Son for Hire: Chapter 95

A thousand emotions swirling in my turbulent soul I am literally shaking with pent up feeling.  Wrench still in hand I stomp down the street like an impudent child right after throwing a tantrum…which is EXACTLY what I am.  As the heat of the moment eventually fades and my raw anger subsides my steps begin to slow and my tense shoulders and fists relax.  Oh boy.  Do I feel stupid.  Really, really stupid.

What had I done?  And why!?  What was I actually so angry about?  Because Alan was a decent human being and wanted to offer a hand up to a couple poor young newlyweds with a child on the way?  Because he called me son in the most innocuous way possible?  Because he clearly still loved his wife?  Because he was trying to make me feel guilty by pretending to be a good guy?  Right there was the crux of the problem.  Alan wasn’t pretending.

I wanted so badly for him to be the mustache twirling cartoon villain that I hadn’t even considered that he might actually be a stand up guy.  He was a gruff man, a hard man, a man who did not suffer fools lightly, but what had he actually done to deserve my hatred?  Be brusk on the phone with Evelyn?  That was just how he talked.  Change her birthday dinner from just the two of them going out to inviting company over?  It seemed hard-hearted but what did I really know about it?  I never followed that up and Evelyn didn’t seem particularly upset about it after the fact.  Maybe they had a great time with friends.  Maybe it was a crucial business gathering.  I just didn’t know.  I knew they’d grown apart over the years, like so many couples their age, but never did Evelyn give me the impression that she held true animosity toward him.  If anything she seemed regretful that things couldn’t have been different.  Though it gnawed at me the fact was is that she still loved the man.  Yeah he’d been stern with me but putting myself in his shoes I could understand it.  Here was this young idiot who’d knocked up his new wife without any preparation or solid plan for the future.  He and I hitting it off was never in the cards.  

As much as I’d wanted to I just could not hate him.  He was kind to Kitty, protective of her even, and in the end he had allowed us under his roof.  And he’d just tried to give me a car for goodness sake!  With no ulterior motive, just a pure act of charity to somebody he felt could use it.  Not only that he also offered his own valuable time to help teach me to fix it.  Not do it for me or offer to have it fixed by professionals, like Evelyn might have done, but show me how to do it for myself.  It was a different kind of generosity and probably the single kindness thing a man had ever done for me.  The way he put his hand on my shoulder, the way he encouraged and offered me guidance, the way he called me son…for a second there…it almost felt nice.

As I walk and reflect I realize that it wasn’t Alan that had made me feel guilty.  That was all Evelyn and I’s doing.  Our deceptions, our lies, our infidelity…we were the bad guys in this story.  To be with her I could live with that but I had to stop projecting my sins onto others.  It wasn’t fair.  Of all of us that lived in that house Alan was the least to blame for my troubles.  Mixed in with the poisonous guilt was that old caustic irrational jealousy.  Evelyn had talked to me about that after my little hissy fit in Eugene’s room and assured me that her feelings for her son and her husband had no bearing on her love for me, yet here I was again.

I ought to go back, go back and apologize to both Alan and Kitty for my behavior, but I just couldn’t.  Not yet.  I hadn’t the courage face them right now and I didn’t trust myself not to make an ass of myself all over again.  I’d rudely thrown Alan’s generosity back in his face.  I’d embarrassed my sister by acting like I had and tried to deny her the car she so keenly wanted.  And I had only increased the chances of Alan putting two and two together by responding with such intense emotion.  And the rotten little cherry on top, here I was outside of the house without my cage and I was too much of a coward to go back and get it.  I thought being her good boy was the one thing in the world that I could actually be decent at…but I failed at even that.  I let my sister down.  I let myself down.  I let my Mommy down.

My shuffling feet slow, then stop moving altogether.  I look down at the wrench in my hand and just stare at it.  I could see myself teary eyed in the polished side of the head.  If only a person could be fixed as easily as a car.  But some people, some foolish little boys, were way too broken to repair.

All goes quiet.  The traffic noises, the evening breeze, everything fades away except for the sound of my own breathing.  Maybe…this walk shouldn’t end.  Maybe I should just keep walking and not look back.  Maybe I should run away, like my mother did.  They’d all be better off without me.  Maybe I should just disappear…forever.

“No.”  I whisper as my hand grips hard around wrench.  “No!”  I glare down angrily at the weakling man staring back up at me in the reflection.  “Haven’t you learned anything yet?  Huh?”  I bring the face closer.  “Has she just been wasting her time with you?  Haven’t you learned a thing?”  I look forward and pocket the wrench.  “I am better than this.”  My eyes drift the direction of downtown and my old hood.  Talking to my old self, the weak man I’d seen in the reflection, I say.  “Run if you want Donny.  Run away and don’t come back.  But I’m staying.”

Really looking around me for the first time since I’d stormed off I realize that I was already halfway to where I needed to be.  My wandering may have been mindless but it had not been aimless.  My stride picks up again, twice as fast as before, as I make for my destination.  Pulling the pendant of my chain from out of my shirt I grip the compass tightly as my pace picks up even more.

With driven steps I walk through the quiet streets with my eyes focused straight ahead though my mind lingered behind.  I hoped Kitty got the car.  She liked those old cars and she deserved to have one.  I hoped Alan didn’t hold her temperamental husband’s actions against her.  And I prayed Kitty would be able to contain her impishness and not make this situation even worse.  If she did I would not hold it against her.  Whatever she did couldn’t be worse than what I had done.  I would find out how it went when I got home.  Right now I had somewhere I desperately needed to be.

I am a good boy, not perfect but getting better by the day, and when times got tough or feelings got low…good boys needed their Mommy!

Chapter 96