Chapter 9
REED
Erie, Pennsylvania
Age Six
Reed Aldridge woke like he did most mornings—to the sound of his parents fighting.
“You have to be kidding me, Jack! It happened again? Again?”
His mom’s voice shot into his room like a grenade. Reed sat up with a gasp, unsure if he’d actually heard her or if he’d been dreaming.
“After one month? A single, goddamn month? You are so fucking pathetic!”
Nope. Not dreaming. Real.
Something made of glass exploded down the hall.
He plugged both fingers in his ears and hummed to himself in an attempt to drown out the sounds coming from the other side of the wall.
Bad sounds. Scary sounds. Sounds he hoped would stop if he gave them a few minutes.
They sometimes did if he waited long enough.
His mom shrieked.
His dad roared.
Something thudded against the floor. Another loud crash followed. The fights weren’t always this bad, but they were always there. And even when they weren’t, one could break out at any time. It felt like living in the middle of a storm.
When it came to his parents, Reed had become an expert at reading their weather.
Like all the times his dad slumped through the door after work looking wrung out and went straight for the beer.
Reed knew better than to run to him for a hug on those days because he’d just be told to get out of the way.
It was better to leave him alone. Or the times when his mom spent the day muttering to herself as she cleaned the house, talking about how dirty everything was.
Those were bad days to ask for a cookie.
His mom would tell him he didn’t deserve one since he never picked up his toys.
Those weren’t the worst days though. The worst days came when his mother didn’t speak at all.
Even Dad knew better than to bother her.
On those days, he’d come home and head straight for the porch.
He’d sit out there and set his empty beer bottles on the railing, and they’d grow by the hour.
Reed knew if his dad cleaned them up before they hit five, things might blow over.
If he didn’t, well, they were all toast.
Last night there had been seven before Reed went to bed.
But that wasn’t what worried Reed the most. Things had been bad for a while now.
Mom and Dad had ignored each other for weeks.
It seemed like all they could do was frown.
They barely spoke, and when they did, it was to complain.
Dad griped about their dinners and said all Mom did anymore was lay around and watch TV.
Mom complained about money. She said they were broke and called his dad a loser.
Reed didn’t know what she meant by that.
For the most part Reed thought his dad was great.
Not so much when he was drinking, but he loved going to the park with his dad to play catch.
And he took Reed fishing most weekends, which was fun. His mom never took him anywhere.
Reed wasn’t sure what had set his parents off this time, but he was glad to be in his room.
In here, his mom didn’t slap his dad. In here, no one yelled.
With the door shut, Reed could plug his ears and close his eyes and pretend his parents loved each other as much as he loved both of them.
In his room, he could forget he knew them at all.
But not today. Not with how bad things sounded out there.
“Be a man for once and look at me when I talk to you!”
A crazy tone had crept into his mom’s voice. She sounded like a rubber band about to snap, her pitch climbing higher and higher by the second. When she got like this, Reed knew there was only one thing that would calm her down.
Him.
Another shatter came from down the hall. A broken plate, maybe. Reed swallowed. He didn’t want to go out there—nuh-uh, no way—but he had to. The last time he’d let his parents fight like this, his dad wound up at the hospital with a forehead full of stitches. This time he might wind up dead.
You can do this, he told himself. Be brave.
That’s what his dad always told him to do when he was scared.
When they rode the Zipper at the carnival.
When Reed took his turn at the plate to bat.
When the moon ducked behind the clouds and painted his room in shadows that looked like monsters. Be brave, Reed. Be brave.
He pulled himself off of the bed and crept into the hall.
He stopped near the living room and peeked around the corner before going in.
It looked like a war zone. A lamp lay shattered on the floor.
Two side tables were overturned in a shower of glass.
The television was spider-webbed with cracks.
A trail of milk leaked down the screen, weeping white tears onto the carpet.
That scared him more than anything at all.
The television—a sixty-inch Sony—was his dad’s prized possession.
The thing he loved more than life itself.
This was so bad.
Reed turned his attention to his mom. She stood in the center of the room and barked at his dad with her face twisted into a knot.
Her lips were a hot slash of pink as she jabbed a red fingernail at him, stabbing the air in time with her words.
“You are unbelievable! Just unbelievable! How, Jack? How do you lose three jobs in a single year? For fuck’s sake, that has to be some kind of record! ”
Dad sat on the couch and stared up at her with his face full of shock—eyes wide, lips parted, forehead tight.
“What the hell happened this time?” his mom screeched. “Out with it already!”
