Escape Plan
My friends and I didn’t have a place to smoke. My dumb sister had friends over at our house. Brian’s parents were home at his house. We didn’t know where to go, but we needed to figure out a place fast.
“Let’s just drive around. We’ll find some spots,” I said to my friends as I slid into the driver’s seat of my piece of shit Bonneville and started it up. As I drove, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was my mom.
“Guys, shut the hell up,” I said to my laughing friends. “What?” I said into the phone.
She was bitching about where I was, or something like that. “I gotta go, Mom – no, I have to go. I’m driving!” I yelled as I snapped the phone shut. I pressed the pedal to the floor. We got to the park in no time, and luckily it was empty.
The five of us sat on the old, creaking swings and passed the bowl down the line. Each time a car drove down the road, we looked up. When we saw that it wasn’t a cop car, we laughed and continued lighting up.
Brian handed me the bowl and the lighter. I invited the sweet smoke into my lungs and held it there for as long as I could.
“Yo, man, you better get that shit out or you’re gonna be gone for a long time,” said Brian.
I exhaled and said, “That’s the point.” I passed the bowl to Keith. I watched the small flame light up the weed that he had brought back from Hawaii. That stuff was the best. All my troubles would be gone in less than five minutes.
I blinked and everything changed. I tried to focus on what Brian was saying, but every word he said had its own echo, and I couldn’t piece together his sentence. Delayed laughter swam to me from the end of the swing set. Jake had fallen off the swing. I laughed with the rest of them. I raised my hand off the swing’s chain to point, and then I was on the ground with him.
_________
I swept my bangs out of my eyes and squinted at the clock on my desk. 3 AM. I walked over to my window and saw that my car was in the driveway. Did I drive home when I was that bad? I scrolled through my text messages. Nope, Brian had driven us back.
I tossed my hoodie on the heap of junk in my room, kicked off my Chucks and got into bed. I turned off the lamp but continued to stare at the black ceiling. I was sober again – mostly – and I couldn't sleep. I closed my eyes for a moment, letting my mind drift. That was a mistake. Everything that had been jammed into my mind before the park popped up again.
It was like all my problems were those pop up, punching bag clowns. Clown 1: My shitty job working for Dad. Whoever said “a job’s a job” didn’t have to work for my dad. Clown 2: College. The future. An empty road. Why wouldn’t these clowns just stay down already when I beat the shit out of them?
I opened my eyes, and there he was. No, not a clown. My grandfather. He was staring at me, his face oddly expressionless and full of every emotion at the same time. He did not speak or move. He only stared, stared into my eyes, into my soul, and out again. It felt like hours had passed, but I blinked and he was gone again.
Although I wasn't really scared, I pulled the covers over my head and sunk lower into the mattress. I could still hear the bagpipes playing at the church as my uncles carried Poppy's casket to the hearse. I remember jamming a Flogging Molly CD into the player in my car, blasting it on the way to the graveyard, the Irish tunes plugging up my ears. I watched two soldiers fold up an American flag and present it to my grandmother, and I tried to erase this image from my head later by sneaking drinks at the luncheon. Poppy was a good man, an honorable vet, a funny man...and I couldn't stand to think about all of that going to waste, a rotting corpse six feet underground.
As much as I missed him, I wished he'd stop these random visits. He was gone and I got used to that. I didn't know what he wanted. I know that what I wanted was to sleep, so I turned onto my stomach and squeezed my eyes shut until I became tired enough to be released from another day.
The next morning I woke up to Mom banging on my door, screaming about me parking my car behind hers. I laid there for another minute, then swung my legs over the edge of the bed.
She banged again and shouted, "Now, Sean! I'm late for work!"
"I HEARD you!" I yelled back. "You're always late," I said, but she didn’t hear me. Great. This was just a great way to wake up.
When I came back in the house, I tossed my keys on the mail table in the foyer. There were a few letters there with my name on them. One from the business school at Johnson & Wales, one from the music department at West Chester University, and another from the Air Force. I left them there on the table. Those paths were too long for me to go down; I’d already chosen a shorter, easier and less expensive one.
Work at the shop was busy as usual. I did a few oil changes, switched out a couple of brake pads, and cleaned up. Dad left early, before I had a chance to talk to him. I stopped at his house on my way home. I walked in through the back door and called out. I heard Dad say that he'd be down in a minute.
I sat on a bar stool, noticing some pictures in frames lining a shelf above the microwave. They were mostly pictures of Dad and Patricia, or Psycho as I liked to call her. I tried liking her. Even after Dad left us for her, I gave her a chance because she seemed okay and I wanted to have Dad around again. That was a lost cause because she is batshitcrazy, and I learned long ago not to try and reason with a crazy person.
Dad walked into the kitchen. He said hello and walked over to the stove to stir a pot of spaghetti. He seemed to be in a decent enough mood, so I figured it was now or never.
"So I've been thinking about this automotive school,” I said. “It would be cool to learn how to fix up hot sports cars. I could get a job doing it after I was done school, too."
"Okay...well, then do it, I guess," Dad said. He started pulling spices out of the cabinet.
"It's out in Westchester. I can drive there and all. I'll need to save up for gas, but it's not too bad of a drive.”
