Autumn
My father broke my mother’s heart. She couldn’t have changed it; he had bad hands. That’s one of the few things I remember about him. He was an attractive man, but his hands were not. They were always cold, like death, and he kept his nails long like a vampire. His hands were the incarnation of despair; a word I would become very familiar with in the years following the Leaving. I capitalize that for the sole purpose that my mother says it like that, like it’s World War I or the Holocaust. In her mind, it was of equal standing. It directly affected her. It changed her life. I’m not entirely sure what caused him to leave my mom, who is a knockout, but it might’ve had something to do with a young grocery store clerk and a condom--or lack thereof. I don’t spend a lot of my time thinking about him, as I’m sure he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about me. I spend even less time wondering if he has more children out there, children he loves more, children whose birthdays he remembers.  I hope if he does, he’s a better father to them than he was to me. For their sake. I don’t give a f*** about him.
Moving on. Mom married my stepdad Billy six years after the Leaving, and it only convinced me further of my mom’s horrible taste in men. I think since going the falling-in-love route the first time didn’t exactly work out, she went for the third most eligible man in our town who wasn’t a racist, homophobe, or misogynist. But, he was taken.. So, she settled for Billy. It sounds absolutely dreamy, I know.  The first day I met him, he was wearing suspenders with his jeans and a stained wifebeater. I had cleaned up the house as well as I could (it was such a sty--Mom was a common pig) since I knew Billy would be coming over. He kicked open the door, looked around, and nodded to himself. “Yep,” he said. “It’ll do.”
I hated him immediately.
It wasn’t just the pungent odor of sweat and beer, or the mud he tracked through the front door. It was the way he’d turned his nose up as if he was better than us, better than our house, and the way he’d walked straight to the couch, where he’d plopped down, arm extended in the air. He didn’t say a word as Mom scuttled through the kitchen to get him a cold beer.
Mom’s problem was she could never be alone. It’s like if she didn’t have a boyfriend or husband or even a possibility for either during those six years, she couldn’t function right. She just freaked out once she realized she was alone. She’d been with my dad for so long, since she was 21, and once he left she needed to fill the hole left by his wake. Unlike Mom, I’m better off alone than with people. For me, alone means peace and solidarity with myself. A place where my thoughts are mine and I can do whatever I please. For Mom, being alone means being forced to be with herself, to face who she is.
I was happier when it was just me and Mom. Especially since in the time she’s been married to Billy, she’s changed. She’s the mom I have always known when it’s just me and her talking, but as soon as Billy enters the room there’s an instant change. It’s like a switch; she almost becomes mean. As if talking to me with love is a sign of weakness and she wants to look strong in front of Billy, in some kind of f***ed-up power struggle. She tries to show strength in ways she actually can, which means me. It’s like a test Billy gives for his own amusement; she’s his puppet on a string. It’d been a gradual buildup for the past two years since Billy’s graced our lives. Little things, like Mom lecturing me for missing curfew (by five minutes!) or taking away my phone for not folding the laundry. Slowly and slowly, Mom would flex her authority when Billy was watching. I finally understood why the day he hit her.
I don’t know if it was the first time, but I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I was in my room reading when I heard the door slam; Billy was home from his shift at the auto shop. I could tell something was amiss by the loud stomping of his steel-toed boots and the crash of some object--the remote, maybe? Billy has the temper of a match; when he gets heated, he lights up quick. And this time, he started a fire.
My mom had a bad day too, except she expresses her frustration in barely audible sighs and constant rearrangement of food in the pantry. If I come down and the Fruit Loops are where the Crunchy Clusters usually are, all hell is about to break loose. I read her moods through food most of the time. As I was hearing Billy stomp and whine like a child, I heard Mom in the pantry, knowing a collision of some sort was about to take place. They started talking, low enough so I couldn’t hear, at first. Then all of a sudden, they were screaming at each other. “What are we going to do? We barely make anything as it is, with your pay!” I heard Mom yell. A beer can was cracked open. “They’ll transfer me. I’m too valuable.” Mom quieted her voice. “You work at a f***ing auto shop, Billy. Where are they going to transfer you? The closest f***ing Jiffy Lube?” Silence, and then a crackling slap. I ran out; Mom was holding her face, ignoring my gaze, her shame obvious. Billy smiled at me. “Hey, kiddo! Go back in your room!” he said, apparently thinking I was a five year old. I wanted to strangle him, and I wanted my mom to leave him at the Jiffy Lube, just to spite him.
