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  Contents

  Prologue

  Unripe Fruit

  A Bastard in the Family

  That Piece of Shit Your Father

  Then and Now

  Boys’ Home

  Lessons

  Bullies

  Mexico

  The House

  One Step Closer

  Some of the Brothers

  Hostages

  The Edge

  Calling

  Year-Rounders

  Los Angeles

  Miss A and the Silver Fox

  Testimony of Father, Son, and the First of Many

  The Trailer Crew, as Explained at a Dinner Party

  The Eldorado

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my family, and the people I knew and loved when I was younger; I wish I could tell the story better.

  Prologue

  WE were never alone in the House. That’s the first thing. Never. There was always some brother around, if not a few, like on the back slab, or front porch, or they were about to come running, someone was, some guy, wanting to talk. Talking meant group. We were always in group. Even our daily things. Like we didn’t eat dinner; we went to Dinner Group. And, afterward, we didn’t clean; we performed Kitchen Clean-up Group. Having a feeling? Want to confront someone? You called group. We were always confronting someone. Half the time, we barely made it to the Coke machine before another group got called. Showering felt off, using the bathroom, getting dressed. All of it strange, like you were doing something wrong, and you had to be quick about it, like any moment someone would burst through the door, calling group. The second thing is, we cleaned a lot. All the time. But at least cleaning, like down-on-your-knees cleaning, like wiping the base of a toilet, you were alone. Twice, maybe three times, I found myself being the only brother on Property. That’s it. Middle of the afternoon, too. The first time, I didn’t even think about it, just went straight to my room, lay down in bed, and played with myself. Every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday night we had scheduled groups. Scheduled meant Staff had prepared, which meant watch out. They were events. Dudes showered before them. They brushed their teeth. We could not miss these groups for anything. Not work, not sickness, not a near-death experience. Miss one and that’s it, your ass is gone. And what about the store? Or watching TV? Or shooting hoops? Most of the time, we could only do these things if we were in group. Like on Flats or Stricts, everything was done in group. Now, we weren’t even alone when we showered. There’d be ten guys outside the bathroom door. And try to beat off in that environment. Try rubbing one out with ten dudes moaning and slapping their cheeks. I promise you this: it got done. Anything, short of using, was okay, if we did it in group. And when something went wrong, as something often did, say someone stole something, or shot crystal, or banged a girl, or had admitted knowing of some other brother who had, but didn’t want to rat, we had Standing Honesty Group, where we couldn’t sit, talk, or move until that dude ratted or someone else fessed up. Didn’t matter he didn’t want to talk. We stood in silence until he either spoke or walked. Sometimes Staff came in during these groups carrying the vials, and we’d wait until our names got called. Once our names got called, we peed. Then dudes for sure left. Even before the results came back. But some guys who pissed dirty stayed. These dudes said amazing things when Staff showed them their labs. Hell, no; it was poppy seeds, or they got roofied, or rolled, or drank spiked ice tea, a damn needle fell from the sky. Or they appealed to our humanity. Their mom died. Their baby got sick. They offered convoluted tales starring their shitty job, dickhead boss, the damn heat, the endless rain, the humidity, a flat tire on their bike, or the motherfucker of a freight train that held them up on the wrong side of the tracks, you get the idea. It didn’t take long to hear it all. Mostly, we clutched our nuts. Or laughed. Straight laughed. In their face. Complete with joking groans: Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink! Not because nothing fazed us, just we’d gotten used to it, that’s all. And besides, it was funny—we could relate to the thinking behind it, how we’ll convince ourselves any idea is a good one. But sometimes a guy couldn’t pee. He was nervous or dehydrated or just pissed like, what, five minutes ago. Then we waited. We stayed in that room until everyone peed. Other guys refused to pee. If we refused to pee, we were gone. Still, dudes wouldn’t. It didn’t matter if they were facing hard time, didn’t matter the House was the only thing keeping them alive, they wouldn’t pee. Once, a guy pissed himself, waiting. He wore yellow gym shorts, a pair of scuffed Air Maxes, no socks. The pee darkened his shorts, bounced off his knee, and pooled on the Group Room floor. We laughed, of course, but it wasn’t funny—he’d smoked rock and was going to get kicked out and we’d have to clean this mess up.

