Halfway Read online

  No, my mom said. Lee’s staying. Now go on. I’m through arguing about this.

  They took me to FAO Schwarz, where this tall man jumped out from an aisle, waving his hands as if he were a magician. Hell-o, he said. Hell-o!

  Who are you? I asked.

  I own this place, he informed me. He pulled toys from the shelves and handed them to me—spaceships, soldiers, robots, mechanical spiders. A lot of stuff. I suddenly missed my brother.

  I turned to my grampa. Seriously, I said. Who’s this dude? He my father?

  Father’s brother, my grampa said, which was pretty cool. This guy was fun.

  My father’s brother owned a penthouse overlooking Central Park. We arrived to find many people swilling about, laughing and carrying on. They twirled in their fine haberdashery, chasing highballs with bumps of cocaine. They were having a party.

  My uncle handed me money, a lot of it. From my pocket, he produced a twenty, found another behind my ear. Other adults gathered about, touching my hair and pulling my cheeks, all of them offering cash dollars. I felt very far from our poverty in Brooklyn.

  The crowd surged, buckled, and then ebbed, swept me off my feet. I landed in front of a couch where a bald man was sitting. He wore a playboy’s mustache, aviator shades. Martini in hand, he’d been explaining things to someone next to him. A cigarette dangled from the frozen smile on his face.

  He seemed surprised and said something, a small joke, I don’t know what. No one laughed. He was still smiling, but the smile felt mean. This wasn’t a happy man, I knew. He held me for a moment before handing me back to my grampa. Then he stood, patted his pockets, and left.

  First memory of my dad.

  That Piece of Shit Your Father

  SCHOOL started, which I’d been looking forward to. I wanted friends. We didn’t have any, Lee and I. No one in our neighborhood seemed to like us much. They said we were different. And not just our hair or skin color but what we talked about. A farm, they’d say, really? A farm? And Lee, they said, you fag. That’s a last name.

  But getting on the bus, I found more of the same. Look at this here, the other children said. A couple strangers. Come here with that white-ass hair. Let me touch it.

  I got angry, said things kids say—fuck you, I’ll kill you—full of stink-eye, waving my fists, but Lee turned inward, sad, aloof.

  In the quiet of our apartment, he pulled me aside. These boys are mean, he said. And you’re going to have to learn to turn the other cheek. You can always go in the other room, he said. It doesn’t make you weak. You can just ignore them. You don’t have to listen, don’t have to say anything. You can just curl up in a ball, if you have to, and disappear.

  No longer happy, Lee had trouble sleeping. He’d sleepwalk or get terrors. We’d find him in REM on the counter or stoop, on the curb or street. He told me awful, uncommon things when I found him staring out our window, watching the alley. He was waiting for a man, he claimed, who raped a woman out there the night before with a screwdriver. He was six years old.

  One day in school I was looking at a book with pictures of horses. This wasn’t cool, the other kids said, but strange, man on man, sissy, for girls.

  I remembered Lee’s warning and brought the book across the room, drew my head in, but they kept after it. Oh, that horse, they said, with its fat ding-a-ling. One of them got in my ear. Hey, horse-fucker, he said. I’m talking to you. He slammed the book on my nose. I started bleeding. There was a lot of blood, actually.

  Then more blood. I grabbed the boy’s arm in my hands and bit into his biceps as you might a pork rib.

  That night or maybe the next, my mom and Abba called Lee and me into their bedroom, told us to pack our things, we were moving again, to Atlanta, which was far away, and warm.

  What about my dad? I asked. How will he find me there?

  Oh, sweetie, my mom said. Or something like that.

  * * *

  THEY SAY AFTER A WHILE a train’s rumble is white noise and you stop hearing it, but I never did. Every hour that thing came, rattling our windows and doors. Even now I listen for that train. It was sort of an idyllic time. In Atlanta, our backyard bordered a park. Nearby was a high school, a college; there were woods and creeks, many bridges to drop things from and culverts to crawl through. There were snakes everywhere. We’d find them in the shed or under the porch and in the street after it rained, writhing about. Nearly every afternoon Abba took us to the park to play baseball. He was a lefty, slick with a glove, could throw a curveball, a slider, a knuckleball. Nothing had ever felt so good as swinging a bat, hitting a ball. Photos from Halloween feature Lee as Superman; I’m Chewbacca. When we weren’t playing ball, we spent time on the railroad tracks. If a train flattens a penny, we wondered, what about a rock? When that got boring, we threw them. There were a lot of rocks. We found ourselves casing garages and carports, stealing sprinklers, transistor radios, old alarm clocks, and bringing them to the tracks. We stole plywood, four-by-four posts, cinder blocks, and bricks. One day an entire Southern Pacific line backed up and stopped. The conductor hopped off, stick in hand. He wasn’t a happy man.

