Read Online I Swear I'll Make It Up to You by Mishka Shubaly - Free Book Online

him looking at his Penthouse magazines the day before Thanksgiving and with a “You really want to know what a woman is like?” had dragged him to the kitchen and plunged his hand deep into the semifrozen cavity of the Thanksgiving turkey defrosting in the sink. My story was so banal it hardly merited mentioning.
    Zack took a little pity on me, and though he wouldn’t allow me to compromise my sequestration, he shared with me one tidbit of happy news: Wayne Lo had been getting the shit kicked out of himwith such regularity while he awaited trial that they had put him in solitary confinement for his own safety.
    My roommate, James, was clever and insightful but not particularly touchy-feely. His parents were happily married and, like most parents of Simon’s Rockers, very well-off. He couldn’t understand what I was going through as money got tighter and tighter. He extended bland sympathies when I told him, but that was about it.
    Still, he was a comfort to me. At night, we’d climb into our beds at the same time, put the slow version of the Pixies “Wave of Mutilation” quietly on repeat, watch the star field screensaver, and talk—about girls, about music, about Galen—till we fell asleep.
    One night while I was on the phone with my father, trying to figure out where I would go for the summer, he ventured that I would be welcome to come and live with him.
    â€œYeah? That might be cool,” I said.
    His job in Vancouver had soured, as all his jobs seemed to sour, and now he was in California. I was still unsure about our relationship, but California sounded appealing, especially during the nadir of a Massachusetts winter. Just the two guys . . . it might be really cool.
    â€œIt’s an option. There’s room here for you. Of course, you would have to pay rent.”
    â€œRent? Dad . . . I just turned sixteen.”
    â€œYou’re out on your own now, which is what you wanted. I think it’s appropriate for you to contribute. We’ll work out something fair.”
    â€œDad . . . I’m your kid. Aren’t you legally obligated to, like, feed me and stuff until I’m eighteen?”
    â€œMishka, you have always made the argument that you’re a special case and that ordinary rules shouldn’t apply to you. You’re out of the house, you come and go as you please, you drink alcohol, you smoke cigarettes. I pay rent—why shouldn’t you?”
    I got off the phone as quickly as I could and fell back on my bed. I had been using the word “unfair” to describe my relationshipwith my parents for so long that, though entirely accurate here, it seemed completely inadequate to describe the situation. It was insane. He was insane. And to invite me in just to push me out like that . . . it was making me insane.
    I made the mistake of voicing my displeasure to my friends. Zack told me, once and for all, to shut up. Zack had grown up a clumsy, skinny weakling utterly dependent on his glasses and his comic books in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a town enamored with its history of backbreaking industrial and agricultural labor. His childhood experiences hadn’t exactly bred sympathy or a high tolerance for whining. When Zack’s father came out of the closet and split with Zack’s mother while Zack was in high school, he had endured public humiliation beyond all imagining, he informed me, and I was to never bitch about my parents’ divorce again. It hurt, but he was right, I told myself. My troubles, troubles that were ruining me, in the grand scheme of things, well, they were nothing. Life is hard. Harden the fuck up, soft boy.

    I hated my father that winter, but by then I had hated him for years. I hated him because I loved him and he ignored me. When my father wasn’t away on business trips for Atomic Energy of Canada and then the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he had only been a token presence, returning from long hours at