Lust Or No Harm Done (30 page)

There was only a week to go. If he'd left it a week, he would have got onto the aeroplane, gotten over whatever held him. He could have come back at eighteen without Dad ever knowing.

Michael stands in the middle of the room and looks at the bare light bulb, and feels the heaviness again. His fingers feel like fishing weights. They feel like they could pull the line all the way out of his reel. It's late, he has no energy, no tears. He might as well finish clearing up.

Michael picks up the broken record. You can buy another. He puts the books back on the shelf, moving as if in a slow-motion study. The book torn in half is a veterinary textbook, one he was reading for UCSD. He might as well leave it torn, leave it here. He won't have any use for it now – he won't be studying at UCSD. The stereo is fucked, but what does that matter? He only uses it when he's here, and he may never come back again. He turns the TV on and it's a late-night Italian Western, claustrophobic voices in studios mismatching lips. He goes back to scrubbing the hall carpet, listlessly, mechanically, continually and to some effect.

Michael begins to be aware of a shower running. There is a noise coming from it, as if there is something terribly wrong with the plumbing. He thinks he'd better see what's wrong. Then he thinks, If I go to the shower and he's naked he'll think I've come for him again. The towel has turned pink. Michael needs to rinse it. He goes to the kitchen instead, rinses the towel and comes back and recognizes the sound. It's someone crying.

'Dad. Dad, is something wrong? Dad?'

The door creaks when it opens like in a horror movie. The shower is running and something dark is on the floor behind the frosted glass, and there is a shredding sound.

'Dad, Dad are you OK? Dad, just say something.'

Michael opens the door and his father is slumped on the floor of the shower and he's fully dressed with water running and he has been eating towels. Big, plush, California towels. The threads of them lie wound all over his black slacks. They coat his mouth and make him look a bit like the Cookie Monster. His accusing eyes look up at him.

'Dad, get up.'

His father grunts and tries to and can't quite get his legs to unfold, and Michael becomes seriously worried, but he can't think of any way of helping that does not involve touching his father. His father's dark eyes warn him: do not touch me. Michael backs away hands raised as if to shield himself, mime helplessness, display his innocence.

Outside the bathroom door, Michael starts to pace. He paces the hallway, and tries to collect his thoughts and can't. They scatter away from him like pearls from a broken necklace rolling away down an escalator. He can't think of anything to do.

He decides to pack. He will have to leave. In the bedroom he takes his shirts out of the closet. He can't remember how to fold shirts so they stay flat. He remembers how his father and he worked together doing the laundry, just that morning, washing, sorting, ironing. 'Hey Mike, I never did this as well by myself. When you move in, we'll have the cleanest laundry ever.'

I guess we won't now, Dad.

I really should go to bed. Michael has just about convinced himself that that is all he can do, since he can't find his socks or his favourite pair of running shoes.

Then abruptly, determined, business-like, his father enters the bedroom. He's changed into dry clothes, a form-fitting T-shirt and slacks. He's still barefoot. He's breathing heavily, through his nose. His lips are pressed shut.

'What time is it in England? What's the number?'

'What do you mean?'

'Whot do you mean?' His father is doing a hate-filled imitation of an English accent. 'I'm going to ring your mother and let her know what a terrific job she did raising you.'

'You're going to tell Mom?'

'No. You are.'

'Me?' Michael sounds like a scared little boy.

'Don't you think she has a right to know? Are you ashamed, Michael? Are you ashamed of what you did?'

'Yes,' says Michael, miserably. 'Please don't tell Mom.'

'You should never do anything you're ashamed of, Michael. It's five hours to New York, say eight to London.' His father counts forwards from 3.00 am. 'It'll be eleven in the morning, right Michael?'

His father backs away into the hallway, and walks towards the phone in the kitchen. Michael follows, wretchedly.

'Please Dad, please don't. Don't do this, Daddy, please.'

His father gets out his tiny, khaki-coloured pocket diary and starts looking up the number.

'Dad please, look, I'll go to a psych, I'll do anything, but please don't tell Mom.'

