Halfway Read online

  That Brooklyn thing had turned my love of horses inward, and yet I hadn’t been lying: I could ride a horse. Calm, cool, collected, I swung my leg over her ass to dismount, but she took off again, full gallop down the trail and into the pinyon stand, where, among the low-hanging branches, she ducked her neck until a branch snatched me out of the saddle and she was gone.

  In the dirt, I felt the bottom drop out of my belly.

  It was a long walk back on foot. For most of it, I could see the open doors of the equestrian center, a line of horses trotting by. At some point I recognized my dad smoking. Then he spotted me. By the time I got there, he’d mounted his horse.

  What did I tell you, he said.

  I didn’t answer. For a long while we matched eyes.

  Finally, he shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. Get on.

  But I’d recently learned of a concept called refusal, and was practicing it often. I didn’t move.

  Son, he said. If you don’t get on this horse, it’s over between us.

  His boots filled the stirrups. How’m I to get on? I asked.

  He kicked loose a foot, hands tight on the reins, posture erect.

  I got on, held his shoulders as we bounced up the trail.

  Of course my pop knew exactly where Stardust was—grazing junipers in that same pinyon stand. There’re wild horses up here, he scoffed. I think she’s in heat. Go on now, he said. Get off. Go get her.

  I refused to dismount. That horse tried to kill me.

  I don’t care, he said. March your ass over there and get back on her.

  You can’t make me.

  His lip curled. Son, he said, this is not very becoming, I must say. You shouldn’t have ridden her in the first place. And blah-blah your mother, he said, or something like that. And blah-blah your grampa! He lowered his face close to my own. That damn horse won’t buck around me. You can bet on that!

  Two things. One: I rode Stardust back down the mountain, but I would never get on a horse again. Sliding off her, back at the stable, I called out to my dad. By now, he was brushing his horse down, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He did not look up at me. Hey, I said again. Dad. I get it. It’s a lesson.

  Oh yeah? he asked, still not looking up. What did you learn?

  That you’re an asshole.

  The second thing isn’t even part of this story, but I’ll mention it anyway: the next summer, while Lee was in Boston with his dad and Abba was out of town, my mom and me drove to Florida. She said we were going to Disney World. I’d never been. And I thought, you know, cool, finally we’re doing something normal. But near Orlando, she changed her mind. Instead of going to Disney World, she drove me to my grampa’s house. I was ten years old. We stayed one night. I did not see my grampa again until my twenties.

  * * *

  AFTER THE HORSE VISIT, I didn’t hear from my dad. For a while. I’d call and get the usual nothing or that automated woman. These were the years when Bobby Cox took over the Braves’ front office. He traded first Bob Horner and then Dale Murphy. He shipped Doyle Alexander to the Tigers for a double-A righty named John Smoltz. Gant, Glavine, Blauser, and Lemke materialized from Richmond. Farm reports mentioned a sweet-swinging lefty as well, David Justice. In 1990 Cox would draft the great Chipper Jones, fire Russ Nixon, appoint himself field manager, and begin a run of success like no other, but all that came later.

  The differences between me and Lee broadened. He wasn’t so down for baseball, did terribly in school. He grew his hair out and wore a hat pulled low over his eyes. Meanwhile, I seemed to thrive. Tall, with quick hands, I had a natural inclination toward violence—sports were revelatory. And yet I was unhappy, I rarely fit in; I switched schools, switched again. Always the new kid, I fought one boy after another until someone befriended me. I got good grades, scored in the highest percentile on all your standardized tests. There was talk of sending me to a magnet school. Duke and Princeton sent letters, had me take more tests, tests I aced. I had a bright future. Teachers wrote gushing notes to my mother speaking of my “promise” and calling me “gifted,” “special,” and, worst of all: “full of potential.”

  Despite this, I felt less than always, vague even, hazy. I lacked something inside, and no accolade could replace it. Between tests and games, I’d sit in a brooding stupor, completely empty, or go about the house lording my potential over Lee. His beatings took on a different tone. Rarely severe, always unpredictable, they confounded the idea I had of myself—not everything came easy.

