Memorizing You (32 page)

I heard Ryan’s two word response to that very clearly. It was followed by an even clearer noise of someone being struck.

“I never had this problem with you until that low-life lawn mowing queer stepped foot in this house. You never spoke back to me like this until that piece of white trash came in and led you down his path of perversion.”

I heard Ryan scream for the man to leave his room. There was another bang as a fist hit a door.

“This is changing here tonight, you hear me?” his father went on, the voice dictatorial. “We’re going to set this right. Get you back on the right path. Next year you’re going to be captain of the team again. You’re going to show those scouts who can do what. You’re go$ IImying to put your life back on track. That means with your playing, with your grades…and most of all staying away from that piece of lawn mowing queer shit. You will not talk to him. You will not so much as look at him. I do not want you breathing the same air as him. Do you hear? You’re my son. These are my rules. And you will obey them!”

There was a long gap of silence. Then an exasperated sigh. The footfalls started down the stairs. I ducked deeper behind the furniture as I heard the man slip on a jacket, walk out the door.

I sat there quietly for a few moments absorbing what I’d heard. We can always speculate what others think about us, but somehow it was never quite as ugly or as painful as actually hearing it come out of a mouth in real words. I felt angry, and sick. And depressed. Then, worst of all, I felt guilty. The responsibility that my presence had brought so much grief to someone weighed on my head. I didn’t know if I wanted to leave or cry, or both.

Snowfall came down at the window. It drifted gently, reminding me it was only a few days to Christmas. A time that should be filled with joy.

The sadness was taking over in me. I thought it better that I leave, but as I stood up I saw Ryan standing in the dining room in his stocking feet, staring at me. I hadn’t heard or seen him come down. He was in jeans and a thick, purple turtleneck sweater. His face was bruised. He had a slightly swollen eye. He looked as sad as I felt.

“How long you been here?” he asked in a soft voice.

I didn’t answer, which was an answer itself.

“You got a cigarette?”

I felt in my jacket pockets. There was a half pack of Chesterfields inside. They had to be a year-old from last winter.

He pulled on a pair of high-top Converse ball shoes. I followed him out the back door. The snow was falling swiftly now. It was beautiful to watch in the long field that opened up past the driveway and barn. A light white dusting made the lawn look like a palomino-colored carpet.

We both lit up a cigarette and made a face at the staleness. We walked out into the driveway toward the barn. It was refreshing to feel the snow dot our face and melt.$“ aup

I stared at his face in profile. At the bruise on his cheek; the swelling under his eye. I couldn’t believe it had come to this. It was a bad dream.

We stepped into the quiet darkness of the barn. The smell of fresh mulch still clung to the air. It reminded me of the first day I’d been here.

He walked to the back, picked up a rake. Dragged it through the compost, turning it over.

I crushed my cigarette out on the floor. His soon joined mine. We stood staring out the window to the field. To the spot that had the rocks in a circular formation that had once been a campfire. Where we once slept in a tent, talking. Getting to know one another. A million footsteps ago, but I could still smell the fire in the wood. See his shadow playing against the orange embers in the black canvas of night.

“I was getting worried,” I finally said in explanation of my appearance.

“I’ve sat in my room these past few days and I think I’ve finally come to understand why people like books so much. Why literature is so popular.” His hand rambled through what was becoming a substantial amount of hair. “It’s because they take you somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Because when things are not the way we want them here, we want to believe they would be somewhere else.”

His hand came from the shadows and found mine. Tender fingers entwined, squeezed gently.

“When the landscape of real life gets ugly, we can pick up a book of fantasy and find a beautiful world, all green and filled with sunshine. When we can’t find an end to something sad, there’s always a novel where everything turns out okay and makes us feel better about things. And even though we know they’re made up, we think that maybe there’s just a possibility, in spite of all the ugliness around us, we really do have a chance to make it all work out. Because we read it. And we wanted it to be real.”

He lids squeezed closed. They were the dams to the silver trails of his soul leaking out.