'You sure as heck will be going to a psychiatrist.' Dad listens to the dial tone.

Michael remembers shoes. He kept outgrowing shoes, and his Mom on her teacher's salary had to find money for shoes. They always bought the specials or nearly out-of-dates in supermarkets. Her boss told her to smarten up how she dressed when she was teaching but she never buys clothes for herself.

'Everything you do has consequences,' his father says. 'It's time to grow up.' His voice changed. 'Hello Mavis, this is Louis. No, he's not fine. If you wanna know, he's just done something pretty godawful. Michael. Tell your mother what you did.'

Michael is sobbing helplessly now, and is shaking his head, no, no. He can't even imagine saying the words.

'You start growing up now, Michael.' His father holds out the phone like a club.

'No.' Michael is wheedling, like he's wet himself in public.

'Michael.' His father is starting to get angry.

Michael howls, and covers his face, and bolts from the room. The gesture is perfectly sincere, but Michael is also aware of very slightly overplaying it. He is offering up the shame and guilt and self-disgust his father wants him to feel. He runs out the front door, and down the steps.

'Michael! Michael!' his father shouts after him.

Michael has forgotten the key and the security gate is locked.

'Michael!'

He hears the apartment door slam, and feet on the steps. The gate and fence are metal poles with something like spikes on the top, with crossbars only at the top and bottom. Michael jumps and hoists himself up. His shirt catches and tears. He stumbles and kicks and topples forwards, hands reaching out to take the blow. Grit is driven into them and his knee thumps hollowly on the sidewalk. He stands up and his knee is weak under him. He has to hobble along the sidewalk. It runs parallel to the fence, and on the other side of the fence his father strolls alongside him, on his way back to the condo staircase.

'I'll keep it simple, Michael. I'll just tell her what's happened. I won't make any trouble. You'll have to face her sooner or later, boy. And yourself.'

And his father climbs up the staircase to the waiting phone.

Michael hobbles on towards the beach. He can hear the sea, shushing like a mother to quiet his fears. 'Oh man, oh man.' Michael says to himself, over and over.

At 3:15 am there are birds singing somewhere and there is a steely hint of dawn. He stomps flat-footed down the steps from the cliffs onto the beach. There is no one, just security lights blazing in shrubbery, street lights, the odd light bulb over the driveway into holiday apartments.

What Michael wants to do is flee. He wants to slip back into the apartment when his father is at work and pack up his things, maybe take some food, and not go back to either home. He can't stand the thought of being back in either home. He just wants to disappear.

He flings himself down onto a hollow in the sand, in the dark, hoping that no one can see him.

The breakers keep pummelling. They keep coming back, one after another. You imagine a little kid in them, and he keeps getting knocked over, and the kid wonders why they don't stop. They pull out for a little while, and the little kid thinks oh good, it's gone, I can swim now, and then the wave hits him again.

There is no way this is going to get better. Everything, everything is going to change. He saw his mother's long face. What is she going to make of this? What is he going to tell her? She knows I wanted to live with Dad. Now she'll know why. She probably knows that now, right now. And she'll know that Dad will want her to pick up the pieces again. It would be hard enough for her to find out I'm gay, but that I was crazy enough to make a pass at my own father. That I would be that dumb, that sicko.

Of all the guys in the world, why your father?

Because he's beautiful. Michael saw his father's face, his body, and the colour of his skin. He remembered the smell of him, the smell of his mouth, the feel of his lips. The love, the sexual love flooded back. In the end losing his father hurt the most, or rather, losing the dream of him. That's why I did it; that's why I dreamed myself into a hole. I could have shut up, not told him, lived my little dream. For how long, Michael? He would have started to ask you about girlfriends. He might have noticed my eyes straying. Sooner or later something like tonight would have happened.

Michael faced inevitability. This was always going to happen, he realized. From the moment I started making my plans, this was waiting for me.

So it really wouldn't have been any good if I'd been smarter. Dad never would have loved me.

Michael started to weep again, for that lost dream; it had been his life over the last two months, and he had no other life to mourn. He'd already left his old one.

