Slide - Kyle Beachy [89]
Begin simply, I thought.
“One of the things I liked so much about school, Pops, was finding myself surrounded by people who didn't know about Freddy drowning while none of us was watching.”
“That was not your fault, son.”
“One of these people was a girl who exemplified everything I could ever come up with to want. We grew very close very quickly and revealed dreams and compared fears and mocked gently and occasionally told lies, but nothing bad. The sex, I'm sorry, Dad, but the sex was unlike anything I believed might someplace exist. I remember lying with her in bed and touching her thigh and thinking, My God. This is the reason I grew hands in the first place.”
My father nodded slowly. I stared out the window and didn't move a muscle. It might have been the whole city I was addressing—from these junior skyscrapers and beyond, out to the bulging seams.
“I fell, as they say. Into love. I practiced saying it, first to myself, in my head. I believed in it. I did. I thought love and I bought it completely. I was excited by my belief but was careful not to let this excitement influence or manipulate the belief in any way. The belief had to be pure. So I said it to her, I love you, and she said it back. And this was our contract. We treated the words seriously and respected that they came with implications.”
What's scary about looking out the Arch's windows is that through some mystery of refraction, you are able to see directly below your feet, and see that there is nothing there. On the lawn, tiny heads spotted against green. And now, as if by some earlier agreement, we crossed to the windows on the Arch's other side.
“Look at that,” he said. “There's a reason that place has the reputation it does. Several, in fact.”
Changing the subject for a second was okay. Minus the garish riverfront casinos and strip clubs just beyond, everything in East St. Louis rests between dirt-brown and the loneliest shade of gray. Highways were pale streaks spread like medical tape across the country's wounded heart.
“The love had a strength, Pop. And part of that strength came from my faith in the strength. Look how strong, I thought. I had no doubts that I would continue to love her in this manner for the rest of our lives.”
“I understand. You look at her and are filled with something grand and complex. With your mother I loved her so much I was given visceral pause. You should have seen her back then, son.”
“That's right,” I said. “Grand and complex. You say love because people believe in the word, it has a shared meaning and demands respect. It makes the strength stronger. But the strength can be unpredictable, it can gain a life of its own and turn on itself enough to make love into something too strong, this massive force. Something horrifying, brief flashes, this same strength.”
I pressed my hands flat against the window like a kindergart-ner stenciling a turkey. It was frigid cold inside the viewing area, but the windows were warm. So much more to say. I had to make it through the Audrey part to get to the part where I ended up on top of Derrick Hoyne's daughter.
“But sometimes, still, I needed to be elsewhere, away from Audrey. I didn't understand. I pushed her away and found myself behaving in a way that didn't align with love. I snapped at her and I lied. I lusted after her best friend and committed indiscretions. But why would I do these things if I loved her, Dad?”
“I hope I have made absolutely clear, Potter, that I did not ever, ever cheat on your mother.”
I stood from the window. We moved back to the other side of the deck. I followed the highway to the west, through the deep green of Forest Park, all the way to Clayton. There I spotted approximately where my parents’ home should be.
We said I love you so many times it lost all meaning. We may as well have been saying I gerbil antacid or penguin Boston pole vault. I had to wonder if I'd been using the word wrong the whole time. Where