  I must’ve seen a thousand guys pass through, many of them headed for worse places, and much worse things, but each of them feels the same to me now, as if they are all some version of myself that I’ll never fully come to terms with. I miss them.

  Unripe Fruit

  LONG before any of this, and before I was born, even, my mom had a baby named Aidan. She was married then. And she and her husband, a flimflam type, moved from Philly to rural New York to start a commune called the Farm of the Message. A guru ran the place, a man who wore a white beard and white robes. He taught meditations unifying various religious philosophies under the guiding principles of beauty, harmony, and love. It was New Age. And they were believers. But shortly after having another boy, Lee—sweet Lee, born bowlegged, pigeon-toed, and knock-kneed—old Flimflam moved on, filed for divorce, and demanded full custody of both children. The guru presided. He said Flimflam could only get one. As a result, we rarely saw Aidan growing up, once a year at most, and when my mom met a man and got pregnant with me, she promised herself no one would take me away.

  She was thirty-two, prematurely gray. She wore glasses, corduroys, maternity clothes. Consumed by sadness and pestered by doubt, she questioned herself—what kind of mother loses a child? Here was Lee, his legs broken to correct his condition, all plaster-casted and braced but happy, and here were her finances—zero—and soon another one—what the hell was she thinking? She didn’t even know my father, not really; never would. He’d arrived on the commune in a VW after driving cross-country, popping black beauties and dropping LSD, losing his mind in Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, he and some others, all of them hopeful. On the commune they found hard work, a lot of it, and not much else. He didn’t know about me when he split for San Francisco, figured that was that, he’d never hear word of it again. He got a job, began living. Seven months later, my mom showed up with Lee and a very large belly, her smile half happy, half apology; whatever my parents tried together that fall did not go well.

  She didn’t even tell him our destination, just bounced. Brought us crosstown to the Avenues. This part of the city was once all sand dunes, but had long ago been developed. Rows of Victorians stretched to the ocean. Hilly, windswept, and covered in a layer of marine fog so thick there’s never sunshine, it exists in perpetual grays, which seems right somehow. That morning, she held me in her arms and pulled Lee’s carriage, marching through torrents of rain, determined, defiant, a single mother. Finally, we came to a Victorian cloaked by the weather. This is our new home, my mom said. It’s where we�
��ll live. Things will be good here.

  It was not our home, of course, but someone else’s—a friend’s—as my mom was broke and, with the two young kids, unemployable. A few months later, we got on an airplane, and once more she explained the ramifications. We’re leaving here, she said, not coming back. Not any time soon, anyway. She lifted me above her head so that my arms flapped out, as if in flight. Don’t worry, she said. Don’t worry. No one will ever take you away.

  * * *

  SHE HAD NO FAMILY, no home. Her only place of refuge was the commune, and she dreaded going back there. So we moved a lot, subsisting on the grace of others, sleeping on couches in living rooms, in spare beds, and on blankets piled high on hardwood floors, each place buying her more time where she didn’t have to decide, as if she had another option, as if something else might arise—a better plan, new hope—as if all this moving wasn’t leading us back to the commune, but by June 1978 we were living in a cramped second-floor room in a dilapidated Shaker dormitory and taking our meals in a communal dining hall at the Farm of the Message.

