“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I stopped long before you were born. To be honest, it was simple: You really don’t ever want to be in another person’s head. It’s not like stepping into a movie. Doing it, you get twisted by the emotion. Bent out of shape and heavy, like you just stepped out of a flat surface into a three-D one. The pain was, is, incredible, but the high…”
I nod slowly, me being the understanding father here. “I know the high.”
“I got pretty ugly. Your mom, she helped me so much, but I needed… I was desperate to get that back.” He lets all his air out through his nose and says, “It’s easy to make yourself believe that what’s in a bottle or a can will make you whole again. It’s not too hard to believe in an easy way out.”
I haven’t talked to my dad like this, well, never actually like this, but we haven’t talked this long and this in-depth since I was old enough to put myself to bed. Honestly, I don’t have time for small talk. Something major’s going down.
I tell my dad that I’m sorry he’s in a coma. I tell him that I’m sorry that for the past really long time I’ve been treating him like he’s basically dead. I say, “Really though, what you did was very, very shitty.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m weak. I was a stupid drunk. Will you forgive me?”
“I’m sure I will. Eventually.”
“Will you visit me?”
“Of course. I have been. I’ve been telling you everything. You never heard?”
“No,” he says sheepishly.
“Not a thing?”
He shakes his head. I can’t tell if he’s lying. He asks, “Can I give you a hug?”
And he stands up, sand sliding down his suit, and I walk over and we hug. He cries. Right there, this ghost version of him, this escape pod version of him, just cries and cries in fits and starts like a bad engine. When he’s done he pulls away and cleans his nose with his sleeve. Says, “Thanks.”
Me, not losing it, I ask, “You need to tell me how to stop it. How to change what I’ve seen.”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you what you’re up against.”
“Okay. And what am I up against?”
“I was unfaithful to your mother. Before your mom got pregnant with you, I had an affair. The woman was bad news. She was sick and she was mean. I have no idea why it happened, but it did.”
I have nothing to say. My dad reads the anger on my face.
The way I’m turning red, the way my fingers bite into my palms, it’s a rage that’s new to even me. I only know that I don’t want to be the pillow my stupid dad cries into right now. I only know that I’d rather see his teeth go flying out of his head.
He says, “You’re mad, I can understand that. But it gets worse.”
I bite my lower lip.
Dad says, “This woman, the one I was having an affair with, she got pregnant. She had a son that she didn’t want. I took off, went back to your mother. She never knew about the affair. We had you and I never looked back. It was over.”
A headache swims up the back of my neck, sinks its fangs into my brain.
Dad says, “The woman died. She drowned. Right here in this reservoir.”
The headache intensifies. It screams at me with a megaphone. Tells me to kick, to kill, to bite, to fight. The headache raging in my skull wants me to scream uncontrollably and crush down my father with my feet. What he’s telling me only happens in bad movies. It’s the end, really.
Dad says, very quietly, “Jimi is your half brother.”
And that’s when I clock him.
It just happens. My fist connects with his jaw between heartbeats. The blood pushes out, I knock my dad to the ground, the blood pulls back in. I stand over him with my eyes fast turning red. My skin is shaking around me. The whole beach feels like it’s vibrating on the same wavelength as my fury.
FOUR
My father, this young version of him, is lying at my feet.
The punch didn’t do much but knock him flat.
It feels good having done it, but still I’ve got this stress wrapped tight around my heart as if it’s bound up with coils of ragged rope.
What he’s told me, it’s impossible.
It’s the worst thing, the very worst thing, he could have said.
Sitting up, wiping at his chin the way boxers do, Dad says, “It’s terrible, I know. I should have told you sooner. Should have seen it coming. But I’m warning you now just the same as I’ve been warning him through your friend, the girl. If you kill Jimi, it will be a stain, a mark, on your soul for the rest of your life. It won’t come clean, Ade.”
Shouting, spitting, I yell, “That doesn’t help me! Tell me something that helps me!”
Dad pulls himself up onto his knees. His arms hanging down like he’s just a puppet put down there, he looks to me and says, “I believe in you. You need to trust your instincts, trust that you can do this even though everything tells you you can’t. Don’t think about the future. Don’t think about the past. Think about right now. About here. You’re already come so far, Ade. Just push further. Push yourself fully awake.”
I close my eyes; try to make the anger fade.
The thoughts stampeding in my mind are hideous. Jimi being my brother makes me want to vomit, to pull myself in half. It makes no sense and yet it makes all the sense in the world. Even though he’s not really, really my brother, not one I’ve ever known or one I ever cared about, my killing him looks even worse now. It’s biblical is what it is.
Jimi is the villain. He’s the corrupter.
I wish, my ears burning, that my dad had never told me this.
“Why?!” I shout at him, kick sand at him. “Why are you telling me this?!”
My dad says, “Because I love you. Both of you.”
“But you betrayed us. Both of us.”
Dad says, “And I’m asking you to forgive me.”
“I can’t stop what will happen. No one can.”
Dad says, “You can try. You have to try. You can save Jimi.”
“Not from me.”
Dad says, “From himself. Don’t let him make you do this.”
I want to tear the stars out of the sky, to bury them in my dad’s eyes. I want to rip up the beach and pull Jimi’s mother’s bones out of the water and beat the world with them. This anger pulses and thrashes away inside me like a lizard. Standing here, in never-never land, I know I need to calm myself down. I know that if I don’t pull back now, I’ll lose control.
I think about Grandpa Razor, about Dr. Borgo, standing over me watching my eyes run crazy under the lids. I think about them shuffling their feet in anticipation. But mostly, I think about my poor mother and about Vauxhall. I remind myself of why I stopped the concussions. Why I decided to go clean.
And I feel the anger slip.
I step back from my dad, turn to the water, and I put my hands on my head and press down hard to press the pain away.
And little by little I can sense the fury trickling out.
Little by little it gets smaller.
Clipped away just like that orange monster Bugs Bunny shaved down to shoes.
It’s hard pushing my hate away, but it works. I take long, deep breaths, slow it down, and I’m able to cool it. I count a few stars, focus on the spaces between them, and then look back at my dad and ask him if this is going to be a regular thing.
“Should I ever expect to see you again?” I ask.
Dad shrugs. He stands up and puts a hand on my shoulder. This move, the one he’s doing here in the moonlight, it’s as old and established as anything else dads do. It’s nice. He says, “I certainly hope so.”
“How come you never did it until now? You’ve been in a coma long enough.”
“I’ve tried. For years I’ve tried. At first the door was just locked, like you hadn’t discovered your abilities. And then, I could just see from the outside. Like looking in at a diorama. The addiction kept me out. I don’t know why. It was like there wasn’t room for me in your mind.”