"Well, if you wanted some money for gas, I can probably help you," he said, cracking open a can of Bud Light.
"Thanks, but what I really need is money for school. To pay the tuition."
I looked at him. He just looked back. I could see his face change from vacant to frustrated. His nostrils flared a little bit and his face narrowed. He kind of looked like my sister’s cat when she’s pissed off. I could tell this wasn't going to be pretty, so before he could speak, I rattled off my reasons.
"You know I've always loved cars, and now I can get a degree without going to college. And it'll be fun,” I said.
"Sean, you never know what you want to do,” he said. “One day you're at work, the next you’re flaking out to go to the shore with your friends. So today you want to go to automotive school? How do I know you're going to stick with that? You're unreliable."
I felt my face flush. "Dad, this is SCHOOL. I can use it to do something."
He turned around and put some meat in a frying pan. "No, Sean, the answer is no. I can't afford it right now."
I stood right next to him, towering over him. Clearly my height came from Mom's side of the family. "Bullshit! You and Patricia go on vacations all the time. You have the money."
"That's her money, not mine. I don't have a lot of money."
"You're such a liar! You expect me to believe that she has enough money to go to the Bahamas on her disability checks and working at the nail salon? I'm not stupid. Fuck you. Goodbye."
I stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I got into my car and sped away, unsure of where I was headed. I just wanted to drive.
Several minutes later I ended up at the river. I started looking for my headphones through the little piles of papers, clothes and trash, but I couldn't find them. I just wanted a little music so I could relax. I tossed everything around, still searching. I threw my sneaker at the glove compartment, shouting. The compartment fell open, and everything fell out. I messily shoved it all back inside, anxious to get out of here. I’d just find Brian and we could go back to the park.
I stopped when I realized I had Poppy's Purple Heart in my hand.
I forgot it was in here. I had put it in my car for good luck. A few months after Poppy’s funeral, Grandmom had called over just about everyone in the family. When we got to her house, she said that Poppy had left some things for some of us, and that we could take anything else we wanted. Then she went to bed.
As I had sifted through the box of trinkets, I found one with my name on it. It was the Purple Heart. I didn’t know why he left it for me. He had a son, and I wasn’t even the oldest grandkid. I hadn’t been extremely close to him. We didn’t go out for Sunday brunch every week or anything like that. But he had always been a constant in my life before he died, the strong head of his family, leading them proudly through life and showing them the way. When I showed the Purple Heart to Mom, she started to cry. She had cried like that at the funeral. And when Dad left. And a lot of days in between. It hadn’t really been a good past few years. She may have gotten over my dad, but money was tight without a second income.
I took the Purple Heart with me as I got out of the car. I slammed the door, even though I felt more tired than angry now. I sat on a bench, watching the waves move pebbles on the sand. Something caught my eye and I looked to the right. There was Poppy, one bench down from me. He was staring, like he always did on these visits. I looked down at the Purple Heart in my hand, then back up at him. I smiled a small smile. He smiled back and then faded away. The bench was empty. I got the feeling he was gone for good.
I drove home to find I had the house to myself. There were dishes piled in the sink, and the carpets looked like they needed a good run with the vaccum. I turned up the radio and cleaned for about an hour. When Mom came home, I was sitting on the back porch reading Rolling Stone. She sat down across the picnic table from me and lit up a cigarette, sighing as she blew smoke out of her mouth.
I thought about how much she’d lost lately. Mostly it was a lot of men. The phrase "man of the house" had never meant much to me, but thinking about it now, it sort of made sense. Mom needed someone to fill in the gaps. Someone the opposite of how Dad was - someone like Poppy.
"You look tired, Mom," I said.
She raised her eyebrows at my comment. I guess it wasn’t every day that I said things like that.
"I am, Sean. I am. It's so hard doing everything on my own,” she said.
"I know, Mom. And I wanted to say I'm sorry. I’ll try to make things better, okay?”
“I hope so, honey, but you say that kind of thing all the time.”
She was basically saying the same thing Dad had said tonight, but it sounded different. The way she said it, it was simply the truth. No anger or resentment involved.
“I know I do,” I said. “But I’ll, you know, clean stuff around the house, do my laundry, that kind of thing. I don’t like doing it, but it’s what you always ask me to do.”
She smiled a little. “Even a little bit of help would go a long way. I saw what you did with the house tonight. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much that helps me out.”
I said nothing else, and she looked at me like she was waiting for something.
“Is there something else you wanted to say, Sean?” she asked.
“It’s just…I mean it this time. I can’t promise I’ll be like the perfect son or whatever, but I know that you need me to help.”
She hugged me. I wasn’t really good at mushy heart-to-heart moments like this, but I wanted her to believe I could change. I knew from her hug that she wanted to believe it.
I pulled out the Purple Heart and laid it on the table in front of her. “I’m thinking about joining the Air Force, Mom. I mean, I’ll have to talk to some people and think about it for a while, but I was thinking it might be a good plan. For the future.”
She didn’t say anything; she just looked at the heart for a few moments. When she looked at me again, her face was one of understanding, hope, and pride. And in that expression, I could see Poppy's face, too, smiling at me once again.
© Lauren E Ward 2010