It was worth it. Good riddance. I never wanted to come back.
Holding his chipped Fishermen Do It Hook, Line and Sinker mug, Dad stood, feet braced apart, on the front porch – every piece of timber comprising the whole sagging and weather-beaten to all f**k. It was a miracle that anything made of wood could survive here, and yet this place had endured, somehow, for decades – defying wind, rain, tropical storms and the relentless salt water that permeated the whole town with its brackish scent day in and day out.
As a kid, when this place was my grandfather’s house, I’d loved the annual summer visits that my dad had loathed, but Mom insisted on. ‘He’s your father,’ she’d tell him. ‘He’s Landon’s grandfather. Family is important, Ray.’
Now Dad was staying, and I was leaving.
Within the dilapidated house on the beach, waves from the gulf were audible at all times of the day and night. When I was little, spending time here was like living in a tree house or a backyard tent for a week – lacking most of the comforts of home, but so poles apart from my real life that it seemed incredible and otherworldly. Roughing it, desert-island style.
After a day of exploring the shoreline and baking in the sun, I’d spread one of the towels Mom always bought before our vacations and left at Grandpa’s place. The soft bath sheets were long enough to accommodate my entire childhood frame and wide enough to stockpile and sort the shells I collected during long, hot days on a beach that was anything but the white coast I let my friends back home in Alexandria imagine.
Staring at the huge expanse of dark sky and the thousands of stars winking in and out as though they were communicating with each other, I’d dream about who I’d be when I grew up. I liked to draw, but I was good at math – the kind of good that would have got me labelled a nerd if it wasn’t for my skill on the ice. I could be an artist, a scientist, a professional hockey player. Surrounded by that seeming infinity of sky and sand and ocean, I thought my choices were wide open.
What a naïve f**k I’d been.
Those bath sheets were like everything else here, now. Worn out. Used up. As close to worthless as something can be without being entirely worthless.
Dad looked older than his years. He was just under fifty – a bit younger than Heller – but he looked a good decade older.
Salt water and sun will do that.
Being a tightlipped, heartless ass**le will do that.
Too far, Landon. Too far.
Fine.
Grief will do that.
He watched me load my shit into his best friend’s vehicle, as though it was normal for a father to reassign his parental obligations – like the day his only kid left home for college – to someone else. But he’d been doing that for a while now. It had been up to me to fail, flail or claw my way out of wanting to end myself since I was thirteen. Five years of surviving from one day to the next. Of choosing to get up or not. Go to school or not. Give a flying f**k about anything or anyone or not.
Heller had given me one shot at getting out, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to apologize for taking it.
‘Hug your father goodbye, Landon,’ Heller murmured as we shut the hatchback door.
‘But he won’t – we don’t –’
‘Try. Trust me.’
I huffed a sigh before turning and walking back up the front steps.
‘Bye, Dad.’ I delivered the words dutifully – something I did for Heller’s sake, nothing more. He’d set his cup on the railing. His hands were empty.
I was leaving him to his silence and his solitude, and suddenly I wondered how different this moment would have been if my mother was alive. She would have cried, arms looping round my neck as I bent to hug and kiss her goodbye, telling me she was proud of me, making me promise to call, to come home soon, to tell her everything. I would have cried, holding her.
For the sake of the only woman the two of us had ever loved, I reached my arms round my father, and he wordlessly put his arms round me.
I stared into the side mirror, watching the town grow smaller. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Despite an uneasy curiosity, I wouldn’t look back to see if this was true. That bullshit town and the years I lived there would be out of view in five minutes and erased from my conscious mind as soon as I could forget it.
‘Do what you want with the radio,’ Heller said, and I snapped my attention forward. ‘As long as it isn’t any of that screaming crap Cole abuses his ears with. Can’t stand that noise pollution he calls music.’
His oldest kid was fifteen now. Whenever we were together, he’d ape how I dressed and what type of music I was into, following me around and mimicking whatever I said or did – not always a great idea, I’ll admit. His attitude on life seemed to be: if something irritated his parents, he was for it.
I blinked like I was surprised. ‘What, no Bullet for My Valentine? No Slipknot?’
I laughed at Heller’s agitated scowl, sure he didn’t believe or care whether or not those were real band names. That was all the answer I got, besides his usual stoic sigh. I plugged my iPod into the stereo console and dialled it to a playlist I’d made last night titled f**k you and goodbye. The tracks were a lot less violent than the title implied, in deference to my road-trip companion. I might share Cole’s attitude when it came to my own father, but not his.
I didn’t see the Heller kids often – though that was about to change, since I’d be living in their backyard. Literally. My new home would be the room over their garage that had been storage for boxes of books and holiday decorations, exercise equipment and old furniture. My memories of it were vague. When I’d visited the Hellers, I’d slept on an air mattress in Cole’s room. Backing out at the last minute every damned time, Dad would stick me on a bus with my duffle bag and strict instructions not to do anything stupid while I was there.