How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (23 page)

T
RACY SAID WHAT? Evan wonders. What did she say?

And when did she say it? Did her story change over time? T Did she tell Frank one thing in the heat of battle and tell Dean something else entirely, when he was older, nearly grown-up, ready to know the truth?

Or did she take the truth to her grave?

Perhaps she was waiting to tell Dean soon. Maybe even that fateful night. A mother-son discussion over pepperoni pizza and carrot sticks.

Who knows what, and when did they know it, and what were they doing when they learned it? This is the Rashomon that is Evan’s life.

HE KNOCKS ON the door to Dean’s room and opens it without waiting for a response. Dean is lying on his bed reading a book. Evan looks around.

The room is dim: the shades are pulled down even though the summer evening is still bright outside; the overhead light seems to be missing a bulb. The bed is unmade, clothes litter the floor. The room is decorated with several posters, including an R. E. M. concert poster, which Evan is happy to see. There are two large bookcases filled with books, next to which stands an open file cart filled with neatly arranged road maps. There is a desk with a sizeable computer on it, a mini stereo system, and a clothes hamper that obviously isn’t often used.

“Can I help you?” Dean asks, looking up from his book.

“I wanted to talk to you, if you’ve got a second.”

“I’m busy.”

Dean goes back to his book; Evan wanders over to the bookcase and looks at the titles. Fiction, mostly, except for a few reference books.

“What are you reading?” Evan asks.

“You mean, what am I
trying
to read?”

“Are you having trouble?”

“Yeah, someone keeps interrupting me.”

Evan smiles. Smart-ass kid.

“What are you
trying
to read, then?”

“
Crime and Punishment
. Ever read it?”

“I think I was sick that day. Is it good?”

“Let me guess, ” Dean says, “you’re going to bug me with stupid questions until I say I’ve got a second, right?”

“Basically.”

“Okay, ” Dean says, putting down his book.“Go ahead.”

Evan takes a deep breath and sits backwards on the desk chair. It’s time for him to have a little talk with Dean. Ellen and Brad don’t really matter. They can think whatever they want about Evan and how it all happened. But Dean’s opinion matters. Dean has to know the truth. He has to know Evan’s side of the story.

“Dean, a lot of things happened in the past that weren’t really supposed to happen the way they did.”

Dean looks at him unblinkingly.

“I mean, with how we got into the situation we’re in. I don’t know what your mother told you—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, your mother must have told you something about me, about why I wasn’t around, right? At some point you asked who your dad was, and she told you something, and you asked why I wasn’t around, and she gave you an answer. I just want to set the record straight. I mean, you should hear both sides. You’ve heard what
she
told you, but you should also hear
my
side of it.”

“Okay. So what’s your side?”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what your mother said first?” Evan says. “Then I’ll tell you my side.”

Dean shakes his head.

“What did your mother tell you about me?” Evan repeats.

Dean makes a pained face. He lifts his book and starts to read it, then puts it back on his lap facedown and runs his fingers up the spine deliberately; he scratches his nose; he doesn’t answer.

“She must have told you something about me, ” Evan continues. “Maybe not about me, personally, but about why she was raising you by herself. I’d just like to know what she said, so if I think anything’s wrong, I can tell you what really happened.”

Dean shakes his head again.

“What did she say?” Evan asks.

“Nothing, ” Dean answers.

“She must have said
something
.”

“Nothing. She never said anything.”

“Never?”

“No.”

Evan considers it a moment.

“I don’t believe you, ” he says. “Did she tell you I abandoned you? Is that what she said?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Nothing.”

“Did she tell you I didn’t want to keep you? Because that’s not true and I—”

“Yeah, ” Dean breaks in.“That’s what she said. She said that.”

“What? That I didn’t want to keep you?”

“Yeah. She said you gave her money and told her to go have an abortion and then you told her you never wanted to see her again.”

“She said that?” Evan exclaims.“Why would she say something like that? That’s not at all how it happened.”

“Well, ” Dean says, “that’s what she said. Sorry.”

Evan leans back in the chair and stews.