His dad mumbled something in response, but Reed couldn’t hear it, could only stare at the pink strips of scalp shining through his thinning hair as he tilted his head forward and stared at his lap.
“What?” Reed’s mother spat. “Speak up!”
His father returned his watery red gaze to hers. “I said, it wasn’t my fault.”
His mother scoffed. “It never is. Let me guess—the bottle just shoved its way into your mouth again and forced you to take a drink.” She gazed at the three empties on the floor and then the fourth clutched in his dad’s hand. That was bad, too. He never drank in the morning.
His eyes flashed. “I wasn’t drinking!”
“That’s a first.”
“It was an accident.”
“Explain.” The way his mom said it—Ex. Plain.—in a slow growl, made it sound like she could barely squeeze the word past her teeth.
“I was backing up. There was a guy behind me. I didn’t see him. That’s it.”
Reed didn’t know much about his dad’s job except that he drove a forklift.
He complained about it every night, said it made his back hurt.
Reed didn’t understand that. How could it hurt his back?
Didn’t the forklift do all the lifting for you?
Either way, Reed knew enough to know hitting someone with it wasn’t good.
His mom set her hands on her hips. “You’re shitting me. You ran someone over?”
His dad gave her a single nod then returned his gaze to the floor.
“Unbelievable. Do you have any idea the number of strings I had to pull to get you that job? Any idea? Max was the last one. I’m all out of favors, Jack. No one’s going to hire you now. Not after this.”
Reed knew his mother was talking about Max Tavish, the fat, bald man who never seemed to stop sweating and had eyes that looked like buttons.
The only time they shined were when they looked at Reed’s mom.
It was like she was a bowl of ice cream to him—something he wanted to eat up.
Reed thought it was weird. His dad never looked at his mom like that.
He barely looked at her at all. But whatever.
Max owned the meatpacking plant where his dad worked and had given his dad a job, which made him nice.
He was also rich. Everyone in town knew that.
And that was a good thing. Reed had thought maybe he could help his dad get rich too, and then his mom could finally stop whining about money all the time.
“I’ll find something else,” his dad said.
His mom laughed—a strange sound that sounded more like a sneeze. “No, you won’t. When have you ever found a job on your own?”
“I’ll find one.”
“Who wants to hire a drunk?”
His dad shot up then, his face a deep blazing red like it had caught fire. He took a heavy step forward and shoved a finger in her face. “Call me a drunk one more time, Diane. See what happens.”
She gasped and skittered back. Reed had never seen his Dad hit his mom before.
But it looked like he might now. He even had his hand raised like he was going to.
But then Mom crouched and seized one of the empty beer bottles from the floor and raised it over her head.
“Go on and try it! See what happens!” Her arm tensed, and Reed knew right then and there she’d smack his dad with it if he didn’t do something first.
He ran out of the hall toward her. “Mama, don’t!”
She hesitated, and when she turned toward him, her face looked like a witch’s mask.
He let out a cry, the tears back. But then her face softened and Reed saw his mom again.
His beautiful mother who read him stories about fuzzy creatures with horns that welcomed adventurous children to their island.
Reed loved that version of his mother, loved the sound of her voice when she told him stories, loved her fingers ruffling his hair.
You’re the best boy, she told him when she was in a good mood.
But even in those rare moments, when he caught her smiling down at him like she was the sun and he was her only flower, he recognized the statement for what it was: A lie.
He knew he was different than the other kids his age.
The kids whose moms actually loved them and sent them to school wearing nice clothes while his always had a bunch of stains and holes.
The kids who never had dirt on their cheeks or bits of food stuck in their hair.
The same kids who looked at Reed and laughed anytime he passed by.
They knew what Reed really was: a loser. Just like his dad.
His mom sighed and knelt in front of him. “What are you doing out here, Reed?”
He couldn’t speak, not now that the tears had begun to flow.
“Go back to your room, okay?” she said in a tired tone.
Reed shook his head. “No! You’ll hurt Dad again!”
The lines in her face deepened. The empty beer bottle slipped from her hand.
She closed her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.
Lord knows I’ve tried, but I can’t.” Her eyes clicked open then, and she reached out and cupped Reed’s cheek.
The smile she gave him was the saddest thing he’d ever seen, like she was growing old before his eyes.
And then she pulled Reed into her arms and held him there for the longest time before standing and disappearing down the hall.
When she returned half an hour later, it was with a suitcase that she tugged straight through their battered screen door.
Reed never saw her again.