Chapter 85
THE WORLD OUTSIDE my head seemed insubstantial, as if the present could be a dream and my memories much more solid and alive in the now.
Sounds were irrelevant; the sirens shrilling outside on the highway, the blaring voice over the PA system, Tommy and Dr. McGinty talking together as they walked down the hallway with me trailing behind.
I ducked my head as I crossed the threshold into Dr. McGinty’s office.
The room was small, and the quake had flung pictures and books across the hardwood floor. McGinty returned a floor lamp to its upright position and switched it on.
He said, “Jack, honestly. We can do this another time.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. I’d like to have our talk now.”
We cleared the center of the room and placed two identical wooden armchairs side by side across from McGinty’s recliner. I felt Jeff Albert’s presence eyeing me from a corner of the room as Tommy and I sat down in the chairs and McGinty got comfortable in his La-Z-Boy. It was a pretty crazy thought, but I wondered—had Jeff Albert been calling me every day to tell me that I was dead?
Tommy said, “I don’t think California broke off the continent, at any rate.”
We were dressed the same. White shirts, blue blazers over jeans. I wore loafers; Tommy wore moccasins. The smirk on his unshaven face made him look a little like the guy who stars on Mad Men.
The arrogance was completely unearned. The smug, invincible affect had come from my dad. Tommy was grounded in Tommy Sr.’s crap.
McGinty asked if either of us needed anything and then said, “Let’s begin. Jack, we’re hoping you can give us some additional insight into your father’s personality.”
Speak of the devil.
“How would you describe him?”
My father had been dead for over five years, but he would never really be dead to me. I said, “He was cruel. That was his best trait.”
Dr. McGinty smiled, then asked, “Can you tell me more, Jack?”
“Oh, hell, volumes. He was abusive to my mom all the time. He pitted Tommy and me against each other for his amusement. He didn’t stop until someone bled or cried. He was never wrong about anything—sports, human nature, the weather. He was a perfect godlike creature in his own mind.”
The shrink nodded. “What we call in my business ‘a real SOB.’ ” He looked to my brother. “Tommy, what do you think about your father?”
“Jack just sees it his way. Jack is never wrong either. Dad was trying to toughen us up,” my brother said. The smirk was gone. I’d attacked something he had defended his entire life. “He didn’t want the world to take advantage of us.”
I barely listened as my brother excused my father’s brutality. He said to Dr. McGinty, “Jack never gives him credit. Dad wanted us to succeed. He encouraged Jack to play football and to be good at it. Jack and I were black belts before we were thirteen. And when Jack became a Marine? Dad lit up when he talked about his son the war hero. He was really proud.”
I was looking over Dr. McGinty’s head, seeing Jeff Albert’s face through my NVGs. I saw the fear and the agony, the broken bones coming through his pant legs. He was screaming, “Don’t leave me here to burn!”
“What are you thinking right now?” McGinty asked me.
Images were firing off like fifty-caliber rounds. I had repressed the truth to protect myself. Now I had no place to hide. I wasn’t who I’d thought I was.
I said, “This was a mistake. I don’t belong here. I have to go.”