Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

“Find someone who’s not on the radar yet.”

“A promising, fresh-scrubbed graduate to be. I’m on it.”

“What are we going to be doing in the meantime?” Leo asks.

“Research,” I say. “Lots and lots of research.”

“There’s different ways to approach it,” Alan says. “My opinion, the best is to look for the things you can agree with, empathize with.” He points to the website, which is still sitting on the computer screen. “Find something in there that makes sense. Align the rest of it to that. That’s what a guy coming to the site’s going to do. He didn’t come here to find out everything about everything.”

“He’s there to find the solution to his own problems,” Leo finishes, getting the idea.

“Exactly.”

“Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” I ask.

Silence is assent.

“Let’s get to it.”

We work late into the afternoon, each of us at our respective computers, reading over forum postings, lurking in the chat rooms, looking at the photographs.

Sex is here, and so is rage, but most of all, below it all like a toxic river, is the pain. The anger is the top layer, the loudest voice, the most visible, but pain is the fuel that drives the engine.

When rage outstrips agony, you have murder, and it’s this that I search for on the website. There are men, few and far between, who have long since passed the point of simply feeling their pain. It is their anger that drives them, anger that has mutated into rage. It’s a subtle thing, but as I read, the small tics become signposts.

One man writes:

God, sometimes I hate my ex-wife. I wish she’d just fuck off and die.

Anger is present but has not yet taken over. He is still grieving, not raging.

Another man writes:

Feminists have all but destroyed the culture of manhood. We need to reclaim our right to be men, and fuck the women who disagree.

Angry, but this is anger toward a principle, not a person.

Then there are the ones I’m starting to the think of as “the dark men.”

I lie awake sometimes in my bed at night thinking about her. About what she did to me. She fucked my best friend. She filed for divorce and got custody of my kids. She took my house and half my income. I live in an apartment, and I go to work every day, and I’m angry. I come home and eat alone, and I’m angry. But at night? When I’m in my bed and thinking about her? Sometimes I close my eyes and pray to God, or wish to the wishing genie, that she’d have a stroke, right now, or crawl into a bathtub and slit her wrists, or have a heart attack. I wish her dead. I actually lie there and try to will it to happen.

That’s an obvious example. There are subtler, even darker ones. Such as:

God took a shit, and there was a woman. Sows, every one of them. The sow who took my son from me, I watch her from my car after work every night. I sit outside, parked, and watch that bitch.

“This is tiring as hell,” Alan laments, standing up to stretch and groan. “I’ve never seen such a collection of whiners in my life. I mean, what’s the problem? You want to be a man? Be a man! You want to think differently than the quote feminists unquote? Think differently! No one’s putting a gun to your head.”

“What about the ones who lose their kids? You don’t think we have a system skewed toward the mother when it comes to custody?” Leo asks. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”

“There are countries where the kid goes to the father by default. You think that’s right?”

“Not especially. I think custody should be based entirely on who is the fittest parent and not biased toward gender. Women are considered a safer bet as a parent. Why?”

“That’s good, Leo,” I say. “Sounds like you found one of your points of agreement.”

He smiles, showing me that his comments had been more intellectual than passionate. “I saw their side of the argument, but the jury is still out.”

“Who raised you?” Alan asks.

“My father, mostly.” He looks uncomfortable. “Mom was a drunk.”

“How would you feel about incorporating that into your cover?” Alan asks.

“Okay, I guess. Not pleased, but okay.”

“That’s the point. A good cover has just enough truth in it to make it believable. If you can incorporate things that give you real emotional response, response you don’t have to fake, so much the better.”

“Are we ready, then?” I ask Alan. “To build the cover?”

“I think so. I’ve read plenty. Leo?”

“I have a pretty good understanding of it all.”

“You seem to have a pretty strong connection with the child-custody aspect,” I say. “Sorry to get personal, but in the interests of motivations for your cover … I’d guess you object to the bias for the mom based on your own experience as a child.”

“That’s fair. Dad is the one who held the family together, fed us, clothed us, made sure we went to school and did our homework.”

“Good, that’s good,” Alan says. “That’s exactly what you’re going to use for your cover. You are a newly divorced, disillusioned twenty-eight-year-old.”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Right, twenty-nine-year-old with a baby face, got it,” Alan teases. “You were raised by a solid, dependable father and an alcoholic mother.”

“Who physically abused you,” I interject.

“My mother never abused me.”

“I’m glad to hear it, but here is where the narrative veers away from the truth and into the profile we need. Your mother abused you physically. She did it when your father was not around, and you hid it from your father.”

“Why did I hide it?”

“Because you were trying to keep the family together. You still loved your mother, and your father had said, many times, that if things got much worse, he was going to divorce your mom.”

Leo’s face reddens. He looks away.

“Hit a nerve there?” Alan asks.

He seems to shake himself. “Dad always called Mom ‘a woman of trouble and fire.’”

“What did he mean by that?” I ask.

“It meant that she was full of life, and full of trouble, both, together.” He bites his lower lip, pensive. “I remember one Saturday, I woke up and Mom was sober. I guess I was about twelve. I walked into the kitchen and she was awake, not hungover, and she’d made me breakfast. A great breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice. I’d never had fresh squeezed orange juice until that morning. I remember drinking it and thinking it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

“After breakfast, Mom asked me, out of the blue: Leo, do you know how to dance? I didn’t, of course. I was pretty geeky, and I told her as much. She grabbed my hand and took me into the living room. It’s never too late to learn! she laughed.” He pauses, remembering. “Mom had a great laugh. Anyway. She put on one of my CDs, and we spent the afternoon dancing. Dad was on a double shift, so we were all alone.” He picks at the knee of his pants, glum. “I wasn’t a great dancer by the end of it, but I’ve danced ever since. Mom started drinking around dinnertime. She was angry by six, crying by seven, and blitzed by eight. Fresh squeezed orange juice and dance lessons, followed by vodka and puking and tears, all in the same day. Trouble and fire.”

“You need to tell that exact story when you’re on that site,” Alan says. “It’s real, son. So it’ll ring true.”

“I understand.”

“The child end of things is more problematic,” I say. “We can’t pull a child into this operation.”

“I have an idea on that,” Leo offers. “Go ahead.”

“What if my ex-wife had an abortion?”

I resist the urge to put a hand to my own stomach. “Go on.”