Perspectives

Heartbreak from 3 points of view

Boy.

This is amazing. We’re floating around in our flying car as Mother reads my favorite stories and Dad plays my favorite Billy Idol songs through the speakers. The sky is crisp and fresh up here.

Everything is red and warm. Wake up, hide the light from my eyes and rub the sleep away. I sit up, hit head on top bunk. Why do I have a top bunk? I don’t have a brother or anyone to play with. I’m afraid of heights.

Put on my favorite shirt. My dad used to be much smaller I guess, because he gave me this Batman shirt when I was 4, saying he used to wear it all the time. I think it’s cool because he’s cool. I open the door and walk out into the mirrored hall way.

I make faces at the mirror. “I’ll be back,” I say, trying to sound Austrian. “You’re one ugly mother…” I’m afraid to finish the last part.

I reach toward the brass knob of Dad’s room because I hear two people snoring. I look in and see a bright naked bottom of a woman. This doesn’t happen every day.

Mother arrived 4 days ago. We’re going to be a family again. She’s tired of being away. She brought me Super Mario 3 and some frisbees. I don’t have a dog to throw them to.

I walk toward our front door, looking back to make sure no one’s awake. I step outside our balcony to see squirrels playing down below. It looks like no one in this complex is awake yet. I pull down my pants and pee off the ledge. I’m not supposed to do that.

If no one’s awake I’m going to play Nintendo. I take Super Mario 3 out of it’s sleeve and insert it into the Nintendo. Press power. Flickering blue screen. I take the cart out and blow from left to right, then put it back in. Power. Bingo.

Mother.

I awake to the same thing for the past few days, the theme song to that game and the mashing of plastic buttons. Why am I here? They were doing fine before I came back. Where are my pants? I find them, put them on, and walk into the kitchen. Am I ruining everything?

“Hey hon.” He looks back at me like he doesn’t recognize my voice and finally acknowledges me. “Do you want anything to eat?” I say. He hits the pause button and walks over to a fruit basket on the table and grabs a pear, looks at me and takes a big bite. He sits back down in front of the tv and continues to play. Alright.

“What if I make your favorite?” I’m not very good at this. There’s a constant threat of the house burning down when I cook something as simple as bacon.

Dad.

She doesn’t even know what his “favorite” is. She doesn’t know what his grade in math is. She doesn’t know anything. I listen for the boy’s response. Nothing. I suppose he’s as guarded as I am.

I get up and stretch, walk into the mirrored hall and check out my aging face. Raising a kid by yourself makes 25 look like 35. I wonder how old I look to other people.

I hear my son call out. “Dad. You’re up! I made it to the frog level. You can swim around real fast and he jumps a lot higher.” “That’s awesome little dude!” He loves that thing. I like when I have to beat levels for him. When he lets me.

She’s doing… something in the kitchen. It’s definitely not cooking. I walk in and she pecks me on the lips. Like she wasn’t gone for 3 years while I raised him alone.

Boy.

Hmm. That sounded like a kiss. I’ve never seen either of them do it but I’ve heard a kiss in the movies and that sounded a little bit like it. I hear them talking but they’re speaking really quietly. I get up and try to move closer to them and sit on the couch so I can hear, but the controller cord won’t reach. So I pause.

“What are we doing today?” I’ve taken off the last two days at school, and it looks like I’m going to make it 3 in a row! “Can we play frisbee at the dog park with the dogs?”

No response. “Or. We could go see Jungle Book?” Dad shake’s his head. “Jungle book stopped playing last week, buddy.” “Ok. Can I go outside?” He walks over and looks out the window to see a couple of the other kids in the complex playing. “Alright, but make sure you wear play clothes.” Laundry is tomorrow. I help every Thursday.

I head into my room to grab my things and change.

Mother.

I guess breakfast is off. It was a disaster anyway. I wish he would talk to me. I understand why he’s so guarded. I left them. I needed to be away. I don’t know why, but I can’t stay in one place for too long.

Everything I do ends in an awkward silence. Maybe we should all go do something tonight like go to a high school football game. They like that in Texas, right? I move from the kitchen to the couch with a plate of burnt bacon as he walks out with a pack of cigarettes behind the boy. I don’t know what I expected. His Dad will take the free fuck, but he’s not buying me sticking around for the long haul.

I don’t know if I buy it either.

Dad.

“Here, let me zip up your jacket…” I say to him as he stares out over the balcony. Interesting smell out here. He must have pissed through the bars again. I told him not to do that.

