J. Gonzalez - They

Frank nodded through the narrative as Vince continued. He summed up their arrival in New York, then their move to Toronto, and then the move to Pennsylvania. He left out the stuff about his mother becoming increasingly fanatical in her religious views. He didn’t want to taint Frank’s ears with his theory that he believed mother had skipped California so suddenly because she’d angered some cultish hippies. It was his own pet theory he’d developed in the last day or two and he wanted to see what Frank knew about his mother before he voiced this opinion.

“That’s it. What about you?”

Frank looked out at the park, noting the activity around them. He looked in the rear and side view mirrors, as if checking to see if they were being observed. It made Vince a little uneasy. Then he keyed the ignition to activate the battery and pressed the power window button; it slid down. He turned the ignition off and settled back in his seat, twiddling with the keys. “When you say that you thought I’d moved,” he began, “it isn’t really the whole truth. The truth was, I was taken out of my home and placed in foster care and my parents were jailed for abusing me.”

It didn’t surprise Vince. Maybe it was the air of dysfunction that seemed to permeate around the man. Now that he thought about it, he recalled that Frank’s mother, Gladys, and his stepfather had been pretty strict. He remembered thinking to himself once that he would have hated to live with them. While he never actually saw them physically strike Frank, the implication was always there. Mom used to always say Frank was “a bad kid,” and he certainly remembered the older boy as being sullen and troubled. This new revelation explained it.

Frank took off his shades. His eyes were dark brown and piercing. They were haunted, liquid pools of pain. “What I have to tell you is pretty heavy stuff. It’s… going to sound pretty crazy to you.”

“Nothing sounds too crazy,” Vince said, thinking back on the past week of hell he went through regarding his mother’s death and the attempt on his life.

Frank looked at Vince, then cast his eyes out at the circle of women around the picnic table, as if contemplating how to begin. “Before I was sent to the foster home something really weird happened that… I guess sort of precipitated the beating I received that eventually led to the arrest of my parents. A classmate of mine, a guy I remember quite well named Larry, was with me one day after school. I was in the third grade. We were playing together outside and my dad came home. He was furious that Larry was at the house. I wasn’t supposed to have guests over unless they were what he termed ‘pre-approved’; you and Nellie, kids that were the progeny of our parent’s friends. Kids from the neighborhood or from school were a no-no. He blew his top and began wailing on me. Larry got scared and ran into the house— my house. That neighborhood we lived in, if you remember, consisted of older homes.”

Vince nodded.

Frank continued. “Some of those houses had little basements. Ours was one of them. Larry made his way to the basement where I later found out he stumbled upon a woman’s corpse.”

A sharp intake of breath from Vince. “Jesus,” he said.

“He scrambled back up the stairs and out the back door just as my step-dad was dragging me into the house. He beat me up real bad, and when it was over the police were there. Larry’s folks had called them.” He looked up at Vince. “Guess what they didn’t find?”

“The body,” Vince said.

“You got it,” Frank said, almost deadpan. “They didn’t find a body. I had no idea until later that that’s why they came to the house. How my stepfather managed to get rid of it before the cops showed up, I still don’t know, but—”

“Wait,” Vince broke in. “How could you even be certain there was a body in the basement. Maybe this Larry kid was just… scared and out of his mind with what he saw happen to you.”

“That’s what I always used to think,” Frank said. “Until just lately.”

A slight shiver coursed down Vince’s spine.

Frank continued his narrative. “They didn’t find a body, but they did find evidence of physical abuse against me. They took me out of the house and placed my folks under arrest. I was in and out of foster homes for three or four years. When my folks got out of jail, they sent me to El Paso, Texas, to live with my paternal aunt and uncle and their kids. I didn’t know them very well at the time, since I rarely saw my dad’s side of the family. In fact, I barely remember my real dad. It’s only been recently that I’ve learned more about him.”

Vince’s heart was thudding. Could it be that their fathers were the same men? “What about your father?”

“Long story,” Frank said, dismissing it with a wave of one leather gloved hand. “I’ll get to that in due time. The basic story I got was that my father left my mom when I was three. That’s all I knew. It’s only been within the last year that I’ve discovered that my father didn’t leave so much as that he was… driven away. I’m… still doing some research on this, and don’t want to go too much into it now, if that’s okay.” He cocked a glance at Vince.

Vince shrugged. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Frank sighed and continued. “I went to live with my dad’s sister and her husband and my cousins, and I eventually left for Hollywood when I was sixteen. I wanted to be a musician, and I was in a band that came out here to try to make it in the music industry. To make a long story short, I lived on the streets for a while, sold drugs, became an alcoholic and a heroin addict, spent time in jail—the whole nine yards. I used people and people used me. I’m not proud of it.” He paused briefly, as if those memories of his past life were causing pain. “I lived in New York City for awhile and later moved to New Jersey. When I got clean, I came back out here. I’ve always had a knack for telling stories and writing, and I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, probably as a psychological method of escaping what I was going through. Makes sense, now that I think about it. Most of my stuff is fantasy and science fiction. Anyway, I started selling stories professionally when I was nineteen, and was already building a pretty reputable name for myself as a science fiction writer when I blew it with my addiction. I managed to get it all back, and now I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got a short story collection coming out this summer, and the third installment of a trilogy due out next winter. I’ve just started a new novel, and a screenplay I wrote has been optioned. I’m married to a beautiful successful woman who I adore above all of God’s creations. I have a three-year old son and a baby daughter. Things are going better for me now than I can ever ask for. And I wonder why I would want to jeopardize all that by… finding you and going through with all this.”

His voice became brittle, verging on that cracking edge of anger and despair. He turned away from Vince and rested his arms against the steering wheel. His breathing became heavier. “All this… stuff just started emerging during therapy over the past six months. I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother or stepfather in almost twenty years, and I remember the names and faces of my childhood with such clarity that it’s almost as if I can step back into that world and relive the horror I thought I’d escaped. It’s pretty surprising considering the amount of dope I shot up to deaden those images.” He paused, his face quivering as he looked out the windshield. “Goddamn,” he muttered, tears pooling in his eyes. He slammed his fist down on the dashboard. “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn !”