Chapter 17 Evan #2
“It’s no good,” she says, getting up and wiping the dust off her knees.
I crouch down to where she was, the vinyl still warm. Sticking my head under the sink, I catch the smell of bleach and something damp and musty. There’s a big crack in the u-bend of the pipe that takes the sink water out into the drain.
“We’ll have to call a plumber,” she says.
“We can’t afford a plumber.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do? We need a sink, Ev.”
“I’ll fix it.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I know how to do it, Dad taught me.”
She swallows and I look away, not wanting to catch the emotion on her face.
“The tools are in the garage. Do you think you can fight your way in?”
“Yeah, I’ll sort it.”
The garage is a fucking mess. No one’s been in here for years and I have to fight just to get past the door, stubbing my toe on old mildewing boxes.
Looking inside everything to try and find the blue toolbox I remember Dad going around the house, fixing shit with.
Most of the stuff in the boxes is old crap, like Stacie’s headless dolls and school projects Ma refuses to throw out.
There are boxes of photo albums, too. I put them to one side without looking too closely.
Old car parts are stuffed behind the boxes. Most of them rusted and no use to anyone but the junk yard guy. I make a pile of those outside the garage to take to the junk yard, maybe try and sell them as scrap metal.
Ma brings me a sandwich and a glass of Coke at lunchtime and I sit on a box and wolf it down before getting back to work.
Dad always warned me how important momentum is.
How hard it is to get back into something once you take a break.
I push out thoughts of him in here, fixing up cars before he got sick, and carry on with my work.
But I can’t help it. Being in here, surrounding by all this stuff. It has him all over it.
I force myself to focus. It’s a task. These are just things. They have no real importance. They’re in the way of me fixing the sink, that’s all.
I finally find the toolbox, hiding behind another stack of damp cardboard boxes.
I recognize the dark blue color right away.
Crouching down, I wipe the dust and grime off it and something catches in my chest at the familiar writing in black Sharpie.
My breathing is ragged, I can hear it in my ears, along with a rush, like the ocean, pouring in.
This is my writing. I did it when I was about six years old. Helping Dad fix something around the house. Looking up at him like he was the fucking moon and stars. It says:
Evan and Dad.
That’s it. Evan and Dad. Just two words. Fuck.
I have to sit down. My hand rests on the toolbox, like it’s gonna disappear if I let go.
Everything forces its way to the surface.
Every scrap I’ve been holding back behind some invisible wall.
It all comes crashing down at once. Every memory I’ve ever had of my dad seems to seep out.
Him teaching me and Nate to ride our bikes on this very street.
How he’d dive on the ground so we fell on him instead of the hard concrete, to stop us from hurting ourselves.
How he took us to the bike store as a reward and bought us any bell we wanted.
I chose Mickey Mouse and Nate chose Ninja Turtles.
I remember sitting on his shoulders at the Fourth of July firework display in the park.
His soft hair under my hands, the smell of Marlboros on his fingers.
The way I’d sleep in his flannel shirts when he was away.
The way he’d make a beeline for me when he came home from work and sweep me up in his arms. How I’d follow him around and how he didn’t mind.
I’d sit in the passenger seat of his work van and play with the stereo with the broken dials.
Sometimes I’d just sit out in the van on the driveway and pretend I was him, on my way to work.
I’d see him peek out of the window every now and then and smile.
He was my world and I had to watch him slowly disappear before he finally left us forever.
I was too scared to be there most of the time.
It hurt to see a faded version of him, but he never made me feel bad about it.
And now I’ve let him down. I’ve failed him.
He told me it was my job to take care of my ma and Stacie, and I’ve failed in the last thing he asked me to do for him.
Nathan
When calling doesn’t work, I take the initiative to go over there and talk to Evan face to face. Maybe I’ll have to start over? Build up from Go back to your frat bros, Nate, to You can come in until Ma gets home.
It felt weird to ask Ben to drive me to my old neighborhood, but when he asked where I was going, he insisted on taking me.
When he pulls up outside Evan’s house, the garage is open and Old Tom is looking through the blinds next door. And crouched in a ball in the open garage, surrounded by piles of boxes and old car parts, is Evan.
I know something’s wrong straight away. Something about the way he’s balled up like that.
“Is that Evan?” Ben asks.
“You can go back to the house, if you want.”
“Are you sure? I can wait. If you guys need a ride somewhere.…”
I squeeze his shoulder and he trails off. “Thank you, but I can take it from here.”
I get out of the car, and when I get closer, I see Evan’s got his hand on something. Closer still, I recognize it as his dad’s blue toolbox. We used to play in it as kids. Used to watch his dad fixing things around the house and pretend to be him. His dad let him draw on it with crayons. A sharpie.
I crouch down beside him. If he’s crying, he’s doing it quietly.
“Ev?”
His shoulders shake a little. I put my hand between his shoulder-blades and spread my fingers. He’s cold.
“How long have you been out here?”
He doesn’t answer.
I press my forehead to the side of his head and hear him sniffle while I rub his back. “I’m here.”
He starts crying, his shoulders shaking. The sound destroys me. I would do anything to never hear Evan cry again. Anything to take his pain away.
When he pulls his arm away, his face is covered in tears, his eyes red and his cheeks blotchy.
His voice is raw when he says, “I miss my dad.”
It’s like a gut punch. I can hear the pure emotion in it. The pain.
“I know. I miss him, too.” My stomach swoops uncomfortably.
I’ve been pushing out how much I miss Joe, the grief I haven’t felt the right to feel.
