Nothing Weighs More than a Check

I stood outside the ATM last night punching the frame as hard as I could.

I stood there punching until security rolled up and I ran off.

Today I can’t close my left hand all the way.

Monday night I had been paid for the first time since I was fired from my old job. They cut me a check and told me to stay away. But Monday, my boss paid me in cash. Normally I spend less than three dollars at Taco Bell and eat my dinner in a dark parking lot somewhere. Monday night I went and I got a real burrito. Sure, I still slept in my car but at least I was full. I had breakfast the next day instead of a few handfuls of the trail mix I keep in the center console.

Tuesday I got paid, I took what was left from the day before and I deposited.

The ATM read I had a zero balance.

There was hardly any gas in the Bronco. I should have gotten gas first.

So I drove about a mile or two from where I work and slept there instead of the nice, private spot I usually hide in. There was barely enough gas to get there, anyway. Afterwards, money in my hand again, I put it all in the tank. And this is a Ford Bronco, mind you. All the money I made today took me to the halfway point in the gas tank.

Throughout the day, during any break I could take, I called my mother’s office to make an appointment with her. Apparently they don’t want me in the building. My mother’s receptionist told me she would meet at the Starbucks in Hillcrest. “Here’s the check,” was the first thing she said to me.

Yes, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, my mother has been helping me financially. “I got job, Mom.”

“Great, I’ll write you a new check for the right amount. How much do you have?”

“I don’t have anything.”

“When do you get paid next?”

“Tomorrow. I get paid every day.”

“So why don’t you have any money?”

“The state says I didn’t file my taxes in 2012. They said they sent me a few letters. Ever since my apartment I’ve had my mail going to your house since it’s so close.”

“I know. Martin checks the mail.”

“Well, what I mean is, nobody told me the tax board was looking for me. So they froze all my assets. Or just the one I have, I guess. They said they needed five hundred dollars from me.”

“But you’re working now." 

"Right, but I’m… I’m working now.” Mom isn’t a rigid person. I’ve seen her at parties, with her friends. With my sister. She’s still the person she used to be. Just not with me. “Do you want to sit for a bit?” I asked.

“It’s late, Andersen. I have to get home.”

“I was hoping I could ask you for a loan in a week or two, help me to get a security deposit somewhere.”

“Why don’t you just room with one of your friends?”

“My friends beat me up. They tried to turn me in.”

“Not all of your friends. Surely there’s someone who will let you stay with them.”

“It wouldn’t a lot that I’m asking, Mom. And I’ll pay you back.”

“Martin has already started to notice the amount I’ve been giving you. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to give you anymore.”

“But it’s your money. You make more money that he does.”

“When you’re married you make decisions together, Andersen. There’s no room for being selfish.”

“I love you, Mom. I’m grateful for everything you do for me. I just… I was hoping to get out of the car soon. It’s been so cold at night. Since I can’t stay with you I just thought it might be nice-“

“Why don’t you stay with your father?”

“I don’t want to watch my father die every day on top of everything else.”

“You need to be grateful for what I’m already doing for you, then.” She zipped her purse and turned away.

“Mom, what did I get out of it?” She stopped. I didn’t expect her to stop. I didn’t even mean to say what I said, it just burst out, a groaning exclamation like when someone knocks the wind out of you. If she hadn’t, I would have never said another word. “What did I get when you went back to school?”

“I was doing that for us.”

“What I get spending my childhood in after school care because you wouldn’t let my Dad take care of me.”

“He abandoned us. And he was sicker then than he is now.”

“What did I waiting for you to stop studying and come watch the movies you rented?”

“If you hadn’t dropped out of college maybe I’d explain it to you. You don’t know what it’s like-“

“You weren’t paying for college. I was. So what do you care?”

“You don’t have a future, Andersen. You don’t have a future and you blame everybody but yourself for that. You have anyone to blame but yourself.”

“It used to be just you and me, remember? Do you remember before Martin? Do you remember waking me up after I’d put myself to bed and saying you were doing it for us?”

“I was doing it for us. I was doing it so we could have a better life.”

“Like what? Like a house with my own room? I had that for four months before you got pregnant and had me sleep in the garage so the baby could have a nursery. So we could travel? We never went anywhere, not like the life you’ve given my sister. Not like the trips the three of you go on without me.”

She slapped me across the face. People looked. No one said anything. “I made sacrifices.”

