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Three months ago ...
I listened to him cry. Beg for forgiveness. Plead for relief from the guilt. Real men didn’t cry. Real men didn’t beg. Real men didn’t plead. No, real men sucked it up and took their licks.
To set the record straight, I wasn’t beaten as a child. I didn’t come from an abusive home. A little unconventional, sure, and neglectful, but whose home life was all glitz and glamour? Even the rich snobs making headlines from their reality shows had their fair share of misery. They just suffered while wearing Gucci and gold.
My mother used drugs, my dad drank. But both were high functioning, able to keep jobs and raise their kids while enjoying the occasional fix. My “psychological issues,” as my high school guidance counselor euphemistically called my acting out, were a volatile mélange of nature and nurture. The counselor said my “domineering social behavior” was characteristic of guys of short stature, like me; a Napoleon complex, he called it. He had it all wrong. I always stood up for the bullied kids for one reason: I saw myself as an underdog too, and I hated seeing someone get the crap beat out of them just because they were different.
Mom and Dad never envisioned college for me, although I’d aced my SATS and had always scored in the top percentile on standardized tests. I blew crap like that off; no kid wants to be labeled a brainiac. My parents always pushed me toward the military—the Air Force in particular. According to them, I was a perfect fit with my leadership traits, which even my stick-up-his-ass principal had begrudgingly acknowledged. I was never among the in-crowd—and had no desire to be—but I was popular with the freaks and geeks and pseudo-intellectuals. Hell, I even ran for student body president—on a dare. Some of my fellow outsiders put me up to it. I mounted a half-ass campaign and, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, I lost big. That was cool with me. Those pussies in student government were self-deluded. Thought their shit didn’t stink. There’s nothing more contemptible than a cardboard authority figure. Except real authority figures. I despise them.
Anyway, the general thinking, at home and at school, was that maybe, just maybe, the Air Force could instill the discipline in me that my parents, teachers, and administrators couldn’t. The world was mine for the taking. I could be a fighter pilot. Or an aerospace propulsion technician fixing planes. Or my top choice: explosive ordnance disposal. Defusing bombs. At least when dealing with bombs it would be a quick and painless death. I have to admit, the idea of messing around with bombs kind of gave me an intellectual hard-on. You know, the danger aspect. Getting blown to smithereens and being branded a hero. Buried in a flag-draped coffin. The whole corny shebang held a morbid appeal for me. Look, Mommy and Daddy, I’m Somebody now.
Yeah, but that was just a bunch of childish bravado. Crazy talk. I wasn’t in any real hurry to die. And certainly not for a country that marginalized the citizens that needed Uncle Sam to have their back the most. I went into the military thinking the government gave a shit. How wrong I was. As they passed out painkillers like candy to force injured soldiers to press on, they turned us into addicts while war turned us into sociopaths.
I’d never forget how scared shitless I felt as my parents stood behind me, forcing me to enlist. It was an easy way to erase the mistake they’d made when they had me. Get rid of me in a jiffy by making me the government’s problem.
Oddly enough, sending me off was the first time they’d made a united front with anything. When it came to parenting, they were divided. When it came to what we ate for dinner, they were divided. When it came to what house we rented, they were divided. But when it came to shipping me off to my death, they snapped together like the mouth of a clam.
As I scribbled my signature across the bottom of the enlistment contract, I felt like I was signing my own death certificate. I had begged my parents to let me live at home, find a job, maybe even try community college out. But no. They wanted me gone ... yesterday. Handed me over to die in some godforsaken Middle Eastern country, their firstborn son. My heart broke and my faith shattered with it as I watched them barter my life away. Six years of freedom from me in exchange for my free will. The deal of a lifetime for them, the nightmare from hell for me. I would never forgive them for it.
One person fought for me, and that was Helen, Dad’s fiancée and the only one who gave a crap about me. Over spaghetti dinner one night, Helen, Mikey, and her two girls teamed up against my father, begging him to give me a shot at college instead.
“He’s smart. Would probably qualify for grants and stuff,” Helen had tried to point out.
The answer, as it always was anytime I wanted anything, was no. That was the first, and probably only time they’d seen my dad’s inflexible side.
As I boarded a plane for Texas a couple weeks later, I vowed never to forgive them for stripping the one thing I had that was my own—my voice. But I would speak again very soon, and loudly enough so that the world would hear.