  So we moved on. We had a crab apple tree in our front yard, and we stood at the bottom of our driveway, throwing crab apples at cars. We didn’t care, Lee and I. Not one bit. When a car’s brakes locked and a man jumped out, we didn’t even run.

  Where the hell do you kids live? he asked.

  Here, Lee said.

  Y’all are pretty dumb to be throwing rocks at cars in front of your own house.

  Fuck you, Lee told this man. They’re crab apples.

  We’d bike around the neighborhood, just taking stuff. I couldn’t stop stealing. If I could slide it down my pants or shirt, I would. I wore sweatpants tucked into my socks, and a large winter coat, even on warm days. On Easter the Good Samaritans hid candy in the woods, and we’d watch from behind trees, wait until they were at church, then take their candy. It was funny, satisfying, full of splendor, and altogether not a bad childhood except every so often my father would appear, wormlike, as if from rotted wood. At first he excited me, for I believed we’d know each other now, but each time he appeared he quickly disappeared again, and I’d find myself on the couch or front porch, watching the street, feeling lonely, empty, incomplete, and wondering what about me drove him away.

  Not that he came to Atlanta, no—that’s not what piece-of-shit fathers do. Piece-of-shit fathers always make you come to them. I saw him once in Florida when I was four and in New Mexico when I was five, both times with my grampa, and what were these trips like, you might ask? Well, in Florida I remember the water—my grampa liked to swim—and a seafood restaurant. I did not like fish and ordered spaghetti. This bothered my dad. He glanced pointedly at my grampa. Who the fuck, he asked, doesn’t like fish? In New Mexico, I noticed a lack of trees, the distance between places, the amount of alcohol they both consumed. In that state, in those days, drunk driving was a full-time job for some people. And my dad did not care. He’d guzzle beer on our way home from the drive-thru liquor store. He lived in a one-room kitchenette on the edge of a vacant stretch of dirt. There were no trees, no shade. In his fridge was only a can of instant coffee, a bag of gingersnaps, and a six-pack of beer. I feel hesitant describing these men as they drove about the desert, swapping dick jokes and quarreling about the boy in the backseat: What did I realize then? What have I put together over time? They were both tall, hard driven, wore mustaches, and prone to asking people which of them was better looking. Strangers, waitresses, me. Constantly competing, they disagreed about everything—where we went, the places we ate, the money my grampa spent. These arguments involved language I never heard from my mom and Abba—the word “fuck” got tossed around, they ribbed each other often. Any affection or attention from my grampa got labeled “spoiling,” “coddling,” or “wasteful”; my dad was audibly certain I was “some kind of sissy.”

  And then something went wrong, I’m not sure what. While grocery shopping, my pop
snapped, just lost it. He dragged me out of the store and into the parking lot and began screaming at me. This wasn’t a talking-to, sit-down, or time-out, but full-bore rant. Maybe he was drunk, I don’t know. He went on and on. I was a dick, an asshole, a fucking-A clown, actually, a jerk, if he shouldn’t be swearing, a no-good, never will be, uncouth, if you want the highfalutin. Much louder, and more profound, than anything I’d heard in Atlanta, my father pushed me down by my shoulders and held me, his eyes black as my own, unremitting until my grampa emerged with his liquor and cookies and milk, and then my dad fell silent and remained brooding and unavailable for the rest of my visit.

  * * *

  I WORRIED. What had I done? Was I that unlovable? And worse, what about my dad? Why was he so unhappy? Back in Atlanta, when I didn’t hear from him, my worries grew. I called, but he didn’t pick up. So I called again, but he didn’t answer. He had no answering machine. I called again, but the phone just rang. I called a lot, actually. More than daily. Over and over. Obsessively. As if the act of calling were my goal. Sometimes I’d let the phone ring for six or seven minutes. It would ring, I came to learn that year, longer than I could wait.

