Chapter Fifty-One Unwanted Casualty

It was a good thing that I took pictures, instead of playing music, because I lost my hearing completely after that. Nothing could penetrate my eardrums but the blank white noise of constant murmurings which quaked my system. It reminded me of butterfly wings, constantly flapping, trying to get away from danger, but only succeeding in crashing together, spoiling their escape attempt. I felt like my own butterfly wings, or whatever the fuck I had held moments earlier, were ripped off, and my own fingers stained. It wasn’t even me who needed to escape from danger. The person who did, it was way too late for.

I may have been deaf, but I still kept my sight, no matter how impaired. Everything around me was a mass of colors and shapes, bobbing together in no particular order. It was a chaotic infraction glowing inside my mind, only propelled further as the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance showed up. Along with being deaf, I was also dumb. Even the flashing right red lights, the long white van and the stretcher, Vivian’s worried face, and Jasmine clutching at my sleeves did not clue me into what was going on. It took seeing the face of the man I loved and barely recognized when everything sunk in, too deep, like a tattoo needle etching out all the ink-banned scars for the world to see. The world was gathering outside the little white art gallery, looking for a good show on a Saturday night. This was not a good show, this was a horrible show, and I wanted all of the people to go away. I couldn’t hear them, but I could still scream.

It was the ear-splitting wail of terror that shook me back to reality, back to the horrible fate set out in front of me. I realized it had been my scream all along, my wail of terror that I didn’t even recognize. Gerard had been attacked. He was tucked into the small white vehicle too fast before I could do anything about it. I could only see black hair topped off by white skin and blood – oh God. There was blood. There wasn’t too much, but Gerard was wearing black. He always wore black. That didn’t show the bloodstains. That didn’t show how much pain he was in, how many bones he have had broken, or how many stitches he would need. I tried to run towards the ambulance doors, screaming and yelling until my voice was hoarse and gone, but they were shut in my face. I saw red hair in the back with Gerard, and though I knew he would be safe with Vivian, I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to chase after the ambulance, but another force, stronger and more powerful than anything I had experienced was pulling me back. It fucking dragged me away from the ambulance and threw me into the back seat of a car. My legs were sprawled out on the seats, the car shoved into a gear before the belts could be done up. I cursed and screamed and even spit at the stranger who had taken me away until I heard the slight, almost distant whimpering of my mother.

She was in the passenger seat, her hands at her face, clutching up to her dangling earrings, and wanting to become deaf herself. It wasn’t that nice of a fate, I thought to myself bitterly. Being deaf didn’t distinguish the fact that the stranger who had kidnapped me, was still a stranger, but one with a face I knew. My father looked back at me from the rearview mirror, then looked away just as he rounded a sharp turn. He didn’t want to pay attention to me at that very moment, telling me to shut up and just be quiet until we got home. I didn’t listen. I was going to scream all the way there.

My voice finally gave way as we rounded the curb up to our house. My father slammed the car in park before barreled out like a bat out of Hell. I was much too quick for him though, light on my feet from not being buckled into the back. I ran after him, my mother a brief after thought in my mind. I didn’t have time to feel guilty or sorry for her. I just needed to corner my dad and do… something. I didn’t even know what I was going to do. My brain had not caught up with my body, and I was inside still yelling before my mind could adjust.

“What the fuck was that?” I exclaimed, my hand slamming the door open as I stepped inside. My father was in the front hall still, taking off his jacket and throwing it on the staircase. He could have gone up the stairs, seemingly escaping me for the time being in his room (I would have only followed) but instead, he stayed in the hallway, crossing his arms over his chest after he was free from his jacket.

“Not now, Frank,” he cut through me, his voice thick as the gas he shoved into cars each day. I looked down at the mechanics shirt he had hanging over his gut, not tucked in anymore. I saw the red stain, and I nearly threw up, knowing that was Gerard’s blood on him. Oh, God. Blood. I had never been one to be squeamish in these types of situations. I had been in fights before. I had broken a few kids’ noses and watches as blood covered their faces, spitting it up like it was vomit. I had seen blood before, and it honestly didn’t scare me. But looking at Gerard’s it made me want to die myself. It made me want to bleed like him, if not to be closer to him, then to have the same fate.

I never thought Gerard could bleed. He was so perfect, so charming and arrogant. I thought nothing could touch him. The idea that blood could be oozing out of him, at that very moment, in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, was surreal. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to. I was staring right at it.

“Yes, now!” I shouted back, stepping inside further and walking down the hall to get closer to this stranger of a person. His eyes widened, seeing the wrath and vengeance in my voice, but quickly shrugging it off. He rolled his eyes, turning his back to me and began to walk down the corridor to the kitchen. I followed, having no idea why he wanted to go here of all places. There were knives here. I didn’t trust myself around sharp things; I was that angry.

“There is nothing to discuss here,” he informed me blandly, hitting the kitchen light and glancing up as the fan came on as well. He went over to the fridge and opened it up, the small light dancing across his face, making his eyes appear sunken in. He looked dead right then, which is what I wished he was.

“There is everything to discus here,” I yelled back, my voice cracking at the realization. Gerard was everything. My dad had fucked with the only thing that I kept pure and whole inside of me. My camera was in my bag, probably still in the car, but that wasn’t the same. I loved to take pictures, but Gerard I could hug. I could hold Gerard, and he could kiss me and tell me everything was better. A camera was metal. I would rather my dad smash that than human skin I once thought invincible.

My father closed the fridge empty handed, heaving a heavy sigh as he leaned against the counter. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. Though his voice was a lot less defiant, it was still loud and booming. I figured the neighbors would call the cops soon enough, figuring that someone was being killed with the amount of screeching that had already happened, and would be happening soon. I wanted them to be called.

“I want you to tell me why you did this!” I exclaimed, slamming my hands down on the counter in between us. My posture faltered a little when I realized that we were in the same position as before when my father had hit me. God, I wished he had hit me instead of Gerard. I was the one who really deserved it.

“Did what?” my father shot back, his voice thick and menacing. When I gave him a death glare, he cleared his throat, looking away and corrected himself. “I talked to him.”

“Fucking talked?” I stammered, unable to control myself. I felt some triumph inside my chest, knowing that I had already essentially gotten my dad to confess the act. I had never mentioned names, but yet, he knew exactly who I was talking about. It was a small win, if any. “Fucking talking does not end up inside an ambulance.”

“My kind does.”

I in took a sharp breath, feeling it cut through my lungs like his words did to my skin. He was admitting this. He really was. I thought speculations had been horrible, the truth hurt more. I kept getting mental images flashing before my mind of Anthony constantly punching and kicking Gerard, over and over again. It made me sick, even more when I remembered he was wearing his steal-toed work shoes.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” I had closed my eyes before, feeling the burn and sting, but now I looked at him, begging him for an answer almost. He saw my plea, and though he flinched, just a little bit, he scoffed it all off.

“I saw the picture, Frank,” he stated. I cocked my head to the side, almost forgetting what one he was talking about. “The one with you two holding hands? Yeah, I saw that one.” He threw the words at me, my eyes widening with each open sore he was making. He huffed and puffed, pacing to the side a bit before he continued, his brows knitted together with hate.

“Before someone bought the horrible thing, I saw it. I stared at it for hours, trying to figure it out. I couldn’t tell what it was before. It was too blurry, too shoddy, too messy. It wasn’t a good photograph, in clarity and in what it really was. And when I figured out what exactly it was supposed to be, I nearly smashed it.” He slammed his hand on the stove, causing pots and pans to shudder, emphasizing his point. “And then, I went looking for him. I went all through the gallery, Frank, looking for this man. I found him. With you. ”

He had been staring at the ground before, but now he tore his eyes away from blue and green kitchen tiles and looked at me. He stared into me, his steel eyes cutting through me. He walked forward, I leaned back. It did nothing to protect myself from the fire melting the steel in his eyes. There was a sadness with the anger, and he was doing all he could to get the anger to win. My heart was jumping into my throat, my fists clenched not knowing where to direct all of my emotions. I felt like I could claw my skin away, leaving a raw and bloodied pulp and my father would still be yelling at it, accusing it of horrible things. He had fucking stalked Gerard. And he found him. I felt a tear inside my chest, wondering just what he had found us doing. Was it when we were linking arms? When he held my hand? Held me back? Oh God. We had done so many things that night we shouldn’t have. All of it seemingly innocent, but nothing was innocent to my dad. He caught us, and he hunted us down. This wasn’t fair.

