8. Pope
Chapter 8
Pope
I’ll tell you my secrets when you start telling me yours.
Like it’s so easy. Like my secrets wouldn’t ruin everything. Like I haven’t spent the past decade desperately clinging to them for a damn good reason.
Shaking my head, I exit out of the message thread like I do every time I find myself staring at those words. Sometimes looking at them makes me furious. Sometimes they make me want to laugh. Sometimes I want to goddamn cry.
A new text comes in, this one from my dad. My stomach twists in a whole new way.
The relationship between my dad and I is complicated. I love him more than anyone else in the world. I look up to him. I respect him. I share his sense of humor and his taste in 80s movies. He taught me how to skate and drive and charm the pants off anyone I’d like. He worked extra shifts to cover the costs of my hockey gear and volunteered to get us discounted league fees and sold his collection of autographed Red Sox cards, even his Reggie Smith and Roger Clemens, to be able to afford me playing in the juniors. He never once told me I couldn’t reach the NAPH if I set my mind to it, and never once made me feel like I would let him down if my dream changed to something else either. When I got signed to the Devils, he was there by my side with the biggest grin and tears in his eyes.
I’ve never doubted that my dad loves me.
The thing is, the weight of that love was so damn heavy growing up—still is, actually—that I sometimes worry I’ll suffocate beneath it.
I remember my mom, but only in flashes, in blurry moments and warmth in my chest, in the scent of perfume I sometimes catch whiffs of in a store, in the taste of a particularly gooey chocolate chip cookie, in the words, “The night Max wore his wolf suit.”
I don’t remember losing her. I don’t remember the moment, or the day, or the weeks after. I’m not sure what my child-self thought happened. I’m not sure if I ever even asked. Someone must have told me something, logically, but whatever that was, I don’t remember it. There are just memories of Mom, then memories without her.
My dad remarried Grace when I was eight. I remember the first time I called her mom. It was my ninth birthday party—Red Sox themed, of course. All of the kids had just left the party and I was nearly delirious from sugar and presents and happiness. I had wrapped my arms around her and squealed, “Thank you, Mom!” before turning to my dad and doing the same for him. “Best birthday ever!” I had informed them both before running off to play with my new toys.
It was only when I got into the next room that I realized what I had done.
I wasn’t sure if I had messed up, if it was okay for me to do that, if I had ruined my chances of ever having a mom again. Grace was kind, though, and so was dad, so I thought it’d be safe to go back and ask. They’d tell me if she could be my mom or not and that’d be that, right? Except when I reached the spot just around the corner from the kitchen, I heard my dad talking. He sounded funny. When I peered into the room, I realized why—he was crying, his hand resting on Grace’s as they sat facing each other at the kitchen table.
“I’m happy,” he told her, even as tears ran down his cheeks. I was so confused. How could someone be happy if they’re crying? “I think it just scares me that he could lose you, too. That we both could.”
“Oh, darling,” Grace had said. She got up and sat in my dad’s lap, putting her arms around his neck. I thought that was silly. She was way too big for that kind of thing. Even I was getting too big to be in his lap. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“She promised that too,” he told her. “She had me so sure. I used to hold my breath every time I walked into the house, bracing myself to find her…” He shook his head. “But she promised it was better. I believed her. And then she…”
I didn’t know who he was talking about or what she had done. I was confused. I still thought Grace looked too big to be on my dad’s lap. I also thought maybe it’d be fun to try to squish myself onto Grace’s lap so we could be like one big family-pile.
“What if Ethan is like her?” my dad continued. His breathing was getting all funny, like when he went for his morning runs or chased me around on the pond with both of us on our skates. “What if one day I come home and find him…?”
My dad started crying really hard then, putting his face in Grace’s neck. I hadn’t liked that one bit. I had left before they could find out I was spying, going to my room. I didn’t feel like playing with my new toys anymore. I just sat there for a really long time, thinking.
Grace tucked me into bed that night. She said Dad wasn’t feeling very good. She seemed sad, so I made a joke about him eating too much sugar and she smiled a real smile, and even though I still felt pretty awful inside, I was glad I had helped her feel better. I remember thinking I could handle feeling bad as long as she and Dad were happy.