“I can’t believe it, ” he says.

“Sure, you can.”

“I mean, yes, I can. She told your grandmother some things, so I guess—but I thought she would have told you the truth, you know?”

He looks up at Dean, who’s looking a little smug, enjoying Evan’s pain.

“What else did she tell you?”

“She told me you had rich parents who never gave you anything, ” Dean says, “but who gave you money for the abortion, but they were too cheap, they should have given more.”

Evan is confused.

“Why would she tell you that?” he asks. “They didn’t give me money—that was money I saved by working summers.”

“And that you were so stupid, she had to help you with your homework all the time.”

“One time!” Evan cries.“
One time
she helped me. Did she really tell you that?”

“Yeah. And you know what else she told me? You aren’t my father. It was some other guy she was dating, but he moved away and she needed to find someone. You acted guilty so she picked you.”

“What?”

“And I met my real father, too. He’s a really rich stockbroker who lives in Tokyo and wants me to come live with him. He’s sending me a ticket—”

“You’re making this all up.”

“All I have to do is get a passport and then I’ll go.”

“You’re lying about everything.”

“I’ll go live with him. He has a really nice summer house in Fukagawa—”

“Stop lying, Dean, ” Evan says, standing angrily. “Knock it off.”

“And we’ll eat wild cherries in the orchard while he reads me haiku he’s written over the winter—”

“Stop it!” Evan shouts.“Shut up, Dean! Shut the hell up!”

Dean shuts up. They glare at each other. Evan is so angry, he doesn’t know what to do. All he wanted was to have a real talk with Dean, and it exploded in his face.

“I mean, Jesus, Dean. I wanted to have a man-to-man talk.”

“So go find another man, ” Dean snaps.

Evan instantly decides he’s not taking any crap from Dean.

“I don’t want to make your mother sound bad, ” he says, “but I need to tell you what happened. She was a senior and I was a junior; she was a year older than I was.”

“Stop talking. Get out of my room.”

“Spring of her senior year. It was an accident. She told you that. It definitely wasn’t a planned parenthood.”

“Stop talking about my mother. It’s none of your business.”

“She was going to a really great college. It made sense. We discussed it. Neither of us
wanted
to do it, but it made sense—”

“Shut up and leave me alone!” Dean shouts. He jumps up off the bed up and confronts Evan.“Get out of my room!”

“You need to be told the truth, Dean, ” Evan shouts back. “I wanted to keep you. Do you understand that? I gave her money, yes, but I only did it because I loved her and I thought that was what she wanted.”

“Get out of my room! Leave me alone! I hate you.”

“I would have married her and raised you with her, but they stole you away.”

Dean lets out a scream of frustration; he stomps his feet and wheels around in a tight circle, screaming. When he stops, his face is bright red and his eyes are teary.

“Stop talking about my mother. You never even knew her!”

“Dean—”

“I’m only here because Frank’s dangerous. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t even like you.”

“Dean—”

“I don’t want to be with you!”

“Well, who the hell do you want to be with?” Evan asks sharply. “Tell me who you want to be with and I’ll try to arrange it.”

Dean’s just barely holding himself together. It’s all he can do to remain standing. Evan lets him off the hook; he walks to the door, pauses, tries one more time.

“I wish I knew what she told you about me, ” he says.

Dean looks up at him. He’s been broken. Tortured to the breaking point, there’s nothing left for him to hide.

“She didn’t tell me anything, ” he says quietly.

And Evan is hit with the realization: Dean is telling the truth. He’s been telling the truth the whole time. Tracy told him nothing. She never said a word.

“Dean—”

But Dean’s lower lip quivers, and Evan sees that he’s just a little kid. Smart, but a kid:
So go find yourself another man.

“Would you please leave my room?”

Shit. She never said a thing. There were no lies to correct, there were no minds to change. And Evan, soulless Evan, rushed in and destroyed the one thing that Dean really owned: the pure memory of his mother, which now lies amongst the rubble, like a felled statue of Lenin in Red Square.

“Please leave.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING, Evan wakes up with the previous night’s encounter spinning in his head. To distract himself he checks in with Lars.