“It was just a picture,” I stated slowly, my eyes down at the counter in front of us.

Our kitchen was oddly shaped, but it was working for this event. The appliances and some counter space along with the cupboards were along the back wall, the counter I was on at the moment being an island in between. I was on one side, my back to the tables and chairs behind me, while my dad was on the other, his back to the kitchen. We were on the same island together, but we were both as shipwrecked.

“Just a picture?” he questioned sarcastically, scoffing and clearing his throat. “You were holding hands.”

“You have to take risks for art,” I explained, my voice coming out in rippled waves from my past screaming and aggravation. I watched the counter, the way the Formica seemed to chip with each word he fired out. We were starting a war again, and Gerard had been the first unnecessary casualty. I crushed my eyes shut just thinking about it.

“I don’t like these risks,” he hissed, pushing himself away from the counter a bit more, taking another breath before he hissed out the next part. He was like a snake just then, his skin just as tough and coming off in layers, his sharp teeth into my neck. “He’s doing bad things to you.”

“No, he’s not!” I slammed my fists down on the counter, making sure my dad paid the fuck attention. He was putting venom into my veins, but I could still suck it out. “It’s just art, it’s just –“

He cut me off again, razor sharp teeth and a rattle without warning. “I don’t like art. I’ve never liked art. I don’t like photography. Or creativity, or anything of the sort. It has only got me into trouble.”

As he halted for a mere second, I could see a weak spot coming forth within him. He may have been fighting, but he was wounded.

“I wanted to play guitar. I did. It was fun and I liked it. But it gets you into too much trouble. Sets you up for dreams you can never accomplish and dreams that will only be broken.” He paused, looking at me hard, a silver of pain behind the steel. “Literally broken.”

I felt a pang inside – my fist real guilt pain – knowing that I was the one who broke that guitar, crushed that dream. But he had given me that guitar; it was mine to break, just like it was his beforehand.

“You gave up on that, dad,” I shot at him lowly. “Not me.”

“I know, but you’re not helping any, are you?” He raised his thick brows at me, and then huffed as he crossed his arms over his chest again. “I don’t like art, music, or anything like that anymore. They don’t prepare you for life.”

No, I thought inside my head, some of Gerard’s knowledge blasting its way through the rumble. They don’t prepare you for life; they just give you one. My heart swelled. God, he needed to be okay. I thought back to my meager pray in the church, begging for forgiveness for my mother’s sake than anything else. That hadn’t even been a real prayer. I needed something real now. I needed a God or something or anything to be around and save Gerard. While they were around, they could save me too. I was looking at the devil and he was wearing my own skin.

“I don’t like things that are useless…” My dad’s words started to echo through my mind again, warping me back into present time. “I don’t like things I can’t control.”

I felt something inside me snap, and I only hoped it was some kind of mushroom cloud bomb, to engulf us both whole. If I was going down, I was bringing him with me.

“You can’t control me, dad! You may not like art, but I do. And you can’t control me.”

I was motioning with my arms wildly, my eyes bulging out of my head, my voice trying to reach him in ways my body or art never could. He looked at me strangely, my words making him squirm. I knew I was onto something. I kept going and going, cutting him off before he even had a chance to speak.

“You can’t control me, dad. I’m almost eighteen. I’m almost out of school. I’m almost out of this house. I’m almost out of your life…”

“And into his house?” he questioned, knowing the answer he was going to put to it. “No, not on my watch. You are never seeing him again.”