  It spanned hundreds of acres, all of it rustic, wooded, or fully arable; in its creaky buildings were cellars and staircases, places to hide. A lot of families lived in these dorms, each with many kids. It was, it seemed, kind of the perfect place to raise children. I remember being happy there. Lee, too. Photos capture his arm around my shoulder; he wears a beret, I have a hammer; we’re both grinning. In other pictures we pose on tractors, again smiling, or stand half-naked in sunflowers and on gravel roads, or drape from each other on cracked stoops, thrilled with the world and each other, shirtless, covered in mud or bare-assed, our essentials exposed, damn near always swimming, tottering in pumpkin patches, investigating stacks of wood or an old pickup. Lee had black curls and I was towheaded, angelic: cowlicks rose winglike behind my ears. The difference felt important: my locks implied lightness, but only in these photos with Lee did I express any levity. The rest of the time I brooded, my eyes these dark orbs full of suspicion and doubt. Whatever plagues me now, I know I had then, too.

  * * *

  LEE’S LEGS HEALED. Now, if you didn’t watch him, he might pee in a potted plant or a trash can. Mom had communal responsibilities—she was on the welcoming committee and helped deliver babies—and meditations to practice and matters of the heart that required her attention, and she was not around much those days. So Lee and I would just get up and go. I recall a vague curiosity about nearly everything. In the woods or graveyard, in the root cellar or hayloft, in the greenhouse or the old chair factory, we’d come across an adult who’d pick us up in their arms, or hold us in their lap as they tractored the field. We had quite a few sitters, most of them nice people. They’d set us down in a row of strawberries where we’d dream. These were my favorite moments, coming to in a plot of fruit, sun rays warming my skin, Lee dozing next to me.

  One lady used to pull my arms through the banister and duct-tape my wrists. Let’s play prisoner, she’d say. Then she’d disappear. I don’t know what happened after, where she’d go. Places of spiritual growth attract all types, and indeed among these idealists was the knowhow to start a birthing center, an organic farm, a bakery, an herb garden, a VW repair shop, a school, and yet, except for the auto shop, none of these businesses made money, and all these dreamers brought their own demons and doubts, their own pasts and inner lives, and despite how much any of us wants something better, the truth is we rarely get far from ourselves, no matter how many miles we travel.

  I’ve had to learn this myself many, many times now.

  * * *

  TELL YOU A HAPPY STORY. We moved out of our room in the Shaker building and down a gravel road past the commune farm and a pond to a cabin deep in the woods. I was three, Lee five, and all summer, as we tramped back and forth along this gravel road, he promised we’d creep onto the farm one of these days and steal all the strawberries. In August, he said, once they ripen. And sure enough, one morning we woke before the sun and walked up that road to where the trees broke and descended upon the farm as if locusts. We ate every strawberry in that field. Row after row. We ate all of them. Until they were gone. It was dark when we began but light now. Chins sticky, fingers pink. I thought, Well, this has been quite nice indeed, we set out to accomplish something, and now that it’s done we will go, but Lee wanted to eat the green ones, too. Don’t do it, I warned him. You’re crazy. But he couldn’t help himself. He laughed and laughed. It was funny. He ate all the unripe fruit he could, strawberries so hard and tart his eyes crossed into themselves and he grew dizzy and had to sit down. He rolled onto his face and retched. Oh, he said. Oh.

  Also, our mom got married again.

  A Bastard in the Family

  WE moved again. This time to Brooklyn, which wasn’t farmers’ markets and fancy boutiques back then. Instead we found dirty snow, barred windows, double and triple locks, soot, sirens, domestic disputes; breaking and entering seemed popular. Cars, or so my mom said, backfired regularly.

  I used to walk to the sidewalk a lot, and then turn back to our apartment.

  We were poor, we struggled. A claustrophobic feeling menaced our lives. This is the misery of the broke: leaving the apartment meant spending money. We had a car, but it never worked. We had lights, but they fluttered, dimmed, and burned out. We used to watch our mom’s husband tinker under the station wagon’s hood, slink from the hood to the driver’s seat, crank the ignition, try it again, shake his head. While grocery shopping, our mom practiced simple addition, held up the line, removed items from her basket, performed sleight of hand, the five-finger discount.

