Chapter 3 - Part 2

We picked our way around the deserted bumper cars and exited the pavilion. I didn’t have to check for Brittney, she had already pushed next to my side and gripped my hand. I felt a wave of emotion for that little girl. What would I do without that hand to hold?

I looked around for Tommy. I wanted to reach out and put my hand on his shoulder, just to connect us again, just for a second, but he had wanted none of that for a long time now. He was so distant and so angry – a lot like his father. He had not always been that way. I remembered the little boy who curled in my lap waiting to be read just one more book and the preteen who would use me as a sounding board for all his new knock-knock jokes. I wondered, not for the first time, if there was some way of bringing him back. I sure hoped there was. Maybe this carnival could help.

I shook my head. Now I was really grasping at straws.

**

It was only a few months ago that the school called and told me that Tommy had been caught with alcohol on school property. I had sunk into a chair next to the kitchen sink. “No, Tommy. No.” I whispered. “Don’t let it be true.”

I drove the short blocks to the high school to pick him up – the school having suspended him for the rest of the day. I pleaded mentally all the way there that it wouldn’t be true or it wouldn’t be so bad. When I finally had him in the car, I asked him to tell me what happened.

“Sheesh, Mom! It’s not that big of a deal. It wasn’t even mine. It belonged to Boozer. I was just holding it for him.” With a name like Boozer, that seemed easy to believe. Besides, I wanted to believe it so badly.

Still, I tried to press it further. “Have you been drinking, though, Tommy?”

“Don’t call me Tommy! It’s Tom, okay? And no! I haven’t been drinking.” With that he turned his face to the window and wouldn’t talk to me anymore.

So, I did believe him, though it may seem ignorant in light of the things that followed. But, what was I supposed to say? I asked him point-blank and he told me no. You can’t get any plainer than that.

One week later he came home undeniably and unabashedly drunk. Sam was home and boy was he livid. He took Tom by the hair and told him what a no-good lout he was and how he wouldn’t ever make himself into anything worth two beans and that he (Sam) and I (his mother) had wasted our efforts on him.

I really felt bad for that last sentence because I didn’t feel that way at all. I never stood up to Sam, though, and I watched with growing sorrow as Tommy just nodded his head and agreed with every bad thing his dad said.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” He finally roared.

Tommy just grinned – the foolish smile of the hopelessly drunk – and said, “Of course not. You’re always right, Dad.” Then he threw up all over Sam’s feet.

I talked to Tom the next day, when the throbbing in his head had gone down some, but when the little boy I loved could do nothing more than peek at me through the mask of the man’s hangover. “Why, Tom? Why are you drinking?” I had asked him.

“You don’t know how it is!” he had hollered and then held his head as he remembered his awful headache. “There was just this girl,” he said stiffly. “I wanted to impress her. I want to sleep now, Mom. Do you mind?”

“Just promise me, Tom. You’re so much better than this. Don’t do it again.”

“Sure, sure Mom. Whatever you say.” Then he put his pillow over his head and turned away from me.

I told Sam that Tom had promised me he wouldn’t do it again and that I trusted him to keep his word. Sam said that if I believed that then I was dumber than he thought. I was such a fool. I even felt the long forgotten feeling of rebellion well up inside of me over his words.

He did do it again, of course. A lot. I didn’t know if I was more upset that he was drinking or that he had lied to me or maybe just crushed from being humiliated in front of Sam, again. Shouldn’t a son help you with that? Shouldn’t he be on my side?

**

I watched Tom walk next to his dad now. I saw how Tom had reached his Dad’s height and might just surpass it sometime in the next year. Or maybe not. He might stop growing altogether. I cocked my head, considering.

Brittney brought me back to the situation at hand by tugging forcefully on my arm. “Where do we go now, Mom? Ken didn’t say!”

I looked down at her. “Ken?” I asked her.

“Yeah, Mom. You know, the guy we met in the bumper cars. The one who said we could learn everything we need to know right here in this carnival!”

I smiled at her. “I know who Ken is, dear, but I really thing that our first priority needs to be finding the car and getting it fixed. Maybe we can come back after we know everything is alright.”

Brittney’s face darkened. “Nothing will be alright ever again if we leave this carnival now!” I sensed a trantrum coming on.

I looked up to see Sam and Tom turned around to watch us. Sam came back toward Brittney. “Your mom’s right, Brittney. We’ve got to get back to the car.”
“No we don’t!” Brittney protested. “The car is broken and it is raining out there! It’s not like you were even taking us home! We don’t have anywhere to go!”

Sam took Brittney by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. I tensed. Brittney was the only person in our family that Sam could talk to with tenderness, but even that had limits.

**
I remember once, when Tommy was nine and Brittney was four, catching sight of Sam as he stood in Brittney’s doorway watching her sleep.

She had fallen during the day and scraped her knee as little children often do. I had been busy with dishes and had only taken the time to kiss her quickly on the head. When she kept crying, I told her to go find her daddy.

I found them later sitting in the big chair in the living room. Brittney was sitting in Sam’s lap and Sam was reading her a book. It was a book of fairytales and they were reading of Hansel and Gretel whose step-mother wanted to leave them in the woods because there wasn’t enough to eat. I always skipped that part when I read to the kids, preferring to tell them that they had gotten lost then to make them face the evil that could come from self-centered thinking coupled with a lack of love – especially to shield them from seeing that in a parent. Suddenly Brittney interrupted her dad, “How come there is always an evil mom in the stories and not an evil dad? You know, like Cinderella and Snow White . . .”

Sam looked down at Britt. I wondered what he would say of the hurt he’d felt in his own life from a mother who didn’t love him right and how that might affect how Britt looked at me. My heart constricted in my chest. He held such a big part of me there on his lap.

He didn’t say anything about moms, though. Instead he tried to find examples of mean dads. “What about the big bad wolf?” Sam asked.

Brittney giggled at him. “That is not a dad!” she said.

“Dad’s can be big, bad wolves!” he insisted and he started to growl.

Brittney shrieked playfully, but then she took his face in her two little hands and said, “Don’t be a big, bad wolf Daddy.”

He looked into her sweet little eyes, then kissed her on the forehead and finished reading the story. By the time he was done, she had fallen asleep.

I came to stand by Sam as he watched her in the doorway to her room. “I don’t want to be a big, bad wolf, Sonya,” he had said.

I leaned my head against his arm. “I know, Sam. I know.”

**

Now I watched as Sam told Brittney, “We’re headed for the car, little lady, and that is that!”

Brittney glared after her father but she knew better than to protest. We trailed after Sam and Tom as they walked purposefully toward the edge of the carnival. We passed a Teacup ride and a Haunted House. It wasn’t long, though, before we saw the bumper car pavilion once again. “What?” Sam said in consternation.

Then he turned and went the other way. We passed the prize booths and the House of Mirrors. Brittney pulled on my arm again to point out the Tunnel of Love. I smiled at her, but when I looked up again we were back at the bumper cars.

Sam stood and stared at those bumper cars for a long time. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Fine! We’ll play your game!” he shouted at the pavilion.
Then he turned back toward us. “Let’s go see if we can find something to eat!”