  But then Lee bowled me over in the neighbor’s yard one day, left me gasping to breathe. Next to me was a baseball bat. I grabbed it, came up swinging. His eyes bulged. He sprinted for the house, but I chased him, swinging the bat across the street and up our driveway and through the garage and kitchen and den, caught him at his bedroom. He ducked just before I smashed apart the door’s threshold. I bashed holes in the wall all around that door.

  * * *

  AT SOME POINT my pops got in touch, and I visited him for the first time alone. He lived in a Tuscan hacienda outside Santa Fe. It felt like a compound, easily the nicest home I’d ever seen, had all the bells and whistles—high adobe walls, iron gates, with a multi-story open kitchen, an enormous slate mantel, marble and wide-plank hardwood flooring, a sauna in the guest wing, a Jacuzzi in the master bath, picture windows, expansive views, a bubbling brook stocked with steelhead, an outdoor wet bar, a pond built, it seemed, for nothing.

  Whoever owned this place had plenty of disposable income.

  This is not my home, he said right off, but my roommate’s. He’s away, he added. I just live here.

  During long drives in the desert, he told me things. His dog was named after a literary hero, he still owned the horse, his car ran on diesel. He liked beer backed by tequila and smoked unfiltered cigarettes, four packs a day. He smoked while he drove and drank while he drove and smoked in bed long after he thought I’d fallen asleep. He liked to read, didn’t follow sports or TV, listened to classical music, spoke Spanish fluently. With sun-browned skin, he looked almost exotic, as if he were from somewhere else, but he was born in L.A. and raised in Richmond. We were Black Irish, he said, almost completely. His grandma, my great-grandma, came over at the turn of the century, settled in Indiana, where she ran an Irish boardinghouse. She was a gambler, her husband a gambler, she made extra money hosting card games in her cellar, had four sons who all went to Purdue; her husband, my great-grampa, died in a card game, got shot in the head, was dumped in the river. My grampa was a genius, a mad scientist, almost opaque—the lead engineer, my dad said, on Reynolds Wrap.

  My dad had attended an elite boarding school, an Ivy League college, and numerous deb balls, had the gorgeous handwriting—he was polished, in other words, and good looking, educated, well spoken, international, even: he’d lived in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires—which meant I’d need to achieve these things, as well. You might not get an invitation to anyone’s coming out party, my dad suggested, but you can damn well work on that penmanship of yours. His mom was straight off the boat, and hadn’t been in his life much when he was a child, he hadn’t known her as an adult, only saw her a couple of times, and not in, God, fifteen years. He didn’t know where she was now, he claimed. Possibly back in Ireland. Or in an institution again. Probably dead.

  But I met her once, I said.

  No, you didn’t. His tone was bitter, angry. Then doubt crept in: Where?

  In a cab. In New York City. That time.

  That wasn’t my mother, he said.

  Who was it, then?

  It doesn’t matter, he snarled. She’s dead.

  We were headed north for green mountains shrouded by a coming storm. Lightning fractured the sky. Our windows were cracked just enough for smoke to slip through, it was a beautiful, bleary, pre-rain desert day, and yet this tonal change of his—how he’d go from zero to angry so quickly—brought to mind all my worries.

  Dad, I said. Why are you so
unhappy?

  I’m not, he said. Who told you this? Your mother?

  Is it because you smoke? I asked.

  He pulled off the road, fists tight on the steering wheel. He closed his eyes as if with a headache, then opened them and stared at the inky horizon. I tell you what, he said. Three things in this world bring me joy. Beer. My dog. Cigarettes. He turned to me, a smile forming. Oh, he said. One other thing. I like horses. That’s it.

  He also liked to drive. Each day we drove somewhere new. We went to pueblos on plateaus and museums, walked dusty arroyos, sat in cathedrals. On one drive a man joined us. He was nice, soft-spoken, well dressed and groomed. I liked him. My dad clearly liked him, too. They balanced each other, one happy and one brooding. Coming back, we stopped at a package store, and that night, as they drank by the pond, I watched them laugh and listened to them speak in a fast Spanish I couldn’t understand. Their interaction enthralled me, my father enthralled me—the way his hands moved, the subtle flick of his fingers as he ashed a cigarette. Everything he did fascinated me, how ash collected at the end of a cherry, and sometimes—when he told a story—he’d forget to ash, and I’d stop hearing his words, this ash my only concern. What would happen to it? How long could it get before falling? And what if it fell on him? Would it hurt?

