Terror Road: Chapter Two

With so many different masks necessary to survive current society, do they split us into undefinable pieces?

This story is Chapter Two of my book, Terror Road, which is my own life story with most of the names changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Click here for Chapter One, also published in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.

They had awoken early to listen for the shrill and piercing screech of the firehouse siren. If it sounded at 7am, it would mean school had been canceled for the day. With their dad in the shower getting ready for work one way or the other, Lance pounced on top of Matthew and glared down into his face. “What are you going to do today, loser, if we don’t have school?”

Matthew tried to figure out if his knee could get free from his brother’s butt so that he could give him a quick jolt to the testicles. As soon as he twitched his leg in the slightest of manners, Lance buckled down that much harder, drilling his kneecaps into Matthew’s shoulder blades and his shins down onto Matthew’s thighs.

“Why are you such a jerk to me?” Matthew agonized.

“Because you deserve it!”

Matthew focused on his brother’s malformed face. Not that it was hideous, but his chin was too long and his cheeks too pouchy, sort of like a squirrel who had taken in too many acorns all at once. He gazed into his brother’s soulless eyes and knew there was nothing there akin to love or kindness. He felt his brother’s shallow and cold heart and he realized his own childhood would forever be tormented because of it.

At last, the sound of the shower ended and Lance knew their dad would be in earshot soon enough, so he let Matthew up.

Snow was such a funny thing, Matthew thought. According to his school, it was often spoken of as a death-sentence for a normal workday within so many cultures, but to Matthew, it was always a sign of new beginnings. It was early December, and with snow gently falling from the heavens, the soft crunch of his boots rang in his ears with a gleeful pitch. The siren had blasted its welcome tune and he was heading towards Scott’s house.

Lance had already headed out to a friend’s house a mile away, and like his dad, Scott’s parents both had willed their way through the storm to make it to work.

But, at last, something good had happened! Their parents’ divorce case was finally settled by the court, and his mother had been granted weekend visitation, which meant Matthew would at last be able to see her. In fact, he was going to see her this weekend! Lance didn’t want to come, which was fine by Matthew. That jerk has no right to see our mother after all the pain he had gleefully heaped upon us. Let him remain alone in his icy shell — it was all he was good for anyway. Just like that James Bond song, live and let die… Matthew thought as he pictured his brother’s ugly face.

This, in turn, was the reason he wanted to see Scott today — better to be with him than with that monster who was supposed to be his older, wiser, and caring big brother. As he came through the front yard of Scott’s house, he noted that the front door was open and Matthew let himself in only to find the older boy sitting in the reclining chair of the living room and there was a strange scent in the air.

However, it was also a familiar aroma, although from a different environment. His father often drank from strange bottles, and Matthew had sniffed from them, and the aroma he detected now was exactly the same as one of the bottles with golden liquid as its contents. Sure enough, Matthew looked directly at Scott, several games already spread out on the floor between them, and he saw a glass of shimmering, rust-colored liquid in his hand. “Hey there Matt, you ready to lose?”

Matthew smiled and shook his head. “Not today.”

Yet, Matthew’s hoped-for optimistic outcome was not to be reality and sadly, after a few rounds of various card games, Scott’s prophetic vision of how things would end today turned out to be the accurate one. Matthew found himself the loser in almost all of their games. No matter what trick he tried, or card he had to play, nothing went his way and Scott found a way around it or somehow turned it against Matthew.

After a tenth defeat, it felt like being knocked out during a boxing match. Finally, after losing yet another round of Uno, Scott’s hand completely empty of Uno cards while Matthew’s was stuffed to the brim with them, Scott spoke up once more. “Let’s make it more interesting and play for fifty cents per game. I know you have an allowance, and that’s what allowances are for, right?” he said, a brow raised. Matthew frowned, but Scott was right. Matthew didn’t really spend his allowance, so….

“Sure,” Matthew said. “If you say so.”

At that, Scott smiled and then lifted the snifter to his lips for a celebratory swig of Kentucky Bourbon.

A week later, after losing so many more games to Scott — almost all of them, Matthew was finally heading up to his mother’s house. It may as well have been a hundred years since he had seen her last, but the moment his father had driven him up to her new residence, and then left him on the front walkway, it was as if those painful days vanished in the blink of an eye. As usual, Matthew noted that he had to figure things out for himself, and walking up the sidewalk towards the front door, what he found wasn’t what he had been expecting.

