by Lee Irby
Edward liked to draw cartoons. Some were a little weird, a little violent. He’d sit there muttering to himself as he sketched away. Loud music pulsing in his headphones, his head bobbing to thrashing guitars. One time I asked him if he wanted to be an artist, and he gazed down at his untied sneakers.
“Not really,” he muttered.
At least he’d answered a question, which I took as progress. Maybe he was starting to trust me, just a little. I wanted to help because I saw a lot of myself in him. Growing up I didn’t have a lot of friends, either. I knew the worst was yet to come. The insults about your complexion. The ink bombs in your locker. Getting picked last. Kids groaning if you sit next to them. I got so filled with rage that I could feel it burning in my nose. As soon as I turned sixteen, I dropped out of high school and eventually got a GED. But it’s not where you start in life, it’s where you finish. By the time I turned thirty, I owned my own business and my own house.
I wanted to tell Edward that things would get better once he got older. It was hard being thirteen, but it wouldn’t last forever. One problem: I was the guy dating his mother and so it was easy for Edward to tune me out and pretend I didn’t exist. I knew better than to push it.
*
Edward’s biological father was rotting away in prison, serving a life sentence for murder. Edward had been a newborn then and had no real memories of his father. It was never a problem until he got the idea that he really wanted to visit his old man. He kept after Barbara for weeks, and finally she booked a flight. I took them to the airport, and it felt stupid telling them to have a good time. Edward looked at me like I was an idiot. Barbara kissed me on the cheek and told me not to worry.
They stayed three nights. When I picked them up at Arrivals, I took one look at Barbara and knew right away the trip hadn’t gone well. On the ride home, Edward didn’t say a word. He just sat in the back and stared out the window. Later, in bed, Barbara filled me in. The trip to the prison had been a disaster. Edward had insisted on going in alone. He stayed twenty minutes and came out with tears in his eyes.
“I have no idea what they talked about,” she said sadly. “Edward wouldn’t tell me.”
“Did you see your ex and ask him?”
“No. I have nothing to say to that creep. And I wouldn’t believe a word out of his mouth anyway. He’s a pathological liar.” She sighed and covered her face. “Going out there was a mistake. I shouldn’t have allowed it. The only thing Edward told me is that he thought he looked just like his father. I don’t see much resemblance, but Edward does. And that’s scary.”
*
When Edward turned fourteen, we threw him a little birthday party. I gave him a Sony PlayStation. It was used but basically brand new, still in its original box. A customer had dropped off at the shop after her son had died of encephalitis. I told Edward the story and he looked at me like I had just spit in his face. His mouth curled into a sneer, and he kicked the box across the floor.
“I don’t care about some retard with a swollen brain,” he groused. “It’s probably got germs all over it.”
I stayed calm. “Fine. I’ll keep it for myself.”
“That figures.” He rolled his eyes at me, but it didn’t stop there. From then on, it seemed like every time I came over, he’d throw a tantrum. He’d just lock himself in his room and refuse to come out. Then he started breaking things around the house. The last straw was when he keyed my car. There was a long gash in the paint on the back quarter panel. Edward said he didn’t do it. Then he said a ghost did it.
Barbara signed us all up for family counseling. I went a few times, but it didn’t feel right. Edward didn’t want me there. I wasn’t the father or the husband. “You’re nobody,” he kept yelling. So I stopped going. It didn’t take a genius to see that I was a part of the problem.
Barbara didn’t like that very much. One night, after Edward was asleep, she accused me of being aloof and being afraid of commitment.
“Do you want to be a part of Edward’s life? Because I can’t handle any wavering right now. Edward needs stability.”
“He hates my guts, Barb.”
“The doctor says he’s testing your limits.”
“Damn right he is.”
“But you need to work through it with him. Oh, Dennis, I can’t keep jerking that kid’s chain. Are you in or you out?”
We split up. I really missed her, though. And Edward, too. As much as the kid drove me crazy, we’d still managed to have a few chuckles. I’d never planned on having a family, so this was as close as I’d get. Edward liked coming to my repair shop and watching me fix computers. He seemed interested in electronics. There was so much I could teach him about how to make it in this world.
But I didn’t want to screw up Barb’s life. She was a single mom, and I wasn’t ready to shoulder the load of helping raise Edward. I needed to stay out of it and move on. I dated a few women but no one special. It’s never been easy for me to find girlfriends. I did what I normally did in that situation: I worked longer hours at the shop, keeping busy so my mind wouldn’t wander.