But seeing Evan curled up and in pain like that, I realize more than ever that I understand.
Years may have passed, but we’re still connected by so many things.
There were threads between us that were always going to be impossible to break.
He looks at me. At first, it’s like he can’t see me. Like he’s lost in his own world of grief. But then his eyes focus and he sees me, really sees me.
“I know you do. I’m sorry, Nate.”
He rests his head against mine and I put my arms around him, letting him cry. Soothing him as best I can.
“I was a coward.”
“What? No, you weren’t.”
He nods. “I was scared to see him like that in the end, I stayed away. He probably thought I didn’t care.”
“No way. Your dad knew how much you loved him.”
He sniffles and wipes his face with the back of a grimy arm.
“I never said goodbye, you know?” He looks at me with such pain in his eyes, every instinct tells me to look away, but I force myself to hold his gaze. “I knew he was dying, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“He understood, Ev.”
“I know. That makes it worse. I should have said goodbye. I wish.…”
He trails off. I rub his back.
“I should have said goodbye to my dad.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that would make the slightest bit of difference. So I just say what I do know.
“I’m not gonna tell you it’ll get better, because I don’t know that. But I am here. And so is your mom, and Stacie, and your dad was loved, and that’s all that matters.”
He puts his forehead on mine and I keep looking in his eyes while I wipe his tears away with my thumb.
I hear a car pull up. Evan must hear it too, but he doesn’t move, so neither do I.
Someone clears their throat. When they speak, I recognize Theresa’s voice. “Everything okay in here?”
“Yeah,” Evan says without taking his eyes off me.
She pauses. She’s hesitant when she speaks again, unsure. “Okay, well … come in for dinner when you’re ready. It’s cold out here.”
Evan smiles a little. “Thank you,” he whispers to me as his mom heads into the house.
“What for?”
“Being here.”
“Of course I’m here. It’s where I belong.”
When we go inside, Theresa’s setting up the table in the kitchen and the smell of pizza floats from the oven.
She looks up uncertainly at Evan, then me. “Everything okay?”
Even’s eyes and nose are red from crying. I expect him to bristle. To push her away. Pretend he didn’t break down.
Instead, he steps around me and puts his arms around her. She squeezes him so tightly her knuckles turn white as she grips his shirt. He clears his throat after a minute and she rubs his back before they break away.
“I’m okay, Ma. You okay?”
She wipes her face. “I’m good. Pizza’s almost ready.”
“Good, I’m starving.”
Theresa looks past Evan, giving me a grateful smile.
We’re quiet as we sit down to eat. Evan chewing cautiously, though he’d told his mom he was starving. I know he’s just trying to make her feel better. Stop her from worrying.
“I found the toolbox.”
She looks up. “Oh? Ev, don’t worry about the sink, we’ll-”
“I’ll fix it. Nate’ll help. Right, Nate?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, of course.”
“It was a shit hole in there,” Evan says. “Found all kinds of stuff we should throw out. Decapitated Barbies mostly.”
Theresa laughs. “I wasn’t sure if Stacie would want them or not.”
“No one wants that, Ma.” Evan grins and she visibly relaxes a little.
He goes quiet, running his crust over some tomato sauce on the plate. “Ma, what did Dad think about people being gay?”
As he asks the question, he keeps looking at the plate, squishing the crust harder against it.
I watch her, watching him so intensely I think she’s going to burn a hole in the side of his face. “Your father wasn’t homophobic,” she says, her voice somehow both gentle and rock solid. “He wouldn’t have stood for that shit.”
He swallows. She reaches over, puts her hand on one of his.
“Wanna know something else?”
“Hm?”
“Your father loved you. More than anything. And he would be so proud of you, Evan.”
She turns her gaze on me and I look down. “Both of you.”
Evan looks up, nostrils flaring, defiance in his eyes. “I can’t apply for that course. I lied to you.” His jaw is clenched.
“Why not?”
“I got a disciplinary at work, because of the fight.”
“That’s not fair!” Theresa takes the words right out of my mouth.
“Evan, we can fight this,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Bob said he won’t let me lose my job. He thinks I should give the guys who jumped us up to the cops.”
“You should,” Theresa says.
Evan shakes his head. “They know where we live.”
“So what?”
“They’ll terrorize you and Stace. No, Ma, you won’t convince me to do that.”
“So what? They just get away with it?”
“If I give them up, they’ll get community service, maybe a little jail time. Then they’ll be out there, doing it again. This time, it’ll be you and Stacie. I promised Dad I’d look out for you both.”
“I’ll give them up.”
They both look at me.
“I went to school with them, too. I know their names. And it’s me who got injured. I could even threaten to sue them, scare them off coming after you guys. Let me use Bryce’s connections for something good for once.”
Theresa smiles. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I think you should stay out of it.”
“Evan!”
“No Ma, I won’t let Nate get hurt again. No fucking way.”
I soften. He keeps his eyes on me.
I put my hand on the table, heart pounding in my ears as I wait to see if he’ll take it in front of his mom. He does.
“You don’t have to take care of everyone all the time, Ev. It’s okay sometimes to let people take care of you.”
He drops his gaze, looks down at our hands clasped on the table.
“Nate’s right.” Theresa says. She leans closer and plants a kiss on top of my head as she stands.
“Make sure you two get some sleep. I’ll see you both in the morning.”
We crawl into bed, both too exhausted to do anything but sleep. I have classes in the morning and Evan has work. There’s so much to unpack, but I know he’s fragile right now. We need to take everything one step at a time.