Dear Little Jo,
I got home from school today and everything I own was sitting out on the front lawn. I knew right away my uncle had found out. I mean it’s not necessarily a direct leap but I just knew. I think it was the way my babcia’s quilt was spread over some of the stuff. I went over and lifted up the corner. Books, boxes of old school assignments, the old desktop from my room. My mom had probably put the quilt there to protect my stuff in case it started raining. But it was like the quilt was signaling something to me, like it was a message from Viktor to me: I know all about you.
And the very first thought in my head, looking at my pathetic pile of crap sitting there like some sad suburban garage sale and knowing exactly what it meant, was finally. I mean I guess I’ve been waiting for this for a while.
That’s pretty much all I had time to think—finally—because one second later Uncle Vik and my mom are standing in the doorway together like they’ve both been watching from the living room window waiting for me to walk up the sidewalk. Uncle Vik comes out onto the driveway, and surprise: He’s sober for a change. Completely calm and relaxed. He says that he never wants to see my face again. That this isn’t my home anymore, from this day forth. He uses those exact words: “From this day forth, this is not your home.” Like he’s trying to be official about it or something. Like it’s binding now.
I can see my mom has definitely been crying, but she isn’t at the moment. She’s just standing quietly beside Viktor looking at her arms, which are folded across herself as if she’s worried I might do something to her. Uncle Vik hands me a piece of paper. Because of all the formality in his speech I’m half expecting it to be a restraining order or something. But it’s just a letter. One of my letters to you, one I hadn’t finished writing and had left in my desk drawer.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it was a poem I was working on. A love poem to you actually. I guess it’s sort of funny, now that I’m thinking back on the whole thing. It’s funny because I’d addressed your full name on the back of the page like Khang taught us to do for the box at school. Jonathan Hopkirk. I mean if I hadn’t addressed it like that, they might have assumed “Jo” was some girl. But it was a fairly erotic sort of poem, and I might have mentioned some gender-specific body parts.
I can’t go back and check, because Uncle Vik took the poem out of my hand again. He gave me just long enough to recognize it as mine and then snatched it back quickly, like it was evidence he had to protect. Which is also pretty funny, I mean in a twisted, vomit-inducing sort of way, to imagine Viktor Kurlansky reading something like that. It’s funny to think that of everything, it’s the fact that I was writing a poem in the first place that probably horrified him the most.
I called Bron. I mean at least she knows the truth about me and you, and about me and Uncle Viktor, so I didn’t have to explain everything from scratch. She brought the Escalade and helped load all my stuff into the back. Viktor stood there not helping, and Bron somehow miraculously didn’t try to talk to him.
My mom went back in the house, but she came outside halfway through and put this box on the back seat. It had some textbooks but also all your letters, Jo. I’d hidden them in a shoebox in the bottom of that other box and kept the whole thing in the bottom of my closet. By bringing that box out separately, my mom was telling me she’d found your letters and read enough of them to know exactly what they meant. Also that she hadn’t shown them to my uncle, but that she knew everything Viktor knew, plus more. And most of all that she agreed with his decision to disown me from the family.
By the way I am really sorry about your letters. About letting them be discovered. I mean I thought they were hidden safely enough. To be honest I didn’t think my mom cared enough to snoop through my boxes, let alone read anything. But she’d probably spent all day packing up my stuff so nothing would break when he tossed it onto the lawn. Maybe she had some last-minute curiosity, or something.
It stung a bit when Uncle Vik looked at me like something stuck to the tire of his truck. I’m aware this makes me extremely pathetic, but it’s the truth. I’m used to getting rage from him. To seeing him red-faced and out-of-his-mind angry. It might not be kindness but it’s something, some passion. Like he cares enough to get that angry with me, at least. But today I could see in his eyes that he’d realized I was never worth his time in the first place. He’d written me off.
It stung a bit, but I have to say it stung more with my mom. She didn’t meet my eyes once, not even when she put that box on the back seat. And all she said was, “It’s better this way.”
I said, “Mom.”
But she only repeated that one statement: “It’s better this way.”
The second we pulled out of the driveway, Bron started bawling so hard she could barely even get the Escalade out of reverse. I had to make her stop at the end of the street so she could pull herself together. I checked inside the shoebox, and guess what the top letter was? It was that one you mailed directly to my house that time, just before Christmas. I never received that letter, Jo, so I assumed it got lost in the mail, but the envelope was open, so Mom obviously read it. For all I know she found my hiding place way back then and has been reading every single letter you’ve written.
So I’m at Bron’s house. For now. Her parents are gone until Wednesday next week. Her brothers are throwing a big Friday the 13th party tonight, and a bunch of Lincoln people are coming too.
I’ve had a couple of beers with Bron already. She has now decided that getting kicked out of the house is the best thing that ever happened to me. “This is going to be your freedom party,” she says. “The first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life party. You’re out, Kurl, in every sense of the word. Call Jo; get him over here! You’re free. You can both be free!”
But I’m not calling you, Jo, obviously. It’s not just because we’ve broken up. It’s that I can’t see it like Bron sees it. I don’t feel anything like freedom. When she said “You’re out, Kurl,” I felt sick. I actually left the den and went to the bathroom because I thought I might vomit. She meant out as in openly gay, no more secrets, live your best life et cetera. But I just heard out as in out in the cold. Homeless.
Ironic isn’t it? I’m finally out of that hellhole and now I’m homesick for it.
Sincerely,
AK