Then one night Barbara called me and asked me to come over.
“Are you sure?” I asked, just to double-check. I could tell by her voice that something was wrong.
“Dennis, it’s awful. Edward’s in trouble. Serious trouble.”
“Where he is?”
“The cops took him away! They put him in handcuffs and took him away!”
Barbara was hysterical, recounting the events. Edward and some pals had broken into their school and painted devil-worship messages all over the walls, pentagrams and upside-down A’s. They also destroyed computers and started a fire. Breaking and entering, vandalism, arson: a long list of charges.
I closed up the shop and hurried over. The drive felt familiar, like a warm embrace. The corner store, the dry cleaners, the Asian market Pha Dong, which always made Edward giggle: these signposts led me back to the little two-bedroom house Barbara was renting from a slumlord.
She was waiting for me at the front door. The outdoor light wasn’t working, and so she stood in a shaft of an eerie glow from the tv, like she was being teleported back to earth. I rushed up to her and held her there on the stoop, with mosquitoes buzzing around our heads.
Inside, I got the whole story. Edward was running away and staying out all night, and when Barbara tried to discipline him, he’d either ignore her or punch the wall in fury. I could see indents the size of a small fist.
She blamed herself. I wasn’t having any of that.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Barbara,” I told her. “He’s just confused right now. It’s a hard age to be.” I rubbed her shoulders and stroked her red hair, trying to comfort her. She’d displayed tons of Edward’s artwork around their small den, monsters and goblins etched onto every kind of paper. There must’ve been a hundred, but she’d hung each one with care. Although I’d seen many of these drawings, dozens were new to me, and more violent than the others.
“He’ll go to jail! My baby!”
“No, not jail. He’ll go to a program for juvenile…” I stopped before finishing the phrase.
“Delinquents?” she wailed. “Is that what he is? He is, isn’t he? He’s a juvenile delinquent, my little man. My baby.”
“You did everything you could to teach him right from wrong.”
“Then how come he’s locked up?”
“It’s not because of you. You’ve done so much for him. And anyway, they’ll help him, won’t they? That’s what these programs do.”
“He needs help. He’s not a bad kid, it’s just those dipshits he hangs out with. Do you think he can change?”
“I know he can.”
She seemed to perk up. Her face brightened and she brushed strands of tear-dampened hair from her eyes. “You’ve been a good mother,” I continued, pouring us another glass of zinfandel. “I don’t think he appreciates what he’s got. But I do.”
It got real quiet. My eyes found hers, and in them I could see swirling the confusion and pain Edward had caused. I wanted to take the pain away. Nothing gave me more pleasure than fixing stuff. But I could tell she was thinking about something, the way her eyes darted around. Then she wiped a tear from her left cheek and sighed.
“You know what Edward told me last night?” she asked softly.
“What?”
“He said he’d kill you as soon as he gets out.”
I gazed up at a picture of an alien in a purple space suit holding a terrible weapon that sprayed out molten lead, burning what looked like a man working on a computer. I could see where the magic marker had gouged the ruled notebook paper. The man getting torched looked a lot like me.
Could Edward actually kill me? The kid weighed around a hundred pounds. I could see it, though, clear as day. His wild shock of greasy brown hair, his fang-like incisors, plunging a knife into my back and then cackling like he’d just wasted a foe playing Mortal Kombat.
Barbara could tell I was rattled.
“He didn’t mean it,” she stammered. “He was ranting. You know how he gets.”
“I haven’t seen him in three months. I can’t believe he still thinks about me.”
“It’s pretty weird, huh?”
“I tried to be his friend. Didn’t I try?”
“We both tried. But he’s just so far gone right now.”
I ended up staying the night. In the morning, I changed out the washer on a leaky faucet, replaced an electrical outlet in the kitchen, and got the bedroom window to shut all the way and lock.
We went to the court on the day Edward was sentenced to his program, and although I sat in back, his eyes found me, two black burning coals of hatred and fury. Barbara told the judge she loved her son and wanted what was best for him. Edward just kept staring back at me. The judge ordered him to a facility that dealt with emotionally disturbed adolescents. A level 6 confinement, which was to last six months minimum.
Barbara was convinced Edward would change. After each of her monthly pilgrimages to visit Edward, she’d come back gushing about the professionalism of the staff and the excellence of the program. Then she’d update me on the progress Edward was making.
“He wasn’t aggressive at all this week. Look at this behavior summary.” We’d sit and read over the hand-scribbled notes the counselors took. According to the paperwork, Edward was meeting goals. He was being appropriate. He was staying on task. He was willing to be redirected.
