Breakfast with Neruda (14 page)

“From what?”

“Like maybe he's a serial killer or an animal abuser or a Russian Mafia dude.”

I lean back and rest my elbows on the top step. “But wouldn't I have crazy urges too?”

“You are crazy,” she says. “You tried to blow up the school.”

“No, just a locker. And that was supposed to be Rick's car, so I'm crazy and stupid.”

Annie does a final swipe on her trumpet and sets it inside the case. “Maybe your dad is a spy, and she can't reveal his identity.” She snaps the case shut. “Why not ask Paul?”

Jeff's dad. It's so obvious. “Duh. Why didn't I think of that?”

“Cuz you're a moron?” she says. I punch her on the shoulder. She punches me back.

Every time I visit my mother's freak show of a house, I feel the urge to straighten up the inside of my car. This time I need to also organize all that camping crap. I pile everything neatly, stacking things in the copy paper boxes I retrieved from school. I wish I could lock the car. One of these days I am going to come out and everything I own will be gone. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

I clean up the car also so it doesn't look like I live in it. If Paul knew I was living in the car, who knows what he would do? Jeff keeps threatening to tell his dad so I can move into the basement with him, but I won't let him. His stepmother Dee Dee is not my biggest fan.

I always knew Jeff was part of a different tribe that did not include Annie or me, but it hit hard when Paul started taking my brother away on weekends and holidays. Paul returned to Rooster after he and my mother split up, and he was now married to Dee Dee. When they started having their own kids, Jeff moved back in with us for a while. Dee Dee didn't warm up to Jeff right away, but Paul took him back when Mom's house got bad a couple years ago. I don't think Dee Dee likes it much; she doesn't like to be reminded of Paul's previous life of drinking and pot smoking, but Jeff says she treats him okay. Jeff's hardly ever home anymore now that he works.

I park the Blue Whale in front of Paul's garage. It's sort of a combination repair shop and junkyard, and Jeff and I come here a lot for our car parts.

Two Dobermans bark as I open the gate and let myself in. I extend my hand, and they sniff and remember me.

“Hey, Flynn.” Paul steps outside the trailer that acts as his office. He looks like an older, balder version of Jeff. “How's the beast running?”

“Guzzling gas likes it's Kool-Aid,” I say.

He laughs. He glances at my tires. “I can give you a set of retreads pretty cheap,” he says. “We have a total in the lot same model as yours that has good tires on it.”

“How much?”

“Fifty, for all four.”

“That is a sweet deal,” I say. “I don't have any money right now, though.”

He waves it off. “You can owe me.”

“Thanks.” I can't really afford it, but it's too good to pass up. Maybe I can sell something. Like the iPod. “I get paid Friday. I'll pay you back then.” Dee Dee would shit kittens if she knew Paul does favors like this for me. She reminds him often he is not my father and owes me nothing. But he did kind of raise me for a year or so, and I am Jeff's half-brother.

“Pull her inside and we'll jack her up.”

As he works, the questions I want to ask spin inside my head. Finally, I just ask, “How long did you know my mom before you married her?”

“We go way back,” he says. “She and I went to middle school together. Dated off and on in high school.” He heaves off my left rear tire. “Jesus, you were running on slicks.”

He hands me the tire and tells me to stack it out back with the others. When I come back inside, I ask, “So did you stay together after high school even though she was pregnant with me?”

He loosens the nuts on the rear right tire. “Yeah. Your mom and I moved to Columbus right outta school.” He places the tire in my arms. “I got a job working at Firestone on Broad Street, and she wanted to get out of Rooster.”

“So I was born in Columbus?” He nods. I ditch the next tire and ask, “And you married her before I was born?”

He yanks at the nuts on my left front wheel. “We never actually got married. Not that I didn't ask every single day.” He stopped and thought for a second. “We lived together just long enough for me to see Jeff come into the world.”

“So that's why you aren't listed as my father on my birth certificate.”