In front of him was a large beige house made of stone and brick with snow gently sitting upon the rooftop and yard, with four veiled front windows to greet him. But, while the snow was pristine, the house was not. The bricks had been worn down by time and lack of maintenance. The small yard was covered with litter sitting on top of the snow, and the one side wall he could see was painted with indecipherable graffiti.

Matthew looked around, searching for any trace of his mother. After a moment of waiting, he walked up the stoop to the front door and tentatively rang the doorbell. When he pushed the glowing white button, the result was more like a screech of shrill noise rather than the expected ringing bell, and for a brief second, Matthew feared he had broken it somehow. A long minute passed and finally the door opened. Matthew expected to see his mother, but instead, standing before him was an older man with a big belly who was rather bald on top and who wore only a bright red bathrobe. “Yes?” The man asked.

“I’m uh, Matthew Devroe?”

“So?”

“My mom lives here now and I’m here to see her,” Matthew explained patiently.

“Devroe?” The man replied, then thought for a moment. Finally, he called over his shoulder. “Delvin! There’s a kid here wanting to see you!” Matthew noted the foyer behind the man was not in any better shape than the outside of the house. The wooden floor was cracked, and slivers of fragmented wood cropped up here and there. The house was very dark and its air was pungent with cooking oil. Matthew saw more than a few cracks and peeling paint on the walls and the ceiling.

But then he heard her faint cry, one that Matthew had missed dearly for so many months now. Sure enough, as she strode down the creaky staircase, appearing before him was the one truly good person left in his life — his mother, looking as clear and as bright as the sun, despite the dismal atmosphere of the house she occupied. The moment she saw him, her eyes became enlivened with unrestrained joy.

“Sweetheart!” she cried, hurrying down the remaining steps, and then embracing him with all the love of a mother’s heart. Matthew’s smile grew so much wider as he threw his arms around her and they held each other for quite some time. His mother took Matthew up to her room, which was a very small space with only enough room for a desk with an electric hotplate on top and a framed photo from his second-grade class photo. There was a small bed, a dresser, and a tiny closet, and that was it.

At least there was a window looking out to the side of the house. He immediately wondered what it was like for his mother to be living in such cramped quarters after having had a huge house and yard as her domicile for the past twelve or so years. He noticed that she had bags of clothing and paperwork strewn about the room.

He soon discovered, much to his surprise, that there was only one bathroom out in the main hall. All the borders had to share it and they all lived in single rooms up here on the second floor while the owner of the house, an elderly lady with the last name Finnegan, lived downstairs by herself. Over the course of the next hour or two, Matthew had counted at least five other people in the building, including the man who had greeted him. Six people, one bathroom? Even Lance would have to admit that wasn’t suitable.

They went into the downtown area and shopped in Woolworth’s and a hardware store with an attached garden shop replete with a greenhouse. Matthew enjoyed looking at the various plants and Christmas decorations. His mom followed close behind him, stopping once in a while to gaze at some flower or other. They then stopped in a soda shop and sat at the counter to get vanilla egg creams, and finally, his mom suggested a deli which made the best hamburger whopper sandwiches.

Finally, on the way back to the boarding house, they stopped in a newspaper shop and Matthew looked down the aisles at the toys they offered. Though some were of interest, spending money on them was out of the question. His dad had given him a twenty-dollar bill to help with the cost of meals for the two days he would be with his mom, and they had already spent about half of it. His mom could not work and had to rely on government assistance for rent, food stamps for food, and there was not much left after that.

They came back to the room just as the sun was setting and they watched an old movie on her black and white TV. Matthew had to keep adjusting the antenna each time the picture turned into floating horizontal lines of black, white, and gray. As night settled over them, much to Matthew’s surprise, his mother offered him the bed, while she would sleep on the small cot one of her neighbors had lent her for Matthew’s visit. “It’s fine!” she said with a comforting smile. “I promise.”

He felt bad taking the bed but would feel worse turning her down, realizing it was important for her that he found some comfort in her new home. In the darkness, with the TV out, Matthew found sleep to be an elusive chase. He found he paid more attention to the elongated shadows being cast on the wall from the streetlamp in front of the house, and whether or not his mom was asleep. Finally, it seemed she had fallen into a light snore.

