Chapter 42 Turn a Blind Eye
TURN A BLIND EYE
I put it off long enough. My mother had called six times and texted more than I cared to count.
I took Noah’s car and checked Craig and myself out of the hotel.
I parked in front of my childhood home. It looked smaller.
Less idyllic, more worn down. I never thought I would hate this place.
I grew up here. But then I left and saw the whole world and realized how small this place was.
“Mom?” I called, stepping into the house.
“Well, well. Look who finally decided to stop by,” my mother said, coming down the hall, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “You realize Karla knew you were in town before me? Your mother.”
“I got in late, Mom, and I had to take Noah to the funeral home. And Karla should mind her own business.” It was odd being back in my childhood home but not being a child.
“So how long are you here?” she asked.
“Few days. The funeral is set for Thursday.”
“Oh.” She looked at my bag. “Are you staying here?”
“Yep. And so is my friend Craig—”
“Craig? I thought his name was Carson?” My mother cut in.
“Craig’s a friend. And his name was Carter.” I didn’t want to do this with my mother. I didn’t even want to do it with myself. Carter hadn’t taken my calls or responded to any of my texts. He was gone. One of us just needed to officially call it.
“Was?”
“Are you at least going to invite me in and offer me some coffee, tea, or cyanide?”
“It’s your home, Evan. I didn’t think I needed to invite you in. And I don’t drink coffee anymore. I have some tea,” she said, walking into the kitchen.
“It’s not Shit Yourself Tea, is it?” I asked, following her.
“Evan,” my mother chastised me before turning on the electric kettle.
A few things had changed in the kitchen. The roosters had been replaced with flowers. The walls had been painted, and things had gotten older, including me and my mother. “You painted.”
“Yes. So are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Laura died. I would’ve thought Karla told you that.” Maybe the Parkfield Inn wasn’t that bad. How many times could kids run up and down the hall before I didn’t hear it anymore? And I didn’t have to turn the volume up on my TV since I could hear the next room’s.
“I was talking about Carter.” She poured the hot water into the mug and handed me the box of non-Shit Yourself Tea.
“He’s taking a job in California.” That was the simplest and easiest answer. It made us both blameless. It made me blameless.
“Really? And that’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. I have a practice in Minneapolis. I have clients and a life, so yes, that’s it.” I knew where this was going. It had been going this way since I was thirteen.
“That Anderson boy has nothing to do with it? I heard he was arrested.”
“That Anderson boy? You mean Tristan?” Here we go.
Everything that went wrong in my life was because of Tristan.
I could die on Mount Everest alone with no one around me, and somehow my mother would blame Tristan.
“And since we’re on the subject of Tristan, he will be staying here for a couple days. ”
“What? You’re not bringing that boy into my house. What will the neighbors think?” my mother snapped, hissing out her words.
“It’s Tristan, Mother. I don’t give a shit what the neighbors think. I’m not a child anymore. And neither is he. He is a very successful tattoo artist.”
My mother scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You call that art. You know who gets tattoos? Drug dealers and prostitutes. That’s who. Criminals and street people.”
I barked out a laugh. “Street people? What are you, a character in a Jim Henson movie? What are street people?”
“Oh, Evan, stop it. You’re always defending him. He could do no wrong in your eyes. He smoked and drank. I heard he did drugs too. Judy Aldrich said you wrote all his papers. You’re lucky Judy liked your father or she would have failed you.”
“Are you fucking serious right now? I have a master’s degree and a fucking practice. People depend on me to help them, and you are bringing up my twelfth-grade social studies teacher? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“You watch your mouth, missy.” My mother pointed to me.
“Have you learned nothing in all these years? Tristan Anderson is nothing but a screwup. He will never amount to anything, and you keep throwing your life away for him. He has a minor inconvenience, and you drop everything and run to him. Just like when you were a kid.”
“A minor inconvenience? Is that what you think this is? That his whole life has been some minor inconvenience?” I shouted at her.
Her bottom lip quivered as she looked me up and down. “Yes. That is what I think. And I am not going to let you throw your life away for him. The whole town is talking about how you attacked James Anderson.”
“This whole town? Well, where the fuck were they when James tried to kill Tristan?” I yelled at her.
They all knew. The cops knew. But they did nothing.
“James beat the shit out of Tristan just because he existed, and you left me to deal with it. I was thirteen the first time I saw Tristan beaten and bloodied. He had a black eye, a bloody nose, and two broken fingers. I dragged him up to my bathroom and held his hand while he cried. I googled how to fix broken fingers. He was fourteen!” I screamed.
She looked away from me.
“It only got worse. Bruised ribs. A broken hand. And then when I turned sixteen, I thought he was dead. I thought James had finally killed him that night Dad and I went to get him. You remember, right? Noah called, crying, begging Dad to save Tristan. When we got there, James was strangling Tristan, slamming him against the wall over and over again. Noah was eight.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” my mother said.
“Tough shit, Darcy. I had to see it. I had to watch Dad pull James off of Tristan. Watch Tristan slide down the wall, his mother screaming at him. At Dad. Tristan just sat there and closed his eyes. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.
There was blood everywhere. His nose. His mouth.
His hands. He vomited twice before Dad could get him in the car.
I thought he was going to die. He was sixteen.
He was just a kid!” I cried. “And when Dad dragged him in here and laid him on the couch, all you could do was bitch. And then you, like everyone else—like Karla, Judy, and Laura and everyone in this fucking town—let me sit with Tristan. Let me hold the bucket as he vomited blood. Let me clean the blood from his broken face. Let me count the bruises on his back, his neck. Left me to talk Noah down from a panic attack. I was too afraid to sleep that night. I sat there and counted each breath he took. All night. I prayed to every god known to man that he would wake up in the morning. I didn’t know dads could do that.
I didn’t know fathers wanted to kill their sons.
That they beat them for just breathing. I didn’t know! ”
“I was doing the best I could.”
“For yourself!” I shouted at her. For too long I let her be blameless in this.
My dad was sick by then. We didn’t know how sick until months later. He tried to stay up with me, but after a few hours, he looked at me, his eyes damp with tears. I’m sorry, Blu. I gotta rest, he said, crawling up the stairs.
“You were doing the best for yourself! If you didn’t want me running to him, you should have stopped James.
You should have been a better mother. You should have been there when I needed you.
But you weren’t. Tristan was all I had. And now you have a choice.
You either smile and bend over backwards to make sure he feels welcome, or I will never speak to you again.
Ever. And when you die, you better hope Karla and Judy have a few words to say at your funeral because it will not be me. ”
I watched my mother try and call my bluff. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. Too many years I hadn’t stood up for him. I let everyone kick him because that was what they did. I was just there to wipe his tears away.
“You have two seconds, Darcy. One—”
“Fine. He can stay. But if—”
“One—”
“Fine. Evan, have it your way, and when I am run out of town, then what?”
“I don’t care anymore. Move in with the street people.” And I left her. Someday when I was in therapy, my therapist would want me to go back and explore when the fuck the wheels fell off my life.
It would be during one of these four days.