Chapter 36 #2
His smile dries up. “Careful, boy,” he says, and his voice is different now, meaner. “You’re not who you think you are.” He claps Seed Cap on the shoulder and nods at Belt Buckle. “Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.”
They start for the door. As he passes, Seed Cap leans in just enough for me to smell stale cigarettes on his breath.
“Hoffmans are good-for-nothings. Always have been, always will be. You ain’t nothing compared to the Richards, and it’s time you learned your place.
” He pats the bar twice like he’s blessing it and steps back.
The door swings shut behind them. The bell rings its stupid, cheerful note, and then the room stays absolutely still.
I’m not sure what my face is doing. My body feels like it’s teleported to a dozen different ages at once.
I’m eighteen and the condo door won’t open.
The key between my fingers is suddenly a piece of useless metal.
I’m nineteen, and everything I do is to prove to someone who left me behind that I’m worth something.
I’m ten, and I’m sitting in my room, listening to my parents throw cruel words at each other before the door slams, and I never see my mother again.
My hands are on the bar. My thumb has gone white where it presses against wood. The glass behind the taps throws back my reflection—fine, composed, the man in charge—as if a trick of light can keep me from splitting down the middle.
“Ben?” Charlotte’s voice is careful at my shoulder. “You want the back?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but the words don’t sound like they came from my mouth
Mark lines up their half-drunk beers and pours them into the dump sink with a clean, final motion. The sound of liquid hitting steel makes my stomach flip. Somebody at Table Six says, “What was that about?” and somebody else shushes her like they’re in church.
“Take the stick,” I say to nobody and everybody. I can’t hear my voice. The bell rings again, and I whip my head up, but it’s not them. It’s a man and a woman, walking in and laughing as they make their way to seats.
“Boss.” Charlotte is in front of me now, not touching, exactly in my eyeline. Not cornering me, but it still feels like it. “Everything all right?” she asks, very quietly. “Who were those guys?”
I inhale. The air snags in my chest like I swallowed a handful of gravel. My fingers won’t unclench. I blink and the bar doubles, edges sharp and wrong. Sound turns to cotton. The room narrows like someone is pushing the walls in on me.
I know this feeling. A panic attack, the kind I haven’t had in years. Not since I stopped trying to prove myself to people who left me behind.
The first time, I was eighteen. Standing at my door with a useless hunk of metal in my hand. It was our first trip back from campus, and Jason had just dropped me off with my backpack full of laundry and a head full of grades I couldn’t wait to hand to him like proof that I was worth something.
I remember the metal plate around the keyhole being a little loose, the way my key went in and turned, then stopped.
I remember thinking I should oil it. I remember knocking with three little raps because I didn’t want to be annoying.
I remember knocking again, harder, then calling his name through the door.
I remember the way my knocking got desperate and the way my voice cracked because, though I wanted to pretend otherwise, I was still just a kid.
Then there were footsteps in the hallway, and just a moment of relief before the door opened and an unfamiliar woman’s face appeared in the crack made by the chain.
“Can I help you?” she asked, a little short.
I told her my name, and her face was blank.
Then it cleared up, and she said, “Oh, honey,” and the way she said it told me everything I needed to know. “Greg Hoffman doesn’t live here anymore.”
“This is my house,” I said, because I couldn’t accept what I already knew. “I live here.”
“We’ve been here for months,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She asked if I had anywhere to go. She started to open the door wider, like she could scoop me off the welcome mat and into a new reality, and I… I ran.
My hands were shaking so hard I dropped my backpack and left my laundry all over the walkway like a pinata had exploded.
I made it to the corner before I sat on the curb with my head between my knees and counted everything I could see—cracks in the sidewalk, screws in the metal plate around the water meter, the pattern of holes in a storm drain—because my breath was exploding out of me in starts and bursts, and I couldn’t get enough air to fill my lungs.
Now those same hands won’t stop shaking. My tongue has gone useless in my mouth. The edges of my vision narrow, and I look around in a panic.
I turn toward the nearest exit. The door is fifty feet away.
It might as well be a mile. The kitchen is closer.
I move. It’s not walking, exactly. More like the way you steer yourself through a crowded room when you realize you’re going to be sick and you’re trying to beat your body to the bathroom.
The men’s words are still sitting in the air like fishing line I can’t see until it catches. Thief. Sham. Good-for-nothing. Not good enough compared to a Richards. Not good enough for Paige.
It’s not that I’ve never had those thoughts about myself before. But hearing them out loud. Hearing the confirmation that I’m not good enough, will never be good enough. That everyone can see past the mask I wear.
My vision wobbles. The bricks go soft around the edges and then sharpen again, like the camera can’t decide which setting to use. There’s a sound behind me—shoes, quick—and then Charlotte’s voice, low and steady. “Ben, are you all right?”
I don’t stop.
I don’t explain. I don’t apologize. I just keep going, through the kitchen, down the back hall. I hit the exit with my palm and push out into the night air.
The air hits my face, and for a split second, it’s too much and not enough. I take the steps two at a time, cut across the lot, and keep going, not toward the river, not toward the sidewalk. Not toward Paige.
Behind me, Charlotte calls my name. I don’t turn around.
I just get in my truck and slam the door.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I can’t stay here.