  I didn’t hear the transition to English, just felt that dubious gaze of his. Come on, he said, shaking his head at me. We need to do this.

  Oh, his friend told him. Let it go.

  No. It’s time he learned.

  My dad took me into the kitchen, got a fork, knife, and empty plate. You have to learn, he said. He grabbed my fingers and bent them around the handle of the fork, took my other hand, formed those fingers around the handle of the knife.

  I wasn’t sure of his point and asked him, but he just swore. In the post-dusk desert quiet, his voice boomed. Why can’t you fucking-A learn?

  Every time he exploded caught me unaware—like we were just bouncing along, a father and his adoring son, and now he said this: What is wrong with you?

  There was no steak in front of me, no potato on a plate. It was all imaginary.

  How do you eat at home? Is this what you do? What’s your mom been doing all these years?

  This stuff, I said, tossing the utensils on the floor, is stupid to me.

  * * *

  A YEAR PASSED WITH NO WORD. Now I was eleven, a pretty big deal, actually—five foot ten, handsome smile, a full head of hair. Six weeks after my birthday, I came home to find an envelope with gorgeous handwriting on the kitchen table.

  Well, looky here, I told Lee. Look whose piece-of-shit father remembered his birthday this year, and I began prancing in front of him, doing the piece-of-shit-father dance. What about your piece-of-shit father, did your piece-of-shit father remember your birthday?

  My mom came into the room. Even Abba.

  Go on, Lee said, smiling. Let’s see what your piece-of-shit father has to say.

  Should I read it aloud? I asked him.

  Please do, Lee said.

  No, my mom said. Sweetie. No.

  Lee, Abba said, come outside with me.

  Yeah, I told Lee. Goodbye!

  The letter began fairly basic: Dear Son, Hope you’re well and liking school. Grampa tells me you’re playing baseball. That’s great. I don’t know much about baseball but I’m glad you’ve found something you love doing. For a few sentences, he hemmed and hawed over a variety of perceived slights—blah-blah, in other words, your mom, and so forth; it was an old story, one he often degenerated to in those years, as if her shortcomings spurred his own and without which he would’ve been involved in my life—before cutting to the chase: Son, this is a difficult letter to write. As you may know, I don’t have girlfriends and never married. You might also notice I have a lot of male friends. You’re obviously somewhat smart sometimes in certain areas and may’ve guessed already—I am gay. I don’t want you to worry. I’m not sick, not dying. I’m in perfectly good health. The only reason I’m telling you this now is your brothers’ father has decided to tell Lee and Aidan about my sexuality, as he is a homophobe, probably latent and/or closeted, what’s known as a charlatan or pretender—we can talk about this later—and I don’t want you hearing it from your brothers, as I know how kids can be. So, there it is. I’m sure you have many questions, though if you don’t that’s okay, too. I’m available to talk should you need to. I want you to know I’m proud of who I am, and I want you to be proud of me, too. Love, Pop.

  I felt relieved. He was gay, so what. He was okay. I thought his coming out would change things, that he’d no longer keep me at arm’s length, for I believed the two were related—his strange disappearances were simple protection, a product of his fierce privacy—and now, things being clear, we’d carry on as normal father and son.

  I folded the letter into its envelope and pocketed it. My mom watched me. Abba, too. Even Lee had come back into the room, an apple in his hand.

  So, Lee said, biting the apple. Tell us. What did the letter say?

  You know what it said, I told him.

  He finished chewing and smiled. I really don’t. Tell me. Please, I’d love to know.

  It says your father is a real piece of shit. Nothing new there.

  At least he’s not a fag, Lee said, and then he did something very Lee-like, which I’ve come to think of more than anything else that happened that night. He punched me in the stomach, ran out the door, and disappeared into the woods across the street.