  My grampa called, at least. Doing great, he reported, still tall, good looking, still swimming every day. Spoke to a young lady at the supermarket yesterday, he’d say. Or at the retirement community. I’m seventy-eight, he’d remind me, but I’ll be seventy-nine in six months and three days. Tell that to your pop, he’d say. The old man still has it. And what about my dad? I’d ask. How’s he? And my dad was always good, doing great, actually, and then, at that point, always at that point, my grampa would ask to speak to my mom.

  I turned six and then seven with no word from my pop. One day I called and the automated recording of a woman answered. She said the number I’d dialed had been disconnected and changed. There was a new number, and I called it, too, but no one answered, and eventually, the automated woman returned and said the number I’d called had been disconnected and was no longer in service. I waited for a new number, but there was none. I called that old number long after it stopped working.

  Abba started his own business. It took him on the road. A lot. We familiarized ourselves with Hartsfield Airport, knew its terminals and trains, moving sidewalks and escalators. On our way to the gate, Lee and I raced. Running, I’d yap at my mom, challenging her to show us her speed, and sometimes she would. We owned a small black-and-white TV but could only watch the Braves. Dale Murphy was Lee’s favorite. I liked Bob Horner. My mom liked Claudel Washington because of his name. Abba, who was from here, liked Phil Neikro, but old Phil got let go. We were weird. None of us had the same last name. Mine wasn’t Macher yet, but something else, something I never saw—I couldn’t spell it. This amused my classmates. They laughed. Who can’t spell their own last name? I got in a lot of fights. Lee also liked to fight. We’d lock ourselves in a room and beat on each other for hours. In our house, we ate quinoa, tofu, couscous; all of it tasted like ass. Carob chips were popular in our pantry, as were dried apples. We had no soda, no Coca-Cola. We ate rice cakes with unsweetened almond butter and honey. Like I said: we were weird. We didn’t go to Disney World or Myrtle Beach but the mountains, where, while Abba and Mom meditated, Lee and I roamed the hillside beating the hell out of each other. In the summer, Aidan visited from Boston, and we went places we didn’t normally go—Dairy Queen, the lake, amusement parks—and pitched a tent in our backyard, and all us brothers slept together. Aidan was funny, worldly, older. When he went back to Boston, Lee went, too, then Abba would go on the road for work, leaving my mom in her sadness. Eyes wet, the gate empty late on a Sunday, she didn’t want to run now, didn’t want to talk. As for me, I continued to steal—sugar products, mostly: sodas, candy, granulated sugar from neighbors’ kitchens, slices of fruitcake, but also everyday items such as toy soldiers, back issues of National Geographic, TV Guide, and mail—and I waited in the yard every day, hoping a letter might come from my dad that would dazzle me with his great handwriting and wit. Another fall passed, another birthday, another winter, another spring. Clover covered our yard, and I’d count their leaves or find patterns in the clouds, recognizable shapes in the shifting boundaries. On the curb, up in a magnolia tree, or back in the clover, I’d hop on my bike, race down the block looking at mailboxes—flag up and the mailman was late, flag down and he’d already come.

  Lee’s dad visited, took him to exotic McDonald’s and Six Flags. Sometimes I tagged along, but mostly no. Lee grew proficient in ordering off a Chinese menu, spoke often now of yogurt, asked Mom to buy yogurt, only she bought plain yogurt, tart, sugar-free, and so he experimented with many fruit-and-yogurt combos. He liked Erector sets and LEGOs, not soldiers; he built model airplanes. All I cared about was swinging a baseball bat, throwing a baseball, catching one, or horses, stables, barn smells.

  And then came the year Lee returned from his dad’s making damn sure I knew what “bastard” meant. Now he tossed me on my ass and stomped me. He’d punch me in the belly as I rounded second base or clothesline me on a football field. We fought in front of Mom and Abba and behind closed doors. We fought in our neighbors’ houses and at the public swimming pool. I’d like to claim my fair share of licks, but mostly, I just took these beatings as they came to me—one after another. I didn’t hate it, not really; I knew what hurt.