I tell him to be careful. “Don’t mess with that Larry kid again. His parents don’t want him playing with anyone.” He nods and walks off. Larry is a strange kid, but that doesn’t hold a candle to his mother. She comes over from time to time with a bottle of something in hand when her husband is out on long hauls. She had the gaul to be jealous that the boy’s mother came back.

All I really need is a long drag from this cigarette and I can head back inside to figure out what this all means. If it means anything.

Boy.

I run down the stairs, tugging at my jacket, past the electrician’s truck as he checked the meter thing. There are a few kids running around the swing set by the grass patch in the shape of a pool.

The manager of the complex said that 10 or so years ago that a kid died there and they had to cover the pool up so nothing like that happened again. Now there’s laundry in the building next to it and a basketball goal hanging on the corner.

I go over to the swings and sit, looking back toward my floor. I count down 3 from the top and 4 over. That’s my room. Next to that is Dad’s window. I take three steps back with my butt in the swing, then lift my feet. “Whoosh.”

Larry comes over and stands near the slide. “Hey,” he waves. I sort of ignore him as i soar higher and higher. He walks to another place in my sight. “Hello.” I look over at him as he talks. “Who’s that lady that’s been at your place?”

I don’t really know the answer to that question. “She’s my Mother.”

“Oh,” says Larry. “My mom was asking. Dad’s been out of town so she’s been bored.” She comes over some nights and Dad tells me it’s time for bed. I go to sleep listening to them laughing. She never brings Larry.

I don’t know much about him, except no one likes playing with him. One of the parents told my Dad that he gave their daughter lice. Lice is something that makes your head itchy and you have to wash it with special soap. Dad says you can also get it from birds. I wonder if Larry plays with birds.

I look over at my floor as Larry sits on the swing next to mine. I’m thinking of all the things I might be able to do now that I have a Mother. Maybe they’ll attend the PTO meetings my dad can never go to. Maybe I’ll get to go on picnics with some of the other moms and kids in the complex. I won’t have to stay in the house alone while dad has to go to work on Saturdays. My thoughts are interrupted by a large crashing sound.

My eyes go straight to the sound. I see a bowling ball out a window of the side of the complex, falls two stories and lands right onto the electrician’s truck. “WHAT THE F…” He says as he runs back towards it. That’s a really bad word, but I can see why he’s so upset.

“Isn’t that your Dad’s window?” says Larry. One. Two. Three down. One. Two. Three. Four over. Next to that, a smashed window. I jump out of the swing and start running back to the apartment.

Mother.

He runs across the room and looks out the broken window. “What the fuck are you doing!?” he barks. I hear a man shouting up from the ground. I guess we know where it landed.

What the fuck am I doing?

He paces back and forth, putting on an article of clothing at a time his voice hitting it’s highest volume every time he walks past my face. I run my hands through my hair and slide down the wall of the mirrored hallway, watching myself sink to the lowest point I’ve been in years.

“What’s the plan?” He asked me earlier. What do you mean, “What’s the plan?” I’m here, isn’t that what it takes to be a family? Before I knew it I was running through the house with a bowling ball and tossing it through the window. I went blank, and needed the questioning to stop. I watch him run out the door. I miss my son, and I want to be with him. But I haven’t thought past that.

Dad.

I skip two steps at a time as I run toward the man’s truck. What the hell happened back there? One second I’m asking her what she planned on for us, the next I’m about to empty my savings on this poor asshole’s work truck and a smashed apartment window.

The boy runs up as I make my way back. I pick him up and throw him on my hip. The electrician walks up. “Please tell me you weren’t trying to practice in there, because I think you might need a lot more work.” He’s funny like most electricians I know. Truth is, I do need more practice. I’m the worst on our team of screen printers, and as you can imagine, printers aren’t that great at bowling.

I look down at the kid. “I don’t know what happened. I’m just making sure the fingers still fit right, on account of me losing a bunch of weight recently.” I walk over to get a look at the damage. It hit his tool topper and dented it pretty good. But nothing so bad on the body of the truck. “It musta just slipped off my fingers.”

He looks over at the boy for a second, up at the window then back to me and shakes his head. “Well, thankfully it’s not as bad as it could be. It’s the company’s truck and this looks like something that could be done on site.” I’m immediately relieved. We’re on such a budget these days. He cuts off my thoughts as he walks over. “Just be careful. There’s kid’s running around here. Coulda been this one’s head and not my truck that this thing landed on.”

I nod. I agree, and pick up my ball as he gets in and drives away.

Boy.