He hands me the next tire. “Yep.”

“Did you know my dad?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I'm trying to find my real father.”

He wipes some grease from his hands on the rag dangling from his belt. “What makes you think he wants to be found?”

“Did you know him?”

Paul ratchets the rest of the nuts off the wheel and sets the tire on the ground. “You don't want to go there, son.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks at me. “What has she told you?”

“Nothing,” I say. “She won't talk about it.”

He nods. “Yeah, she's cagey that way. Never told me much either.” He hoists the tire at me and goes back to the final wheel. “And to answer your first question, I know she didn't declare me as the father on your birth certificate. It was sort of a sticky point for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's like she wouldn't let me inside. Wouldn't marry me, wouldn't let me be a father to you. Even after . . . well . . . she just liked to keep things at arm's length. Granted, I was no prince back then,” he says. “I was either high or drunk, so your mother was smart not to marry me.” He shrugs. “We were a couple of fucked-up kids.”

“Why does she get so freaky about it when I ask?”

He sets down his tools and wipes his hands again. “I'm sorry, Michael,” he says. “Maybe she doesn't want to be reminded of that time in her life.” He pats me on the shoulder. “We all have crap in our lives we wish we could forget.”

“I know how she made a living for a while. Before Bob, there were a lot of men in the house.”

He nods. “Before that, her life was always a bit of a train wreck. I knew something was dark in her home life. Enough for her to take off with me the week after graduation.”

“Was that when her brother died?”

“Yeah. And after that she couldn't wait to move to Columbus and never look back.”

“But she did come back.”

“She ran out of options.” Paul rolls a couple retreads over to my car. “Your mother always had these walls around her. I loved her, but she always kept me and everyone else outside her circle.” He grabs the lug wrench and glances at me. “I think she still does, doesn't she?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“I tried to deal with my own ghosts with drugs and alcohol,” he says.

“But you got better.”

“Yeah. I got help. The first step is admitting you have a problem in the first place. Your mother?” He shook his head.

“So she had some issues when she was a kid?”

“Ha! Who didn't?” He sets the first tire on the rear right wheel. He waves me over. “Hold this while I tighten the nuts.” We set the tire on the rim and he starts to mount it.

“She never tells us about the past,” I say. “Always changes the subject, or invents a story.”

“Yeah, she was like that.” He sighs. “She was always . . . a little lost. I think that was what attracted me, you know? We men like to think we can fix whatever is wrong. Be the hero in the story.”

I feel like that with Shelly. Like she has this deep hollow space I want to fill up so she doesn't fall in.

“Anyway, I knew your mom was a little damaged even back in school, but I loved her. I thought that was enough to protect both of us.” He shrugs. “But I couldn't really help her either. I had my own messes to clean up.”

He and I mount the second tire. I hold the third tire in place as he tightens the nuts on it. “I'm not sure anybody can.”

“Bob was good for her, though,” I say. “She seemed happy with him.”

Paul nods. “Yeah, he was a good guy. When she lost him it was like she lost her last good shot at a true life.”

“Yeah. It was around then stuff changed for all of us.”

“So how bad is it?” he asks.

“The house?” I shake my head. “It's bad.” I don't tell him Annie is sleeping on the porch and I'm living in my car. If he knew, he'd probably insist she and I both move into their basement with Jeff.

“You know why she does it, don't you?” he says. “All that crap is a cocoon. It's like a layer of protection from whatever scares the hell out of her. I couldn't be the man to slay the dragons for her.”

We work on the last tire. “I haven't seen it since Jeff moved in with us.”

“It's to the point where only the bathroom and kitchen are half usable, and that's only because Annie won't let Mom put any more crap in there. She's worried that Mom will trash the house even more the week she's at band camp.”

“And there will be no stopping her.”

“I can't stand being there,” I say.

“Well, if you hadn't screwed up your life you'd be done with school now.” He chuckles. “One more year and you'll be on your own. Maybe you and Jeff can get a place together.”

