses Luke. It tries hard not to look like what it is. The landscaping is lovely. The gates manage to seem ornately decorative, even though I know them to be electrified-like a mansion (for maniacs) or a country club (for nutcases). And the man who greets me at the gate is armed. He knows me, this aging guard with his slick gray hair and formidable paunch. He waves me in, and I feel a familiar lurch in my stomach. I hate this place. And I have grown to hate my brother.
My father is ill. He has liver cancer and very little time to live. I have taken the trip to Florida to see him after he was released from prison and admitted to a hospital not far from where he spent the last seven years. The visit, without my going into too many details, was awkward. He apologized for all of his mistakes.
I’m sorry, son. I can’t count the ways I failed you and your mother.
Dr. Cooper urges a journey toward forgiveness. It’s a concept that I don’t really understand. What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn’t mean that you’re saying it’s all right now, or that you’ve forgotten the wrong. It just means that you’ve drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn’t hurt as much. That’s all.
But I am not angry. I do not hate my father. I miss my mother, every day. I wish everything about our life together had been different. But I do not blame him, or her, or even Rachel. Really, I blame myself. Maybe if I had been a different kind of child, they would have had a different kind of life. Dr. Cooper says we need to work on my thinking.
It’s all right, Dad, I told him. I failed her, too.
He tried to argue with me, but he was just too physically weak. We made peace, I think. We are bound by blood, but we are strangers of circumstance. We are so far apart that we cannot come together now. If I could feel more, I imagine I’d feel deeply sad about that.
I had one request for him, and he was happy to comply. A couple of weeks later, the paperwork came in the mail from Sky. It has been signed by all parties.
They always have Luke and me meet in this comfortable, sunny room. They call it “The Morning Room.” There’s a fireplace and some plush couches. Fresh flowers in plastic vases are placed artfully on end tables, books are arranged carefully on shelves. It is a soft and comforting place, pretty even. Except for the armed guard that sits just outside the door.
Today, Luke is sitting by the window when I arrive. His twelfth birthday has just passed, and it’s interesting how he seems to change every time I visit. He is growing up, getting bigger. It fills me with dread.
Usually, we just sit. I talk about innocuous things-the weather, events in The Hollows. I avoid anything loaded. I don’t talk about our father, or his mother. I don’t talk about Beck. I talk about television shows, movies, and video games. He stares blankly out the window. He hasn’t uttered a word since the night he was admitted.
But today, there’s an electricity in the air, something palpable that I can feel. When the door closes behind me, the hair on my arms stands on end, and someone walks over my grave.
I take my usual seat as far away from Luke as the room will allow.
“Hey, Luke,” I say. “How are you feeling?”
How can you live with it? Sitting there and talking to him after what he did to you? To me? Beck asked me this morning, tears in her eyes.
“It’s still pretty warm out,” I go on. “But a cold front is moving in.”
He’s a monster.
“Did you hear the news?” he says.
I practically jump out of my skin. I haven’t heard his voice in over a year. It sounds strange, a crackly high and low to it. I try not to show my surprise.