“And that may happen because you could have killed him!” I shouted the words, but never really felt their impact until they hit the air. My heart beat stopped and I felt my vocal chords twist in on themselves. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that my dad could have killed Gerard. He always said he wanted to. To the cops, in our last fight. My dad hated this man. He could have done horrible things to him. I never got to see or talk to any of the workers to see how Gerard was doing, for all I knew, he could have been dead in the back of the van.

My blood ran cold and I forced the image from my mind. He was not dead. I had to keep fighting, regardless of his fate.

“Why would you do this, dad?”

“He was hurting you,” my dad answered slowly, then added quickly, so much that I almost didn’t notice next to the prior malignant phrase. “He was doing my job.”

“What do you mean, doing your job?”

My father huffed, uncrossing his arms and slamming them at his side, not wanting to explain his own answer, but doing it anyway. “He gave you a jacket. He gave you an art show.” My dad pursed his lips and looked at me, as if I should get the point. I didn’t.

“So?”

“I’m supposed to do those things, Frank! Not some random fuck!”

The curse rolled off my dad’s tongue effortlessly, the sharp corners of the word striking like bullets. My dad was jealous and even he hated himself for the feelings.

I was going to play up on every weakness I saw.

“Then do your job and maybe I wouldn’t need Gerard,” I shot at him without sympathy. I knew that I still would need Gerard, no matter how my father acted, but he didn’t have to hear that part. He just needed to hear what it felt like to be cut down to nothing, again and again. Maybe then, he would stop doing it to me.

He merely looked at me, shaking his head, his eyes squinted. He clucked his tongue and brought out another surprise attack. “Frank, the photo was called ‘Love’.”

“Huh?”

“The photo. Of you and Gerard. Holding hands. It was called ‘Love’.”

He looked down at me, narrowing his eyes. His words sickened him. He folded his arms and started to lean down, taking the approach I had used before and making it seem ten times scarier. “You want to explain that to me?”

“There are many different kinds of love, dad,” I informed him, keeping a straight and serious face. I had already lied so much, I was getting good. Even I was starting to believe that Gerard was just my art teacher and nothing more.

“Don’t talk about something you know nothing about.”

“You do the same thing with Gerard. Only I actually do know what I’m talking about.” I gave him a sneer, tilting my head as a challenge. He scoffed, rolling his eyes and was silent for a long time, processing everything.

“So, you love him?” my dad asked, arrogant and airy.

Fuck, was all I could think. It ran around in my head like a merry-go-round. This was the moment of truth. I could either lie to my dad, totally discounting the man who had pretty much saved my life or I could tell him the truth, but disguise it in another form. Neither thing sounded particularly great, but love wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I had seen that. There were many different kinds, but all of them immeasurable. I recalled the conversation with Gerard earlier that night – and though it hurt a little bit – I thought of what he said. I loved Jasmine just as much as I loved Gerard. I had thought it was more, but it was just a different kind. Love was immeasurable. Love was an emotion, and you had to grasp it. I loved my father (despite my displease for it) and I loved Gerard, too. They were just different ways.

I glanced up at my father from my staring point on the counter. I wondered if he could handle my truth, because at that moment in time, I was not going to deny my feelings. Gerard was out there, hurt because of me and my father. Because of me and that fucking picture. If I had not put it in that damned gallery, none of this would have happened. Gerard wanted it there though, he wanted me to take a risk and he wanted me to fight. This would not be a lost cause. I could do this. I could see my father slowly breaking, the snake he was slowing shedding its skin, becoming a different creature. We were still fighting our war and I could tell with each bullet or bomb encased with words I through at him, he was getting closer and closer to that white flag. I had to keep going. I was winning.

“Yeah, I do,” I answered, breathing in and out slowly. “But, it’s not what –“

“Frank,” he shouted, raising one of his hands in the air. His voice was so loud, it hurt my ears. I could hear the glasses in the cupboards shaking, and even though he lowered his voice for his next statements, I was still shaking. “Jesus fucking Christ. Stop lying to me.”

