Did You Ever Have A Family

Silas

It is after three in the morning by the time he has pedaled back to town. He has not taken a hit since just after Lydia Morey stood on the sidewalk screaming at him. There will be no more hits tonight since his bong is now reduced to a pile of broken glass rattling in his knapsack. But for once he doesn’t want to be high. For once he doesn’t want anything between him and the world. He’s tired, and it is time. But before doing what he knows he should have done months ago, he needed to go back, retrace his steps, and remember it clearly enough to tell. He remembers Luke telling the three of them he needed them to work twice as hard that day. You’re good, he said. But today I need great. He remembers bolting with Ethan and Charlie to the back field as soon as Luke was out of the driveway, fucking around on the Moon and rushing through the remaining work when they got back. Luke must have seen the shitty job when he got home. He would have said something when he saw them next, but he wouldn’t have blown up or been an asshole. He would just have said he needed better than they gave, and if they couldn’t clean up their act, he’d have to find other guys. He’d said it before and it usually made them feel guilty enough to kick ass for a month or so and get back in his good graces. He remembered how Luke was an adult but didn’t seem like one. They feared him a little but mainly they respected him. Physically, for one — no one they knew was stronger; but he was responsible without being an asshole. Worked hard without being a dick. Every once in a while, when they’d be working on a job with him, he’d get mad at something he’d done and throw a shovel, or one time he broke a rake across his knee. But these outbursts didn’t happen often and they weren’t directed at the guys who worked for him. Luke was a good guy. Not the druggie Silas’s mother made him out to be when she first refused to let him work for Luke. But when no other jobs came up that summer between eighth grade and his freshman year in high school, she caved in. Still, she warned Silas she was keeping an eye out and to watch out for what she called screwy business. There was never any screwy business, and after a while the stories of jail and drug dealing seemed like they must have been about someone else. They made no sense with the guy he’d worked for on and off since he was thirteen. But his mother never backed down, never allowed for the possibility that she or any of the other gossips in town were wrong. And then the accident happened and she had what she needed. I’m sorry, but I knew something would go wrong over there, she said the same day it all happened. You can only fool people for so long. I’m just glad Silas didn’t get wrapped up in it. He remembers his mother on the phone that day. How it only took minutes before she was spreading stories, coming up with a cause and a culprit. But what he remembers most sharply is that he said nothing to stop her or any of the other people who cracked jokes, embellished rumors, or passed judgment. What he remembers is saying nothing. What he remembers is seeing Lydia Morey at the coffee shop a few months after everything happened and wanting, right then, to go up to her and tell her the truth. He didn’t have the guts then, just like he didn’t have the guts every time he’d seen her after. Instead, he followed her at a safe distance around town. He’s even stood in the driveway outside her apartment building and watched her walk from room to room. Every time he has seen her, he thinks this will be the time he will step out of the shadows, and each time he loses his nerve. Not only because of what it might mean for him, but because he can’t imagine not seeing her anymore as he has. Unaware, sad, alone. It would be impossible to explain to someone else, but he thinks of himself as her guardian, her shadow. No one would see it that way, he knows, especially Lydia. And once he says to her what he has to say, he expects he will be the last person on earth she will want to understand. Maybe if he hadn’t frightened her tonight things might have stayed the same. He might have stayed her shadow for years. But there is no way he can be invisible to her again. And he can’t undo what he’s done. If there is one thing he has come to understand this year, it is this.

The town is silent, every light is off besides the streetlamps that light their usual circles. It is late but Silas is awake, and he is not nervous. He steps across the front porch of Lydia’s apartment building and knocks on the door. Soon, she is in front of him. She is standing behind the glass window in the door, a gray robe folded across her chest, her hair falling around her face and catching the light from the kitchen behind her. She will not unlock this door, she is saying, but he is not bothered. She will call the police, she warns, but he does not budge. He will wait until she trusts him. He will stay as long as he has to this time. And then he will tell her.