  * * *

  SO BEGAN MY BEST YEARS. I made friends. Real friends. Every day we’d go into the woods and shoot things, set fires, and blow stuff up. There were a lot of fights and fishing, a lot of breaking and entering. We vandalized cars, houses, buildings, played basketball, football, baseball, home-run derby, twenty-one, horse, smear the queer, anything. They all had older brothers with cars and spare time. Most nights I only came home for dinner, if at all. I spent weeks straight at my friends’ homes, knew their parents better than my own. Hair grew on my balls, above my lip. I was six-one, six-two, a beast in local Pop Warner leagues. At fourteen, I could dunk two-handed from a standstill and throw a baseball very, very hard. Something else came about. One night me and the guys found ourselves at Shayla’s house. Shayla was well developed for that age. And her mom was some rocker chick, a real backstage Betty, who wore Daisy Duke bottoms with bikini tops and peroxide hair; a sweet lady, really. She’d decorated their house with half-naked photos of herself posed on a motorcycle or the hood of some car—she still features prominently in my occasional wet dream. Roach clips dangled from bent hooks on the wall. A python slithered freely from room to room. Her fridge was stocked with beer, a handle of vodka chilled in her freezer. I brazenly sauntered through the kitchen, opened the freezer, and removed a bottle. What a feeling to pour a few fingers and drink. This was something else entirely. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly who I was: this. I finished my glass and filled it again. Where had this been all these years?

  From then on, I drank as much as often as quickly as possible, each time trying to set a record—I’d get there faster than anyone had before. Drunk, I didn’t worry. Didn’t care. I was funny and much better-looking drunk. I knew what to say, how fast to say it. I became that fool who brings a handle of vodka to beer pong. As much as I liked being drunk, being blacked out was much, much better. Then I didn’t think anymore.

  Well. Colleges stopped sending me letters. Magnet schools no longer asked me to shadow their students. Quickly, and in earnest, once high school started, I got kicked out of all my honors classes and all my AP-what-have-you. I didn’t care. Drinking was what I’d do now. It was something I was good at, and loved. I’d still go to Harvard, of course, or Yale, but high school—shit.

  Lee, too, had gone now, left for Boston to live with his piece-of-shit father. We’d stopped speaking by then, though I heard various reports of him drifting beyond the peripherals—he’d left his father’s house, dropped out of scho
ol, stayed with strangers or friends. Then he was homeless in a city park. And then no one knew.

  * * *

  THAT SUMMER MY FRIENDS AND I adopted a new point of emphasis, which was the shopping mall. Someone had clued us in—girls hung out there. We roamed around, drenched in Polo, Obsession, Drakkar Noir. I recall violently tongue-kissing a girl in front of a mattress display. As when drunk, a feeling of self-worth emerged. It was like Kevlar, or a coordinated growth spurt. It plugged the emptiness I felt inside. Ten feet tall and bulletproof, adaptable to any social setting, I had no clue how to take it easy. School suspended me now and then. I caught a semester of detention, failed every class, was academically ineligible for basketball, baseball—next thing I knew, we had a for-sale sign in our yard.

  Is it true, the guys asked, are you moving?

  Yeah, I said, I guess.

  Where to?

  California.

  My friends’ parents pulled me into their kitchens and garages. I hear you’re leaving, they said. Is this what you want? If you don’t want to go, you can stay here with us. We can work something out.

  But my dad had moved to California by then, to Palm Springs. And I told people my dad lived there, which is the kind of thing people understand. Then I called him and he answered.

  Guess what, I said. I’m six-four now.

  Uh-huh.

  You know what that means?

  He offered only the crackle of a burning cigarette.

  I’m two inches taller than you. Want to know something else?

  What? he said.

  We’re moving again. To the Bay Area. That’s right, Pop. We’re going to be close. I’ll get to see you all the time. I’ma visit regular, maybe spend summers with you, possibly move in permanently. Tell me about Palm Springs. Good schools there? I’m coming this week, going to check the place out. Should I dogleg south and we rendezvous?

  * * *

  SURE ENOUGH, the day I turned fifteen, a month after moving to California, I came home from baseball practice and found an envelope with gorgeous handwriting. It was, no lie, one of two times he’d remembered my birthday. This was new, the real thing, a change—no more fear of vulnerability, no continent of separation to guard against. My legs shook, my stomach lurched, I was excited—I’d be close to my dad now, our closeness would complete me.