31 #3
It felt like a long time before Jem answered, and his voice was stiff. “He was a big part of your life. You’re always going to have feelings for him.”
“What? No.” Tean sat up a little straighter and turned to Jem. “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t have feelings for Ammon. At all. In any sense.”
Jem nodded. But the look in his eyes was skeptical.
“I want it to be simple,” Tean said. “I want to hate him. I want him to be this monster. You should have seen me with my dad; he was trying to explain how hard Ammon had it growing up, how awful his dad was to him, and it was like—it was like I wasn’t rational anymore.
That’s what we started fighting about, actually.
I don’t want him to have had a hard life.
I don’t want to feel sorry for him. I just want him to be this—this asshole who’s the worst human being on the planet, and that’s all I want to feel. ”
Jem’s face didn’t change.
“This is where you’re allowed to say something bad about Ammon,” Tean said, trying to make his voice light.
“He’s an ass nugget,” Jem said. “He’s selfish. He’s abusive. He’s a giant turd in the middle of the sidewalk, the kind you accidentally step in, and then he’s stuck to you forever.”
“Exactly,” Tean said.
He opened and closed his hands around the tissues. They were soft, and they creased easily in the pressure of his grip.
Jem was the one who spoke next. “So, what? It’s not his fault? Someone did something bad to him, and that’s why he did what he did?”
Tean shook his head.
“So, what?” Jem asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“You want to talk to him.”
“No.”
“You think you’re supposed to forgive him.”
“Maybe. Eventually. If I want to. But that’s about me, Jem. Not about him. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
The edge that had been half-hidden in Jem’s voice rose to the surface now. “Then what are we talking about?” Then Jem sank back down and muttered, “Sorry.”
Tean settled himself on the sofa. He set the tissue aside. And then he took Jem’s hands in his. “Hey.”
Jem shook his head.
“Hey,” Tean said again.
After a pair of breaths, Jem looked up.
“I love you,” Tean said. “I want to spend my life with you.”
Jem cut his eyes away. When they came back to Tean, they were wet. “I love you too.”
“I’m happy for Daniel. And I’m sad for Ammon.
And I’m proud of him, because I think it took a lot for him to give Daniel that.
And I hate Ammon. And that’s a lot for me, all those feelings, and that’s why I cried.
But it has nothing to do with how I feel about you.
” He tried to laugh, but it came out soft and mangled.
“If anything, it has to do with how I feel about my dad.”
Eyebrows arched, Jem said, “Well, now you have to tell me what that means.”
Outside on the street, a pair of twentysomething women pushed strollers along the sidewalk, both of them fixated on their phones. One of them showed the other something, and the other leaned in for a better look, pointing. And then they were gone.
“I don’t know.” Tean’s mouth quirked. “I keep saying that. But it’s true. I feel like the last year has made me realize I don’t know anything.” His chest was tight, and he had to sit for a minute in silence. “I stopped seeing Hudson.”
Jem didn’t say anything.
“You already knew.”
“I mean, I kind of figured.”
Tean let out a slow breath. “I stopped because—because it was too much. Because it’s still so hard, and I’m tired of hurting like this, and I’m tired of dreading every session, and I’m tired of having to—to face all this shit that I don’t want to deal with.
Every time I think I’m there, it’s something else.
Some new layer. Some part of myself I’ve avoided dealing with or thinking about.
And I’m just so tired of it.” He shook his head.
“That’s not what I wanted to say. We were talking about my dad, and I was thinking—” But he stopped again.
“I’ve been angry at my dad for so long. For a lot of things.
For hurting me, I guess. And because I still wanted him to be the father I wish I had.
” He stopped again, trying to put the pieces in order.
“He’s been unbearable the last few days, everything with his dad.
My grandfather was not a kind man. Maybe not a bad one, but hard.
When I was young, he wasn’t patient with me because I was different.
I didn’t play sports. I didn’t want to hunt.
I was too soft-hearted about animals. And so, having to sit and hear my dad lionize him, like his father was the kind of man they didn’t make anymore—it was difficult.
In part because everything my dad praised about his father was, for me, the reason for all the ways my father had fallen short. ”
“What happened?” Jem asked.