“The last few days, I’ve lived in that world of ‘what if?’ What if we could go$’ll y fy somewhere else? What if we could start over away from all of this? What if…what?” He opened his eyes, looked into mine. “We’re always looking for salvation away from some storm, away from some trouble, away from the turmoil that makes life seem way too impossible. We want to find protection, an armor to keep us from being wounded…a shelter…” His voice trailed away as he pulled me into his arms.

“Are you okay?”

“I was when I realized this was my shelter,” he said, tightening the hug. “This is where I can read my happy ending. Where everything is okay. I just wish I could thumb forward to the pages to our first kiss in the garden, to chapter five and see what wonderful things happen to us. And then to chapter seven like there was a great adventure there. And to know, after all was said and done, the bad guys lose, the good guys win, and the last chapter reads happily ever after. It would be a nice thing to know.”

“What are you going to do?”

His nose nuzzled through my hair. “I believe I’m going to have to write some of it myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when we know we’re not doing things one way, it means we know we’ll have to do them another. My mom has been working with her sister doing a scrapbooking business. They put together people’s weddings and births and christenings in scrapbooks. They’ve been making some good money doing it so we can tuck away some for my college tuition.”

“That’s great,” I said, although hearing him discuss going away to college was another source of anxiety for me.

“I was thinking of going here at Saint Louis U., or maybe Mizzou. They both have good departments in horticulture. They’re both affordable. And they’re both still close enough for us to see each other. I mean, you could actually drive me to school at Saint Louis U. I’ll get a job.”

I saw what he meant about writing the story himself. It certainly sounded like it would have a better ending. is killing me.”

“I like the sound of that story,” I told him.

“I had plenty of time to think about it. I couldn’t stand the idea of going somewhere that you weren’t. If I’m going to climb out on a limb, I’d like to know you’re in the tree.”

Bruised and battered as he was, sad and sullen…he never looked more beautiful to me as in that moment. The snow that had melted on his skin looked like glinting diamonds. The shadows that found the planes of his face painted him with heroic colors. He never stood taller or stronger. His arms never seemed more secure around me.

He’d done it again. In the aftermath of what his dad had done, the wake of despair he’d left behind, Ryan had raised me out of it and made me feel happy and hopeful again.

I looked at him. He looked at me.

“See? We don’t even have to say it.”

The yard was now a blanket of pure white. Flakes danced crazily in the air. The wind made whirring noises through the slits in the wood. I remember looking back at the pair of tracks in the snow behind us as we walked back to the house. Blazing a new trail, I thought. His hand felt warm in mine.

Locks inside me came undone. No jewel could be greater than my treasure. It shone with simple words and hopes.

The house was cozy against the chill. We were hungry and needed to warm ourselves. Ryan grabbed a box of graham crackers and poured us cups of coffee to take to his room. A perfect way to spend a snowy winter’s day.

There was still a chill in the hallway. Patches of wet were on the floor reminding us our feet were wet. Ryan knelt to wipe it dry with a handkerchief as I started upward with the cups of coffee in hand, box of crackers under my chin. He bounded up the stairs to catch up with me.

The blow that struck me full-force on the chin blindsided me. I only saw the shock of it explode in my eyes before seeing the coffee cups dislodge from my hands and fly across the shadow that towered over me at the head of the stairs. The ball of flesh that was a fist still hung in the air as it spun away from me. $“ aupI crumpled backward, hands splaying for something to grasp. I’d gone sideways, bumping hard against Ryan as I barely caught a rail and stopped my descent. My shoulder wrenched with screaming pain, and I found myself rolling down the stairs again. Another hand caught part of the balustrade and yanked me to a hard stop. My arm cracked twice, blinding me with unspeakable agony.

I could hear the tumultuous plummet of Ryan behind me down the full flight of stairs. It ended with an absurd, horrifying crack of a head against the door.

I tried to maintain my grip, even though I knew I’d broken my arm. The shadow above me came at me and kicked my grip away. I slowly rolled down the stairs to the bottom. I saw Ryan laying at wrong angles against the frame of the door. There was a blood leak from his ear and forehead. He was unconscious. Mouth wide open, a spindle of drool stringing to his chest.

