DUST

Briar came back to the apartment after meeting with my father.  He was in the living room telling Pat about it when I joined them there.  Briar turned to me.

“He agreed with you staying with us, Dustin.  I told him he still needed to support you, and he’s going to put money in your bank account every month.  You’ll be able to buy your own clothes, any electronic stuff you want, go to movies and buy yourself snacks after school, treat your friends, do anything that takes money.  He’ll be paying for your college, too.”

“He agreed to all that?  Really.  I don’t believe it!”

“Well, I guess you could say I talked him into it, but he didn’t really put up much of a fuss at all.”

I shook my head.  “I don’t understand.  He hates me.  I’m not making that up.  Did you get the money or just a promise?  He’ll say anything but won’t do what he says.  He’s not honest.  He used to talk to my mother all the time, and I’d hear him.  He’d gloat how he took advantage of suckers, the people who believed what he told them.  That’s what he called them: suckers.”

I sat down in a chair.  They were both on the couch, looking at me curiously, so I explained about my father.  “He made all his money in real estate back when property values kept shooting up.  He could be very persuasive and was good at seeming to be on the side of his clients.  He’d talk people who wanted to sell their houses into listing them at prices way below market value—he was good at the lying part—telling them what was wrong with their properties at the same time he was telling them how lucky they were to find him as he was good at covering up all the defects in the houses.  They’d list the houses with him, and then he’d buy them himself using a phony name and sell them fast for the real market price for a substantial profit.”

“How does a kid know all this,” Pat asked, but she didn’t sound like she was doubting me, just wondering.

“He loved to brag about himself.  He was always talking about things like that he’d done.  But it sounded wrong to me, taking advantage of people like that, so I read up on it.  You know what?  It’s illegal; a real-estate agent has to identify himself as such when making an offer on property.  He knew that and used a phony name.  He called what he was doing ‘flipping houses’.  He flipped a lot of them, sweet-talked a lot of people out of their assets and got rich.  But I think he liked that he was taking advantage of people as much as the getting rich part.  It made him feel smarter than everyone.  He loved that.”

I grimaced and turned to Briar.  “If he promised you he’d do things for me, he was thinking while doing it that he’d put one over on you.  He’ll never pay that money, and he’ll be laughing that he made a fool out of you.  That’s just what he does.  He’s good at it.”

It depressed me.  My father was always like that and always got away with it.  It was one of the reasons I was always so unhappy.  Kids want to admire their fathers; I was disgusted by mine—and afraid of him, too.  I think most kids also know right from wrong, and most of them want right to win and wrong to lose.  Kids have a sense of fairness.  All I’d seen my whole life was fairness thrown out the window and the bad guy winning.  It probably wasn’t a surprise I wasn’t very optimistic about much of anything.  If I lacked much motivation, it probably came from how I saw the world, and that was because of how my father acted and what he got away with.

Briar smiled at me and shook his head.  “No, he’ll do what he said.  In a few days, I’ll take you to my lawyer’s office, and your father will be there and you’ll see him sign the papers.  It’ll all be legal, and he’ll do what he’s agreed to do or go to jail.  You don’t have to talk to him when we go, but I want you to see him signing.  I want you to see him making out a check to you.  See him accepting the fact that he isn’t as smart or as tough as he thought he was.  See that sometimes the good guys do win.”

I doubted I’d ever see that, and I didn’t like the idea of facing him, but I did feel pretty safe whenever Briar was with me, and if he’d be there and wanted me with him, well, OK.  I didn’t think I’d ever see my father write a check and hand it to me.  It would humiliate him to do that, and I couldn’t imagine him humiliated.  It just wouldn't happen.  But if Briar wanted me to go, I would.  I think anything Briar wanted me to do, I’d do.

Pat waited till we were done, then said there was something we needed to talk about.  “This is a small apartment, guys.  I think if we’re going to be a family, live together like normal families do, we need something bigger.  For one thing, Dustin needs his own bedroom, not a couch in the living room.  Teenage boys need privacy and a place of their own.”

She looked at me and I blushed.  Maybe she didn’t mean what I thought of when she said that about privacy, but then again, maybe she did.

“I’ve been thinking about that, too.” Briar said.  “I’ve lived alone for a lot of years, and I liked it that way.  This will be a big change for me, too.  I have a few doubts, but this could work.  We’ll have to see.  What I’m thinking is, and I want to be very clear and upfront about this: as long as you both do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, it’ll all work out fine.”  He smiled at us.

Pat looked at me, then picked up a couch pillow and nodded at the other one.  I saw what she wanted and picked it up.  Then we both threw them at him.

He ducked, laughing.  “OK, OK, maybe I didn’t mean that, or at least I shouldn’t have let you know what I was thinking,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender.  “Maybe I’ll have to reconsider.  But I agree, we need a bigger place.  Fortunately, I’ve just come into some money, so I think we can afford something.  We’ll go looking tomorrow.”

I slept on the couch again.  Pat was right; it wasn’t very private.  A boy who’s 13 like me needs privacy every night.  Often in the morning, too.  I don’t like to talk about it.  It’s embarrassing.  I don’t like thinking that maybe Pat knows about it, too.  I have to assume that Briar knows, but I’m sure he never does it.  Probably he never did.  He’s too big and strong and never needed to.

