Paradise (pt 10)

The flight back to Houston is nearly eight hours long, and the whole way the boy is prepared for his father to tell him it’s time for him to go back to his mother – but his father does not; in fact, he jokes with the boy and plays cards with him, and tells him he wants to go see that Rambo movie next weekend. Every once in a while the boy sees his eyes glance at the bruises on his neck, and those eyes get very hard.

The boy goes to the bathroom, putting his hands through wall over the toilet out into the wind, and thinks that he could keep going all the way if he wanted and take to the skies. Maybe he’d never come back down.

When he returns to his seat his father is flipping through the Poloroids, separating out the ones of the girlfriend in all of her magazine poses. She packed her stuff and left before the cab came to take them to the airport, and the boy supposed she was getting some other flight back home. His father hadn’t said. The boy knows she’s going to try to find some way to tell his father what she saw if she hasn’t already. Maybe a note or something stuck to the tv. He just needs to get inside the house first.

There is a lot of turbulence during the landing, and his father puts his arm around him and says not to worry, it’s cool. The boy wants to tell him right then, so badly, what has happened to him – but as he’s about to he thinks that maybe worse than his father hating him for being so weird would be if he wanted him to do it all the time, like a trick to show his friends. And then later to do stuff that the boy didn’t want to do, like help his father go back to stealing. So just as quick as he starts to tell, he stops.

His father looks at him, waiting for him to say what he was going to say.

That was a pretty fucking great place, huh? the boy says.

His father grins and raps his knuckles affectionately on his son’s head. You said it.

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