My body froze, swallowing the only thing I could manage. I opened my mouth slowly, preparing the harsh sting of retaliation. “Then you stop lying to me. ”

We both stood together, our backs arched and necks tilted the same way, waiting for something to happen next. If my father wanted to believe that I was lying, then fuck it. I was tired of fighting for that cause at the moment. But I could tell there was something inside of him, something itching to get out and smother one of us with. He had not been very clear at all with any of the details surrounding Gerard. They were just vague threats and hints as far as I was concerned. He was barreling down on me, wanting straight fact after fact when I wasn’t the fucking criminal. He was. He had hurt someone, assaulted them behind a fucking art museum. I wanted my answers now; the interrogation tables were turned.

“How bad did you hurt him?” I asked, my voice hitting the silent air. My dad didn’t move, but I saw an eye twitch. I kept going. “Did you fuck him up as much as you, huh, dad?”

I paused, waited, only twitching happening on his part.

“Answer me!”

I slammed my hand down on the table, his skin flinching a bit, but not following my orders. He refused to look at me, his hands pressing down his shirt. He locked eyes with the stain from Gerard, and it broke something inside of him that I didn’t know existed. I heard a huge shudder come from my father’s mouth, his breath weak and labored. I felt myself relax, but still stared perplexed at the man in front of me. I didn’t know what was going on. All the logical places inside my mind told me that he was about to cry. The way his breath came out in shudders, and were swallowed back like gasps, the way his head was looking down, eyes refusing to meet my own. His hands ran from his shirt to the stain to his hair, his thick fingers pushing their way through the matted clumps. His hands ended up over his face, cowering and hiding his emotions. His breathing became echoed, and though I wanted to believe he was crying, it just didn’t make sense. I had never seen my father cry. It was a rare phenomenon that I never wanted to see.

He took in a sudden deep breath, bringing his face up again, hands away and at his sides. He was flushed, and though his skin was tanned and rough, I could see red poking through. My dad may not have been crying, but fuck, he was really upset.

But over what? This? Gerard? I had only seen him express anger for this man. He was now on the verge of tears. What changed?

“He didn’t fight back…”

As if hearing my internal plea, my dad’s lips started to move and sound began to come out in choked gasps.

“He didn’t fight back…” he repeated, shaking his head and looking at the ground. He had not looked at me yet and I didn’t know if I wanted him too. I extended my head and my ear, trying to engulf every word he was saying, and the more I heard the statement, the more untrue it seemed. I was on the verge of just leaving the kitchen, thinking my father had completely lost it when he finally made eye contact. I could see the pain and hurt in his eyes, the sheer desperation for anything. “He didn’t fight back…”

“Who?” I asked, and I didn’t care how stupid I sounded. “Gerard?”

“Yes!” my dad bellowed, but not like he had before. His loud voice was wracked with pain, but I wasn’t sure for whom anymore. “He didn’t fight back, Frank.”

My dad’s eyes bore into me as he shook his head, almost begging me for an answer.

I didn’t have one. This didn’t make sense. Why would Gerard have not fought back? Gerard was a fighter, I knew that. He had told me that. He liked fighting. There was passion in it. But he had prevented me from obliterating Sam and Travis because it had been a lost cause. Was my father a lost cause? Maybe… I looked over at him, the mere shell of a person he had become. His hands were shaking, and he pawed at the bloodstain on his shirt occasionally, shaking his head each time.

“Dad…” I started, not wanting to make him break anymore than he already had. He wasn’t crying, he was just… upset. Visibly and physically shaken. There was no doubt in my mind that this was still my father. There was anger in his actions, like he didn’t want to be that way, but couldn’t fight it anymore. He slammed his hands down on the counter every once in awhile, expressing this frustration.

Ironically, this made me feel better. I was starting to realize there was something much, much worse than having an enraged parent.

One that couldn’t even understand their actions for themselves.

“Dad,” I repeated when my first attempt had fallen on newly deaf ears. “What happened?”

He drew his head around slowly from looking at the wall to gaze at me, biting his lip and taking a deep breath.

