Brightside by Mark Tullius (story books to read txt) 📕

DAY 66. THE SUN WAS setting and I suddenly had this urge to call Mom. When Sharon suggested I give her a ring, I had no intention of following through, but here, in this room with a closet of weird gifts, I wanted to yell at someone. I punched in the numbers faster than I could think about it.

The phone rang and I tried to remember what she sounded like, if I’d ever had a real conversation with her. Once I’d moved out, I basically only heard from my father. It rang again and I almost hung up.

Mom used the same greeting she used whenever a guy would call and Dad was around. “Who’s this?”

“Uh...”

“Joey?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

The setting red sun filled my window, everything beyond it. I brought the phone back to my ear. “Yeah.”

Like she was sorry to hear it, she said, “Oh my God.”

I realized it was late in Ohio. “Did I wake you?”

“No, not at all. Are you alright?”

“I’m okay.”

She sounded genuine when she said she missed me. “So much, I really do.”

Suddenly, I was three years old again, just happy to hear her voice.

“I hate this,” she said. “I’ve tried to call, but they won’t put me through. I was scared. Have they hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound it.”

If anyone had been listening to the call, they probably would’ve believed her, the way she sounded so sweet. “You know you can call me anytime, right? I’m so glad you called.”

“Yeah...”

“So how you been, Joey? What’s it like?”

I rubbed my temple, tried to quiet the voice telling me to hang up. “It’s different.”

“It seems loud.”

“It’s my neighbor.”

“Oh, what’s his name?”

“Her.”

“Oh. Are they nice?”

I knew someone was listening in, waiting for me to slip up. I suddenly felt trapped, felt the anger building.

“I’m sure you’re meeting other people. Like you. That must be exciting? Just be yourself.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. You’re always smart, sometimes too smart—”

“I thought I was an idiot.”

Mom sounded a lot more like the woman I remembered, when she said, “I never once called you that.”

“You thought I was stupid.”

“Joey...”

“You did. I was there. I got a ninety-one on my IQ test. And you thought I was an idiot.”

I opened my eyes, looked out the window, everything red.

Suddenly, I was five years old coming home from the snowstorm, hating my mother. I said, “It wasn’t my fault. The stuff she was thinking made it so I couldn’t think.”

“Who?”

“The test lady. She wanted to hold me, feel my skin on hers. She wanted to breathe in my hair.”

“You didn’t tell us.”

“And say what? I’d been hearing thoughts my whole life, knew damn well you hated me?”

“Don’t you ever say that!”

“Why? Should I just think it? Does that make it better? Does it make it any less true?”

“Stop it, Joey. Stop it right now.”

I did. But only because I was done. I heard the hurt in her voice, even if it was barely there. That would have to be enough.

“Is that why you called? To accuse me? Point fingers?”

I thought about it a minute, loved not having to hear what she was thinking. Imagining her heart being crushed. “Closure.” Sharon’s word flying out of my mouth.

“How do you think I feel?” Mom said, “You don’t think you owe me an apology? Listening in to whatever you wanted.”

I took my time to answer, chose to speak the truth. “I guess I do owe you an apology. For the time when I was six and you were fucking Brian’s stepdad.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“When all you could think about all day long was how much you loved him. How you wanted to fly away, how it’d be so much better.” I looked at the sky, wishing I could turn back time, put her on that plane. “How he was going to send you to New York, you’d only have to see me when you wanted to.”

“Joey, I always loved you.”

“I’m sorry for giving you the guilt trip. I should have let you abandon us. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up.”

“You make it seem like I thought bad things all the time,” Mom said. “What about all the good thoughts I had? Don’t those count for something?”

“Should they?”

“Don’t you dare tell me there weren’t times you hated me. I listened to you scream you wished I was dead.”

I kept quiet.

“It’s natural to have bad thoughts every once in a while. It’s natural to be upset and tired and cranky. It’s natural to not be satisfied, to want something more.” She paused like she had something important to say, then I heard the sobs. “You think it was easy living in that house with you and your father, leaving nothing inside my head. Ripping it out whenever you wanted. I could have left. I thought about it. And yeah, I took comfort in the arms of other men. But I deserved some time to myself, away from you and your dad.”

“Poor you.”

“You have no idea what it was like.”

“Just put Dad on the phone.”

“He’s not here.”

“Then I have to go. I only have a certain amount of minutes.”

“Joey, please. I don’t want you to hate me.”

“Well, I do.”

“How can you say that?”

“You know, it wouldn’t even surprise me if you were the one who turned me in.”

I pictured Saul, that douchebag making the call. I pictured his fat fingers and that shit-eating grin.

Then everything changed.

“I would never turn you in, Joey. Never. And when I found out your father did, I felt like I was going to die.”

My stomach churned acid. “You’re sick in the head.”

“I don’t know why he did it. I’m so sorry...”

I don’t remember letting go of the phone, but I heard it crack against the floor, my mother sounding like she was screaming from the bottom of a well.

My foot stomped down on the phone, cracking it, shattering her goddamn voice.

Dad turned me in. Just handed me over.

I saw the closet. Opened it. All those fucking gifts. I flung them from the closet. Ripped them open. The little swan figurine, I smashed it against the wall. The fishing pole, I snapped in two. Everything obliterated. Tiny pieces flying across the room, sliding under my bed, cracking against the window. I destroyed it all and collapsed. My own father. The man who would never give up on me, told me he’d always be there. No matter what.

Through my tear-bubbled eyes, I saw a tiny piece of metal. Curved, shiny. Resting right in front of my face on the floor. My hand reached out. I held it under the light. So small and hard and silver, and it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. Felt it pressed against my finger as a kid.

No...

Frantically, I crawled across the floor, sifting through all the broken bits, the tuning fork that wasn’t really a tuning fork. The fishing pole snapped in two, the bottom part hollowed out. The metal picture frame with the strange spring.

Everything coming into focus.

My hands putting it together. Dropping the bolt slide into place like Dad showed me. Screwing the barrel.

In ten minutes, there it was.

Eight pounds of power. American metal. The shotgun Dad got when Grandpa decided a mouthful of buckshot