• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Augusten, Dr. Finch and I are talking now. You go back and play with the girls.”

My heart pounded. I was seized with panic. I desperately needed to check my hair in a mirror. “Please, can we go? I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s too weird here.”

I looked up and there he was. “Well, well, well,” he boomed, approaching me with his hand extended.

I grabbed it, wondering if he’d hidden something in it. A joy buzzer, maybe, or more balloons.

His eyes widened along with his smile. “What a firm handshake. That is an excellent handshake. A ten-plus on the Great Scale of Handshake Ratings.”

He was short, but seemed much larger. He occupied a lot of space in the room.

“How are you doing, young man?” He smacked me on the shoulder, like a father on TV; like Mike Brady or Ward Cleaver.

“Okay.” I could feel the bottoms of my feet sweat. I couldn’t tell him that his own freaky kids and his own filthy house were the source of my distress.

“Take a seat here,” he said, gesturing at a chair.

I moved the roasting pan to the table and sat. He took the chair between my mother and me. I looked back and forth between them and for awhile nobody said anything. My mother lit another cigarette and Dr. Finch scratched the back of his head.

“Your mother is in a state of crisis,” he said finally.

She blew a plume of smoke into the air. “That’s an understatement,” she said under her breath.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked me.

In the distance, somebody began to pound on the piano keys. “I don’t know,” I said.

“What that means is that your mother is in trouble with your father. Your father is very angry with your mother right now.” He elbowed a plate out of the way and placed his hands on the table, clasping his fingers. “Your father may want to hurt your mother.”

I swallowed. Hurt her?

“Your father is a very sick man, Augusten. And I believe he is homicidal. Do you know what homicidal means?”

I looked at my mother and she turned away. “It means he wants to kill her?”

“Yes. That’s what it means. Some people, when they get angry, become depressed. That’s what depression is, it’s anger turned inward. Other times, they project that anger outside of themselves. And that’s healthier for the person. But you have to be very careful dealing with somebody who is that angry.”

Freud pressed up against my leg, raising his tail. I leaned over and stroked his back. It was sticky. “Oh.”

“So your mother is not safe from your father right now. She needs to be protected. Do you understand?”

I was terrified but also excited. Dr. Finch left every single light in the house on, as opposed to my father who never let us turn any lights on, always saying something about the Middle East being the reason we had to live in the dark. “What do we do?”

“Well.” He leaned back in the chair, folding his arms behind his head. “I’m going to take your mother to a motel. And you’re going to stay here at my house.”

I’m what?

“There’s plenty of room here for you. You’ll be very safe.” He smiled warmly.

Again I looked at my mother, but she still wouldn’t look at me. She was focused on the table. I followed her line of vision and I think she was looking at this one spoon that had a reflection of the ceiling light in it. Almost like you could eat the light if you wanted to, like it was cereal. “I have to stay here?”

He rose from the table. “Deirdre, talk to your son. When you’re finished, I’ll be in the car.”

He patted me on the head firmly, then turned and left.

My mother mashed her cigarette out in the plate. “There’s not much room on this table, is there?” she said.

“What’s going on? Why is my father trying to kill us?”

My mother sighed. As she exhaled she seemed to shrink into the chair. Even her perfume seemed to fade. She looked at her hands, turning them over in front of her face like they were misplaced artifacts she had pulled from the earth. Then she looked at me. She leaned forward and whispered,“Without Dr. Finch, your father will kill