“I really just wanted to talk to him, Frank,” he started and it sounded like he was begging. Begging me, his son, who he had cast aside for so long to actually listen to him. I was tempted to just walk out of the room, tell him to fuck off and deal with it, but I couldn’t. There was only so much pain you could cause to someone without feeling it yourself. And apparently, my father had come to that realization himself. I stayed where I was, listening as he continued his story.

“I just wanted to talk to him. Ask him what he was doing with my son…” Only sentences in, my dad paused, unwilling to continue.

“What did he say?”

“That you were an amazing kid,” my dad said, all of the shakes stopping for that one solid moment where he looked proud of me. He nodded his head and even cracked a small smile, his gaze cast towards me. “He told me you were an amazing kid. That you were smart and had a lot of talent. A lot of potential. But that’s where I couldn’t take it anymore.”

I crushed my eyes closed, knowing the next part of the story before he would even tell me. I could see the pain in my father’s eyes, fighting someone who didn’t strike back, but I couldn’t understand why he was shaking over it, why he was acting so out of character.

“I hit him first, just to the stomach. But even when I kept hitting him, worse than that and other places, he didn’t move. He went limp, but it was so much more than playing dead. His eyes were open. He was looking at me the entire time. He was conscious. And still, he didn’t hit back,” my dad said again strongly, looking me dead center in the eyes. “Rapists hit back.”

I let go of a breath I was holding, understanding everything all at once. My dad was finally realizing that Gerard was not hurting me, that he was just a good guy. All of my father’s hate and vehemence for this man had been focused on the fact that he had supposedly hurt me. My dad wanted to believe that even after the rape kit came back and the charges were never filed. He still wanted to believe that when there was no evidence. He was given a small speck of evidence in the grand scheme of things tonight and tried to run with it. He wanted to hurt Gerard; he just needed a reason to. That picture sparked it all, and he gone to seek his vengeance. He wanted to fight him, man to man, to settle this one and for all. Only, he wasn’t fighting what he thought he was. He was fighting a man who was not going to lay a finger on him, not even in self defense. That did not fit his idea of a rapist. Fuck, that didn’t even fit my ideal of a human. I would have fought back. It was an instinct. You hit back if someone hits you. It was only natural. Gerard had denied his natural instincts to take blow after I didn’t know how many blows to help my father understand. Gerard was letting someone beat him to teach someone something. I couldn’t believe what he had done.

Now that my father had fully comprehended his actions, it shook him to his very core. He hated Gerard because he was replacing him in my life, but he never wanted to admit that. He would have rather his son been raped in his mind than to think that I was willingly finding a father figure elsewhere. As much as it disgusted me, I felt my heart ache for my dad at the same time. And I couldn’t let him suffer before me any longer.

“See, dad,” I started, extending my arms across the counter more, leaning into him but trying not to be too intimidating. “Gerard was never trying to hurt me.”

My dad nodded, and let out something that sounded like a mangled ‘I know’, but didn’t do much else.

“The doctors, shrink, and the lawyers were right,” I started again, talking slow as to not rub my accuracy in his face. “Gerard was just my art teacher, nothing else. I love him, but I love you too.”

I swallowed my back thoughts to the statements and just let them hit the air. It was friendly fire at this point, and we were just testing our guns. My dad took in a deep breath, smoothing out his shirt, trying not to become preoccupied with the dreaded spot.

“I know,” he said, asserting it to himself more so than me. He stood there for awhile, exchanging glances between me and the kitchen floor. There was an unsure quality about the looks, but I couldn’t place it right away.

“I’m sorry, Frank. So sorry,” my dad finally stated, and that was when I realized it. He was surrendering in the war we had started. Never before had I heard those words spill from my father’s mouth, especially in such a heated situation as this. With that simple statement, he was telling me he had been wrong. My father, Anthony Iero who had tried to dictate everything in my life since I was a child, was telling me that he was wrong. And he was apologizing for it. I didn’t know what to do - except that I was not apologizing alongside him. I had done that my entire life; it was time the tables stayed turned.

