Dirtbag

Dolly was ten years old when she saw my father slap me.

Stephen Trenton is not abusive. He is impatient. However, when a sheltered young girl sees an angry man hit his son, she freaks the fuck out. It’s what girls do.

“Jack,” my father had said that evening. It was after school and Dolly had come over to watch TV at my house. Mom was in the kitchen, making egg salad sandwiches. Dolly and I were sitting on the living room floor, twiddling our thumbs and keeping our eyes on the television screen. Dad was towering over me.

“Dad!” I had happily cried. I rarely saw my father when it was light outside, nonetheless did he ever talk to me. This, however, was not a warm-and-bubbly kind of visit. I soon found that out.

“Jack,” he repeated, “I saw that you left your bike out on the driveway. What have I told you about putting things away after you use them?”

I stared at the ground. Complete embarrassment washed over my body. I could have only imagined the awkward look on Dolly’s face.

“Jack, you look at me when I talk to you.” His hot breath was on my face now. He was no longer above me, but at my level. For a moment, I thought he was compromising. I was dead-wrong.

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“Sorry,” he said the word with complete distaste, “does not fix the fact that in order to get into the driveway I had to get out of my car, take care of your bike, and get back in my car. Sorry does not fix that, Jack.”

Take care put an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I knew what those blunt words meant.

“Sorry.”

”Stop spewing that bullshit!” I could feel Dolly flinch at my side. I could see my mother’s polka-dotted apron in the near distance. I could hear my father’s heartbeat—that’s how close he was—and see the rage in his eyes.

A child’s bike in a driveway should not anger a person this severely. It was not my fault that he was so deranged—it was work and work and work and work and work. I knew this, even at the mere age of ten, and I still made the stupid mistake of leaving my bike out. That was my fault.

“Stephen, let’s not make a scene,” I heard my mother whisper. We were in the comfort of our own home. She didn’t have to whisper. But even in our household, we were not sheltered away from my father and his temper. If anything, we were in more danger.

“Make a scene?” my dad repeated. That was one of his techniques—he was mocking us. “Jack needs to learn how to become a responsible young man.”

“I’m trying, dad.”

I felt it. The air that hits before the contact of skin on skin. The sting, afterwards, that leaves you feeling nothing but shameful. The shocked look on my mother’s face, the gasp Dolly let out, the regret that seeped into the wrinkles on my father’s forehead. Because even evil people can experience the ever-so strong emotion of guilt.

Dad left, mom followed, and Dolly held my hand.

Dolly then stated the obvious. “He’s not supposed to do that.”

“How would you know what it’s like?” I had hissed back. There was a faithful friend trying to help me, and yet I pushed her away. “You don’t have a dad, Dolly. You don’t know anything.”

Dolly used to never let things get to her. Only the mention of Hanson made her steely exterior crack.