He tossed and turned, until his eyes followed a stream of light cutting into the dead of night. The room was dimly lit by the streetlamp whose lonely rays sliced through the window. Looking into the shadows, there, on top of the dresser and tucked away behind a box of potato pancake mix, was a small bottle of pills. Matthew blinked, and then gently and quietly got out of the bed and walked to the dresser. Beneath the bottle of pills, there was a slip of paper, and his curiosity overcame any caution. He took the paper and unfolded it as he came to the window where the light was brightest. As he looked over the paper, he frowned. It was a medical report of some kind, most of which he didn’t understand.

But five words sent a spike of fear into his heart. “Congestive heart failure?” he muttered so quietly that even he barely heard his own voice. And then, a few lines down, he saw the words paranoid schizophrenia. He didn’t know what this meant, but he saw this was the discharge paper from Bergen Pines Hospital, the place his mother had been just before coming to this boarding house. Matthew buried the report back beneath the pills and slipped into bed. He would ask his mother about it tomorrow.

He hoped that, in any way that he possibly could, he would be able to make her happy in the morning. He had to, for Matthew was becoming a man, and what kind of man did not take responsibility for those around him, except for his own father? He had until Sunday evening to make his mother happy, and he should be able to find a way. Yes, I will definitely do something for her, Matthew decided.

The night passed, and by morning’s first light, he was already up, as was his mother. After a worrisome trek into the communal bathroom, he came back into their room and asked, “What should we do today, mom?”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her lost expression washing away any optimism from his spirit. She looked up at him and tried to put on a goofy smile but it was lifeless. “What do you want to do, Sweetie?”

“How about a movie? Or the mall to go window-shopping?”

And thus, it was decided that after having potato pancakes and applesauce, they were heading to the mall. He mixed the instant batter according to the directions on the box and then his mother cooked breakfast upon a small pan, one that was unevenly heated on the electric coils of the single burner hot plate, but nevertheless, the pancakes were cooked. Then they set out. The trip to the mall proved to be more difficult than he had imagined it would be because his mother lacked a car, and they would have to take public transportation.

As they sat beneath the small enclosure of the bus stop, Matthew looked over the schedules his mother had collected and sighed. Lance would have been able to figure this out, but he didn’t come. Lance decided he would hate their mother for some godforsaken reason, one which Matthew would never understand.

And he didn’t want to, either.

During the week after his weekend visit with his mother, Matthew found himself in the basement of Scott’s house once again. Scott’s parents were working and rock music from the seventies blasted out of a stereo. They were playing a game of pool, but Matthew’s mind was elsewhere, even as Scott placed another two balls into the pockets and celebrated his accomplishment with another swig from one of the various bottles of booze stashed behind the bar across the room.

Matthew didn’t really care, if Scott wanted to drink, then so be it. Matthew had far more important matters to consider, like the safety of his mother, and any treatments possible for all of the ailments afflicting her. His hands moved on their own without any determination, and Matthew just watched with a dazed expression as his shot missed yet again, the eight ball bouncing aimlessly against a cushion and coming to a rest somewhere in the middle of the table.

Scott came back to the table with much better luck, or aim. The distinct crack reached Matthew’s ears as another pair of balls fell into the nets of the two far pockets.

“I win again!” Scott cheered and glanced at Matthew. He heaved a bottle in front of Matthew’s face. “Here take a swig, you’ll feel better.”

Matthew lifted the bottle to his lips and gulped at the liquid like it was water. It burned so much that he wanted to spit it out, but he did not want Scott’s parents to be offended by him, and so he swallowed hard as tears came to his eyes.

Scott smiled at him. “I believe that, right now, you owe me a hundred and twenty dollars,” he said with a mischievous grin, which soon turned into a sneer. “What can you do to pay up?” Taking the bottle back from Matthew, he drank heavily from it.

Matthew held back a frown. Over the past few weeks, he had seen Denny leaving Scott’s house with haunted eyes and an uneven gait. Matthew had wondered just what they had been doing, or if something bad had happened to Denny while he was with Scott. “Oh,” Matthew said, for lack of anything else to say. “I have to think about it.” The alcohol had hit his system full on and he felt lightheaded and flushed.

“Well, can’t you give me cash — your dad’s rich,” Scott chided. “Shouldn’t be a problem for a spoiled boy like yourself.” With Matthew’s silence in reply, Scott lingered over Matthew, his much larger hand gently, firmly, and then rather painfully wrapping around Matthew’s neck. “I should beat the shit out of you. But don’t worry, I know other ways you can make up for paying me.”

