Two Truths and a Liar

XV • An encounter

Harley

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"You know your aunt?"

Musty air flamed and fluttering specs of dust tickled my nose and settled on the kitchen table, where I scrawled idly over a half-finished math worksheet. My body ebbed with stiffness and warmth, just a little too much heat building from the heavy blanket I had pulled over my head like a hood, tucked around me and the back of the chair I was huddled in. 

"Which one?"

Dad leaned over the half-wall, tired and sunken eyes trained on the mug of day old coffee he held to his mouth, and drained with a heavy gulp. A thunk as he set it down hard.

"The crazy one."

They're all crazy.

"No,"

A sigh.

"Your aunt Katie. She's getting married in a month, at that old catholic church downtown,"

I lay my head down on the table and puffed out from my nose, gaze cast over the crooked bookshelf across the room. Tall and off-balance, scattered with the few self help and finance books we kept but never opened, collecting dust and watching us day by day. Hopeful. Maybe one day we'd pick one of them up, maybe.

"So?"

I'd never set foot in that place; never cared to either. The walls were tall and arched and brooding, dark stone and stained glass windows with the twisted faces of saints and angels mocking us from the outside, emotionless faces of reverence and remorse glued on their tempered panes.

"Don't talk back, boy,"

"Sorry," 

I wasn't sorry. 

"What's it got to do with me?"

"We're invited."

"Oh,"

"Your aunt Laurie is coming to take you suit shopping or something,"

The thought of my dad and I dressed in dry cleaner fresh suits and gelled hair, talking to relatives about school and work and the ups and downs of ordinary life twisted my insides. Going shopping with my aunt would only add to the nightmare.

I was silent for a minute, the question I knew we were both wondering but neither willing to say ready to jump off my tongue. I said it quickly, as if to soften the blow.

"Is mom coming?"

Katie was her sister, after all. 

The tv switched on, spewing the sudden sound of news reports in a fuzzy garbled blare from the living room. 

"I don't know," He shouted over the sound, and then quieter as if just to himself:"But I sure as hell hope not."

***

Leon: I saw him everywhere.

After staring at me in class, accosting me outside the front of the school last week, and taking over the café I'd gone to---like I did most Friday nights to read the posted que of bands that would play late Saturday night---making a scene as always. He gaped, every time, as if I were some brand new species or strange object found abandoned by the side of the road. Foreign. As if I were some spectacle set up to surprise him whenever we crossed paths. I was sick of him, but still he smiled as if he were glad to see me. 

I just couldn't understand why.

It was a good thing that I wouldn't be running into him today or tomorrow, have to nod or wave or acknowledge him at school. I could be alone again, away from the judgement he brought with him and threw at me with every interaction we had.