I got in trouble again today. The other kids are looking at me while I sit in the corner waiting for Mrs. Moore to tell me it’s ok to join the rest of the class. Some of them are giggling.

All I said was that Dax’s mother didn’t care about him.It’s true. She doesn’t. She can’t. So I’m in trouble for knowing what he and everyone here doesn’t. Dax cried and told the teacher, and now I’m sitting in the corner looking at his stupid face.

The bell rings and Mrs. Moore gives me the nod to get up. I grab my things and start walking out toward the front of the school. I make it outside just in time to see Dax getting into his mother’s Ford Bronco. I sit on the cold stairs and wait. I look down at a digital watch and wait for the minute hand to hit the 15 minute mark when the small red truck rolls up. It’ll just be dad.

We haven’t seen her since that day.

Dad.

McDonald’s. I know the smell of these fries will at least distract him from questioning me about her for just a minute. She’s been gone for the last 4 days, but she has been pretty busy. He wouldn’t even recognize her if she walked up to him.

She came home with long brown hair, sensible clothes, and a smile. Last night she’d cut it all off, short cropped, and was wearing a mini skirt and half shirt with her tits hanging out the bottom. Was she like this before and just acting? What a difference 4 days makes.

We drive away from the school as he’s digging around the bottom of a happy meal box. He looks up at me and says “Hot Wheels!” “Awesome, dude!” He takes it out and wipes it down with a white napkin and starts to wheel it around the car door. Five solid minutes with no mention of her. Mission accomplished.

“I got in trouble today,” he says to me. I ask him what he did. I can’t say I blame him for it as he explains it to me. There hasn’t been a very good example set for him in that area. “That’s alright. Just don’t mention that sort of thing in class anymore. Dax’s Mom is his business, and you shouldn’t judge.” I move right into it. “So your Mother wanted you to come by tonight.” He perks up while I pull into our parking lot. “Are we going to play frisbee!?” He pleads. It’s basically the only thing he got to do with her before she moved on.

“Maybe.”

Mother.

I’m over it. I’m sure. I came here for a reason and I’m going to make it work. I walk around the half-decent motel room I’ve been staying in the past few days trying to figure out what I’ll say to them. I hope his Dad didn’t share what I’ve been doing over the past few. I hope he doesn’t see me differently than he did before. Is that dishonest?

I pick up a wad of hair extensions that I took out a few nights ago and throw them in the small bathroom. I look up at the mirror. “This is me,” I say out loud. This is who I’ve always wanted to be and I shouldn’t lie to make him comfortable. I went so far as to wear the shirt I was wearing on the last day I saw him when he was three. It was wrong. It was fake, and he knew it.

I’ll tell them I want to make it work. I put concealer on my face to cover up any lack of sleep I’ve had over the last couple of nights of partying. I don’t know this town, but it loves a pretty face.

He’s supposed to be here in 20 minutes, and then everything will be good.

Boy.

Finally. I got in the back seat as Dad moved some things around in the back of the truck. Extended cab is what he called it. Really, it’s just enough space to put stuff you don’t want to get wet.He asks why I wasn’t sitting in the front. I respond, “To make room for Mother.”

He turns the key and the engine makes a weird noise before starting up. We drive away from the apartment and I daydream of not ever going back to it.

We’ll live in a bigger house that we don’t have to share with 40 other families. We’ll have a dog and have space in the back of the house for picnics. I’ll be able to stay home with my Mother on Saturdays. She’ll cook my favorite. Brocolli cheese chicken. It’s what families do.

The Super 8 is a lot further than I thought and we’re going pretty fast down the highway. Some things start flying from the back of the truck. I look out to see what he has packed back there.

It’s a box of all of Mother’s things.

Dad.

I hit the breaks and the car slides on the gravel. Room 26. Top floor. The windows don’t have any bowling ball size holes in them so that’s a good sign. I see the kid jump out and run over to a patch of wild flowers. He picks a the best looking dandelion of the bunch and runs back over under shoulder as I lean on the warm hood of my truck. “For Mom,” he says.

I feel like my kid is standing on rail road tracks, and I can’t do anything to get to him. I’m stuck watching while I know he’s going to get crushed. This kills me. I rub my knuckles on the top of his head and we start walking toward the motel door.

“Knock on the door, buddy.” I tell him. I’m praying that she doesn’t answer. I’m hoping we can go back to trying to forget about this.

Mother.

I open the door to a little hand holding out a tiny yellow flower. Without looking at him, I lift him up into my arms and it feels normal. It feels absolutely perfect.

