Chapter 14 #2
“Jesus.” Casey’s voice is low, sorrowful; Will, embarrassed, jolts a little and whips his head around.
He almost forgot he was talking to someone, let alone to Casey, and he feels a little prickle of anxiety in his stomach to think of how much he’s revealed, but it fades at the expression on Casey’s face.
Casey looks sad, and fascinated, and like he means it when he says, “I’m sorry, Will.
That sounds like a…really rough way to grow up. ”
“Oh, you know,” Will says, waving a hand, unable to let this land but so grateful for it he thinks his skin will fall off if he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“It wasn’t the best, but we get on with things, right?
What else is there?” He swallows hard and then, before Casey can answer, pushes ahead, suddenly eager to be on the other side of this whole discussion.
“That’s what I did, anyway. With Brandon, that guy I met.
I got on with things. And for a while, it was good.
Fun. The first time I’d ever been with someone who wasn’t…
” Will pauses, and allows a delicate little moment to stand in for the broad sentiment “A much older sleazebag, the memory of whom should be left in the early 2000s, where it didn’t really belong in the first place, but very emphatically was even so.
” Casey inclines his head, seeming to indicate, “I, too, participated in club culture during a similar era of the human experience, and we can agree: yikes.”
Will allows himself a small, rueful smile before continuing.
“Anyhow, like I said, Brandon and I met in secret for a while, but then it got to be August, and he was going off to college in a week—Purdue, I think, though I honestly only half remember now. Anyway, he was leaving and I wasn’t going. Hadn’t enrolled anywhere.”
Casey’s brow furrows. “Wait—you didn’t go to college? But I thought—the PhD?—”
“Oh, I went to college,” Will says, shifting abruptly into the wearied tenor of the seasoned academic.
“And then grad school, and then even more grad school, and you could honestly make the argument even now that my life is still grad school , since it involves teaching and socializing with so many grad students. But all that was after I left; Bill didn’t want me to go at all, wouldn’t pay the application fees or fill out the forms. Got into a bunch of fights with my teachers about it and everything, it was a whole mess. ”
“Jesus,” Casey says again, shaking his head. “He never said.”
Will thinks, No, I bet he didn’t! quite sharply indeed, but he doesn’t say it.
It’s not Casey’s fault, especially since: “Yeah, he was like that, my dad. Everything was need-to-know with everybody, all the time. God forbid he communicate like a normal person even once; the world might have ended, don’t you know.
” Casey’s soft snort of laughter is gratifying, and it helps Will take a breath and say: “Anyway, the night I left, I had Brandon meet me here at the farm, because it was his last night and my last chance to see him and I figured it would be fine, my parents would be asleep, it was just the one time. But in the end Bill, um…caught us? In Brandon’s car?
And the position was, uh… Well. Let’s say it would have been incredibly difficult to come up with a heterosexual explanation. ”
“I see,” Casey says, and grimaces a little. “I’m a little afraid to ask how that went, but?—”
“Oh, you know,” Will says, vague now, far away.
He’s remembering it as it happened—the edge of the cornfield, the shriek of Brandon’s tires as he peeled away, the clear moonlight under the broad canopy of stars.
Everything had been so beautiful, this picturesque background like something out of a painting, set against Bill’s twisted, red face and hard eyes.
“He was angry. He wanted to know why I didn’t understand my duty to my farm, and to my family.
He said a lot of stuff about how being a man was about doing what was right instead of what you wanted, which at the time I thought was homophobia with like a weirdly religious curveball thrown in, but now I don’t know.
After what Mrs. Cardini told me—maybe that’s really what he thought , you know?
That being part of a family meant putting everything else to one side, whatever it meant to you, or however miserable it made you to let it go.
After all, that’s what he did, although personally I think he should have told my grandpa to shove it where the sun didn’t shine, but what do I know? ”
“Is that what you did, then?” Casey asks, the curiosity evident in his voice. “That night? Told Bill to shove it?”
“Oh, well.” Will pauses, and then nods. “I mean. More or less. I said it was my life, and he’d been mean to me pretty much for all of it, and why should I listen to him if he never listened to me?
