“Jason…oh, my god. This is incredible. You could sell this to a magazine, I swear to god.” I breathed in and examined the photo again, amazed at the way he’d framed it with the flower in the center, taking most of the space, with the bee near the top, caught in the act of hovering downward.
He grinned, and seemed oddly shy for the first time since I’d known him. “Thanks. I got stung about six times trying to get that shot. There were a bunch of big, fat bees flying around a field.” He pointed out beyond the tree, to the field beneath us. “Right out there, actually. There must have been a nest or something. Anyway, I followed these bees around for hours, taking picture after picture. I must have taken a couple hundred before I got that one.”
“Can I see some more?” I asked, excited now.
He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Nuh-uh. Now it’s your turn.”
I felt my hands trembling. I knew if I spoke it would come out all jittery and full of blocks, so I just sucked in a breath, reached into my purse, and pulled out my journal. It was a spiral-bound, unlined sketch pad, a piece of brown paper Meijer bag cut out and wrapped around the outside covers. On the front cover, I’d used a Sharpie to copy an inscription of a poem in Arabic:
??? ????? ????
??? ???? ?????
????
??? ????? ??????
“What’s that say?” Jason asked.
I hesitated, breathing several times and reciting the words in my mind before I said them out loud. “It says, ‘I am not alone—the truth is I befriended my loneliness.’” I traced the lines with my forefinger before opening the cover and flipping a few pages idly, looking for the perfect poem to show Jason. “It’s by an Arab poet named Abboud al Jabiri. It’s actually part of a longer poem, but that’s the part I like the most.”
“Was he from, like, a long time ago?”
I shook my head. “No, he’s alive and living in Jordan, still writing. My mom is a pediatrician, but she’s always loved poetry. On top of her medical degree, she has a second minor in Arabic poetry. She kind of turned me on to it, I guess.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Jason said. “So what’s your dad do?”
“He’s in real estate. He owns several industrial properties, plus he does commercial real estate sales.” I glanced at him as I chewed and swallowed. “What about you? You told me about your dad. What about your mom?”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t do shit. Works in a dental office three days a week, making copies and shit. Other than that, hides in her room gluing paper cut-outs into a book.”
I scrunched up my face, trying to figure out what he meant. “Scrapbooking?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Something like that. She’s got a ‘craft room.’” He made air quotes around the phrase. “She spends all her time in there. Sleeps there, except when Dad makes her sleep with him for…you know. Mainly, she avoids both of us. Me because I take Dad’s shit instead of her, and him because he’s an ass**le.”
“What do you mean, you take his shit instead of her?”
He snapped a chip between his fingers and ate both halves. “He used to beat on her, back till I was, like, three or four. Once I got old enough, I started jumping in. I hated seeing Mom cry, you know? She stood up for herself for a while. I remember that. Then she just got tired. Gave up. Let him do whatever he wanted, to me, to her. He wants the conflict, you know? He wants the fight. I started giving him that so he’d leave her alone, and now she sorta resents me for it, I think. Don’t know why, since I’m the one getting my ass beat instead of her. Whatever. Stupid bitch.” The blasé tone in his voice was awful in its utter apathy.
“Jason! She’s still your mother!” I couldn’t keep it from coming out.
His eyes blazed green fire, but his voice never rose. “They may have biologically created me, Becca, but they’re not parents.” He calmed and looked away, his voice growing thoughtful. “Parents love and protect. They shelter, they nurture. All that loving shit that I never got. My old man? He wasn’t loved, and he never figured out how to break the cycle. My mom has just spent so long being the victim that she doesn’t care anymore, so I get the brunt of his bullshit.”
I wasn’t sure what to say for a long time. Eventually, I thought of something. “Do you think you can break the cycle, Jason?”
Jason stared down between his knees, crumbling chips into dust. “I have to, Becca. I will. My grandpa was an ass**le, and I’m pretty sure his dad was, too.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m scared it’s, like, a hereditary thing. What if I can’t be different? What if I’m just…genetically hard-wired to be an ass**le like my old man?”
I took his hands in mine. “I don’t believe that. You already are different, Jason. We can choose who we want to be.”
“I hope so.” He seemed so sad suddenly, and I wanted to find a way to cheer him up, change the subject, but I couldn’t think of anything.
We had finished the sandwiches and were munching on chips as we talked, each of us having had two cans of soda. I remembered the bottle in my backpack and reached through the back window to grab the backpack, opened it, and pulled out the bottle. I set it on the blanket between us. Jason stared at it as if it were a venomous snake.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked in the same too-calm voice he’d used before.
“My brother gave it to me. He thought we should party it up, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really drink much, but I figured what the hell, right?” I tried to sound casual, but I don’t think I succeeded.
“I’m not sure I can drink that,” Jason said, in almost a whisper. “That’s…that’s what my dad drinks. It’s…the only way I’ve ever seen him after seven or eight at night, my whole life. Him, sitting in his leather armchair in front of SVU and Castle and Game of Thrones, and always with that motherfucking square bottle on the sidetable, a glass beside him. I watch, every night, as that bottle slowly empties, one glass at a time, until he’s meaner than a f**king viper, and twice as dangerous.”
His eyes were far away as he spoke, and I sat still and silent, listening intently.
“I don’t have anything against drinking. Not everyone is like him. I’m not like him, when I drink. I just…I cannot, will not ever touch that shit. Ever.” Jason stared at the bottle as if it were his father, raw hatred in his eyes. “Please put it away. I have some beer in the cooler, if you want to drink.”