And that is why we’re moving. Billy had been fired, and considering he had completed school up until tenth grade, we were in a bit of a rut. Until Billy’s cousin, Billy-Bob (I wish I was making that up) out in Iowa swooped in to save the day. He’d help him out and let him work at the auto shop he runs. Mom pretended to be angry about the move, or was just genuinely angry at Billy getting himself fired, but I knew she was at least a little excited; she’d been wanting to move for months. We live in the same house I’ve lived in my whole life, a middle class townhome in New York, but I think our house finally got too much for Mom. I understand it, and I would probably be angrier if I didn’t understand. For me, since I was only three when Dad left, I don’t see him around here. I don’t see memories in the ordinary items. Mom does. The ghost of him haunts her, but so does the ghost of who she once was.  Sometimes I’ll see her staring at something random, like the couch or a vase, and know she’s seeing them, together. Him, still warm and loving and there. Her, still kind and happy and the way she used to be. Over 14 years she’s seen them, and I guess she’s had enough. My secret theory is that it stopped being just the happy times, but the later years too. The fighting, the discoveries, the actual Leaving.
For her sake, for her sanity, I’ll accept the fact that we’re moving to the middle of nowhere, some town in Iowa. I don’t have much here, anyways. I only have a few friends, and none of them I’m close with. Just cardboard friends, people to sit with at lunch. I’m not bitter about it. It is what it is. I’m just not into having sexual relations with a lot of different guys, and so I’m not really popular. I’m a little bit excited about the move, actually. Maybe I’ll make new, better friends, and maybe there’ll be a guy. I’ve never had a boyfriend. Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve ever really liked a guy. I’ve always had an issue with the idea of opening up completely to someone, having them know everything about me. Sometimes I’m sure I would find it nice, like if he ever bought my favorite candy just for a surprise, but some things I want to keep just mine. Ideas, secrets, desires and sometimes foolish longings I don’t feel like sharing. I don’t know. Maybe that’ll change if I find a guy I love and want to tell him those things. God, I am grotesquely hopeful for a town boasting a total of sixty-two occupants.
Tristan
I just want out of this f***ing town.  I’ve wanted to leave since I was nine years old. Of course back then I wanted to leave so I could be an astronaut, but still. I’m sick to death of the same people, the same places, the same goddamn trees. I’m fed up. I don’t even understand why people come to Capnentacce in the first place. It’s in the middle of the woods, the nearest grocery store is at least 20 miles away (thank god it’s a buy-in-bulk kind of place) and there’s literally, and I do mean literally, nothing to do. Take it from a guy who’s tried his whole life to find something to do here. The kids in middle school hang out at the soccer field and the playground, and the high school kids hang out in one of three places: either the old barn behind Farmer Millie’s house, Smokey Jim’s gas station/cigarette haven, or Whitney Salem’s house. The barn and Smokey Jim’s are places I don’t mind going to, but Whitney’s place is one I try to avoid. She’s so stuck-up and idiotic it genuinely hurts to talk to her. When I’m not in those two, I’m in my own spot. My secret one. I discovered it when I was 12, ignoring the boundary set in the forest of where it was decreed “acceptable” by the PTA moms to wander (isn’t that the point of wandering?).  It’s an old abandoned construction site, where they got as far as chopping down all the trees and then lost funding. What an allegory for this place. Nothing goes anywhere, nothing gets out, not the people or the buildings or the dreams. Trunks lay everywhere, and it used to make me sad, seeing them cut down like that for no use. When my dad and I fight, I come here. When it’s the anniversary, I go here. Needless to say, I’m here quite often. Sometimes I think I have a better relationship with these decaying trees than with a human, with this graveyard of trees.
It's not a new sensation, being in graveyards. My mother lives in one, Plot 329. She was too good for this place, too alive; I still maintain that she shouldn’t be buried here, but in her home state of New York, a place as lively as she was. It’s what my father and I argue about. At least, one of the things we argue about. It’s usually nothing but little spats, about college or grades or my “style of living.”
This morning, though, it was different.
The first day of school, also known as the first day of my last year in this place. Only one more year until freedom. I woke to the sound of my best friend Kellan’s 1987 Chevy’s horn croaking. “Tristan!” he yelled. “Hurry your lazy ass up!” I’ve been attending school for thirteen years, and the whole “first day” thing was still one I was not accustomed to. “Waking up early” was a phrase not in my vocabulary, not now, not ever. Luckily, my morning routine consisted of throwing on a Jackson 5 Victory Tour tee and a pair of sweatpants, so I was downstairs toasting my nutritious breakfast of an Eggo waffle in no time. The air smelled odd, though, and starched scent of my waffle was muddled by-gin? I looked around. There, on our atrociously plaid sofa, lay my dad still in his mechanic’s jumpsuit. Yep, it was definitely gin. I roused him, a hard jostle, until his bloodshot eyes flickered open. “Dad,” I whispered; I knew his ears would be sensitive (one of the only things to do here entailed alcohol. Lots of it). “I’m leaving for school.” He nodded. “You can skip today, I won’t mind.” Did I hear him correctly? My dad made me go to school even when I had strep in the fourth grade, and food poisoning in seventh. He’d scheduled Mom’s funeral specifically on a Saturday just so I wouldn’t miss any school; that’s how anal he was about my education. Needless to say, I was confused.
