“A Promise” by Kenneth Zak

I wasn’t gone more than thirty minutes, but when I got home glass was all over the hardwoods in the hallway.  I heard sobbing.  I ran to the bathroom doorway.  It looked like a bomb had exploded.  Sitting on the side of the rusty tub in a convulsing, sweaty mess was my only son — one part teen angst, one part bipolar, and one part who knew.  Broken mirror covered the green tile floor, the palm-treed shower curtain beneath his Doc Martens, and his black-dyed mop of hair.

Blood traced his pale knuckles.  He was holding a piece of mirror above his wrist and looked up to me.  His bloodshot eyes looked so scared.

“Cameron! What the fuck!” I said.

In two steps I was over him.  I bent down, wrapped my hand over his wrist, and took the glass from his shaking hand.   Man, I was so glad he let go.

“Is this what you want?” I asked.

I dropped the glass into the tub.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Tears and snot covered his pimpled face.  He nearly slipped from my grasp when I pulled him to his feet.  His sopping, sleeveless Operation Ivy t-shirt stuck to his back.  We stood almost eye to eye, our faces only inches apart.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

I pulled him into the narrow hallway by his neck and pushed him toward his room.

“Come on, if this is what you want, let’s go,” I said.

I walked up to him and jabbed him in the chest.

He backed away, nearly tripping over his black boots.

But I so wanted him to charge me.  Come at me.  Take his best shot.

“Come on!” I said.

What a complete, fucking idiot.  I had never laid a hand on him, or him me, but I was seething.  Shit, I was shaking too.  I took a breath but pulled him back to the bathroom.

“You’re gonna clean this up,” I said.

“I will,” he said.  He got down on his hands and knees and started to pick up glass.  I thought I knew his troubles, but he had never once self-destructed in my presence, not once in the sanctity of my house.  He left that for his mother to deal with, almost as if he was protecting me, or making it easy for me, or trying to make me proud, or be normal, whatever the hell that was, but not today.  Not any more.

I wanted to shake the demons from him, but instead I knelt down and hugged him.  Cam’s long arms held onto me like his life depended on it.  But really mine did.  The day he was born his reddish body was wailing, shivering, and helpless.  His scrawny little hand wrapped around my pinky.  I recalled a promise made that day, an impossible promise to protect him.

Clasped on the floor, both of us weeping, our sweat and stench felt the same.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

His brown eyes distorted through my tears.

We rocked back and forth on the floor.  Specks of glass pricked into my knees.

I wanted to fix him.  I wanted to fix myself.  I wanted to make all of it okay, everything.  I always believed I could.  What fucking lunacy.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered again, “but I’ve got you.”

And Cam’s grip tightened around my shoulders.