Here Lies a Father. Mckenzie CassidyЧитать онлайн книгу.
While speaking to Marie, I had simply communicated how I felt my mother was most likely feeling, how any wife would feel in this situation. I didn’t know if that was the true reason Mom stayed home, and besides, she didn’t share her thoughts with me. I had been with her the day Dad died, or at least the day when the news was delivered to us, and she hadn’t seemed very upset. She may have been in complete shock.
“When you see her, please give her my condolences,” Marie said. “Thomas’s former relationships were shaky to say the least, but people change and it sounds as if, with your mother, he found the person who was meant for him.”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” interrupted Catherine. “Before he passed, my father was alone in Albany. My mother got the ridiculous idea in her head to move us all down to Florida, but she got bored again after two years. She came back with Ian first, about six months ago, and my father never rejoined them. They were separated.”
I laughed nervously.
Catherine obviously hadn’t understood the situation. Mom and I had returned to Wellbourne first so she could arrange for a new job and place to live. The next step of the plan was for Dad to join us when he was ready, after he had resigned and settled any debts in Florida. Catherine knew, as well as Mom and I, that he was in Albany making the important connections needed to secure a job. His absence was no different than the summers he spent working at the resorts on the other side of the state. Sooner or later he always came back.
“Really? Separated?” Marie asked, stunned from the revelation.
“Is it that surprising, Marie?” said Neil, taking a sip from the coffee he’d been balancing on his potbelly throughout the conversation. “The man was married twice before.”
“Tragic nonetheless, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Honestly, though,” I chimed in, “I wouldn’t say separated. They weren’t living in the same house, but it wasn’t like they were getting a divorce. A lot of families live apart, especially if their jobs are in different places. It’s not like it used to be, you know. It’s not the 1950s anymore.”
The room fell silent, as if someone had just made an offensive remark, and everyone avoided eye contact with me. They took sips of their steaming coffees instead.
“So, Ian, tell us about your life,” Marie finally said. “What do you like to do for fun?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Oh, that’s not true. A boy your age, you must have a million interests and hobbies. Video games, sports, girls?” She chuckled. “Do you play any sports at school?”
I hated when people asked if I played sports. Blood pumped like a bass drum through my jaw. This tingling warmth crept up the surface of my face and I felt like shaking. Old men were the worst when they asked me about sports. They stared at me in disbelief when I said I didn’t have a favorite team and never watched any games, like I was a freak or a leper, like there was nothing more that could be done for me. I was a lost cause; better to be left alone. They were members of an exclusive club and I’d never be invited. I could only watch from a distance, through the chain-link fence.
Dad and I never watched sports together or discussed teams. I think he was so busy with work he didn’t want to disappoint me by promising something he couldn’t deliver. Mom said sports were for knuckle draggers anyway, a big waste of time, so my interests unfolded elsewhere. Since we’d come back from Florida I had been training regularly at an amateur boxing gym in Wellbourne. The workouts were intense and grueling, but I looked forward to the agony. I never talked about it because I didn’t want anyone to roll their eyes at my ridiculousness or think I came from a bad family. Besides, the idea of me fighting was laughable. Troubled boys with criminal records and violent fathers went into boxing, not docile, ineffectual teenagers like me.
I had waited too long to answer Marie’s question and she regarded me with concern. Given the extraordinary circumstances that brought us to New Brimfield in the first place, I decided to break normal protocol and provide a straightforward, honest answer to her. I’d never see her again anyway.
“I’ve been going to an amateur boxing gym,” I said. Air escaped my mouth rapidly like I had been holding my breath.
Marie set her coffee mug down on the coffee table, a Las Vegas mug with a giant set of colorful dice printed on one side, and she smiled. “That is so fascinating,” she said. “What made you decide to start doing that?”
“Nothing, really. I don’t go much,” I said, trying to downplay it.
“Is that where you got the black eye?”
I reacted without thinking, bringing my hand up to my face. “Oh, it’s still noticeable?”
“Well, faintly really, but I can see where you had one recently. Did you have a fight recently or something?”
I stammered and tried to think of an excuse. “Well, no, of course not. I’m not very serious about it. But, sort of, I mean, it was from all that stuff, so, yes.”
She looked confused.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell her the real story behind my black eye. “I only do it once in a while. Not every day or anything. It’s not a big deal.”
Before my first night at the Wellbourne Boxing Club I’d been carrying the flyer in my pocket for two weeks straight. I couldn’t initially muster the courage to go. The gym was housed in the back of an office building at the local fairgrounds, vacant year round until the traveling carnival came to town each summer. Crumpled pieces of wax paper, remnants of giant pretzels, and fried dough rolled across the grounds like tumbleweeds. A large wooden grandstand was occasionally used for cattle auctions, rodeos, and demolition derbies, but otherwise it sat like a creepy ghost town all year long. The sun had set when I first arrived by foot, but an eerie purple and orange glow made the clouds resemble the sky of some faraway planet.
I stood in front of the entrance and weighed my options.
I wasn’t big enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t tough enough. I wasn’t coordinated or athletic enough. I had quit everything I’d ever started. I didn’t know anyone at the gym. They would all laugh at me. Everyone at school would make fun of me when they heard about it. I would break my nose, and Mom would get spooked and ban me from leaving the house ever again. But something in me, maybe a sense of destiny or adventure, forced my hand to reach for the door. There had always been an instinctual side to me, yearning to be dangerous and uncharacteristic, yet I had learned to bury it deep.
I took a breath, exhaled, and pulled open the gym door, plowing a thin pile of snow flurries to the side of the walkway. I couldn’t open it all the way, on account of it being wooden, warped, and old, but I managed to squeeze myself inside and saw three people standing around, two teenagers and an old man. They looked bewildered and I realized they probably didn’t get many new visitors.
The old man turned as he heard the creaking of the door. He smiled. “Hello,” he said, stepping up to me. “My name’s Bud Johnson. Are you here for the club?”
What a strange question—what other reason would I have for entering?
Bud Johnson and I were about the same size, but his cheeks were flushed and his round belly filled his faded sweatshirt. His gray hair was carefully barbered and brushed to one side. His most pronounced feature was the flatness of his nose, like someone had used a roller on it, and I realized it was from years of getting punched in the face.
“Call me Bud, by the way. For tonight, just do whatever you see everyone else doing until you start to pick up the basics. There is always one thing I tell new recruits, whether they last one night or one year, and that is: you get out of it only what you put in. If you’re prepared to work hard, you’ll see the fruits of your labor. If not, then you only have yourself to blame.”
I nodded in understanding, but really I had no idea what he was talking about.
Inside the gym