Chapter 8

After driving a few miles in silence, I found a moonlit pull-off overlooking Happy Valley. Shelly snuggled up to my side again, but I couldn’t seem to let go of the steering wheel.

“I’ve never told anyone some of this stuff, Shelly. …but it isn’t right letting you believe I’ve led a completely innocent life so far.”

“What do you mean by not completely innocent, Phil. You’re scaring me.”

It seemed like I was in a fog as I prepared to pour out my life’s story to her.

“I almost killed myself when I was fifteen.” I felt Shelly tense. “It wasn’t suicide. It’s just that I was so angry at everyone that I kind of went crazy for a while.

“You know how I tell you sometimes that I don’t like to be called Carrots?”

Shelly looked even more apprehensive than before.

“I guess it kind of got really bad in middle school. I didn’t develop physically as early as most guys in my class, so I kind of got teased a lot. One day I misjudged a ball and got hit in the eye by a dodge ball in gym class and they started calling Sissy Boy. After my eye turned black and blue, and then green and yellow, they added Rainbow Brite to the list of names they called me. Then the next week a jerk named Chase Johns set me up in the locker room so when I looked up to answer his question, his junk was right in my face. After that I was simply referred to as ‘the faggot’.”

“Oh, Phillip. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“That’s just the start. Things kind of really got out of hand on my Fifteenth birthday. I was hangin’ with my friend, Dakota Longwell, at the Dairy Queen in Quaker Hills when some lady walked right up to me and said…

“Oh you must be Gill O’Shea’s son. Don’t you look just like him. I’ll bet he’s proud of you.”

“I remember just staring at her. I don’t think she believed me when I told her I had no idea who the man was. It really freaked me out too, because that was like the third time it had happened in less than two months.

“Dakota just thought it was funny, and started joking about it because he had been with me the other two times it happened too.

“Dude, you oughta look that guy up. I mean if you look that much like him, you could probably give him a heart attack if you told him you were his long lost son. That would be like so hilarious watching him squirm. I’ll bet if you played your cards right, you could probably scare him into buying you a car or something to keep you off his back.”

“I didn’t really think giving some guy a heart attack sounded like fun, but it got me thinking again about something else I had been trying hard not to think about for a couple of years by that time. Shelly, I don’t look like either of my parents, and I often wondered why I was different than the rest of my family. I forced myself to chalk it up to weird genetics or something, but at times I seriously wondered if my parents weren’t holding the truth back from me – like maybe I was a foster kid, and my real parents didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

“That and the other stuff that was happening at school was more than I could handle at the time. That’s when I decided I had to find out about them. …about me. At the supper table that evening I went fishing to see if what I had started to wonder about me might be true.”

“Seems like everywhere I go in this town lately, someone mistakes me for some guy named Gilbert O’Shea’s son? Who the heck is Gilbert O’Shea anyway? Today was like the third time in the past two months someone told me that.”

“I watched the color drain from my mom’s face, and my dad looked at her anxiously. I knew then that I probably didn’t want to hear their answer. Like I said, I had often wondered why I didn’t look like either one of them – I’m short and round faced. Both of them are tall and thin. …and I’m the only one in either extended family with red hair, too. I think my brain sort of short-circuited that night.”

“Honey, there… there’s something that your father and I have been discussing whether or not to tell you some day. I guess you need to know something about some bad choices I made when I was young. Can we talk after dinner?” she asked me, nodding toward my brothers, Sammy and Aaron.

“I didn’t feel much like eating after that, and finally asked to be excused. Normally, getting away from the table before my plate was cleared of all edible food had to include ralphing or some similar gesture,” I chuckled. “But that day, all mom said was ‘I understand Phillip,’ so I knew it was serious.”

Fifteen minutes later, mom knocked on the door of my bedroom…

“Phillip? May I come in?”

“When I didn’t answer her, she pushed the door open and walked into my room.”

“Honey, can we talk?”

“I… I just want to know if you and dad are my real parents or not,” I asked, afraid of the answer she was going to give me.

“I think I had already decided what the answer to my question was, and my head was filled with all kinds of confusing thoughts about who I was, and more importantly, who’s I was and why they thought I was such a bad person that they didn’t want me.

“Phillip, I…”

“Just tell me.” I shouted at her.