Michael must have fallen asleep in the end. Suddenly there was sunlight. Seagulls made exhilarating noises, one after another like the bells of many churches. There was a paved road along this stretch of beach and all along it old ladies were walking their dogs, or businessmen were jogging in grey tracksuits. For a moment it was beautiful, and then Michael remembered. He looked at his watch. It was 6:10. What if Dad came looking for him?

Michael stood up and started to hobble further down the beach towards Carlsbad. Between Carlsbad and Oceanside there was a marsh, a wildlife reserve with a lagoon and birds. The main road raced through the middle of it on a causeway. So did the railway on a separate series of bridges. If Michael slipped under the railway, he could hide from the road, amid the reeds. Then maybe about ten o'clock he could go and have breakfast at Cafe 101. He could pack some stuff and take off.

Well maybe. How was he going to take off? By bus? How much money did he have? What was he going to do? Say: Hey, Dad, I'm running away from home, can I borrow the car? It began to feel like another dream. He had developed distaste for dreams.

He felt exposed, naked in the wide expanse of beach and brilliant sunshine. He turned off the beach and limped as fast as he could up onto the railway. He scanned the road, slipping on gravel, for any sign of a blue Ford. He hobbled along the tracks, visible all the while from the road.

Finally he saw the pathway under the railroad. He skidded down the bank, and ducking low, scampered under the bridge.

The lagoon was lined with the backs of expensive homes and the railway. There was no road anywhere near it. Michael squatted on the banks and looked at the insect patterns imprinted on the creamy mud. He waited.

He remembered his Dad used to bring him here, to look at the birds, and spend an hour or two fishing. It was always hot and still. What do you think of your son now, Dad? Michael asked the memory of his fishing father. The sun pounded like unrelenting boredom.

Hungry, Mikey? You've still got the price of a Huevos Rancheros in your pocket. In a week you won't.

Just how much of a baby are you, Michael? This is what a five-year-old does. He decides to run away and gets halfway down the block before realizing that he can't cope.

Michael slapped his own face again. He had to slap something, he was so mad, so bereaved, so ashamed. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand being inside his own skin. He seethed tinder his skin, like oil in a joint being roasted in the oven. You're not hitting hard enough, Michael. He really slammed himself on the cheek. It went numb. He picked up a stone and drove it as hard as he could into the centre of his face. His nose started to bleed. Drops of blood dotted his trousers.

Stupid fucking fairy, what the stupid fucking hell good does that do? He broke down again, and started to cry. It was late and getting hot and he was sick from hunger, bleeding, and lack of sleep. Ten am. Maybe it was safe to get going.

A train roared overhead, hooting and rocking the track from side to side like a crib. Michael toyed with the idea of waiting for the next train and walking under it. That might even look like an accident.

The thought of Huevos Rancheros made him decide he wanted to be around. And that made him laugh and snuffle at the same time. All I've got to look forward to is a 101 breakfast.

He strode alongside the tracks, perfectly safely into Oceanside. He climbed up another bank onto a side street and walked among all the whispering ranch-style homes, with their lawns and succulent ground cover being automatically watered. Michael was watered too. He washed the blood off his face.

He turned up the street to the cafe and went in the back door from the parking lot, and the first person he saw in a booth was Dad. Michael thought about turning and running and realized that he didn't have the strength.

'Hiya Mikey,' said his father, in a voice that seemed to come from far away across a valley. 'Have a seat.'

And you thought you were being so smart: he knew you'd come here all the time. Michael sat down. The booths had tan upholstery and individual jukeboxes at each of the tables. They didn't work.

'You been in a fight? Who did that to you?' His father's voice really was different, it was higher and more gravelly at the same time. His sunglasses were different, old-fashioned, dark green, not mirrored at all.

Michael considered making up a story about how homeless people had chased him and beaten him up. But he didn't have the heart for it.

'Me,' he said. His own voice was far away too and now he understood why: neither of them wanted anyone to hear.

'You. You did that to yourself?' His father's mouth opened and shut helplessly. Michael couldn't see his eyes.