“You married a man who hated that you had a son. And rather than let me go to live with my father, you just let him make it clear I wasn’t supposed to leave the garage.”

“You led a charmed life,” she told me. I don’t know if my face was read, but the skin burned and my eye watered from where I felt the band of her ring scrape across.

“You said that with a straight face,” I said.

She bit down on her lip, raised her eyebrows and looked down at the ground. “I’m glad you got a job,” she said and turned away.

Normally I try to be a little more detailed about the things that happen.

This was all I could really muster tonight.

I think I’m going to throw up.

Sister

I agreed to meet my sister on her birthday. Since what happened at the movies I have been… more antisocial than usual.

“You remember the last time we were here and there were severed dicks in all the paintings?” She met me for lunch before walking to the Museum of Contemporary Art. “And when you took me back home and Mom asked what we had seen you drew a total blank?” I didn’t bother to check what the exhibit was. The museum was between exhibits and so we sat out in the sculpture garden looking out onto the ocean. “When she asked again, you just said ‘Dicks, Mom. Lots of dicks.’”

I smiled because she was laughing but I didn’t remember the moment as fondly. The exhibition we had seen that day was a collection from a lesbian artist, pieces she had done over decades. There was a period where she had a lot of violent imagery, red pastels of men being tied to be burned, their severed genitals being smashed by crowds of women. These pieces covered a massive wall, so even though they were only a fraction of the exhibit, they stood out.

In context, it was frightening. To me, anyway. My sister just laughed and laughed. And I could have said anything when my mother asked me what we had seen but was burned into my head, the image of being helpless and mutilated. And this was before any of this #EatADick stuff happened. But my mother, for whatever reason, told my step-father verbatim what I had said.

The unpleasant life I had led in that household became even more so.

My sister, whose name I have no plan to share for the sake of her safety, leaned against my shoulder. “You don’t seem like yourself.” She’s seven years younger than I am, smarter than her parents, smarter than me. But there’s no way to explain to her what I’ve been through. “How’s your dad?” she asked me.

I don’t want her to understand me. “Do you worry about my dad?” It’s my biggest fear.

“I worry about you. And I like your dad. Everything that makes you so cool, I see in him. So it’s like protecting an older, older brother.”

If she ever understands me, it will be too late for her.

“I called him a couple weeks ago because I needed a ride. He couldn’t even pick up his phone.”

“You can call me now.”

“It was the middle of the night.”

“I’ll still come and get you,” she said. For a moment I remembered what that night was like, bleeding, my chest swelling, like trying to breathe through a straw. There isn’t a great deal I remember, but I do remember getting in the car and seeing Tim in the driver’s seat.

“I don’t ever want you to come and get me.” I like Tim well enough, as much as I can considering the circumstances. But in that moment I was glad it was him and not someone I love. It was better that it was Tim who drove me out of that nightmare. “Are you looking at colleges yet?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she cut me off. “I want to know what we’re going to do for your birthday.”

“My birthday’s not­-“

“I want to know if you’re going to be there. I want to know if you’re even going to be alive. I see your picture online. People at school talk about you-“

“Who does? Do they know-”

“They don’t say it too me. They don’t know you’re my brother. But I have to listen to people talk about what they will do when they catch you. I listen to people say you deserve to die.”

She was in tears at this point but it wasn’t in me to comfort her. I folded forward, elbows on my knees, face in my hands.

Below the sculpture gardens, the streets were filled with sight-seers, a bit strange considering it was early January, even on a Saturday. The sun had yet to make an appearance and the waves were hitting the rocks with building regularity. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you right now. I can’t… I can’t even help myself.”

“How many other siblings do you have?” she asked me. “I just have you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not asking you to help me with any of this. I’m asking to let me help you.”

“I would just pull you down with me.”

“Then I’m asking you to give me that chance.”

I pulled my face up from my hands as a bird flew overhead. It crossed unseen above the throngs and over the violent surf. It flew into the cloudy sky, beyond the point where I was certain I could see it, farther than I could imagine ever going. “Thank you,” I stood. “I appreciate what you said about my father.”

I left my sister there and wandered on foot into the village. There was an inexpensive shop where I bought a bottle and drank alone in an alleyway until I fell asleep. The sun was setting by the time I woke and I wandered back out to the crashing waves where I sat on the rocks and gave life a lot of consideration.

There was so much I wanted to ask her.