And he said that I knew why, that I’d watched my grandfather die the same way he had, that I didn’t have time to go galivanting around doing whatever I pleased because he didn’t have the time to wait. ”
And for a moment Will’s eighteen again, the wind whipping his hair back away from his face, sending flecks of Bill’s scream-borne spittle hurtling towards him at punishing speeds.
He’s eighteen, and his throat is raw from yelling, and every part of him feels sliced open, on display for his furious father to see.
He’s thinking of all the years he’s spent attempting to please this man, and all the brutal, excoriating failures.
He’s crying, “So that’s it, then, huh? That’s your big plan for your only son?
I’ll just spend my whole life here, trying to doing whatever you say, and getting it wrong, and being punished for getting it wrong, and my reward for that, for never doing anything for myself, will be—what?
To take care of you while you lose it like Gramps did? ”
And Bill’s face is turning purple, and he’s screaming, “You ungrateful little—that’s what it means to be someone’s son! That’s being part of a family!”
“No!” God, Will’s replayed this in his mind so many times over the years; it shouldn’t still have such power over him. It shouldn’t still feel so fresh. He shouldn’t still be able to feel the words, “That’s being part of a tragedy ,” scraping against the back of his throat.
“Anyway, he hit me,” Will says now, in the present, to Casey.
It’s flat, matter-of-fact, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less to say.
“I mean, not—it wasn’t totally unprovoked, I said some stuff that was below the belt, for sure.
And it wasn’t like it was his best swing or anything.
He could really fight, when he wanted to; I saw him do it a few times when I was a kid, and he always said he’d get around to teaching me.
Probably if he ever had, I would have known how to duck or dodge or whatever, but.
He didn’t, so I didn’t, so he hit me. Not hard enough to do any real damage, but his class ring broke the skin, left an infection that took weeks to clear up. You can still see the scar.”
“Christ,” Casey says, his eyes wide. “Will—God. I’m so sorry.”
Will sighs, touches the little sliver of scar tissue briefly as he says, “Oh, thanks, it—I don’t know.
I’m not sure either one of us meant it to go as far as it did, and I didn’t exactly comport myself well, either.
” Grimacing, he adds, “For example, at that point, I believe I told him I’d rather be anything but a Robertson, and would be better off with no family than this one.
Which wasn’t even how I felt, not really; I was just hurt, and sad, and upset, and eighteen, and I wanted to say something that would make him feel as bad as he’d made me feel.
And, I mean, it worked, as least as far as I can tell.
After that, he said if I felt that way, I might as well leave, because I was dead to him, anyway, so. That’s what I did.”
There’s a beat. Then, his voice smooth and carefully even, Casey says, “You’re a stronger person than he was, then. Good for you.”
This wasn’t what Will was expecting to hear to such a degree that he can feel his own eyes bug out of his head; it must be entertaining to look at, because Casey cracks a smile, but not a happy one.
It slips away, though, into an unhappy little expression, when Will says, “I mean, that’s… No. He was…and I’m?—”
“Look, I spent my own time with Bill,” Casey says, his voice firm.
“And I’ve spent enough time with you, I think, to get a sense of who you are.
I’m usually pretty quick off the draw with that sort of thing; in this case, I…
let circumstances get the better of me. At first.” He gives Will a brief glance under low lashes that Will could, if he wanted to be optimistic, assume communicates certain rather carnal intentions.
Will’s never been the optimistic type, but it’s harder to reach for his usual pessimism after last night, especially when Casey adds, “Anyway, I stand by it. It takes a small person to treat a kid like that—to treat anyone like that, really—and a big one to walk away. It’s hard, you know?
To walk away.” The unhappy smile slips back onto his face, wry this time, as he adds, “I think for a lot of people, it’s easier to just live with what hurts than face the effort of trying to change it.
They’d rather do what they know, even if all they know is suffering. ”
Will groans. “I know what you mean,” he admits, a little uncomfortably.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m—I don’t know.
Seeking it out, right? Situations that make me feel—well, situations that suck for me, I guess.
Just… because it’s familiar? Comfortable?
Like, okay, a few months ago, I was dating this guy and he had this, God.
Just, listen, don’t judge me too much, but… ”