  One day I found her on the bedroom floor, an empty bowl on the hardwood, pennies spilled everywhere, maybe a dollar total. She counted carefully, sliding each penny into one of two separate piles. She was crying.

  I asked was she hurt. No, she said, removing her glasses and wiping her wet brown eyes. But her shoulders bobbed, the tears kept coming.

  But you’re crying, I said.

  That doesn’t mean I’m hurt.

  Well, if you are, I said, you should tell me.

  I’m just sad, she said.

  Why?

  I want to be able to afford to buy you things, she said. I don’t care what. Just something. A snack, a toy, ice cream. Anything.

  My heart shattered in my chest, tore open. I don’t want anything, I said.

  It’s not the thing, she said, her voice breaking with despair, but the ability.

  * * *

  WE HAD NO IDEA what to call her new husband. His birth name got bandied about. As did “Dad.” Yet Lee and I hardly knew what “Dad” meant. We settled on a loose Hebrew translation, a term of endearment like “Pop” or “Daddy,” Abba. And for his part, Abba fit the bill. Despite our family’s weird construction—our halves and lacks, the unknowing—he was determined to make it in New York City as a provider. Every day he put on a suit and tie and set out to find work in Manhattan and every night came back wearing overalls, his beard and curly hair spattered with paint. He worked hard, was athletic, distant, motivated. On the weekends he played softball, brought us along, and introduced us to such finery as the chili dog, Coney Island, and Far Rockaway Beach. We kept mice in a box, took them to Long Island or the park when the car quit working again. Finally, we got a new car, but it seemed the same—another barely operational station wagon that sputtered to life and died again. Aidan visited. Then he left. My mom was crying. I could go on; I could stab you a thousand times with sadness. These weren’t good years. They were full of little anxious nothings and long silences.

  Mom, I’d say, but she’d just look at me, her eyes always on the verge.

  She was tall, five foot eight, and extremely nearsighted, almost myopic, and she told me these things of herself—the early gray, the height and poor vision—would be passed on to me as they had been passed on to her by her family through genetics, which worried me. She had no family beyond us. Her mom died when she was young. Her dad was dead. She had a b
rother, but he disappeared after the war. Not a POW, not MIA or AWOL, he just never came back. There was no one else. No aunts, uncles, grandparents, or cousins. She had no one. I, too, felt as if I had no one beyond them. Everywhere I turned, every question just led to more lack: Who is my dad? What’s he like? What happened with you and him? Did y’all love each other? Will I know him? Will I ever meet my family? And what about Aidan? What’s his deal? Will he ever live with us?

  I tried to make her feel better.

  I wish I could meet your family, I told her once.

  She knelt and kissed my forehead. I’m so glad, she said, you never will.

  * * *

  LEE AND I were playing on the sidewalk. I believe he had a broom in his hand, and I had a spatula, and we were thwacking each other about the neck, head, and face. I’m not sure if the reality of our different fathers had set in yet or if we’d fully transitioned from happy children to the monsters we’d become, or if this game of beating each other had already become our favorite, as it one day would, but I know it’s what we were doing when a taxi appeared at our curb. The oldest person I’d ever seen hopped out.

  I turned and ran for our flat, but my mom appeared in the doorway, drying soapy hands on her apron. She likes to clean when she’s nervous.

  Here he is, the old man said. Let’s have a look, shall we? He turned me by my waist. An equally old woman teetered in the taxi’s backseat, a crooked grin on her face—they’d been drinking. Come on, the old man said. Hop in. He waved at my mom. We’ll have him back soon enough. I promise.

  I’m not getting in that cab, I said. Not with you. No way.

  Sweetie, my mom said. This man is your grampa.

  Abba’s dad?

  No, she said. Your dad’s dad.

  Huh. C’mon, Lee, I said. This was interesting to me. Let’s see what he wants.