That conversation was like an itch in my brain for years, always coming back at the weirdest times, always making just a little more sense with the context I had gained since the last visit to the memory. It was when I was thirteen that I put it all together. My dad had just brought me for my first sports physical as a teenager and the doctor had asked about my family history of mental health. He had said, “We lost his mother to depression,” and the doctor had said he was sorry for our loss.
The doctor asked me a few questions after that, explaining that they would help him decide if I had a hard time with depression too. He asked questions about how I slept and how I ate and how I felt. My dad did that thing where he spun his wedding ring around his finger over and over. He sometimes did that so badly when he was worried that he’d make the skin raw. I could tell he didn’t want me to struggle with depression, and I didn’t really anyway—not enough to make much of a difference. Plus, TV shows made it pretty clear being a teenager sucked for everyone, so I figured it was safe to blame everything on that. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t like my mom. I was just a teenager.
On the drive home, my dad had pulled over at our favorite ice cream shop and gotten me a triple scoop cone. “Don’t tell Mom,” he had warned. I had agreed easily. Even then, I was excellent at keeping secrets.
I was halfway through my cone when he started talking.
He told me it was time for me to know more about my mom. To know things that I used to be too young to know. I remember the feeling of my heart in my throat, making it nearly impossible to swallow the ice cream. I remember feeling it drip down the cone and onto my fingers as he talked about how she had depression since she was young. He explained that mental health was treated differently back then. He talked about medications and therapy and something called postpartum that made everything so much worse. He stopped and made sure I knew it wasn’t my fault, and I didn’t really understand why he thought it would be in the first place so it made me uncomfortable that he felt like he had to point it out.
“I thought she was okay,” he told me, tears in his eyes. My ice cream was dripping down into my sleeve at that point. It felt sticky and wrong, but I was physically incapable of moving to clean it up. I just stared at him and waited, my memory from all those years ago making perfect sense. “That’s the thing with depression, though. Someone who is depressed can be very good at hiding it. You can never know for sure that they’re really alright. Your mom… wasn’t alright. And she—well she—”
I was thirteen and I had read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” for English class . I knew what he wasn’t saying. “She killed herself.”
He had looked like he’d been punched. “Yes, son. But it wasn’t because she didn’t love us, okay? It was just—it was her mind. Something was wrong with her mind and it—it made her—”
“It’s okay,” I told him, even though it wasn’t. I didn’t want to hear him explain it any more. I didn’t want to think about it. I felt itchy inside. Scared. That memory kept replaying in my mind, reminding me that he said he came home and found her. Reminding me of how he had cried when he worried I’d be like her. I didn’t want him to worry like that. I didn’t want him ever holding his breath because of me. “Dad?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Does your brain have depression?”
His expression did this weird wavering thing, like he was going to cry. “No, buddy. My brain doesn’t.”
“Then I must have yours,” I told him. I said it with confidence. I wanted him to believe it. I wanted to believe it. And there was a very good chance it should have been believed anyway. I was a teenager. Teenagers’ lives sucked. I wouldn’t know if my brain was fucked up like my mom’s until I was an adult anyway, so why worry, right?
My dad had looked so fucking relieved, too. He had smiled so wide when I told him I had his brain instead of hers. He said he was so glad for me and to tell him if that ever changed. He helped me clean up and then bought me a whole other ice cream because mine had melted. He kept shooting me smiles at every stop sign and red light.
Every year, when I had that sports physical, I gave the same answers. Every year, my dad grinned and hugged me and looked so relieved I could barely stand it.
The first time I thought to myself, “Yeah, alright, I see where my first mom was coming from,” I was sixteen.
I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want my dad to ever hold his breath for me.
He never had to find out. As long as I never hurt myself like she did and I kept my mouth shut, he’d never have to know his biggest fear had come true.
So, I love my dad. I get along great with my dad. I laugh with my dad and tell my dad all the gossip of whatever team I’m on and go home to visit him whenever I can so we can watch 80s movies and drive my mom nuts together. But that weight he unknowingly placed on me all those years ago? That weight sometimes makes it a little hard to even think about him. It makes it a little hard not to resent him. It makes it a little hard not to tell him.