I haven’t really felt this since the day I left them. The first time I left them. I wasn’t ready for anything real. He’s so heavy, in a good way. What I’m holding is part of me. In this moment I’d sooner cut off my hand than let this part of me go.

I kiss him on the forehead. “Hey, Baby.” I look over at his Dad. “How are you?” He stops himself from laughing. “Oh, I’m fantastic.” He then explains to me all the things our son wants to do. He wants to go on a picnic. He wants to go to the speedway. He wants to be a family and have a house and a bigger car just like his friends.

I’m excited for this. He looks away from our boy and looks at me without emotion.“But we came over here so you could tell him why we won’t do any of that.”

Boy.

I look up at her. She looks like she’s struggling to find something to say. I look back at Dad. “What do you mean?” He never looks away from her eyes and says to ask her. She drops the flower that I picked for her and says “I don’t know what he means, honey. I’d love to do all those things. Let’s go do those things!”

I look down. “Mom, you dropped your flo—.” Dad cuts me off.

“Tell him that you’ll just leave when you’re bored. Tell him that you have a whole other family in Michigan. Tell him you strip for a living. Tell him you just got tired of them and came back here to figure out what you’re doing next,” he yells.

She takes fast steps toward him and drops me right onto the flower. My feet smash it into the carpet.

“That’s not true!” She screams as she throws a punch at the left side of my Dad’s mustache. He grabs her arm and walks her over to the bed and yells loudly. “NO MORE!” He turns away from her and yanks me up as he runs out of the room.

Dad.

I put the Boy in the truck and lock the door, ready for her to chase after me with a bat, or a brick, or something worse. I stand my ground.

“You can’t do this his whole life.” I plead with her. “You’re going to really fuck him up if you keep flirting with his life like this. Three years gone, one week back. How long next time? What will you look like? How many fuckin’ more men will you have ruined? How many more fuckin’ kids will you have left behind?”

I just can’t let it happen. Me and the boy are a team.

“Look at what you’re doing to him!” I look over at two little hands and a bawling face inside the truck. “This isn’t me. I’m not lying to him! This is YOU!”

I start walking back to the truck.

Mother.

This is me. This is anger. This is what I do every time. “I’m trying! I don’t know what I’m doing.” I’m here because I care. Or. I’m supposed to care. I think. I just know that his father and I are poison.

Our son is red, screaming, wondering why nothing works for him and why he has no say. I don’t know what to tell him.

But I know I’d take him with me. So that’s all I can try to do. “The boy needs his Mother! He can come with me if he wants to. Do you want that honey?” I cry out to him as he rests his face on the glass. He doesn’t make any motions. “Do you want to play frisbee and get a dog and a house and have friends and picnics and hang out with Mommy?”

He’s still, and bawling, and confused. I look back over to his Dad. He looks like he’s about to explode.

Then he gives me pity and walks over to our sons side of the car.

Boy.

Dad looks in at me. My face feels hot and I can’t breath. I roll down the window one turn at a time. “Hey buddy. Did you hear what she asked?”

I did. I nod to him as he continues. “I want you to think about this, now. Would you like to live with your Mother? Would you like all those things that she said she’ll give you?” I look over at her as she stands ready for me to run over to her.

A million things are going through my mind. How fun those few days were, how much in common I had with the other kids in that time, and how much better everything felt.

Dad interrupts my thoughts. “Well dude, what do you say? Do you wanna come home or go with her?”

Without thinking any more I say the only thing I know. I choke out “I want to stay with Dad.”

Dad storms around to the other side of the car, throws her things out onto the gravel, and starts up the truck. I look out at my Mother as the car starts to move. She’s screaming, “Wait! No. Wait. Please!”

I hang out the window as my dad drives away, and she fades further and further back into the distance.

Dad.

I carry him into his room and lay him down on his bed. Walking back through the mirrored hall I see a person who had to tear a kid away from his Mother.

I run cold water onto a rag and walk it back to him. He’s exhausted from crying. “It’s ok little dude. I’m sorry this happened.” His sobs are getting quieter and quieter. He’s drifting off, knowing that he won’t see his Mother for a long time.

I walk out of the room and turn the light off and a little voice stops me. “We’re a team, Dad. It’ll be ok.”

Boy.

The clouds are bright and its hard to see as we drive through them. I look back and there’s a storm behind us, fading back below the clouds. I look over at dad and he smiles as Billy Idol plays loud through the speakers.The sun feels warm, and everything is normal.

“Wake up, buddy.” He says. Time to get ready for school.