“What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”Lars asks.

“Oh, let’s go for good, ” Evan says.

“Okay. Remember when Billy said he’d pass our demo around?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he did. And we got a call.”

“Really? From whom?”

“Template Records.”

“No way, ” Evan says, genuinely surprised. Template Records is huge for a Seattle-based independent label. Almost Sub Pop. “They’re interested?”

“Very. You’ve heard of Mel Kidd?”

Evan’s heard of him, seen him around, been introduced to him a couple of times, but Mel Kidd would never remember Evan.

“Yeah.”

“Well, Mel called Tony and told him that he wants to take our demo to CMJ in New York in the fall. And he wants us to go with him.”

CMJ? The ultimate independent scene? Too cool for words.

“He’s going to sign us?”

“Well, maybe. There’s a catch.”

Oh. The bad news.“So what is it?”

“The catch is that you need to come back to Seattle next week so we can meet Mel, meet his publicist, take some photos, and play a gig for him so he can see how we perform.”

“That’s not a bad catch.”

“That’s cool, right?” Lars asks.

“Very.”

“You’re into that whole thing, right?”

“Very.”

“Cool.”

“So, what’s the bad news, then?” Evan asks.

Lars chuckles.

“I stopped into Fremont Guitars today. I saw your boss.”

“Yeah?”

“He wants me to give you a message. He says you’re fired.”

EVAN CALLS HIS boss, Ehud, and, indeed, he’s been fired. It turns out that Angel, Evan’s substitute, hasn’t shown up for work for three days. It’s only logical that Ehud should fire Evan for that. Evan doesn’t like it, but he understands.

And, after some thought, maybe he does like it. He definitely finds it liberating. So much has changed. He’s taken his son back from the people who stole him. His band is about to sign a record contract. He might as well wipe the slate clean and start all over.

When Dean comes home from his day as a street urchin, they eat. After dinner they retreat to their respective rooms. Once in Tracy’s room, closed off from tender young eyes, Evan decides he might be able to sneak in a little marijuana. He doesn’t need it— he’s not having an aura. But since the fight with Dean about his mother, there’s been a cooling between them, which is upsetting to Evan—upsetting enough to overshadow Lars’s good news, so he needs a pick-me-up. (This is how the line gets blurred, he thinks, as with professional athletes and their painkillers: when the ritual becomes habitual . . .) He opens the windows, lays a rolled-up towel at the foot of the door to prevent fumes from escaping into the hallway, and lights up his pipe.
Mmm, that smell.

It’s always the same, that smell. The first hit of the day. There’s a brightness to the scent, an extra tanginess that vanishes with subsequent puffs. He takes a few hits and puts the pipe away. He doesn’t want to get wasted, just a little high. Take the edge off his sunburn, cozy him up a bit.

The phone rings loudly. Evan looks at it. Is he supposed to answer? It rings again. Then it stops. Dean must have gotten it. Huh. Oh, well. He lies back on the bed, closes his eyes and lets his mind wander.

B
AM
,
BAM
,
BAM
.

He’s startled out of his reverie by a knocking at his door. He leaps to his feet, stows the pipe in the cigar box.

“Yes?” he asks frantically, his heart racing. He’s been caught totally unawares. He panics. Where is he? What time is it? Was he asleep?

“I’m going out. Is that okay?” Dean says through the door.

“Hold on a sec, ” Evan replies quickly. He closes the box and sticks it under his pillow. He throws open the door and tries to act casual.

“Where are you going?” he asks breathlessly.

Dean looks at Evan strangely.

“You reek, ” he says.

“Reek?”

“You’ve been smoking weed, ” Dean observes.

“What are you talking about?”

“I smell it. It smells like weed.”

“How do you know what weed smells like?” Evan asks with a sheepish look sweeping over his face.

“I know.”

Evan turns and walks across the room decisively.“Where are you going?” he asks.“Was that a friend who called?”