Apparently just because you suck at life doesn’t mean you’re fit for a uniform. Weeks into basic training my instructors discovered what everybody else already knew: I was far too much of a headstrong individual to be a good little tin soldier. After all, isn’t that what the military’s all about is—blindly taking orders? I wore my recalcitrance like a medal. I held on for as long as I could, months of being berated and brainwashed until I didn’t recognize myself anymore, but in the end, one’s nature always takes over. My nature was telling me to get the hell out of Dodge. Though even still today I kept my boots polished and bed pristinely made with hospital corners. Some habits never die.
I hadn’t intended to wash out, especially with nowhere to go. AWOL, the military called it when you just up and disappeared. I was sure they were looking for me, but I’d lost any capacity to care about what happened to me. I hadn’t told my family—if I could even call them that—until one day I showed up at my dad’s house carrying the duffel bag I had been first shipped off with on one shoulder and the weight of failure on my other.
After my military stint had slaughtered all my old dreams, I lost all sense of purpose along the way. Who was I? What did I want in life? I didn’t have a clue.
Until now.
I dropped my bag at the foot of the blue living room sofa that felt like sandpaper. I’d suffer through sleeping on it if it meant I didn’t have to deal with my mother.
“You can’t live with me. Go live with your mom.” I could smell the beer on Dad’s breath as he got in my personal space, his body swaying slightly.
“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that? Can’t even give your son a place to crash for one night after he comes home from serving his country. Fine, I’ll go to Mom’s. Can you at least give me a lift?”
His eyelids drooped like anvils weighed them down. His body swayed like he was riding waves. I had never seen him this bad—not in all my childhood or adolescence.
“Just get a taxi or somethin’. I’m in no shape to drive.”
Making his way to the kitchen, he tripped over the arm of the sofa and fell into the seat. I wondered if this was just alcohol ... or was he on something stronger?
“Are you high? What are you taking?”
“None of your business, Keeeevinnnn.” I hated the way he slurred my name when he was drunk. “It’s just a little something to make me feel better.”
“Feel better how?”
“I’m going through some stuff right now. Just leave me alone.”
“Dad, what kind of stuff? You can talk to me.”
“See, that’s the problem, Keeeeev. I can’t talk to you. Can’t talk to no one. Just go. Goooooo!”
As if expelling that last word took every last bit of energy he had, he fell back against the cushions.
Then he gained a second wind as one eye peeked lazily open. “I see you judging me. You wanna call me a junkie? Go ahead, say it. But what you don’t understand is that I’m a story, with lots of pages. I’m laughter, I’m love. I’m ripped open, I’m scabbed over ... Those are my insides, Kev. I’m not just what you see when you look at me.” He seemed to consider his own words and gave a self-deprecating snort. “I’m a deep sumbitch, ain’t I, Kev? God, what a bunch of horseshit.”
I knew depression when I saw it. A seductive mistress. It enticed with whispered suggestions: it’s easier to hide. What I saw in my father wasn’t just depression. It was darker, grittier, harsher. It was guilt. A soldier ambushing him, slaughtering him from the inside out. He was unsalvageable, much like myself.
“It’s no wonder Helen split up with you and Mom didn’t want you,” I grumbled under my breath. I figured his excessive drinking had something to do with Kat’s disappearance. My grandmother had told me about it during one of our monthly calls, said Dad had been falling apart ever since. I guess if something happened to Mikey I would have felt the same. While he wasn’t my kid, I had almost raised him myself.
I decided to make a sandwich and called for an Uber, watching him sleep, until I heard a sniffle, then a sob. At the kitchenette table I silently sat, observing him as he fumbled for his cell phone in his pocket and misdialed with a wandering finger, then dialed again with a little more deliberation.
I could hear the other end ringing, then a voice that sounded like a voicemail.
“Cody, man, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I’m just ... I’m so sorry about Kat. It’s all my fault. I don’t know how to fix this. I feel like she’s haunting me from the grave. Every night I see her, the bullet tearing through her, and I know I can’t take it all back. Please help me. I don’t want forgiveness. You can’t possibly give that, I know. I don’t deserve it. How do I make it stop? The guilt. The ache in my soul. She’s dead ... cuz of me. I ... just wanna die with her, man.”
As I stood there listening to my father’s murder confession of the girl who would have been my little stepsister, I realized there had been no abduction. The search parties, the media frenzy, the suffering, the worry, the depression, the drugs, the alcohol—my dad had caused it all. He had left Helen’s life in shambles. He had taken Kat’s life. And now he sat in his own soiled misery wanting freedom from the guilt.
I couldn’t free his conscience. But I could free him from the chains of this life. Because that’s what child-killers deserved.