Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

“Linch,” Aidan said, his voice low. “Cool it.”

“I didn’t ask him to come home! I don’t care if he stays here or not!” Colm leapt up with a noisy backward scraping of his chair, and left. The room was so quiet in his wake that I could hear the ticking of the old Swiss clock, all the way from the living room, and then the start of a commercial from the family-room TV filled the silence.

“That went pretty well,” Liam said dryly.

Aidan pushed his chair back from the table and said quietly to Marlinchen, “Yell at me if you have to, but I’m going to have a cigarette.”

Marlinchen shook her head numbly, meaning no, she wasn’t going to lecture Aidan about smoking. He got up and left the table.

“I’ll clear the dishes,” Liam said.

When it was just the two of us, Marlinchen wiped away a tear. “I just don’t get it,” she said. “Aidan taught Colm how to swim. He taught him to catch. Colm used to want to be Aidan.”

I looked out through the window and saw Aidan, pacing on the back deck. He tipped his head back and exhaled smoke.

“Why don’t you let me talk to Colm?” I said.

A dull thudding,like an irregular heartbeat, came from the other side of the garage wall. I heard it before I even opened the door.

Inside, the heavy bag that hung from the rafters was jumping steadily under the blows Colm was laying into it. He was still wearing the Adidas sweatpants he’d had on at dinner, but from the waist up had stripped to a narrow wife-beater undershirt, and his hands were protected by black bag gloves.

I wasn’t a fight fan, but I knew enough to see that Colm was pretty good. He didn’t make the amateur mistake of standing back from the bag, thinking the point was to strike with your arm extended as far as possible. He stood close in while throwing his hooks and uppercuts, getting his body weight into them. He didn’t hyperextend on his jabs, either, so they were quick, like they should be.

“You want me to hold the bag for you?” I asked. His blows were hard enough to make the bag dance.

“I like to let it move,” Colm said. “It simulates a real opponent, one that could evade you.” He moved back and aimed a roundhouse kick at the bag.

“It simulates an opponent with no arms who can’t run away,” I pointed out.

Colm’s eyes narrowed slightly at my words, and the uppercut he followed the kick with grazed the side of the bag instead of digging in. I stepped in to hold the bag, laying my hands on each side, about level with my shoulders. “If the bag is still,” I said, “it’s easier for you to work on your form.”

I was comfortable in gyms, and comfortable with guys who hung out in gyms. Colm and I probably had a lot in common, under the surface. It could so easily have been pleasant.

But Colm was scowling. He executed a powerful front kick, pushing hard through his heel. It was supposed to rock me backward, off my feet, and nearly did. It was only because I saw him set his feet, preparing for a powerful strike, that I knew what he was going to do and had leaned my full weight against the bag so he didn’t dislodge me.

Colm shifted tactics and spun a high roundhouse kick into the bag, hitting my right hand, up where I thought I’d positioned it out of reach. It wasn’t a hard strike. If he’d wanted to, he probably could have broken bones, since I wasn’t wearing gloves. He was just showing me what he could have done, a point he underscored by not meeting my eyes afterward.

“You’ve got amazing flexibility,” I said. “Have you thought about ballet instead?”

Irritated, he shifted back, to launch a kick even higher and strike my hand again. This time, I caught his heel and yanked. He lost his balance and fell.

“What’s your problem?” Colm glared up at me.

“Do you ever think about what your father did to Aidan, when he was living here?” I asked, without preamble. “The way he used to hurt him?”

Colm scrambled to his feet. “Maybe Aidan deserved it!” he said. “It didn’t happen to any of us, just to him! Don’t you think that’s kind of weird? Don’t you think he did something to deserve it?”

“Like what?” I said. “Tell me what he did.”

A muscle worked near Colm’s jaw; above that, his face was mottled with exertion and anger. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. He stalked to the door and out of the garage.

Another triumph by Sarah Pribek, the great communicator. Well, I’d started this. I couldn’t leave it unfinished.

I found Colm sitting under the magnolia tree. He’d already taken his boxing gloves off and was starting on the flesh-colored wraps around his knuckles when I reached his side.

“If there was a Hennessy family crest,” I said, sitting down next to him, “the motto on it would be, ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ ”

Against his will, a small, wry smile began to play at the corners of Colm’s mouth. I realized how handsome he was when he smiled, and how rarely I’d witnessed it.

“Back there, in the garage,” I said, “you were off-balance physically, and I knocked you over pretty easy. You were also off-balance emotionally, and I got you to walk out on me with two questions.”

Colm let the last of his right-hand wrap fall to the earth.

“You were off-balance because you were angry,” I said. “Few things make us angrier than our own guilt.”

The half smile fled Colm’s face, and there was a guarded light in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“When your brother and sister were hiding Aidan out in the garage, you were the one who turned him in to your father,” I said. “You got him exiled back to Georgia. Before that, you let him take the blame for a window you broke. And when Liam and Marlinchen were expressing reservations about my arresting Aidan, you went and got my handcuffs.”

“I get it,” Colm said bitterly. “I’m the asshole here.”

“No,” I said. “But sometimes the hardest thing to forgive other people for is the wrongs we’ve done them. To protect yourself, you have to tell yourself that there must be something wrong with Aidan.”

Colm pulled up a handful of grass, which made a low thrrip sound as it came up, exposing black, loose soil.

“Something else, too,” I said. “I think you’re angry at Aidan for letting you down.”

Colm pulled up another small handful of grass. “Saint Aidan?” he said sourly. “The hero who came home to bring in another income and help Marlinchen take care of everyone? What could he have done?”

“He scared you,” I said.

Colm gave me a quizzical look.

“Years ago, you idolized him; he was everything you wanted to be. Then you saw him powerless before your father’s rages. That was frightening. You couldn’t blame your father; Hugh was the only parent you had. So you switched sides. You agreed with your father on everything and aligned yourself with him, and you told yourself that there must be something wrong with Aidan, that your father treated him that way. Because if what was happening to Aidan wasn’t his fault, then it could happen to anyone. Maybe to you.”

I saw the muscles of Colm’s throat work. I wasn’t expecting tears, but that uncomfortable stiffness in the throat, that was promising.

“Then you made yourself into a caricature of toughness,” I said. “You wanted to be stronger than you’d ever thought Aidan was. But that wasn’t the point. Aidan couldn’t have solved the problem by being taller or stronger or faster or tougher. You know that.”

I tore up my own handful of grass, uncomfortable in the role of armchair psychologist. Between the two of us, Colm Hennessy and I would defoliate the whole patch of ground under his mother’s beloved tree.