The summer heat snuck up on us, scattering us for our electric fans and air-conditioning, turning us into sluggish, sweaty heaps about the house. My dad and I were watching Lord of the Rings in my room on the big TV, drinking cold Coca Cola from cans leaving perspiration rings on the carpet floor. I knew the sugar was bad for my teeth but as soon as I finished one can, I panicked for another, not simply for the cool drink in my throat, but to have something cold to hold between my knees. Dad faced the same moral dilemma, though with less concern for dental hygiene. “Want another one?” he asked, standing from the bed. The mattress springs squeaked. I nodded.
It was at that moment someone pounded on the front door.
Outside of my room, our home on Lincoln Way was quite literally falling apart—though by our actions entirely. We’d lived her for almost a year and spent the past month ripping down the walls, tearing out the cabinets, uprooting the moldy carpet, breaking, ripping and destroying everything that would eventually be torn down anyway. It was all part of the plan to transform this little red-and-white home into a coffee-shop. With my mother and my sister, we took up residence here while the permit paperwork did the local government shuffle, only recently getting full go-ahead construction clearance.
During that time, however, there was Steve.
The restraining order, obviously, was not working.
“Lisa!” he was yelling now, pounding on the door. “Lisa! I want to talk!”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
My dad turned to me, biting his lip, wide-eyed, and he said, “Stay here.”
Outside of my room, so far as I knew, my mom was in the kitchen making lunch or doing a crossword puzzle or reading a book. I heard her shout, “Don’t come in here!”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
My dad, who’d been staying with us for about a month with the intention to work in the coffeeshop, but mostly to help protect us from Steve, grabbed the baseball bat leaning against the wall of my room and opened my door.
Steve kicked his way into the house.
“I’m calling the cops!” my mom yelled.
Steve, I imagined, with his ex-military bulk and recent rise of drug use, moved forward like an irritable bull looking for a red towel to charge. Not too long ago, he drove his motorcycle onto the porch around midnight, woke us up with the roaring revving engine, then peeled away with a screech and holler. Not long before that, my ex step-father spent a half-hour circling our house, kicking the walls, beating on the windows, shouting, “I just want to talk!” while my mother passed me the phone and told me to call 911. Both times he evaded the cops moments before they arrived. Before that, there was infidelity, verbal abuse, police involvement, restraining order headaches, death threats on the answering machine, the stalking of relatives, drug use and sleepless nights.
Hell, basically, and nothing we could do about it.
Here Steve was again, inside, and as the movie continued to play and my dad stepped out of my room with the metal bat in hand, time slowed down and I moved toward the door to see what was going on out there.
“I’m calling the cops. Don’t get any closer,” my mom shouted.
“Don’t play that bullshit with me,” was the response, the roar, followed almost immediately by the charge—the bull horns lowered, fingers grasping—and my mother, with the phone receiver in one hand, backed up into the kitchen. Steve slapped the device from her hands and smashed it with his foot, grabbing her throat with his hands and forcing her against the wall.
“Hey!” my dad yelled, lifting the bat.
Steve, startled out of his trance, let my mom go. Without a word, he turned and left the house, slamming the door behind him.
In the silence that followed, the busted lock let the warm breeze push the door open. Dad put the bat down and went to check on my mom. I stood in my bedroom and looked out at the results of the scuffle, wrapping my head around it, making sense of it, rejecting it, accepting it, and my mom was astonishingly calm as she wiped a few tears from her face and rubbed her neck. We photographed the evidence: the red skin, the smashed phone, the busted door lock after we called the cops to file another report.
Not long afterward, Steve was in prison.
I wondered about that afternoon for a long time, wondering how it would’ve been different if my dad wasn’t there, wondering if I would’ve grabbed that bat and what I would’ve done with it. The moment was so brief. I hardly saw Steve, catching just the sight of him leaving the house, slamming the door. And what if Steve had put up a fight? What if he’d shoved my mom down and gone after my dad? A crack across the head from a metal baseball bat wouldn’t have ended pretty for anyone, and certainly Steve would’ve wound up in a hospital if my dad’s aim was any good, not running from the cops again. Or what if Dad missed? What if Steve totally lost his mind and killed us all?
Different outcomes for different universes, I suppose.
I’m just glad I’m in this one.
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