“Um, is something wrong? Is Grandma okay?”
His eyes flashed towards me, staring at mine in an animalistic way. The blood vessels around his pupil made him look crazy, animalistic. The way he looked at me, I was anticipating anger, some kind of rage-filled rant. Rather, he sat up, and almost to himself whispered, “You forgot.” He said it so quietly that if there had been any other noise I wouldn’t have heard it, but his was the only sound in the house, in the entire world, it seemed. What had I forgotten? His birthday? Mine? Mom’s? I racked my brain; August 27 held no meaning, rang no alarms. He watched me struggle to remember, the almost gentle disappointment on his face turning to disgust. Finally, I just stared at him, waiting for some kind of bone.
“Today is the ten year anniversary of your mother’s death. And you forgot.”
Immediately, the world began to spiral and twist on itself around me. No. This couldn’t be happening. I wanted to punch himself, kick, scratch, impose as much harm as possible. The one thing I’d promised never to do in my life, the one thing I knew wouldn’t happen, had just happened.
After Mom’s funeral, most of the crowd had cleared and gone home besides Dad, Aunt Lilly, and myself. Aunt Lilly, Mom’s sister, had been staying with us for a while to help out my incompetent, grieving father. They talked about adult things behind me; I knew they were speaking but it didn’t sound like words coming out. All that existed to me was this rock, this slab of nothingness that was supposed to sum up the essence of my mother. I stared at the two dates--October 17 and August 27-- until everything turned fuzzy. Standing there, I promised that I would never forget either one of the dates that made and broke my mother.
A promise I would break in ten years.
I jumped up as if struck. Dad remained sitting, seething at me; I couldn’t stand to look at him for a single moment longer. My waffle popped out of the toaster--I left it, scrambling to get out of the house as quickly as I could. Kellan was still outside in his car, waiting; in the past life-shattering moments, I’d completely forgotten about him and school. Kellan smiled at me, completely unaware of my failings as a son. Today he wore a suburban dad visiting Hawaii esque tropical shirt, cargo pants, socks and sandals. Ever since we’ve been friends (so, all our lives) he’d been insanely theatrical, dressing as a different persona every year. Freshman year he was Goth everyday; sophomore was Frat Boy. I liked this year’s theme, fashion served with sarcasm.
The fourteen minute drive to school was filled with Kellan talking himself into oblivion and me trapped in my thoughts. I’d really forgotten. I hadn’t meant to; time snuck by in it’s illusive, quiet way. A part of me, the part that could see Mom’s smooth face as if right next to me, thought perhaps she wouldn’t be as offended by my slip as Dad was. But the bigger part of me, still visualizing Mom, was as disgusted with myself. I hadn’t even marked it on my calendar, and it was the ten year. Ten years she’d been gone, and in that time I’d become this. An otherwise occupied, too busy son to grieve and remember his mother. I’d go by her grave today, leave fresh tulips, her favorite. It wouldn’t do much to quell my mind, but she deserved at least that. Dad probably wouldn’t talk to me for a while, or anyone, for that matter. He’d stay in a drunken stupor until August bled into September.
Rutherford B. Hayes High School, where dreams go to die and kids fight to stay high. Education here is a joke. The curriculum goes up until World War II in history, and there’s only three teachers; one for abridged History, one for Math, and one for English. If you didn’t graduate, and out of our freshman class of 29 we only were left with 15 senior year, you stayed here, started a family, and sent your kids through the vicious same cycle. Everything is just stuck. Kellan and I, we’re getting far away from this place. We’re going to be roommates, at some college in a city with babes, civilization, and opportunities.  But for now, this last year, we’re trapped here with the same people we’ve known since diapers. We’ve never had a new student, especially not one from out of state. As I walked into homeroom, then, my surprise was matched by my classmate’s at the appearance of the new girl. She was actually pretty, breathtaking by this town’s standards. She had a kind, open face, the type I wanted to reveal everything to. I forgot my mom’s deathaversary. I’m so sick of this town and these people. I think my dad hates me. I felt like she’d understand, like she had crosses of her own to bear. Of course, everyone was eagerly talking to her, extracting as much information. I waited until the fifteen person crowd dissipated, then approached her. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Tristan.” We shook; she had good hands. “Autumn,” she said. “Starburst?” I offered. I’d carried them on me since second grade; they’d caused too many cavities. She gave an unexplainably huge smile. “Yeah,” she said. “They’re my favorite.”