Cote Smith - Hurt People

“She had a son,” my dad said. “Your neighbor.” My mother glanced up from her glass. “Not biological. The kid of the man she was with. But she raised him. He lifeguarded at the city pool.”

“So,” my mother said. “So what?”

She stared at my dad, her face desperately trying to make meaning of his words, trying not to jump to any conclusions. Finally her mouth opened, whispered, What? What is it?

“It seems he was fired,” my dad said. “Nothing was ever proven, but there were charges … rumors that he”—he glanced cautiously at me—“ hurt one of the kids.”

“What do you mean?” my mother said. But then she seemed to realize something. The meaning behind my dad’s words, his tone, the helplessness in his eyes, became clear.

My mother stood up. She looked at my dad hard, and left the kitchen, not wanting to hear any more. She was halfway down the basement stairs before she stopped and called back up to us.

“Do you know where she is?” she said. “Does this tell you where he might be?”

It didn’t.

“Then don’t,” she said. “Don’t you say it. Until you bring him back, don’t you dare say what might’ve happened.”

The last few stairs moaned under her feet. My mother didn’t come up the rest of the week.

MY DAD STILL did his job. He no longer spoke of a promotion, or seemed to hope or care about such a thing anymore, but he didn’t miss a day. Unlike my mother, who never returned to the golf course, who never called Rick to let him know what was going on, my dad put on his uniform and went to work. He came home, changed and ate, went back out. Not to the bar, like before. Not to rent stupid movies. He went out looking for my brother, again and again. He never took me, and if I asked where he went and what he found, he wouldn’t say, but I could see it all over him. I knew.

When it had been over a month, my dad got a call about the Stranger. Until then, it seemed the rest of the city had forgotten about the escape. For them, the threat had never become real. It became a waste of their time. There were no murders over the summer, nothing to satisfy the fears that buzzed the thick air. A prisoner had escaped. Yes. A dangerous man made himself free, but he never went after their family. He did what my mother promised she would do, if she ever got half the chance. He left. He fled this city of prisons and little else, and he never looked back.

My dad hung up the phone and sat at the kitchen table. He didn’t know I was in the living room, lying on the couch, in the dark. He opened his police pad, thumbed some pages, and shut the pad with a look of disgust. I imagined what he saw there, in his notes, the scribbles that told the story of this terrible summer. A few jots about the Stranger, yes. But most of the notes came from my dad spying. They were about my mother, with Rick, then without. If you read the pages closely, they showed what my dad really wanted.

My dad put on his gun and his badge.

“It’s not him,” I said, startling him from the darkness. “It can’t be.”

My dad came into the living room, saw me on the couch, my arms pulled into my shirt for warmth. “Sleeping here tonight?”

I nodded. I waited for him to shake his head, to say boys sleep in beds. But he pulled a blanket from the closet and draped it over me. He tucked me in and kissed me on the head.

“I love you, son. You know that.”

I closed my eyes, unsure if his last words were a statement or a question. I told him I loved him, too, and listened to his footsteps move to the door, out into the night.

* * *

I woke at a painful hour. Too dark to be up, too light to go back to sleep. For a while I stared at the TV, blank and black. I tried to remember what day it was, what had happened the night before and if any of it mattered. My dad had not come home. He was out chasing the Stranger lead, following the claim to its dead end. I tried to imagine what my dad would find when he arrived wherever the tip took him. An empty shack, perhaps. A stack of dirty dishes. In the sink an insulting note: Sorry I missed you . I pictured the disappointment on my dad’s face, his hand crumpling the note or tearing it into a million pieces.

I poured a bowl of cereal before discovering the milk carton was empty. I went into the basement to tell my mother, as if this little tragedy would finally rouse her. I knelt by her side and listened to her light breathing. She wasn’t asleep.

“What do you want?” she said, and I told her about the milk. “Be quiet,” she said. “Come here.” She moved over and pulled me onto the bed, wrapped me in both arms. She had taken on a certain smell these last couple of weeks, from rarely bathing, wearing the same robe day after day. She breathed into my neck. “Big spoon, little spoon,” she said, and weaved a leg around me like a giant spider, squeezing me tight. “You know, when you were a baby this was the only way you would sleep. Just like this. Someone always had to be hugging you. Otherwise, you’d cry your head off.”

She asked me if I remembered that, and when I said no, she said, Well, of course, you were just a baby.

“I don’t remember when it stopped exactly,” she said. “When you didn’t have to be in bed with me or your dad.” I felt her arms and legs flex with thought. “I guess it was when you were big enough to sleep by your brother.” She sighed. “That makes the most sense.”

She held me for a moment longer, then, as if satisfied with the answer she gave to her own question, she released me. She lay on her back and stared at the black ceiling, a sky without stars, with no stories to tell.

“You stink,” my mother said. “When’s the last time you had a bath?”

I lied and said it was yesterday.

“Well, you need one now. Grab your things. Close the door behind you.”

The bathroom was upstairs, next to my dad’s bedroom. Since my mother and I had been staying here, the bedroom door was always closed. This morning, it was open, and an eerie daylight shone through the window blinds. I tried not to look, pretended that looking was also forbidden. But it was weird. The bed was made. Zero clothes were thrown on the floor, and the fan chair had been moved to the opposite side.

So there was a clear path to the closet, if I wanted it. I didn’t want it. I put my clothes on the sink and started my bath. I waited for the tub to fill. I peed, flushed the toilet, and listened to the water move down the pipes, descending to the basement, rushing above where my mother lay in the dark. My dad was out there. My mother was downstairs. Everyone was somewhere else, and why couldn’t I know? I deserved to know.

I kept the water running and tiptoed to my dad’s closet. The box was still there. So was the tape. I waited until the bath was full before I snuck downstairs and put it in. I pressed rewind. I pressed play.

But there were no clues.

There was the woman. There was the gun. There was her face.

It’s OK , the Stranger said. They need to understand you deserve this .

My wailing must’ve woken my mother, though I didn’t realize it was me making those sounds until she appeared in the basement doorway.

“What’s wrong with you?” my mother said.

I wiped the last bit of tears and snot off my face. I pointed to the VCR. The tape, done playing, half ejected itself, as if the VCR had spat it out, out of disgust.

“What is this?” my mother said.

I opened my mouth and wailed some more. “He’s killed him,” I cried. “I know it.”

My mother dropped the tape. “What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

The phone rang. In the story I accepted, the call was right on cue. It was an officer. It was my dad, calling to say he’d found another tape. With my brother. With Chris. You’d better come down here, he would say. To the station. It’s over. It’s all over.