Over those six months, Barbara and I grew even closer. She leaned on me, and I liked being the strong one, the dependable one, the logical one. I promised her I’d do whatever I could to help Edward’s transition go smoothly when he returned home. I told her she could count on me.
But as Edward’s release date grew closer, I started to wonder how things would go. I knew Edward was making progress in his program, but could he keep it up once he got away from the controlled environment? What if he was just going through the motions? I tried not to dwell on the negative, but I couldn’t stop myself. Edward had promised to kill me. The threat rang in my ears, a constant whirring, like the way hard drives do before they crash.
“What’s got your goat?” she asked one night as we made dinner.
“It’s work,” I answered as I chopped garlic for the new recipe. “I’m swamped. I barely have time to use the bathroom.”
“You’re so stressed, Dennis. It’s not good for you. Your immune system’s gonna go bonkers.”
“Summer is my busy time. That’s when all the lightning knocks out electronic equipment. Everybody wants their TVs fixed as soon as possible and they yell at me for taking so long. I have to go back in tonight and catch up.”
“You do?”
“I’m buried. You should see the shop. Stuff’s piled everywhere.”
“Poor baby.”
Barbara tried to soothe me. She put on a playlist full of gentle sounds and burned aromatherapy candles made with rich spices. After dinner, she gave me a massage with linseed oil, rubbing my shoulders and kissing my neck, as I sat slumped on the futon in the living room.
“You’re one big knot,” she said gently. “You’re all twisted and out of alignment.”
“I need a vacation.”
“Maybe we can all go to the beach. Just the three of us.”
She undressed me and I leaned back as she started her little routine. She might as well have been peeling potatoes. “You just need to relax,” she kept whispering.
But how could I relax? Edward’s sketches were everywhere, taped to every conceivable space, hovering above me in an array of sick adolescent violence. In a week he’d be home and what then? Would he kill me?
Tomorrow was the day that Edward was coming home. Barbara planned to drive three hours to the facility and pick him up. I tried not to think about it, but I kept sinking further into fear. I had to replace a power source on a Dell, but I kept snapping the input wire, something I never did. I was afraid I was losing my mind. Why couldn’t I stop worrying about Edward’s threat to kill me?
I closed the shop just to get away for an hour. Maybe I could clear my head. I decided to go for a drive, and out of reflex I ended up at Barbara’s house. It was like driving through a thick fog. I could barely see anything. I sat in the car and stared at the house. It was blurry and vague. Did I need to see a doctor?
Then Barbara came out. She walked over to the car and opened the door because I couldn’t move.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “I thought you had to work late tonight.”
I didn’t even answer. I was too confused to answer. Because I was very turned on by the sight of her. I was so upset and afraid, and yet there she was, wearing a sarong that displayed her curves. I reached out and cupped my hands around her breasts.
“Oh, Dennis. Did you get lonely at work?”
I pulled her into the car and kissed her. Then I picked her up and carried her inside. We got as far as the futon in the living room. Then we made love like we never had before. Something was pushing me past every place I’d ever been, a force so raw and powerful that I couldn’t control it.
“You were pretty rough,” she said when we were finished.
“Was I?”
“I didn’t much care for it. It’s not like you to be rough.”
“I didn’t realize I was being rough.”
“It was like I wasn’t even there. What’s happening, Dennis? Why are you acting like this?”
I didn’t know what to say. Or I knew what I wanted to say but couldn’t, because I would open a can of worms. “How am I acting?” I finally muttered.
“You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“I’ve been very busy at the shop.” That excuse usually did it. But not now. She dug deeper.
“Is that all?” She didn’t sound convinced. “You haven’t been acting the same since we found out about Edward coming home.”
I laughed like there could be no way that her son had anything to do with my personal life. “Oh, come on.”
I laid it on a bit too thick. Barbara got up and pulled her sarong on, as if suddenly ashamed to be naked around me. “It’s true, Dennis. You haven’t been the same in a long time, and I’m not talking about your work. I’m talking about you.”
Her tone was hard and angry. I got defensive. Who was she to come after me? “And that’s my fault?” I asked.
“Is it mine?”
“How could you have ever fallen for a murderer?” I couldn’t believe those words came out of my mouth. Her face dropped, and she folded her arms across her chest. A ceiling fan chopped the air above her, as if slicing off the crown of her skull.