Days passed, and still Matthew did not know what Scott’s words, or perhaps more fittingly, his warning, had meant. Had it been a threat? Why? What did he want from Matthew? Up until now, Scott had been nothing but nice to him, so why the sudden change?

Matthew pushed his thoughts aside as he set about the day. Scott didn’t matter at the moment for, at last, he had gotten called over to spend some time with Stevie and his family. It was a rare event lately, a time when both of them had a spare afternoon. As the chill had descended, and with snow falling from the heavens, Stevie and his three sisters took Matthew away from his family and out onto the ice.

Or to be more accurate, the frozen pond at the local golf course. It was truly a winter wonderland and they skated for a time, then made snow angels on the greens of hole #7 now covered with almost a foot of fresh, slushy, wet snow. It was perfect for snow forts and snowball fights, and Stevie’s sisters had been nothing but kind to him, so much unlike his own family. Stevie truly enjoyed his time with Matthew, and Matthew was so happy to feel the joy exuding from his best friend.

All good things had to come to an end sooner or later, and the afternoon hours had passed quickly but had now turned to dusk. They skated along the frozen stream all the way back to the road where they donned their boots once more and headed home.

Once home, much to his surprise, Matthew found two unfamiliar faces. The first one was a woman around his dad’s age, one who greeted Matthew with a forced smile, and the other a boy just a bit older than Matthew who didn’t say much, but that was alright. Apparently, this was the woman Lance had warned Matthew about — their dad’s new girlfriend who also had gone through a recent divorce from … their dad’s old Army friend.

Matthew couldn’t shake the feeling there was something wrong about that, but the woman was nice, and they had brought home pepperoni pizza and mussels, which was enough for Matthew after such an exhausting and fun day. During the meal, Matthew wondered about money. His dad had an abundance of it and his mom had a scarcity, and this did not make any sense to him.

Three weeks ago, Lance had been instrumental in informing Matthew that their dad had been able to “prove” before the divorce judge that their mom had been responsible for the divorce due to their dad’s attorney blatantly lying and saying their mom had been unfaithful, which their mom had been in no position to defend against. The settlement included only a $20K check for their mother while their dad got full custody, the house, the cars, and everything in the house besides their mom’s clothing.

“She gave it all to the Black maid,” Lance told Matthew one day after she had called to speak with them. “Mom blew her whole settlement from the divorce.”

“What do you mean?” Matthew asked.

“Remember Hazel, who used to come two days a week to help her clean the house?” Matthew nodded. Hazel had been the only Black person either of them had ever known, and their dad had long before told them that Hazel lived in a broken-down trailer two towns away with four kids and an abusive husband. Lance continued, “She felt sorry for her and gave her almost all of the twenty thousand dollars.” Matthew’s heart had dropped to his feet, and he didn’t know if he should believe Lance since he seemed set against their mom at all times.

Presently, at dinner with their dad and the dad’s new girlfriend, Matthew figured why not ask about it? He swallowed a muscle and looking at his dad’s face, he summoned the courage to do what he felt necessary to honor his own need-to-know. When he could no longer handle the fear building inside him like a river of icy water, during a lull in the dinner conversation, he blurted out to nobody in particular, “Did mom get twenty thousand dollars with the divorce? And if so, did she give it all to Hazel?”

All eyes at the table turned from Matthew to their father. The silence threatened to drown them all beneath a swell of murky obfuscation until finally their father opened his whisky-breathed mouth. “Yes, to both, and we are not going to discuss it anymore. That’s it, Matthew!”

They had spent the rest of the night watching Christmas movies mostly depicting families frolicking in all of the typical holiday whimsy, and all the while, Lance was strangely silent. They were spread out on the living room carpeting in front of the crackling fireplace with huge throw pillows, sleeping bags, and blankets. Matthew, for his part, didn’t care if his brother, or even his dad’s new girlfriend’s son, wanted to shut their mouths, that was fine by him. His dad and the girlfriend laughed and carried on watching the TV, but Matthew did not get it.

As the hours passed, guilt festered and ate its way through Matthew’s mind. For though he enjoyed this warm night of comfort, his mother sat all alone in her tiny room at that boarding house. Its heat was shoddy, at best. And all those strange people she had to share the bathroom with, and cooking on such a useless stove … he could not shake her from his thoughts.

What about this situation was fair, Matthew wondered.

What must I do to make it right?

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