Pete

Richard
Pete
Starbucks, October 5, 2008

Pete was at the kitchen table, his back to me, as I entered, and I could tell from the look of concern on my dad’s face that something was amiss. I didn’t recognize Pete at first. We hadn’t seen each other since our twenties. He was a broad-shouldered man with a mop of greasy black hair, and he looked even bigger than usual in his rough, workman’s jacket, hunched over my mother’s china teacup like a giant at a children’s party. He stumbled awkwardly to his feet, and I placed my hand on his shoulder. “No need to get up.” I feigned friendliness I’d never felt.

It’s 1959 and our family has moved from Liverpool to Syston. My Dad is reopening his father’s tailoring business in a dreary street a mile from where they live now. “Go out and make friends,” my dad encourages, and as I wander the streets I come across a boy on an American bike I have not seen in England, the type with big handle-bars that thrust up like stag’s antlers, and it has fat tires with painted white-walls. He cycles directly at me, and I have to jump out of the way to avoid a crash. He has a crew cut, the first I’ve seen on a live human being. He looks like American kids we see TV, but he speaks Leicestershire and calls me “nipper” and adds “me duck” to the end of sentences to show who’s boss. He says he’s going down the brook and I can come if I want, but I have to run. He speeds off, and I follow. Running is what I do, and no one is faster. I am right behind as he turns onto the Melton Road and cruises into Wellington Street. He races across a scrap of open ground where trees have rooted by a stream that meanders beside an old stone wall and disappears into a narrow tunnel. I am there when he slams on his brakes. He turns, looking surprised. “What kept yer, nipper?”

Not waiting for an answer, he rests his bike against a tree and bolts down the banking where he squats on smooth rocks lapped by dirty water. “Come an take a look then, me duck.” I slide to where he is and squat beside him. He points into the water.

I peer in. “What?”

“Made you look! Made you look!” He stands and pushes my shoulder, and I lose my footing and slip into the wet mud, my shoes and socks disappearing into ooze from which an acrid smell bubbles up. What is being dumped here?

“Made you slip! Made you slip!” He runs back up the bank, jumps on his bike, and speeds away.

My dad says his mother is a good woman. They were neighbors growing up before the war. What is that to a nine-year-old? Dad says life hasn’t been good to her. I don’t know what that means, but in time I learn that Pete’s father is an American GI who’s taken off. Did he send the American bike? His mother works long hours in a shoe factory to support them, plus she looks after her disabled mother who has a cleft palette. Pete’s mum is a gentle woman, and she wants her boy and me to get along, but I avoid their place. I can’t understand his grandmother’s speech, which fills me with embarrassed dread that I might somehow find myself in such a conspicuous, helpless position. The other reason is that Pete’s mean streak doesn’t let up, and I am a person who doesn’t foget an insult. I store them like coals for a cold night ahead.

The night Pete came to my parents’ kitchen, Dad dispensed with the usual warm greeting and moved toward the door. “Your mother and I will be in the sitting room.” He was gone.

“How are you doing, Pete?”

“I’m s-sorry.” He sunk back in the chair. “I came to say summat. There’s been things I need to say.”

He’d been drinking. What did he want?

“So how’s Marylynn?” I asked. He had married her a year after our divorce, and it had come as no surprise. After a visit to see her and Trevor, I’d been waiting at a bus stop on my way back to Leicester when Pete came over to talk. He asked if Marylynn was “seeing anyone.” I said I didn’t know. The phrase sounded coy, or maybe delicate, and I could see he felt something for her, and I minded, even though I no longer wanted her myself. “I think she’s beautiful,” he said, his chin out, protective or challenging. “I’ve always thought she’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” I said. “She is.” That was ten years ago, and here he was again with something to say.

The year before, the phone rang in Leeds, and it was was Trevor. We hadn’t spoken since he was a toddler, and he was saying he was fifteen. He said my brother Roy had given him my number. Trevor wanted to know what color my eyes were, if I was any good at sport, whether I was right or left handed. I said my eyes were brown, that I’d been a fast runner, and I was a lefty. He said he was nearly six feet tall. He liked BMX-biking. He wasn’t working as hard as he ought to at school. His eyes were blue.

I tried to picture this boy. My boy. The possibility had always floated that I wasn’t his biological father, but I’d raised and loved him during his first three years, and I’d let him go to save myself. I’d tried to take him with me, but no one would rent us a room and I’d had nowhere to live and had squatted for a while with friends. I’d let Pete raise him. I’d left him to Pete. When I thought of my son, I was reminded of my failure, blame the messenger, and I felt stopped in my tracks, but now we were talking on the phone. We talked for an hour, my heart pounding. I could hear his beating, too. Finally, he asked if I’d missed him, if I’d ever thought of him. All the time, I said. It was the call I’d been waiting for, but I didn’t tell him that. He wanted to end the conversation but didn’t know how, so I said he should talk to his mother and Pete about coming up to Leeds for a visit and he should call me again. He said he would and rang off quickly. When I put the phone down I thought a dam had broken and that there was no telling where the waters might run.

In my parents’ kitchen that night, Pete stood and said, “Trevor tells me he played around on a piano at your place.”

“Yes, that’s right. I think he enjoyed it. It’s Kim’s. She’s very good, although she doesn’t practice enough. When Trevor came, they played for hours.” Kim was the woman I lived with after Meg and I split up. I liked seeing her with Trevor, thinking I might still be a factor in his life, not instead of Pete and Marylyn but in addition. Maybe the part of me that had raised him was still there and I’d be able to see it. I could when Kim played Satie, and Trevor sat, rapt. It was music he’d never heard before. I studied his profile, trying to find my face in his sharp features. He stole glances at me, looking for a physical connection it was hard to locate in my slender body and softer features.

“He’s my son now,” Pete said suddenly, slurring the word “son.” He was pained, and I liked it.

“I know,” I said, “he was just wondering about himself. He wants to know who he is.”

“He knows who he bloody-well is. He doesn’t need you telling him.”

“I don’t have any intention of telling Trevor who he is. I wouldn’t know how. I’m sure he’s just a teenager who wants to understand where he came from. I don’t have plans to interfere with his life. I think it’s up to him.”

“It’s up to me, if it’s up to anyone. Me and Marylyn, not you.”

“Whatever you think is best,” I said, wondering if he’d take a swing at me.

The day Pete walked over to the bus stop was the last time I saw Marylynn. I don’t remember if Trevor was home. I’ve told myself he was three when I took my last look, but memory plays tricks. I was about to get on the bus, when Pete said, “I’m going to marry her.”

“Good. She deserves to be with someone who loves her.”

I don’t know why I said that. I’d ceased to wonder about Marylynn. I was thinking of myself.

Pete got up from the kitchen table and slowly buttoned his jacket, mulling something over. He was at the back door, his hand on the handle when he turned, and I saw a tear in his eye. “Just don’t try to come between us.” He looked up. “I think I’ve always hated you.” Maybe he felt free to hate me now because I was a runaway father just like his had been. Or maybe he hated me now as he always had because I had a dad who was still in my life.