I think I do it not only because it feels good, but because it’s something I can do and control and make myself feel good doing.  Something I can choose to do.  There isn’t much about myself to feel good about, and if I can feel good doing that, not just physically good but mentally good, too, about anything concerning me, then that’s all right.  I need that.

I used to be scared all the time—of my father, of bigger kids in school, of not being able to protect myself at all.  Bigger kids could do anything they wanted to me, and sometimes they did.  I guess I don’t have a very good opinion of myself, but it is what it is.  I’m not much, and I know it.  Unfortunately, other people know it, too.  They can see it, somehow.  That’s why I was so excited when Briar and Pat invited me to stay with them.  They seemed to really care about me, though I don’t know why.

There’s really not much about me to like.  I can’t do anything, really, other than read and play some video games and watch TV.  I do that OK.  Sit and watch.  But sports, well, I suck at sports.  I suck at most anything I try.  So I’ve stopped trying.  Any time I did try, I got yelled at by somebody, especially my father.  It was better not to try.

I never stand up for myself.  I learned that because of my father.  If I tried to argue back when he said all those nasty things to me, he’d hit me.  I discovered it was best just to let him say and think what he wanted and not put up any fight at all.  I didn’t get hurt that way.  Not physically, at least. 

Maybe that’s why I didn’t really put up any fight with Jim about what he wanted me to do.  I’d learned to just do what people told me to do.  I’d learned that lesson for years, and I guess I learned it well.

Well, there is the one thing I do well.  But as I say, it’s embarrassing to talk about.

When I woke up the next morning, I had to be careful.  I didn’t want Briar or Pat to see me with the tee shirt he’d given me to sleep in all tented out in front.  I had to make sure they weren’t between me and the bathroom.  They were both up already, in the kitchen.  I’d slept later than they had.  We teenagers need our sleep.  We get it, too.  Maybe that’s why most of us are so much more attractive than old people: more sleep.

I waited, and when it sounded like they were both sitting down at the table in there, I made a run for it.  I took my shower and then realized I hadn’t brought any clothes into the bathroom when I’d made my mad dash.  I had to put the tee shirt back on to go get them.  Rats!  I really did like the idea of looking for a bigger place.

Maybe I’d have some privacy then.  But, if I lived with these guys and they liked me and, and…and my life got better, well, maybe I wouldn’t even want or need to do that thing as much.

Nah.  I didn’t believe that for a minute.  Even if I was safe and happy, I was sure I’d still get horny.

Breakfast was an omelet with bacon and sausage in it accompanied with home fries and toast.  Briar made it, and Pat stood over him telling him how there should be less meat and more veggies in it and what else he was doing wrong.  When I lived with my father, it would have been him criticizing my mother, and he’d have been meaning every word of it.  With these two it was playful and funny, with Briar acting angry even though he wasn’t.  I could tell he was enjoying it.

So I was in a good mood when the food was served.  Then Pat and Briar started talking about what kind of a house to buy and where, which was good until they started to include me.  I had never been included in conversations with adults and never never any that involved my voicing my preferences.  Never ever!  It made me uncomfortable because, well, this sounds silly, but I didn’t really have any opinions on anything.

The conversation went like this.

Pat: “We could get a large apartment in the loft in an old reclaimed building downtown.  They’re really popular right now.  We’d be close to all the things there are down there: the opera house, the ice-skating rink, the zoo, the sports arena.  What do you think, Dustin.  Does that appeal to you?”

Me: “Uh, I don’t know.”

Briar:  “How about a house in the suburbs?  Something like what you had before, Dustin, but much less posh and without a wall around it.  We could have a yard, even a pool.  You had one before and could again if you wanted, and you could have friends over this time to splash around with.  You could swim, go for walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, meet other kids, play games in the street, like kick the can or hide-and-seek or capture the flag?  Do kids still play those games?”

Me:  “Uh, I don’t know.”

Pat: “Maybe a place out in the country.  An old farm.  Get some chickens and a cow or two, maybe even horses!  We could get horses!  Wow!  Wouldn't that be great, Dustin?!”

Me: “Uh, I don’t know.  Sure, I guess.  Maybe.”

Briar:  “Or a condo in one of those big new places where we’d have lots of neighbors right in the same complex, and they’d have a rec hall with pool tables and table tennis and board games and all that sort of thing and a community pool and a schedule of activities and even dances and stuff like that for teens.”

Me (trying not to sound frustrated): “Uh, I don’t know.”

Pat: “Or a fixer-upper that you guys could work on which we could sell when the fixing-up part was done, and then maybe get a bigger place.”

Me: “I can’t do anything like that.  What I do best is watch TV.  And read.”

Briar:  “Uh…”

So that wasn’t working well and I was losing my appetite.  All my life, I’d sort of dreamed about sitting with a family at the table and having happy conversations and being part of them.  Now that it was happening, it felt like I was getting third-degree questioning, even if they were just trying to include me, and I wasn’t having any fun at all.  I excused myself and went back to my couch.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself any more if I stayed there.  Or maybe, now that they’d seen the real me, they’d take me back to my father for real.

I wouldn’t blame them.  I was worthless.  And now they knew it.