But I owe him a call and it’s better to do it on a day where I’m feeling decent—which I am—so I send him the request for a video chat and wait with a grin already pasted on my face. He’ll never know it’s fake. He’ll never know my entire life is a carefully constructed lie for him.
No one will ever fucking know.
I make it three days without having to interact with Hayden at all. I still feel his eyes on me, but he stays true to his word by leaving me alone. I make it a point to keep my smile in place and mess around with the guys whenever I feel him lurking, not wanting to give him any ammo against me. I chug energy drinks before each practice, refusing to let him catch on to my lack of sleep and motivation to be a functioning human being. I even manage to keep my anger in check during our next game, not participating in a single fight, even when an asshole slashes my wrist with a stick in the third period and gets away with it.
The thing that I’m starting to notice, however, is that Hayden is great at finding you when you’re weak. That’s why I shouldn’t be surprised when he appears in the aisle of the bus we’re taking back to our home arena, trapping me in place as I fight the impending crash that always follows a game fueled by energy drinks and sheer force of will. His eyebrows knit together as he looks me over, making his concern clear.
I sigh without meaning to. Here we go.
“That shot in the third was nasty. I was expecting to see you after the game.”
I manage to cut off the words it’s fine just before they leave me, knowing how he feels about them now.
“It’s not too bad.” I push my sleeve up to expose my wrist. I already know him well enough to know he’s not going to take my word for it. The fucker will want to see for himself.
“Mm.” He purses his lips before gingerly wrapping his long fingers around my arm, just above where the skin is angry and swollen. His thumb absentmindedly strokes the mole I have there. I feel it everywhere—even on my fucking insides. Goosebumps rise along my skin. It’s fucking weird. Maybe I am hurt after all? Or maybe it’s the incoming crash? I do always feel really jittery if I fight those off for too long.
My face must give me away because he asks, “Does that hurt?”
It… something .
“No.” When he just raises an unimpressed eyebrow, I elaborate. “I mean, the wrist is wicked sore. But the—the touch there doesn’t hurt.”
“Can you make a fist for me?” I curl my fingers inward, pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t hurt any worse than before. He makes a thoughtful sound. “And you’re sure it’s more sore than painful?”
I know he shouldn’t be pushing the issue this hard. I’ve seen him with other players. He asks them a question or two, takes their word for it when they give him their answers, and moves on. I shove the thought away. It makes me feel too itchy, and I don’t want to fight with him on the bus in front of Coach and the guys.
He’s still holding my arm.
That makes me feel itchy too.
The bus driver calls out, “Get in your seats, we’re about to move!”
Hayden grimaces. He quickly digs in the bag over his shoulder until he finds an instant ice pack. He breaks and shakes it before handing it over. “You keep that on for the next twenty minutes, okay?”
I force a smirk, wanting to get him to stop with that whole worried thing he’s got going. Joking usually helps with everyone else, so I give it a try. “Hey man, as long as you don’t make me drink that nasty ass cherry juice, I’m game.”
He runs his tongue along his bottom lip before giving me a smirk of his own. The lip shines despite the low light of the bus. For some reason that I can’t even begin to understand, I can’t look away from it.
“No cherry juice tonight, but no promises for the future.”
“Hayden!” Coach barks from his seat a few ahead of mine, right behind the driver. “Get moving.”
Hayden eyes the ice pack I’m now holding against my wrist, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. I find that more fascinating than the shiny spit. Clearly, I’m fucking losing it and really need to give into my crash. “Keep that ice on, okay?”
I can’t talk for some reason, so I just nod.
It’s only when he turns away, heading back to his seat, that I stop looking at the lip—and only because I can’t see it anymore. I startle when Jules nudges me with his elbow, having forgotten he was between me and the window. I blink at him, trying to get my mind to focus. He’s chewing on a Twizzler, the candy hanging loosely from the corner of his mouth. He’s offering me one, I realize. I shake my head.
“You good man?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I stick my earbuds in and pull up a relaxing playlist before checking to make sure the ice pack is where it should be. I don’t want to give Hayden a reason to come talk to me again. Especially not when I’m all fucked up inside at the moment. I can’t hear myself as I lie for Jules’s sake, “I’m fine.”