“I warned you about this, little queer!” Ryan’s dad spat at him. A bottle of scotch dangled from one of his arms.

My head was on the floor, cheek on polished wood. I could see wet boots before they found my fingers and crunched them into the floor. The scream that blew from my lungs buried me in darkness. I’d passed out.

I woke again. It seemed like hours, but I knew it had been seconds. Ryan had been pushed away from the door. It was left open and only a small feathering of melting snow covered the floor around his body. I tried to move toward him, found my arm could not support me. I tried to stand and my leg gave way at my ankle. I was unaware of my yelling until I heard it resonant against the walls. I had to drag myself, through broken glass, with one arm to him.

He was still breathing. I could see his chest move. My palm covered his heart and found the beat. But his face was pale and his eyes sunken. I couldn’t wake him. Every moan dragged me to the phone. I remember dialing the number to my home. And then my head pitched down into the deepest darkness I’d ever known, and I thought,
I’m dying
.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The nightmare unfolded in my head like ble that was twice the sizealy actually ached snapshots taken in harsh light. Brief glimpses of frantic movements, gloomy faces, wisps of antiseptic smells. Things seen just long enough to let me know I wasn’t dead yet.

I was swallowed in flashes of needle pinpricks, twinges of pain sharp enough to wrestle me from the blackness. Disjointed movement swirled around me like an ominous ocean.

There were voices. First urgent. Then insistent. Some I didn’t recognize. Then those I did. I had people prodding me from all directions. I heard the siren from the inside.

Even as deep as I had sunk, I was still aware of the pain that wouldn’t subside. Eventually, I slid headfirst into oblivion. And all I knew was that if I came outside, sadness would grab me by my heels. I knew it was out there. You didn’t hurt this bad without it waiting for you.

Once I awoke to a square of light. The smell of a hospital. A dark room. In the square was Ryan’s mom clutching a handkerchief to her mouth. She vanished, leaving behind the whisper of words, “I’m sorry,” carried away by Christmas music. After a few moments, I believed she’d never been there. Sucked away by the same black sadness.

With the next sliver of light, I was thirsty. More than that. I was parched. My tongue was pasted to the roof of my mouth. It tasted like chemicals.

I could see a table in front of me. Hovering above the bed. On it was a glass with a bent straw in it. I could see ice melting into liquid. I wanted it.

Moving for it was not as easy as I anticipated. I found myself harnessed to a bed by plastic tubes. My arm was encased in a plaster cast. The fingers of my right hand were splinted. The whole was suspended slightly above the bed in a sling. I could barely move an inch forward. My right leg was also in a cast.

Dad’s face moved forward in a dot of light that was coming from behind my head on the wall.

“Hey there, Samson. What can I get for you?”

I used a finger from my good hand to point to the glass.

It was 7-Up. It burned lik$ watchy fy ed the dickens all the way down my throat. Tasted great.

I could smell the fake pine of a small Christmas tree on the nightstand beside me.

In the fog of my mind, I remembered the first snow of winter. “What day is it?” I asked.

He glanced at his watch. “The twenty-seventh.”

“What happened to Christmas?”

His answer was simple enough. I’d slept through it. It was not an announcement I welcomed. I looked up and saw the bag that led to my arm. I knew why I was sleeping. And I slept again.

*

My eyes opened once more on what was a late afternoon.
Cookie and The Captain
played on the television. They were showing
Looney Tunes
. A Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. Connor was seated in a chair at the foot of my bed facing the television. He was laughing like a four year old.

I could see snow had piled on the window sill. I sat quietly watching the television, trying to get my bearings. By the way I was strapped in the bed, it didn’t look like a rewarding endeavor. I could see my toes at the end of a cast. I could see Connor’s name inked on the cast near my foot. I wiggled my toes. They were okay but it made my leg hurt like a body-length, severe tooth-ache.

Only my thumb and first two fingers were visible on my right arm in another cast. Signed by Connor as well. I wiggled those three digits. Pain shot all the way to my elbow and I groaned. That bought Connor’s attention.