Killing Time in Crystal City Read Online Free PDF Page A

there in full employment.”
    â€œI’m not a child,” I say.
    He raises his hands in surrender. “Fair enough, Kevin. Still, I’d think he would be considered a danger to a school full of students.”
    â€œYou know,” I say, rising from the table as if I had someplace to go, “if I believed that, I would do something. But the truth is that the only two people he’s a danger to are me and him.”
    â€œAnd his daughter and his wife, they don’t count?”
    There aren’t enough Sausalitos in the world to make this hurt less.
    â€œThey don’t count because they’re gone, Syd. And because he never hurt them. Not physically.”
    He nods sadly. “Why didn’t you stay with them, Kev? You should’ve gotten away clean and left him to rot away from the inside. What were you thinking?”
    This is not a hard question to answer, in the sense that I know what I was thinking. On the other hand, it’s very hard to answer, out loud, because most people—starting with the one I’m talking to—will never, ever get the logic of my dealings with Dad. Some days I have trouble piecing the logic back together myself, so I understand.
    Dad didn’t ever hurt the girls physically, this is true. But he hurt them.
    The first of his midlife crises made a big mess of things. But it wasn’t Armageddon.
    The second, after he had slowly, incrementally, carefully been let back into the bosom of our family, was the one that brought the walls down.
    Mum and Alice were wounded and enraged to the point where it is not conceivable that they will ever reconcile with Dad. It was faith betrayed, and to be forgiven once, to be given a do-over on that, would seem to be something that would make a man count himself blessed.
    And so my father counted his blessings, and he took that do-over . . . and he did it over, again, a year later.
    He left the house, the family, the town. He got a new job at a new school just far enough away. Everybody got a do-over.
    Until I undid my do-over.
    â€œI couldn’t leave him by himself. I had to go back. He needed somebody. He needed me. He’s a lot better than that, Syd, better than it seems on the outside, and somebody had to stick with him.”
    â€œBullshit. He is what he is.”
    â€œHe is a wonderful guy, a wonderful dad . . . almostall the time. I always thought I could help. And I always thought it was my job to do that. He needed me. I know nobody understood—”
    â€œThat’s correct. I’m glad the girls got away from him anyway.”
    Glad. It’s not a word that occurs often around the subject of Dad.
    â€œYeah,” I say, failing to produce glad. “They saw red when I told them I was moving back with him. They were so livid, it was like when Mum threw him out, all over again. Screaming and breaking things, it got . . . fairly unpleasant. Things were said . . . some of them by me . . . It was bad. Is bad.”
    â€œWell, that I am sorry about. But, I am very glad you’re here,” he says, extra brightly for both of us. “I’m your whole family now.”
    â€œThanks,” I say. “That really does make me feel better. And it’ll make me feel even more better if that’s the end of that subject, okay?”
    â€œOkay,” he says, “done.”
    â€œWhich way to the bathroom?”
    He points, I start toward it, almost make it out of the room.
    â€œDo your mother and sister know, Kevin? About the latest? I bet they’d agree with me about your father’s job situation.”
    I stop and spin back toward him.
    â€œI wouldn’t know, since I talk to them now about as often as I do you, and by the way, does the word ‘done’ have a different meaning here in Crystal City?”
    He laughs. “I think you’ll find that pretty much everything does, Nephew.”
    That sounds quite exciting to me at the