Redemption Road(126)

*

Gideon liked the hospital because everything was clean and people were nice. The nurses smiled; the doctor called him “Sport.” He didn’t understand a lot of what was said and done, but followed parts of it. The bullet had made a small, clean hole and hit no organs or major nerves. It nicked an important artery, though, and people liked to tell him how lucky he was, that he’d made the hospital just in time and that the surgeon had stitched him just right. They liked to make him feel good, but sometimes, if he turned his head fast enough, he’d catch the whispers and strange, sideways looks. He thought that was about what he’d tried to do, because Adrian Wall was all over the television and he was the boy who’d tried to kill him. Maybe it was about his dead mother and the bodies under the church. Or maybe it was about his father.

The old man had been fine for the first day. He’d been calm and quiet, and even respectful. At some point, though, that changed. He got moody and sullen and short with the nurses. His eyes were red all the time, and Gideon woke more than once to find him staring out from under the bill of an old cap, lips moving as he stared at his son and whispered words Gideon couldn’t hear. Once, when a nurse suggested his father go home and get some sleep, he came to his feet so fast the chair scraped. There’d been a look in his eyes, too, something that scared even Gideon.

After that, none of the nurses lingered when the old man was in the room. They didn’t smile and tease out stories. But it worked out in a way. Gideon’s father stayed away most of the time. When he chose to appear, he curled on the chair or slept. At times he stayed under a hospital blanket, and only Gideon knew he had bottles under there, too. He could hear them clanking in the dark, the gurgle when his father lifted the blanket and tipped one back.

It was the pattern. And if the drinking went longer and deeper than usual, Gideon didn’t blame him. They both had reason to hate, and Gideon, too, knew the ache of failure. He didn’t pull the trigger, and that made him as weak as his father. So he tolerated the drunkenness and long stares, the time his father stumbled to the bathroom and vomited until the sun rose. And when the nurses asked Gideon about the mess, he’d said it was him; that the painkillers made him sick.

After that they gave him Tylenol and let him hurt.

He didn’t mind.

The room was kept dark, and in the gloom he saw his mother’s face, not as a photograph—flat and faded—but as it must have been when she was alive, the color of it, the animation of her smile. The memory couldn’t be real, but he played it like a favorite movie, over and over and bright in the dark. The confession caught him by surprise.

“She died because of me.”

Gideon started because he didn’t know his father was in the room. He hadn’t been for hours, but now he was by the bed, his fingers hooked on the rail, a look on his face of desperation and shame.

“Please, don’t hate me. Please, don’t die.”

Gideon wasn’t going to die. The doctors had said as much, but his father’s breakdown was complete: red eyes and swollen face, the smell from his mouth like something pickled. “Where have you been? When did you get here?”

“You don’t know how it is, son. You don’t see how it piles up—the things we do, the consequence when we love and trust and let others inside. You’re just a boy. How could you know anything about betrayal or hurt or what a man can do if he’s pushed?”

Gideon sat up straighter; felt stitches pull in his chest. “What are you talking about? No one died because of you.”

“Your mother.”

“What about her?”

Robert Strange pulled once on the rail, then rocked onto his knees as a bottle clattered from a coat pocket and slid across the floor. “It was just an argument, that’s all. Okay, wait. No. That’s a lie, and I promised no more lies. I hit her, yes, three times. But just the three, three times and done. I did that, but apologized. I swore to her son. I told her she didn’t need to leave me or go to the church. She’d done a bad thing. Yes, okay. But, I’d already forgiven her, so there was no sin to pray for, no need for God or the cross or reason to pray for me, either. All she had to do was stay with us, and I would forgive every bad thing she’d ever done, the lies and distortions and the secrets of her heart. Tell me you see it, son. So many years I’ve watched it eat you alive, to be motherless and stuck with me, alone. Tell me you forgive me, and I think maybe I could sleep without dreams. Tell me I did what any husband would do.”

“I don’t understand. You hit her?”

“It wasn’t like I planned it or enjoyed it.” Robert pulled at his hair and left it spiked. “The bad part happened so fast, my fists … that was twenty seconds, and maybe less. I never meant it. I didn’t want her to leave, didn’t think she’d die over twenty seconds. Just like that, one, two, three…”

He was moving his fingers—counting—and Gideon blinked as it all soaked in. “She went to the church because of you?”

“Her killer must have found her there.”

“She died because of you?”

The question was hard, and the father grew still, his head tilting so light caught in his eyes. “You still think she’s some kind of saint, don’t you, some perfect thing? I understand that, I do. A boy should feel that way about his mother. But she left you in that crib, son. I was angry, yes, and maybe I broke up the kitchen and smashed some things, and maybe I lied to the cops about what really happened. But she’s the one who left.”