Stockholm Syndrome? - Chapter 10: Chapter 10

I watched him closely. He'd given me a bit of a reason for his Neanderthal behavior but it still didn't make sense to me. It couldn't make sense. I needed him to explain, to make me understand.
He couldn't quite look at me when he started talking.
"Before I was born, my parents had trouble conceiving. They tried different doctors to no avail. My mom was in pain. Both of my parents were. But my dad did the stupidest things to 'cope' as mom put it. He had affairs. Then in 1988 they had a miracle. They were overjoyed, for a while. Dad had gotten what he wanted but suddenly it wasn't enough. When I was 9 he had an affair", he said. The next bit seemed to be a lot for him to say, but he continued.
"The woman he had an affair with knew about his marriage, but she didn't care. He brought her home, to our family house and they treated mom like a slave. She didn't leave, she couldn't. She went through nights of hearing them have sex in the next room. It was foolish to hope that dad would come to his senses. One day he decided he was leaving for good. He didn't care about mom or me. He had a baby on the way with his lover. That was mom's last straw".
I thought I saw tears in his eyes. "I came home one day to find her hanging from the ceiling".
There was silence. I didn't want to say something and interrupt although there was nothing to interrupt.
"She killed herself. She couldn't take the pain anymore. Dad didn't come even after the police called him. His son was born that day", he said. "He never came back until days after he discovered he had terminal brain cancer. He was a poor pathetic broken man".
I took a deep breath. "The woman was my mom, right?"
He nodded.
"And the son is me", I said. It was more of a statement than a question.
He nodded again.
He was forcing me to confront my past. It wasn't something I wanted to think about, but his misguided acts forced me to remember a conversation I'd had with my mom. It was on those rare days that my uncle decided to show up for Christmas break at my grandparents' house. He wasn't in good standing with the family after trying to steal my grandparents' retirement funds so no one expected him to show up. The last time I'd seen him before that day I was 5 years old. That Christmas I was 13.
After getting drunk like he usually did (at least that was what my aunt said he usually did), he blurted out,
"You look like your father. He looks like Grant, doesn't he? The bloody bastard produced a clone of himself". He was talking to me.
Everyone went quite for a few seconds.
"Uncle Grant, uncle", I corrected. "Weird, even the neighbor said I look like him", I added.
He looked at everyone one by one. "You didn't tell the boy? He's 15!"
"Calvin, you've had too much to drink", my aunt stepped in trying to get him to sit down.
"Macy, I may have had a bit to drink but I am not drunk", Calvin said.
"You are obviously drunk, the boy is 13 not 15", Macy said.
"So I got the numbers wrong, big deal. I know he is Grant and that tramp girlfriend of his' son. I remember the day Grant came here crying about how he'd gotten a girl pregnant. The tramp didn't want anything to do with the baby so she dropped it off", Calvin said.
"Calvin stop! Right now", my grandmother shouted.
That kept my uncle quiet. I stormed out. Mom later explained. My uncle – who I had just found out was my dad – had gotten a girl pregnant. At 16, he wasn't ready or equipped to handle a baby. His older baby mama didn't want me. Mom was pregnant at the time. When her bundle of joy died a few days after birth, mom was distraught. Faced with the inevitable concept of me being shipped from one place to another, she accepted the duty of raising me. Overtime I became hers. Grant died a year after I was born in a car crash and his baby mama disappeared off the face of the earth.
=
I looked at the man sitting on a chair next to me. He was looking down at his feet. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. His dad leaving and his mom committing suicide didn't excuse what he did but he obviously hadn't dealt with it properly.
"I'm not your father's son", I said quietly.
He looked up. "You are. I didn't get identities wrong".
I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again. "I was born the same month as your half-brother. Your brother died a few days after birth. Mom became mom when her brother and his girlfriend – my parents –couldn't take care of me".
"You are lying!" he accused.
"Why would I lie? It's not like it changes anything. Her blood or not, my mom is hurting, which is what you want! You are getting what you want!" I yelled.
"How is it that I missed that detail? I am usually thorough in my research", he said thoughtfully, scratching his head.
"You were obsessing over your dead coward of a mother! You wanted to blame someone. You wanted to pathetically find a reason why she would leave you. She didn't care! She killed herself. She hung herself there!" I yelled.
I regretted my words seconds after I had uttered them. I was mad that he had made me relieve something I had buried underneath piles and piles of bricks and concrete. I had found out about my parents in the worst way.
My own regret wasn't enough. There was physical pain to go with it, served by a man who had the angriest look on his face. He'd never lifted a hand to me, but now I knew just how much his punch stung. It came out of nowhere. I barely saw him move.
I put my hands up to try and block further punches, but there weren't any. I realized then that he hadn't just given me an aching jaw; the punch had split my lower lip. Blood came out in little drops, and I tasted some when I tried to moisten my lip. My head was ringing.
"You fucking say that one more time and I will kill you in the next few seconds!" he yelled.
I kept quiet. For once I couldn't say anything. This time it wasn't rebellion, I was utterly stupefied into silence. The next punch that touched me would probably render me unconscious.
I put my hand to my lip to stop the bleeding, feeling the blood as it covered the palm side of my thumb. I couldn't press hard. It stung.
"Remove your hand", he said quietly.
I raised a brow but did as he said.
"We need to take care of that", he said unlocking my ankle cuff. He helped me stand up. I didn't know what he meant by "take care of that" and I was afraid to ask. He held my wrist firmly as we walked to the door. He pressed buttons –way too quickly for me to see which – and the door slid. He walked me outside the room and upstairs.