“He found your vow book while I was—” Tean almost said at Amy’s, but he changed it to “—out, and when I came back, he was upset. Why hadn’t I invited him to the wedding?
Why was I trying to hurt him? And I was already angry about the conversation we’d had, everything he’d said about Ammon.
And I was…dysregulated. Not in a good state of mind for that conversation. ”
“And you lost your shit on him.”
Tean felt the smile flare on his face and then burn out. “Something like that. I told him to get out.”
Something changed in Jem’s face, but all he did was nod.
“And then he came back. After you and I—after you left. He found me at the park. And we talked. And he told me he was sorry, which I think is the first time in my life he’s ever said those words to me.
And he told me how angry he was at his father.
And how he’d always felt like his father treated him poorly compared to his brother.
Which, if I look back, is probably true.
And he told me he never wanted his own children to feel like they weren’t loved.
” Tean’s eyes were hot again, but he was still holding Jem’s hands, so he wiped his cheek on his shoulder.
He laughed, and this time it was a full sound, albeit wet. “It was so fucking weird.”
“Swear jar,” Jem whispered. But his hands tightened around Tean like he was going to keep him from flying away.
“I don’t know what to feel now. I’m sorry he felt that way his whole life. I had no idea he had so much resentment and hurt. It’s—it’s strange, seeing him like this. It was so much easier when I could tell myself he was just a self-absorbed, small-minded man.”
“To be fair,” Jem said, “he still is. I mean, he’s an absolute dick to you sometimes.”
“Yes, he is.” Tean’s head felt like it was full of smoke, and when he tried to think ahead, he found nothing.
But he said anyway, “You asked me if it meant I was going to forgive him. Ammon. But I guess that’s what I have to decide about my dad, too.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do.
I understand him, though. More than I used to.
And it’s hard not to say, when I look at him now, that a lot of what I see—a man whose life has been, by his own measure, a string of failures, who has never lived up to his own code, who is a disappointment to himself—has to do with how he was raised. ”
“Evil is just a chain of consequences.”
“Well, it’s one thing to say that. It’s a lot more difficult to believe it. I kind of liked being able to demonize people and not give a damn about what might have made them the way they are.”
“Oh please.”
And for some reason, that made Tean laugh.
“You’re so kind and loving and gentle,” Jem said. “This shit is like candy to you. You’re going to be ten times more compassionate now. It’s going to be out of control.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tean said. He hesitated.
But then he said, “You know what really frustrates me, though? I spent so long telling myself the universe was meaningless, and any meaning we had to create for ourselves, and we did it by deciding who and what we wanted to be—creating the meaning that we wanted to see in our lives. And it turns out, that’s kind of bullshit too. ”
“You’re really filling up that swear jar today.”
“People aren’t rational. Not always. Not in every way.
Stuff happens to us. We get hurt. We carry those wounds around with us.
Yeah, we still have to make choices. But there are parts of us that aren’t rational.
That we can’t even access sometimes, or if we can, we can’t control.
It’s all so much more complicated.” He sagged. “Why is everything so complicated?”
Something changed in Jem’s face again. The color, maybe—he looked washed out, and the shadows under his eyes were darker.
He made a sound that was an attempt at a laugh, and then in a scratchy voice, he said, “Huh. So, funny story about that.” And then he stopped.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about this, and then you went ahead and dropped that in my lap.
” He laughed again and craned his head away. “So, uh, thanks.”
When more didn’t come, Tean asked, “What do you want to talk about?”
Struggle tightened Jem’s face. And then he pulled his hands away and got to his feet. “So.” He took a few steps toward the kitchen and turned back. “Things have been kind of…weird for me lately.”
Tean nodded slowly.
“It started at Rainbow House, when I saw him.” Jem licked his lips.
“Wendell. It was like I wasn’t even thinking anymore.
I just—I just jumped him. And we came home, and it was okay, because I had just been surprised, and I hadn’t thought about him in years.
And that was it. The end. It was over.” He scratched his beard.
He tried to smile. When he started to talk, his voice sounded like it was about to break. “And then I did something stupid.”
Tean listened as Jem told him about finding Wendell’s house. About breaking in. About the night at Rainbow House when Jem had seen him on the sidewalk, broken into his car, and taken the garage door opener. About two nights before, when Jem had gone to Wendell’s house.