“Phil, darling, it’s not what you think. I gave birth to you, and your dad will always be your dad. He chose to be your father through some very difficult circumstances in my life.”

“Tell me if he’s my real dad or not,” I wailed.

“No, Phillip. I met Ed at the hospital after I gave birth to you. He…”

“That’s about the last thing I remember hearing her say. I guess all of the hurt and bitter feelings I had bottled up for two years seemed like they came spewing out at that instant. I have no idea now why I was so angry, but I just couldn’t control myself, and began cursing and yelling at her.”

My body suddenly convulsed as a sob forced its way into my throat. Shelly pulled me into an embrace, her moist cheek against mine.

“Shelly, I still remember exactly what I screamed at her. I told her she was nothing but scumbag liar for not telling me the truth about Ed.”

Another sob choked off my next sentence as the pain of reliving that moment seemed so real.

Shelly moved her hand to my shoulder to comfort me. I looked over at her. There were tears running down her cheeks. I flashed a wry, pain filled smile.

“Shelly, I heard words come out of my mouth that day I didn’t even know I could say. She was in shock after I called her a whore …just sank to her knees beside my bed without denying it. I practically jumped over her to run from the room and out the back door.

“I had no idea where to go, since my only friend, Dakota, must have lived five miles away. I ended up walking into town and just wandering the streets for a while.”

Another sob choked my words as I got to the part that I was so afraid of telling her.

“I met this guy from school. His name was Casey Alvarez. We had never really hung around with each other, but we knew each other. He’s the one who talked to me first after it happened.”

“We walked around for a while without saying much before he finally asked me if I ever got drunk. When I told him I had never even tasted beer, his eyes lit up. He said it would make me forget about everything, and that he knew where he could get some for free.

“I followed him as he led me through an alley to a garage several blocks away from where we were. When we got to the entrance door, he knelt down, lifted a paver, and pulled a key from its hiding place.”

“We went inside the garage and found a coffee can to use as a cup. I think he just wanted to watch me get hammered, because he kept telling me to take another gulp. After we had finished off one full can between us, and I was already beginning to feel dizzy, he filled the can again. This time, he took a few big gulps and then dared me to chug the rest of it – which I proceeded to do. He was right about me forgetting my troubles by getting drunk. What he didn’t tell me was that I’d feel sick as a dog at the same time.

“After passing the can back and forth between us for a couple of hours, he laughed at me and said he should be getting home.

“He waited to see if I could stand up, then when he saw I was having trouble, dragged me through the door and into the cold night air.

 

“I had no idea where I was, but I think I told him I would be okay if he pointed me toward my house.

”I’m sure he didn’t have a clue where I lived, but he guided me to Center street, and ended up somehow turning me toward my home, gave me a push and told me, ‘later, Phil.’ I can still hear him blowing chunks into a shrub before I got ten steps away.

“I managed to stay on the sidewalk, even though I stumbled a few times, but as long as I didn’t turn my head too quickly, I was able to keep making progress toward my house.

“Eventually, I found my way back home and let myself into the house well after midnight.

“It was so glad the door was unlocked so I didn’t have to ring the doorbell and have mom or dad see me like that.

“M birthday cake was sitting untouched in the middle of the table in the kitchen. I looked at the words ‘Happy 15^th B-day Phil’ written on top of the cake in blue frosting for a moment, and then all my anger boiled over again. I leaned over the table and with both hands, turned the decorated layer cake into a pile of crumbs and frosting. I think I even threw a handful or two of it at the wall. I must have moved my head too quickly, because that’s when my stomach decided get rid of everything I had put into it that night. I had no idea if I should try to clean it up like a good boy, or run for my room.

“It wasn’t too hard to figure out that I had better get to my room before anyone came to see what was happening. Stumbling back the hallway, shaking the cake fragments off my hand and onto the floor as I went, I managed to get my bedroom door locked just in time.

“Phillip. Phillip, unlock this door immediately,” my mom demanded through the door, while trying to maintain some semblance of a whisper. Later I heard her sobbing in the kitchen as she was cleaning up the mess I had made.

Shelly draped her hands around my neck and pulled me toward her.

“Shelly, I screamed ‘Get out of my life you Eff’n bitch’ to my own mom.”

It took a minute or so to compose myself again, but I had to go on. I had to get to the important parts – the part she had joked about – the part we both needed to hear.