He grabs his wallet from the dresser. People who are stoned always act deliberately because it takes special effort to act not-stoned when you’re stoned. A stoned person’s momentum is in favor of all motion stopping. So the stoned person often overcompensates and moves quickly from place to place.

“Yeah. We’re going to the mall. Is that okay?”

“I guess so, ” Evan says, taking a twenty out of his wallet.

“Mom always wanted to know how I was getting home, ” Dean says with a shrug.

“How are you getting home?”

Evan turns and sees Dean sitting on the bed with the cigar box in his lap, holding the plastic baggie of pot that Evan keeps inside. Over an ounce of pot. Maybe an ounce-and-a-half. Good pot, too. Dean opens the baggie and smells it.

“Hey, ” Evan shouts. He charges across the room and snatches the box out of Dean’s hands.

“Can I have some?”

“No, you can’t have some.” He stuffs it in the drawer of the bedside table.

Dean rolls his eyes and stands.

“Dirt weed, ” he mutters as he stalks across the room.

“It’s not dirt weed, my friend. That is some of the finest marijuana on the planet. That’s hydroponically grown Indonesian sin-semilla, all female, all bud. That ain’t starter weed like you delinquents smoke here in Yakima.”

“Ooh, I’m impressed, ” Dean says mockingly. “Rick’s father is driving us. Can I go?”

“Yes, ” Evan says, holding out the twenty.“Here.”

“What’s that for?”

“Food. A movie. Whatever.”

Dean takes the bill and looks at it comically, like it’s some kind of moon rock.

“Wow, ” he says.“Big spender.” He stuffs the bill in his jeans and walks down the hallway toward the door.

“Your mother never gave you any money for the mall?” Evan calls out toward him.

Dean stops and cocks his head at Evan, a slightly puzzled look on his face. Evan has no idea what Dean is thinking. Just a strange, bemused gaze.

“She gave me money, ” Dean says simply. He continues his puzzled stare at Evan for another beat, then shakes his head to himself and disappears.

IT’S NINE-THIRTY and Dean still isn’t home. Evan is slightly worried. Did Dean say he’d be home by nine-thirty? Or was that on hockey nights? Does curfew change for the mall? What if Rick’s father didn’t show up to take them home and Dean decided to walk? Would he think to call Evan?

Evan knows that Dean has a key, so he’s not worried about not being home for him; he gets in his car and goes looking.

The streets are quiet. Deserted. Nothing but big, thick-trunked trees whose roots buckle the sidewalks, their heavy branches draping over the streets. Nothing but green lawns with sprinklers. Nothing but silent cars parked underneath ominous Neighborhood Watch signs. The streetlights are on, but there’s still a touch of light in the sky, enough to see by. And he cruises through the neighborhood, not really looking for Dean but looking at the same time. Simply driving up and down the streets. Finding nothing while not looking for anything at all. Hoping, perhaps, to happen upon Dean and his friends walking home as a group, or shooting a few hoops on a streetside rim. But he finds nothing.

He stops at a 7-Eleven he passes on one of the bigger avenues; he’d like to get himself a soda. He parks and sees a group of teenage delinquents hanging out by the Dumpster at the side of the parking lot. Kids still hang out in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? That’s a throwback. Evan thought they all played video games these days. He gets out and starts inside.

“Hey, mister.”A carbuncular young man in baggy jeans and large sneakers and an oversized Cypress Hill T-shirt approaches him.

Evan turns, surprised by the interruption.

“Hey, mister, buy me some cigarettes?”

The kid holds out his upturned fist. Inside, presumably, is money to be used to procure the contraband.

Evan, slightly astonished by all of this, shakes his head.

“No, ” he says.

Evan turns to go into the store.

“I’ll suck your dick for some beer.”

Evan looks back at the kid.

“Faggot, ” the kid sneers and walks away.

Jesus. What kind of kids are they raising these days? Is that a devalued sense of humor, or what?

Evan grabs a seltzer and goes back outside. The kids have moved closer; they’re leaning against the store window, right in front of Evan’s car.