“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs in China? You know how much I hated being with him. Why are you bringing that up now? I thought you understood where my head was back then. It was a long time ago.”
“I’m saying—this is what I’m saying.” So the moment had arrived. I hadn’t planned on telling her in this way, but we can’t control the flow of events anymore than we can predict where lightning will strike. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. I’m worried that Edward hasn’t changed.”
“Dennis, what in hell is wrong with you? How can you say that?”
“Because he threatened to kill me!”
“He didn’t mean it.”
“What if he did?”
“He’s not the same kid he was back then. Give him a chance, will you? We can’t condemn him forever. He’s been doing great at his program. You won’t recognize him when you see him.”
“I’m willing to give him a second chance, but at the same time, he’s prone to violence. That scares me.”
“Well, it sounds like you want out.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“I need someone who’s willing to stand by me in good times and bad. Is that you, Dennis?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should leave.”
“Maybe I should.”
Two months later I saw Edward’s picture in the newspaper. I was at the shop, having a cup of coffee, about to install a new motherboard into a laptop. I was feeling lazy, reading through those random stories in the back of the Metro section next to the obituaries.
And then there he was, staring blankly at the camera like he was about to cry. His name was in the caption beneath his picture, so there was no doubt. It was Edward. The headline read: LOCAL TEENS CHARGED WITH ANIMAL CRUELTY.
A customer came in, but I didn’t move. I was in shock from reading the story. Edward was part of a group called the Freaks, who went around stealing people’s pets and killing them so they could drink the blood. Freaking, the called it. They hung out at an abandoned auto-body shop behind the mall, and cops found all kinds of animal skeletons lying around. One of the cats they killed was named Puddles.
“Are you open?” the customer yelled from the counter.
“No. Come back later.”
The fact was, I was choked with rage. I’d been right about Edward all along. He was a danger to society. Barbara was just kidding herself not to see it. We hadn’t spoken since we’d split up, but I wanted her to know what a deluded, warped person she was. As I hurried out to my car, all Barbara’s words came at me in a torrent, her pathetic explanation of how, back in 1985, she’d been a young girl trying to find herself thumbing rides around northern California taking drugs and she meets up with this alleged carpenter with a spare bedroom who had hair down to his waist and the bottom line is she fucked him—how the hell do you just fuck someone like that, without knowing the first thing about their background—but she did. Two months later she’s pregnant with Edward and daddy’s in prison for murdering a Mexican dishwasher and the son lives on to fulfill the destiny of the father.
It wasn’t a long drive to her house. You wouldn’t notice her house. It’s one of those low-slung concrete boxes that all look the same. Paint was peeling from the fascia, and weeds choked her sidewalk. I counted four fire-ant mounds in her front yard. You could see them clearly because the grass was dead. It doesn’t take much to treat a fire ant mound. You pour some stuff on it and the queen dies. But Barbara was helpless when it came to taking care of life’s little problems.
Her car was parked in the driveway. It was an old Dodge minivan with a rusted tailpipe held in place by a coat hanger. There was a bumper sticker faded by the hot sun. You could still tell what it was. A dove with an olive branch in its beak. Most of the letters were washed out. I think it used to say World Peace.
I sat in my car and stared at the minivan, at the house, at the yard. It wouldn’t take much to fix everything. Most of it required simple maintenance. One time Barbara tried changing her own oil. She crawled up under the minivan and scratched her face. I ended up doing it. Edward even helped me. But that was a long time ago.
Barbara wasn’t a bad person, just a confused one. She was always trying to improve herself, taking one class or another at the community college. She could never find a good job without a high school degree. She wanted to be a good mom, but Edward was screwed up.
I opened my door and stepped out. Behind me the traffic roared by. People wanted to get out of here as fast as they could.
Then Barbara appeared on the stoop like she was watching me from a window. She was wearing the same red sarong as the last time I saw her. Her arms were hanging limply at her side and her red hair was a mess, all tangled and bushy. It looked like she’d been sobbing for hours.
“If you don’t leave right now, Dennis, I’m calling the cops,” she said, her voice hoarse and husky.
“That’s not why I came.”
“I said get out. I’m counting to three. One…two….”
“I’m sorry, Barbara. That’s what I came to say.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“Can’t we talk for a minute?”
She stood there not saying anything. Then she went back inside. But she left the front door wide open.
About the Author:
Lee Irby teaches at St. Petersburg College and is a Fellow of the Florida Studies Department at the University of South Florida. He is the author of three novels (all with Doubleday) and thirteen published poems.