Austin looked at Miles. “Wassup, man.”
“Wassup,” Miles said back, studying Austin’s eyes. He wasn’t looking for a tell, a break in some sort of disguise that would let him know that Austin wasn’t who he said he was. Miles knew Austin was exactly who he said he was—that he was family. He knew it from the moment he entered the room.
A balloon of awkwardness inflated around them. “So, you’re Uncle Aaron’s son, huh?” Miles asked, trying to burst it.
“Yeah.”
Miles’s dad brushed his hand down his face. “Can you just…explain it to me? I just…”
“You just didn’t know I existed. I know,” Austin said, blunt. “Look, we don’t have a lot of time in here, and y’all don’t gotta stay if you don’t want. I just wanted someone else to know I was here. Someone else that was blood. My grandma too old to be coming up here.”
“Okay, so, my brother was your father,” Miles’s father said. “But who’s your mother?”
“Her name was Nadine.”
Miles watched his father roll that name around his brain, trying to place it. “Nadine? I don’t remember a Nadine.”
“Yeah, she and my father weren’t together but they stayed close, y’know.”
“And she’s…” Miles said.
“She’s dead.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, me too. She was the best. You know how some people are so easy to love you’d just do anything for them? That’s how she was.”
“Yeah,” Miles said, thinking of his own mother. There was a pause, a moment where everyone sized each other up.
“Look, kid…Austin, why are we here?” Miles’s father asked, his voice pushy.
“I told you.”
“But what do you want from me? From us?”
Austin leaned back in his chair. “I don’t want nothin’. Ain’t nothin’ you can give me. Except…” Austin leaned forward again. “Tell me why you ain’t never come around?”
Miles’s father hmph’d. “Because me and your father didn’t get along.”
“So you just cut him off for almost twenty years?”
“I had to. I don’t know how much you know about Aaron, but…”
“I know what he was into.”
“Well, then, it should make sense that I had to leave Aaron alone after I decided to get out the game and realized he couldn’t. Or should I say, he wouldn’t.”
“But he did.”
“What?”
Austin smirked, nodded. “He did give it up. For a while.” Austin looked at Miles. “Did you know him?” Miles looked at his father and thought about all the secret visits he had made to his uncle’s house without his parents knowing. He thought about the pizza and the grape soda, the grimy apartment in the Baruch projects. He thought about the last time he saw him, the battle, the explosion.
“Kinda, but not really,” Miles said, scratching the spider bite on the top of his hand.
“Well, he was cool,” Austin said, regaining Miles’s attention. “A good dude, who wanted to do right by people, but just…I don’t know. I mean, when my mother was pregnant with me, my pops decided he was gonna be a family man.”
“That don’t sound like Aaron,” Miles’s father said.
“Well, it was. My mother always said he watched how you straightened up once you got married and started a family and all that, and he felt like that was what he needed to do, too. And he did. Got a regular job making dough at a pizza spot. And even though that wasn’t a whole bunch of money, it was enough to add to the pot with my moms to keep a roof over our head. But then she got sick.”
“Your mom?” Miles asked.
“Yeah. Stomach cancer. Had to stop working and all that. And after a while, the money ran out. I don’t know how much chemo and all that cost, but I know it’s a lot. So, my pops went back to the basics.”
“Robbery.”
Austin winced a little when Miles said it. “Yeah. Everything he got he sold for money to pay her doctor bills. At least, almost everything. He always kept a little to the side to buy me sneakers, which was cool. But, y’know, then…he died.”
Miles readjusted in his seat, discomfort clinging to him like wet cotton.
“So I picked up the slack. Tried to lift that burden. Couldn’t just let my mother waste away without at least trying. I cut back on school—wasn’t doing so great anyway, and teachers never seemed to bother to ask why—and figured stealing cars as a minor would be a slap on the wrist if I got caught. But when I did, they trumped my charges when they found out who my father was. So now I’m in here. Been in here for almost a year. And I can deal with it most days, but there are a few things that are hard to shake, and one of them is the fact that my mother passed away the day I came in.”
That was another punch in the gut for Miles, and as he glanced at his now-softening father, Miles figured this phantom fist of guilt had taken the air out of him too.
“I’m so sorry to hear that, Austin.”
“Me too,” Miles said.
“Yeah, me too.” Austin forced a sad smirk. Miles had grown used to that painful smile because Ganke did it often.
“Five minutes,” the guard called out, her voice bouncing off the cold walls. Miles looked back at her, then turned to Austin.
“Um, what are some other things that are hard to shake?” Miles asked.
“What?” Austin squinted.
“Miles.” Miles could feel his father’s glare on the side of his face. He ignored him and continued.
“You said there were a few things that were hard to shake. One being your…um…mother.” Miles swallowed. “But…what else?”
“You don’t have to answer that.” Miles’s father cocked his head to the side and looked at his son like he had lost his mind. “What are you thinking?”
Miles didn’t know how to answer that. Because he didn’t really have an answer. He just knew that he was looking in the face of someone who looked just like him. Who, for whatever reason, did what he thought he had to do, just like him. Who loved his family despite their flaws, just like him.
“It’s okay.” Austin leaned forward, knit his fingers together, looked Miles in the face. “Sometimes, I have nightmares. Been having them on and off for years. But since I’ve been in here, they’ve been worse.”
Now, Miles leaned in. His father, however, leaned back. “What kind of nightmares?” Miles asked.
“Just crazy stuff. I mean, look, everybody locked up in here comes from similar situations as mine. Either forced to act a certain way to survive, or totally forgotten about. And they all look like me—like us—too, if you know what I mean. So, sometimes in my dreams, everybody in this place changes. Like they all turn into things, everybody but me. And they attack me. So when I wake up, I be looking at them crazy. Because my dreams have me thinking I can’t trust nobody in here. Then, other times, it’s just simple stuff, baby nightmares.” He lowered his voice and continued. “Like that jerk over there telling me I ain’t never gon’ be nothing. Which ain’t really much of a nightmare, because he always says that when I’m awake. Only difference is, in my dream, he got my daddy’s voice.”
“Jesus…” Miles’s father shook his head, visibly upset.
“You’re just like me,” Austin said.