“Did you get the beer?” one of the kids yells at Evan as he gets in his car. All the other kids laugh. Evan remembers his own high school life and the disgust he’d felt for kids like this, the tough ones who hung out at the 7-Eleven, smoking and talking about drugs and girls. Evan was never friends with them. He was too busy practicing his guitar. And he was already having sex, anyway, while kids like this just talked about it.

“Come on, mister, buy us a Philly so we can roll a blunt.”

Evan looks up as he opens his door.

Holy crap. Is that Dean?

He looks closer. In the back. Hunkering down. Trying not to be seen. Dean.

“Hey, ” Evan says, pointing toward Dean.“Get in the car.”

A murmur buzzes through the group.

“I said, get in the car, ” Evan repeats sternly.

A big kid steps forward.

“Fuck you, faggot, ” he bellows.

Evan boldly moves toward them, ignoring the big kid. He points at Dean.

“Dean, ” he says. “Get in the car. Now.”

Dean? At the mention of a proper name, the murmuring stops. Eyes turn. The kids part like a sea and reveal Dean, who is angry at being thusly exposed.

“Now!” Evan shouts.

Defiantly, Dean starts toward the car.

“Dean, who’s that, man?” a kid whispers.

“My dad, ” Dean explains with a roll of his eyes.

Dean tries to look tough as he circles behind the car and opens the passenger door.

“Dean’s daddy came to get him. What a puss.”

“
You
told him you’d suck his dick.”

“Shut up, fuck face.”

“Hey, ” Evan barks, “what, are you tough guys hoping to work your way up the ladder and get a job behind the counter here?”

Blank faces.

“You have no excuses, ” Evan says. “This is America. If you piss away your life, it’s your own damn fault. Go home and read a book, get an education, and maybe you can aspire to do something a little more relevant than stocking the 7-Eleven with candy bars.”

Silence.

Dean is sitting in the car. Evan gets in and starts it up. As he pulls away, he looks in the rearview mirror. The kids are making all kinds of obscene gestures at him, giving him the finger, grabbing their crotches, pumping their fists. Sick, sick, sick. That his son would be one of them. Sick.

EVAN PULLS UP to the curb and stops. He and Dean are both silent.

The wind is blowing. Evan can see it through the windshield, though he cannot hear it. It’s blowing the trees back and forth, the long dangling willow vines, the dark, somber oak leaves.

“You told me you were going to the mall, ” Evan says.

“I lied. So sue me.”

“How about I ground you instead?” Evan snaps.

“So ground me. I don’t care.”

“You’re grounded.”

“Ooh, I’m really scared, ” Dean taunts.“You’re so fucking
Leave
It To Beaver
. You’re pathetic.”

“Don’t swear.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“You’re seriously grounded this time, ” Evan says.

“Oh.
Seriously
grounded. As opposed to the last time when I was only
play
grounded? Now I’m
seriously
grounded. What exactly does
seriously
grounded entail,
Dad?
No flying around the house?”

“You know, ” Evan says, “this is probably the first time in your life you’re trying on how to be a real prick. And you’re good at it. But, trust me, it gets tired real quick. And some day, someone’s gonna pop you in the nose.”

“Bullshit.”

“Don’t swear so much. It makes you sound stupid.”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”

“I see you got your father’s mouth.”

Dean twists in his seat to glare at Evan.

“I got my father’s eyes, too, ” he snaps. “And I got my father’s ears. And his face and his hair and his body. I got my father’s lack of responsibility. I got my father’s Attention Deficit Disorder. And I got my father’s basic loser nature. So what else are you going to give me? Pearls of wisdom? ‘Don’t swear so much?’ Fuck you.”

Evan tries to center himself.

“You’re a nasty kid, ” he says.

“You’re a lousy father.”

“Well, I’m a lousy father who’s taking you back to Seattle next week.”

“I’m not going.”

“I have to go for work. It’s important.”

“So, go. I’m staying. Hire me an au pair.”

“You’re going, ” Evan says.

“I’m not your fucking suitcase, ” Dean says.“Go fuck yourself.” He gets out of the car, stomps up the walk and into the house, and leaves Evan wondering what the hell a real father would do right now.