  Another summer brought another visit from Aidan. Aidan did not beat me. This was both welcome and strange. Did he not love me? Did he not care? Often, I provoked him, but he never budged. No way, he’d say. Why?

  He came for two weeks. Each year. Two. That’s it. And yet those weeks were glorious—I’ve described the strange foods we ate—the Taco Bell and the ice creams; we caught fireflies now; watched sunlight dance in the north Georgia pines.

  Years passed. I discovered their limits, found out they changed you—my hair browned, I lost teeth. I dreaded my birthday. Did your dad call? people asked.

  I showed an innate ability to remember stuff, displayed aptitude in simple math: I was two inches shorter than Lee and two years younger; I’d be taller than him soon. It’d been three years since I heard from my dad.

  * * *

  THAT JANUARY, my mom went to the hospital for a few days. While she was gone, her friends came by, watched after Lee and me. Snowfall kept us home from school, and then word came on the radio—there’d been a tragedy with the space shuttle.

  After they came back from the hospital, Abba sat me down. You know I don’t like to get involved, he said, but it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from your dad. His voice was quiet; he swallowed. We just don’t know if he’s coming back. Abba had returned from a business trip to be with my mom, and he still wore the suit he’d flown in, though his tie had been pulled free and hung from his breast pocket. I mean, he said. For all we know. But he couldn’t say it. He scratched his beard and looked at the ceiling. Well. We just don’t know. The last thing I want is to overstep. It’s just. I want you to know: if you want a dad, I’ll be your dad. I can adopt you, if you let me.

  I worried. What about Lee? I asked.

  I’d adopt him, too, he said, but he has a father.

  * * *

  OF COURSE, after they changed my last name, my dad was in touch.

  Oh, hey, been thinking of you, he said. How’re things? What’s new?

  I told him I liked horses, baseball.

  I own a horse, he said, I live on a horse ranch, matter of fact, I went to high school and college with a man who owns a Major League Baseball team. Hell of a good guy, actually, you’d love him. How tall are you? he asked.

  Four foot eight, I said, which was a pretty high number in my grade.

  That’s cool, he said. I’m six-two.

  I called my grampa, as we were still in cahoots then. Guess what, I told him.

  Tell me, he said.

  Finally heard from that piece of—

  Well, well, he said. How wonderful. Shall I call my travel agent?

  I’m t
hrowing some stuff in a bag now, I told him, motoring around the house making airplane noises.

  Lee got involved. He was building a puzzle. He stood up. What the hell are you doing? he asked.

  I’m an airplane, I said.

  No, you’re not. He slugged me in the belly. You’re a whore’s son.

  * * *

  TURNS OUT not only did my dad live on a horse ranch, but he trained horses. For money. He slept in a room in the tack house. Pretty cool stuff. Mountains surrounded the ranch. It had this burned-out desert feel; crazy hues colored the sky. In the mornings, my pop worked horses on a lunge-line. I don’t remember much of my grampa from this visit. If they argued still, if they’d come to an accord. A moodiness dogged their interactions, I felt certain from my new last name. I knew I was the last male in their line.

  After the horses had been worn through, I’d help my dad clean their hooves and wash their backs. Then we’d saddle some animals and ride into the mountains and talk. He was instructional, both loose and stiff, a cigarette always hung from his mouth. Here’s how you break an animal, he explained. He spoke of firmness, respect. He spoke of insistence, what’s what, how you use your shoulder, you don’t back down. He was macho, unfiltered, direct. He inventoried the stable, ordering me to avoid a paint named Stardust. Someone got dirty with her, he said. She ought to be put down. Do not ride. The bitch will throw you.

  Thanks, I told him, but I’m a pretty good rider.

  The next morning, while my father worked, I brought Stardust into the hills. No sweat. We climbed higher and higher. In the wide gradual trails, I looked down at the ranch and smiled. This was easy. We came to a plateau of pinyon and juniper beyond which the trail steepened and narrowed. Here the horse quit moving.

  I nudged her flank. Go on.

  But no.

  Again I urged her.

  She bucked, backed up, hoofed rocks and dust.

  The trail’s edge dropped a few hundred feet, and she cantered toward it and then stopped abruptly, backed up, raced for it again.