“Are you booting him out when he turns eighteen?”

He snorts. “Nah. Jeff's a dream kid,” he says. “He's the easiest of the bunch. Appreciates everything we do for him.”

“Probably because before you took him in, his life was a mess too.”

“Literally and figuratively. But he wants to live on his own after school. Kind of like the old man.” Paul releases the lift and my car floats down to the garage floor. “Almost good as new,” he says.

“I really appreciate this, Paul. You've been a good ex-stepfather.”

“Even though she never would marry me.”

I shrug. “Yeah. What reasons did she give for turning you down?”

“She would never give me even one.”

I shake his hand, thank him for the tires, and turn to leave. “Paul? Why did my mother leave my father's name blank on my birth certificate?”

He sighs. “She had her reasons."

I cruise by Shelly's house, but I park across the street and just look at the house. I wonder what made her take off and live on her own. “Having a pool isn't reason enough to stay,” she had said. Can we all suffocate even in splendor? Her parents are Hollywood handsome and they seem nice enough, yet they treat Shelly like a polite stranger. Are they afraid she will take off again?

Underneath the expensive exterior are ragged bones, gristle, and meat. Under the skin we all share the stench of our own madness, our wild urges. My mother buys things. My sister hides behind a trumpet. I live in my car. God, we're all freaking weird.

What drives Shelly?

I punch up Shelly's number on my phone.

“My homeless Romeo,” she says.

I smile. “Shall I stand under your window and recite some Shakespeare?”

She laughs. “Probably not.”

“What are you doing?”

“I could lie and say I'm creating a masterpiece, but all I am doing is painting my toenails.”

“I'm sitting outside your house.”

“Like a stalker?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Cool,” she says. “Never had a stalker before.”

“I could hide in the bushes like paparazzi and take pictures with my phone while I talk to you.”

She laughs again. Her laugh is gold flecks in my crappy day. “I would invite you in, but my folks have dinner guests. Some people from Dad's office.”

“That's okay,” I say. “I just wanted to hear your voice, and I just wanted to tell you . . .”

“What?”

“I talked to Paul. Jeff's dad?”

“Yeah?”

“He claims he doesn't know who my father is, either.” I say.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. It's all shit,” I say. “I could be anybody. Maybe I am an Amish alien.”

I drive to my mom's and park in front of her townhouse. I hardly ever sleep here because the streetlights are too bright, but for some reason I need to be in proximity of people who care about me. I can tell the living room light is on by the strip of light at the top of the window. The bottom part of the open blinds is blocked by stuff. But the sliver of light provides some comfort, showing someone is awake, probably watching TV. I set the timer on my phone to wake me early so I can be at school when Shelly arrives.

I wake at six, before the alarm, and drive over to the school for another run before Shelly gets there. I set my pace with a free song I downloaded from an iTunes card I found on the floor near the Starbucks inside Kroger: Dave Matthews Band's “If Only.” It's the one decent song on the iPod so far, so I sing along. I rarely sing out loud because I sound like a howler monkey in heat, but I figure nobody is up at this hour to hear me. Singing as I run helps me know I won't have a heart attack by the end of the trail. Coach makes us run in pairs and talk to train our breath, but I am alone, so the song is my companion. By the third play, I have memorized the lyrics.

Most of the time I run without music, but today the music helps provide a soundtrack where I imagine the camera above panning the shot of me in the woods, zooming in for my close-up. Music also blocks out the voice inside my head screaming,
Who the fuck am I?

I replay the song four times before I take the earbuds out and listen to my footfalls, the steady clomp, clomp, clomp of rubber against earth, the whisk of my body against tree branches. I started running around the same time my mom started hoarding. It doesn't take a genius to see the connection.

After about four miles, I slow down and lean over to breathe. I need to lay off the donuts and fries. And I should have brought some water. The cross-country trail is five miles total, so I walk/jog the last mile back to school.