“Where did you get the black eye?” Higgins asks after class Wednesday, pointing two red-tipped index fingers at my face. Behind me, second period drifts to their desks.
“Present from an old friend.”
“Same friend as last time?”
“Last time?” I feel suddenly warm despite the air-conditioned cool.
“January, I believe,” she says.
I don’t flinch. “No. Then, I was training for boxing. Had to give it up, though. Interfered with my poetry.”
Higgins pulls her grade book from the top drawer and flips through its pages. She doesn’t smile. “You missed two days in October, came back with bruises.”
“Flu.”
“A day in January—fat lip.”
“Cold sore.”
“Now this.”
“This wasn’t—”
“Mrs. Walters noticed the same pattern last year.”
“It’s not what you think,” I say.
“What do I think?” Higgins draws breath between slightly parted teeth. I can’t avoid her eyes. She knows about my father. From my poem, maybe, and my face. But what does that mean? Teachers are supposed to report child abuse, but I’m not a child. I’m sixteen, old enough to take care of myself. I shift my suddenly immense weight from foot to foot.
Breathe.
I give her a Nick Andreas smile, meeting her eyes with my good one. “That I have lots of enemies?”
“Or one enemy,” she says. “Someone at home, perhaps?”
I gesture at my eye. “My dad didn’t do this.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I shrug and walk away, almost breaking into a run at the door. I don’t think I breathe until I get to chemistry class, but my mind is racing. If Higgins says anything to my father, he’ll just get meaner.
The sound of ice cubes greeted me. In my father’s house, ice cubes are airraid sirens that send me diving for cover. I searched for an exit. There was none. Usually, I missed happy hour, my father’s version of dinner at home, but he was early, I was late, and worlds collided. My father swirled his glass. I tried to look casual—impossible—and walked past him.
“Hi, Dad.”
He gestured me closer. The clink of ice against crystal intensified, and I began the countdown in my head … ten, nine, eight… I walked toward him … three, two… He brandished a wrapped condom between two fingers like a witness with the bloody glove. “This is yours?”
Nailed. As in crucified, in the true, biblical sense of the word. I hung back, trying to avoid the inevitable blow. I stared at the evidence.
“Answer me.”
I stepped toward the stairway. He didn’t react, and I glanced back at him, expecting the worst, bracing myself. Finally, I said, “Yes, sir.”
My father smiled. He sat in his antique wing chair against the backdrop of Biscayne Bay, clutching his crystal glass and grinning like I’d never seen. “Congratulations.”
I figured I must have heard him wrong. I said, “What?”
“Congratulations, my son, for becoming a man.”
I felt marble beneath my feet. My fingers relaxed. My father was proud. Of me. For years, I’d brought home perfect report cards, trying to make him happy. But now, he was proud. Is this the only thing that makes me a man in your eyes? I wanted to scream it. But that clinking ice brought reality back. My father was finally proud of me.
I smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
He gestured toward the leather sofa beside him. He poured another scotch, filling his glass almost to overflowing, drank half and filled it again. He filled a second glass halfway and thrust it toward me. He raised his drink. “To my son becoming a man.”
I drank with him. I’d had scotch before, but this tasted different, bitter. Impossible. My father bought the best. He asked me if I had a girlfriend. I took another sip—still bitter—and nodded. “Her name’s Caitlin.”
This he ignored, reaching for his wallet. He pulled out a wad of bills, hundreds, who knows how many, and leaned forward, fanning them in front of him. “Buy her something nice. Then, give her a hundred, and tell her to get some pills because these things…” With the money, he gestured toward the condom, thrown on the glass table. “These things do not work.” He shoved the bills at me and refilled his glass. I heard the waves, the pale liquid sloshing against crystal, and his question. “Do you know how I know this, Nicos?”
I nodded. I’d heard it before, too many times to care. I met his eyes, not taking the money. His smile was gone. He dropped the bills onto the table. I threw back the rest of my scotch.
“Sixteen years old,” he said. “I came to this country with nothing. I worked, joined the navy, went to school. I made an error.” He stopped and refilled my glass before emptying his own. “For one mistake, I was to pay, to marry a nothing whose family barely kept her in shoes. I paid once. I will not pay again.” He slammed the empty bottle to the glass table. “You must not make my mistake, Nicos.”
I nodded. I was the mistake. But I was numb to it. I felt the scotch’s heat inside my body, in my toes, my fingertips. I didn’t drink any more. I also didn’t point out the obvious, that he was rich anyway. My father was silent, his green eyes expecting no answer, and finally, I stood, took the money, said, “I’ll do that, Dad,” and shoved the wad into my pocket. I counted to three before I added, “Okay if I go study at Tom’s now?”
He nodded, and I walked back to the door. His voice stopped me.
“Nicos?” I turned, hand on the knob. He was smiling again, eyes half-closed, slumped in his chair. “You were a tough little bastard, Nicos, tough like me. You wanted to be born.”
I nodded. The glass slipped from his hand and shattered against the marble floor. I was out of there. I sprinted down the driveway, not knowing where I was going, and jumped into my car. I roared into the night, wanting to scatter my father’s money, like his words, to the December wind.