Free Cheated by Patrick Jones Page B

lie also made everyone happy.
    â€œI need sixty dollars for tickets. Can you mail it?” I knew since my parents never talked, only exchanged e-mails and angry driveway stares, that I wouldn’t get caught.
    Before the words came, ex-Dad sighed, a sound I’ve heard most of my life. The sigh reminded me of sign language: The sigh was a shortcut symbol of ex-Dad’s frustrated impatience with anything and everything that I said or did. The sigh was the smoke from the angry fire that flared up with each step I took that he disliked. “Did you ask your mother?” he finally responded.
    I waited for a second; what’s one lie to ex-Dad, when lies were mostly all he knew. “She doesn’t have enough money,” I said as I twisted the bitter truth and the guilt knife a little deeper. “Was your check late again?”
    Another sigh; more smoke. “Okay, fine.”
    â€œPromise?”
    One last sigh. “I promise,” ex-Dad said, and I buried my laughter. I wanted to say,
Dad, is this a promise like the one you made to Mom? Like the promise you make every year about how we’re going to go hunting, fishing—anything? The truth is that all your promises are lies
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    â€œSo I’ll see you,” I said, then twisted it in deeper. “Unless there’s another work thing.” I hung up the phone, slammed every door behind me, then walked out in the fall air, the gale breeze of deceit at my back. Why should I tell the truth to someone who had lied to me all my life?
    What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to tell someone?
    Brody never said a word to me after Dad and the mystery woman walked away from us that day at the mall. He kind of shrugged his shoulders, saying without words, Dude, I don’t know what you should do. We went on to the arcade, like nothing had happened. Played pool, pinball, racing games, the usual—even if everything in my life, in just a matter of seconds, wasn’t how it used to be. On the way home, I didn’t say anything. I was as mute as Brody’s mom who didn’t say a word while his older brothers teased Brody, pulled his hair, and called him names. Brody took it like a man, so I guess I needed to be a man, too
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    Mom was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a sweater in the summer since the air conditioner was blasting. She was drinking a coffee she must have picked up from Starbucks and making out a shopping list. I didn’t get any more than two feet into the room before she knew something was wrong. I told myself if she didn’t ask me, I wouldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t lie for my father, but I wouldn’t feel a need to tell the truth. But she spoke. “Mick, what’s wrong?”
    I tried to leave the room, but she wasn’t having any of it. I tried not to talk with her, but she kept smothering me with questions. I tried, but I failed. “Mom, I have to tell you something,” I started, not knowing how I would finish, only knowing it would end badly
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    â€œYou can tell me anything,” she said. And I did. I could almost see her brain working, putting together all my father’s late nights at the office with other clues that she couldn’t see because she hadn’t been looking. We were both crying within a few minutes
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    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, but she wouldn’t have it. She hugged me instead
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    â€œMick, you don’t need to apologize,” she said through her tears. “You did the right thing. You saw something wrong, and you told me about it.”
    â€œBut Dad asked me not to,” I reminded her
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    â€œHe betrayed me, Mick. You don’t owe him anything,” she said, tears of shock turning to sadness turning to bitterness in a matter of moments
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    â€œBut—” I started, but had nothing else to say. I felt overwhelmed by emotion. I was a victim of both circumstance and coincidence, like an accident victim finding