Mom invited Jack and me over for dinner. I brought a box of red wine, mostly just to piss Gillman off. He invited me to say grace prior to the meal, but I declined. The four of us sit around the long Amish table Mom found at an antique store in Gnaw Bone, a peculiarly named bend in the road about halfway between Bloomington and Empire Ridge.
“What exactly are we eating here?” Jack asks me under his breath.
I eye the spread: cubed steak, Spanish rice, and green beans stewed in bacon grease. “It’s a Fitzpatrick specialty.”
Jack shakes his head. “No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is,” Mom says. She ladles mushroom gravy over the cubed steak on Jack’s plate, following it up with the rice and green beans. “This meal was an old staple when Hank was a kid. Try it. You just might like it.”
Jack sticks his fork in the Spanish rice, dissecting it more than eating it. He eats a small bite.
“Well, what do you think?” Mom says.
“Isn’t this just white rice mixed with tomatoes?”
“Eureka!” I say. “Someone has finally cracked the code. Four-star restaurants everywhere are now doomed to irrelevance by this seventies culinary masterpiece.”
“Give it a rest, Hank,” Gillman says. “Your mother made this meal especially for you.”
“Yeah, I kind of assumed that.” Grabbing the napkin from my lap, I reach up and wipe my mouth. I place the napkin to the side of my plate. “Truthfully, though, I don’t really have an appetite right now.”
“You sick or something?” Mom asks.
“Or something,” I answer. “Can we just get on with this?”
“Get on with wh—”
“Utah, Mom?” I say.
“Oh.”
“Fucking Utah?”
“What about Utah?” Jack says.
I nod in my mother’s direction. “Your grandma is moving with Gillman to Salt Lake City.”
“It has the highest quality of life of any major metropolitan area in the continental United States.”
“Says who, Mom? Your oh-so-impartial husband?”
“Says a Gallup poll for the fourth year in a row,” Gillman chimes in.
“Gillman, shut the fuck up.”
“Hank, you will not talk to your stepfather like that in front of me.”
“I think I just did, Debbie.”
“It’s just time.”
“Time for what? To run away?”
“I don’t see this as running away from anything,” Mom says. “I see it more as running to something—to a new life, to some place where I’m wanted.”
“Oh bullshit. You’re not just moving to another state. You’re moving to another planet. A planet of weird white people, weird white gods, and weird white underwear. You’re moving to fucking Honkeytown.”
I back away from the table. Standing, I turn and walk into the living room, my back to the kitchen. Gillman follows me.
“When was the last time you really included your mother in anything, Hank?”
“What are you talking about? I include her. We see each other for the holidays, and I always take her out for a birthday dinner.”
“What about the other three hundred sixty-odd days of the year?”
“I call Mom all the time.”
“You call Debbie for three things…” Gillman says. He moves close to me, now nose to nose, holding up three fingers. “You call her when you need a last-minute babysitter, on your father’s birthday, and on your parents’ wedding anniversary.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we’re moving. It’s time to lay John Fitzpatrick to rest.”
“Fuck you!”
Gillman sticks his finger in my face. “I think I’ve earned the right not to stand in his shadow anymore.”
“Careful, Gill-man.”
“I’m tired of being careful, Hen-ree. I’m tired of hearing about the perfect John Fitzpatrick. He was a flawed person who struggled at being a husband, a father, and a man just like you and me.”
“I would seriously shut your piehole right about now if I were you.”
“Heck, Hank. Far as I’m concerned, John failed you. He shielded you from the truth about his abusive mother. He lied to you about Jack. When Uncle Mitch abused you all those years, it was on John’s watch. His death didn’t mess you up. His life did.”
Because of the way Jack is positioned at the kitchen table, he’s the only one who has a clear view of my right arm, which is partially hidden behind my back. He sees me clench my fist, but by the time he stands up he’s already too late.
I underestimate Gillman’s substantial gut. I land a solid punch into his midsection that I assumed would knock him off his feet. Instead, he’s merely doubled over and gasping for air.
“Gillman!” Mom shouts.
“I’m okay, Debbie.” Gillman waves her off with one hand, his other hand on his knee.
“Holy shit, Hank!” Jack says to me, trying not to laugh. It’s just the distraction Gillman is looking for.
A word about my stepfather. He was an all-state linebacker in high school and walked on at BYU before blowing his knee out.
Gillman crouches low, his feet shoulder-width apart. He slides his head to the side of my waist and reaches his arms around my thighs. He wraps my legs, raises me up in the air, and slams me through the coffee table. It’s a textbook tackle.
My wrestling instincts kick in about halfway through the spray of glass and splintered wood. Right before I hit the ground, I turn my right shoulder in just enough so I won’t get caught on my back. I secure Gillman’s right arm with my left while bringing my right elbow down on his right ear. His grip grows slack from the blow, his ear bleeding profusely. I slide out from under him, raising my right fist for another shot.
“Dad, stop!”
Jack’s hand squeezes my wrist, my fist hovering inches in front of Gillman’s face. I think Jack might be stronger than I am, although I’m not going to admit it to him anytime soon.
“Please,” Jack says to both of us. “No more.”
Mom helps Gillman to his feet. She leans his head over the kitchen sink, cleaning his ear with a cold washcloth.
Jack offers to help me up, but I refuse. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can,” Jack says. He still grabs my elbow, steering me toward the couch. We both sit down.
“Nice move,” I say.
“What move was that?”
“Calling me ‘Dad.’”
“Snapped you out of your fucking ’roid rage, didn’t it?”
“That it did.”
“Hank?” Gillman says, walking up to us.
“I think we’ve said all we need to say to one another.”
“I just wanted to let you know I didn’t mean what I said. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you and your apology.”
“I suppose I deserved that.”
“Come on, Hank,” Jack says. “Be nice.”
“Be nice?” I stand up, walking into the kitchen where Mom sits stone-faced and silent at the Amish table from Gnaw Bone. “Someone just accused my dead father of enabling a pedophile. You call that being nice?”
“I said I was sorry, Hank.”
“And I said ‘fuck you and your apology, Gillman.’”
“Just get out of here,” Mom says, tears now running down her face.
“What?” I say.
“I think you and Jack probably need to leave now,” she reiterates. “Some of the things Gillman just said to you were cruel and unnecessary, and I’m sorry for that. But his heart is in the right place. I love you and Jeanine and Jack more than life itself, but I also love Gillman. And for him and for me, I can’t be Mrs. Fitzpatrick anymore. It’s time for me to be Mrs. Prestwich.”
“But, Mom, you can’t go.”
I don’t say these words. They come from the family room—from Jack.
He runs across the room crying and into Mom’s arms, just like when he was a little boy and the tornado watch would flash across the television.
“There, there,” Mom says. Jack sits in her lap. She strokes her seventeen-year-old boy’s hair. “You know the difference between a tornado warning and a tornado watch, right?”
“Yeah, Mom,” he answers. “A warning means a tornado has been spotted in the area, and a watch means the conditions are right for a tornado.”
“So when there’s a watch?”
“There’s no tornado.”
Mom kisses Jack on the forehead. “And when there’s a warning?”
“It doesn’t matter, because you’ll always keep me safe.”