Cement Heart(75)
“Listen, at the beginning, yes… I came over here because it was something I told Mike I would do, but it quickly evolved into more. Much more.” I turned to face her on the couch, pulling one leg up in front of me. “I like being here. I like hanging with Maura and Matthew. I like hanging with you. You guys make me less lonely too.”
She turned her head toward me, blinking a couple times as she searched my face. The moonlight peeked in through a slit in the curtains, shining right on her face as her blue eyes sparkled. Her head lay back against my arm and she bit her lip like she was holding something in.
“What?” I asked, tilting my head to mirror hers.
“Why don’t you talk to your parents?”
“Oh,” I groaned. “That’s a long story that you don’t want to hear and I don’t want to tell.”
“What if I do want to hear it?” she asked softly.
I shook my head and stared down at the couch. “It’s not pretty.”
She pressed her lips together and sighed. “None of those stories ever are.”
“You’re right.” I nodded slowly. “Okay, here goes… When I was little, my life was normal. Like you, I was an only child. I don’t know exactly why, but in fourth grade, everything changed. It started with getting picked on in school. Ruthlessly. I walked through the halls and the kids bounced me around like a Ping-Pong ball, literally shoving me back and forth. Eventually, that wasn’t enough. They would take my lunch and throw it away before I could eat it or trip me in the halls.” I finally looked up at Michelle, who was staring back at me so deeply I just wanted to lay my head in her lap and stop talking. Reliving my childhood was so exhausting.
“Anyway,”—I cleared my throat—“finally I’d had enough and decided to defend myself. I started punching anyone from that group of boys who came near me, and of course, I was the one who got in trouble because they never got caught. The principal called a meeting with my parents and I was actually relieved. I had told them about the bullying many times, and I remember thinking, this is it. It’s finally going to end. My parents will give the principal a piece of their mind and all this will be over. But it wasn’t. My mom wanted to take me to a doctor who would pump my body full of pills that would calm me down, but my dad had other ideas. He thought the key to ending the bullying was to teach me to be tougher, so that’s what he set out to do.”
Michelle reached out and put her hand on mine, squeezing it as her brows pulled in tight.
“He immediately threw me into hockey so I could get my ass kicked and really learn how to fight, but the real fighting started after I got home. If he sensed I was about to cry, over any little thing, he would stand in front of me, inches from my face, and scream at me until I pulled it together. Or he’d make me do three hundred push-ups in one night, until I couldn’t even lift my arms to brush my teeth before bed. This one time, I remember getting into a fight at school, and they sent a note home saying that I would have a twenty-minute detention the next day. That night, he made me sit in the bathtub full of ice and freezing water. Every time I complained or cried, he would pour more freezing water over my head and add another minute to the timer. He never actually hit me or anything like that, but I almost wish that he had. The bruises would have gone away, but the shit I had to put up with has lasted so much longer.”
I took a deep breath and laced my fingers together in an attempt to stop my hands from trembling. “Anyway, thankfully, it turned out I was good at hockey and had my pick of colleges. I left home the summer after my senior year of high school and never looked back. Instead of going home during summers, I would stay with friends or live on campus. I was drafted straight out of college, and I’ve been on my own ever since.”
“Where was your mom during all this?”
An awkward laugh escaped me. “Sitting in the living room watching Wheel of Fortune.”
Michelle closed her eyes and shook her head as two tears ran down her cheek. “So instead of protecting you from the bullies—”
“My father became the ultimate bully,” I finished her sentence.
“I think about Matthew and someone doing that to him,” she stuttered through a sob, “and I think I would kill them with my own bare hands.”
“That’s how it should be,” I said, “but not all parents come with that built-in protective gene, I guess.”
“Have they ever tried to contact you?”
“Oh, yeah. When I got drafted, it was all over the news, especially in my hometown. They called, wrote to me, even showed up at my first apartment once. The last thing I remember saying to my father was that I was bigger and could fight a lot better than when I was twelve, so he needed to get the fuck away from me fast. My mom stood next to him, sobbing into a tissue.”