“Thank you,” was all I said instead, my fingers finding a groove on the counter and playing with it nervously.

“Gerard was right,” my dad stated off the cuff. “You are a pretty amazing kid.”

He smiled as much as he could while I felt my cheeks grow bright red. My father sighed, pity and sorrow seeping their way into his once strong voice.

“I just wish I could have been the one to tell you that first.”

“You still can,” I stated, looking up brightly at him. I couldn’t believe what I was going to propose this, but fuck, weirder things had happened that night. “I’m not eighteen for another few weeks. You can still find out all you want to know about me.”

I felt weird, offering myself like I was. I had only ever done that with Gerard, and he had needed to extract each and every tiny morsel of it from me. Now everything about me was on the surface, I could easily share myself with another human being.

“Thanks,” my dad said, half-heartedly looking around the kitchen. He breathed another heavy sigh, defeated.

It didn’t seem real that everything was over already. It seemed like we just started fighting, and the ending came so fast. My dad had surrendered and I was left to be victorious. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves when we weren’t constantly at each other’s throats, it took awhile for us to adjust. So we both just stood in the kitchen, savoring the new sensation.

“Just, do one thing for me,” my dad stated, cocking an eyebrow to see if I accepted the offer. I nodded slowly, still on guard from our last attack. “Keep taking pictures.”

“Why?”

It was one thing for my father to finally accept some aspects of Gerard and admit that he was wrong, but did that mean he was changing his opinion on art as well? I was too shell-shocked to tell.

“You can change people with pictures,” he informed me, trying to teach me something I already knew. His eyes remained on the floor, but gradually, he brought them to meet mine. “You can be creative and still do something with your life. Don’t stop because I did.”

Ironically, as soon as my father gained the strength he needed, I was rendered weak, and had to look away.

“I think we all should go to bed,” a small voice came into the kitchen, after a long silence had passed. I looked over and saw my mother, who had been standing at the side the entire time, not uttering a word. She had watched the entire battle go down, and was now only coming out to start to tend to any left over wounds. She looked at both of us shakily, finally smiling when she realized it was done.

“It’s late,” she added, and I drew my attention to the stove clock. It was well past two in the morning, but I didn’t feel tired at all, my sudden thoughts returning.

“I want to go to the hospital,” I enunciated, stamping my foot down as I sat up straighter away from the counter. My worries with my father were resolved; I still needed to pick up the mess from our war, however. One causality was already too much. “I need to see Gerard.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother sighed, running her hands through her hair. The lines around her eyes deepened, showing her tiredness. “It’s late. Can we go tomorrow?”

I bounced up and down on the soles of my feet, shifting my weight nervously. I didn’t know if I could wait that long.

“I didn’t hurt him too bad,” my dad came in with a clear and conversational tone, despite the severity of the situation. “I think. I stopped before anything too bad could be done. I gave up after awhile when he just wasn’t doing anything back. I had to stop then…”

He screwed up his face a bit, trying to remember and have the details come off right. My father’s reassuring words did nothing to help. I still had the imprint of the ambulance sirens on my mind, and the bloodstain on my father’s shirt in front of me to coincide with my worst fears. I looked at my mother, who merely shrugged her shoulders in a loud sigh.

“It’ll be okay. We’ll get up early and go. I’ll drive you,” she suggested, trying to force a smile.

“No,” my father suddenly cut in, before I could even have a chance to react to my mother’s comment. I felt my heart drop out into my stomach, getting burned in the stomach acid.

“I’ll take you,” he declared. As he looked over at me, I saw how tired he really was. “I should get to know this guy before I totally make up my mind about him.”

My dad gave me a weak smile, and I nodded to his suggestion, realizing something much deeper. My father would never surrender. It just wasn’t programmed into him. I had changed his mind, but I could never change him. I had to stop trying, but that didn’t mean defeat. It didn’t have to mean defeat for either of us. It just meant compromise. The war was done and over with. We would be signing the treaty between us tomorrow.

As I walked up the stairs to bed, sleep still a distant thought, I couldn’t have felt more victorious.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-24