Hal

Today is the end of a chapter in Bryan’s life, as he is putting the last coat of paint on the far wall of the house he grew up in. It’s the wall that separates the master bedroom from the room Bryan grew up in. Bryan always begrudged how inconvenient it was being right next door to his parents’ room, especially having to share a wall with them. But it’s been a good long time since Bryan’s been a teenager. He’s in the master bedroom now with his wife, Anna, painting over the wood paneling in a stylish steel gray with white trim. Very modern. Today will be the last day Bryan will spend in his house, as he and Anna have spent the last few weeks refurbishing, modernizing, and prepping 948 Betsy to sell. It’s time; he knows. And it took a while to get here.

Bryan moved into 948 when he was eleven. It was all so new to him. His parents had divorced years prior, he started getting into trouble at school, and he ultimately closed himself off to the world. His mother met a man named Hal and they married, and Hal brought them there, to 948. Hal’s parents, Harold and Betty, owned 996 next door, and they had bought 948 to use as passive income. When Hal married, they offered it to him, and along came Bryan, his mom, and his sister, a broken family that was slowly piecing itself back together.

Hal offered Bryan the room at the end of the hall; it was bigger than the master bedroom, but Bryan was already tall for his age, so this made sense. Bryan layered the wall with posters and he blacked out the windows with thick curtains. A room with plenty of beauty and natural light turned into a dungeon where Bryan could hide from what has so far proven to be a dangerous world. Hal noticed. He hadn’t been in Bryan’s life long, but he knew a broken kid when he saw one.

“What happened in third block today?” Hal asked. He barged into Bryan’s room. Hal removed the doorknob to the room three weeks prior after Bryan started locking everyone out.

“You tell me. Clearly, you talked with my teacher,” Bryan never looked up from his video game.

“She told me she asked you to open your textbook and do some work. You told her to shut up and leave you alone, and apparently you used some choice words to say this.”

“That about sums it up.”

Hal reached behind the video game console and ripped out the power cord and the coaxial cable to the back of the TV. Bryan stood up, aggressively, and Hal never flinched. “You want video games that I buy you? You want cable that I pay for? I want good grades and a better attitude. You’ll get what you want when I get what I want.”

“You can’t do that,” he still bowed his chest out assertively.

“What do you want me to do, Bryan? You want me to spank you? You’re twelve and you’re twice my damn size. No,” his voice came down a notch, firm but sympathetic, “I’m sorry that no one to this point has pushed you to be better. But I’m in charge of you now. I know what you’re capable of and I want you to get there. And I will hold you to a higher standard.”

Eight weeks later and Hal called for him to enter his room, the master bedroom with my beautiful, if outdated, wood paneling. Bryan came in, already having a clue what the summons was about. Hal started, “You know I got your report card today.”

“I know, but I was just starting to…”

“Shut up,” Hal interrupted, “and sit down.” He motioned Bryan to the foot of the bed. Bryan sat down grudgingly and Hal tossed him a yellow note pad and a pen. “I will say what I have to say, and you’ll shut up. Anything you want to say, any response you have, write it down. When I’ve said my piece, I’ll shut up and you’ll have your chance to respond, and I’ll take notes on my pad. We’ll go back and forth until we come to an understanding. Right now, you’re grounded for another 10 weeks until the next report card comes out. You argue me down well enough, and maybe that restriction gets lessened a bit. But that’s up to you and how well you can explain to me your actions. Do you understand?”

He didn’t; not then, at least. But this was a big moment for the two: Hal (a grown man-child) and Bryan (an actual child), going back and forth, really learning from each other. Bryan explained that when he was grounded the first time, he didn’t have enough time as the damage was already done. Hal explained that it was still his fault because he was in that situation by his own admission in the first place. Bryan explained that he got all his grades up, not just passing, but to “C’s”. Hal explained that “C” means “average”, and because Bryan was far beyond average, “C’s” wouldn’t be considered acceptable. Again and again, Bryan listened while Hal parented. When Bryan spoke, for the first time ever, an adult genuinely listened back.

They sat on that bed exchanging arguments for two whole hours, and Hal finally relented, “Okay, I’ll reduce your sentence to four weeks, when interims come out. If your scores are better then, we’ll re-negotiate.”

“I can live with that,” Bryan was relieved.

“One more thing. We’ve talked about me officially adopting you and you taking my last name…,” Hal started.

“No. I want to keep my last name.”

“I understand, and I respect that. I’ve already told your mother to back off. However, whether you wear my last name or not, you still represent me and you represent this family.”

The blank stare in Bryan’s eyes made Hal know he was losing him. Hal continued, “You see, I made a lot of mistakes in my youth. My father, your grandfather, he busted his ass to make sure that our family name meant something. He worked, he sacrificed, he lived a wholesale honorable life to make sure when you heard our name, it meant something great. Me? I pissed all over that name. I haven’t lived a life worthy of that name. But you? You’ve still got the time and the potential to be great. To be worthy. I will spend whatever time I have left on this planet making you worthy of that name, whether you want to wear it or not. Whenever you leave this house, remember who you are, and remember who you represent.”

Bryan nodded. He understood, but in that moment he didn’t truly feel the gravity of those words. After four weeks, the grades were up, and Hal offered him a trade: his TV wires and a new doorknob in exchange for continued good grades and the blackout curtains in his bedroom. Bryan’s quizzical eyebrow asked the question for him. Hal explained, “Because you need to let the light back in.”

Years passed. Hal forced Bryan out of the bedroom. He sat at the dinner table every night as a family. Bryan always had to share something good and something bad about his day, just to keep him talking. When decisions needed to be made as a family, Hal insisted Bryan throw his two cents in; Hal called it “man of the house” training. Hal pulled him kicking and screaming into Boy Scouts. He chaperoned Bryan’s first date with a girl, and he sat three rows back and threw popcorn at the back of Bryan’s head every time he went in for a kiss with the girl. When it came time to learn how to drive, Hal would make Bryan chauffeur him around to clients’ houses all over town. When Bryan started playing football, Hal was the one who took him shopping for more pads than he’d ever need. And Hal was at every football game, rain or shine.

One Friday night, Bryan returned home very late. It was a barn-burner of a regional game, and the good guys pulled it out by one score in triple overtime. When Bryan walked into his room, Hal was sitting in Bryan’s desk chair asleep.

“What’s up?” Bryan stumbled. He didn’t think he was in trouble, but Hal being in his room after a game was rare.

Hal shook himself awake and wiped his eyes with his palm, ”Hey, bud. Hell of a game tonight.”

Bryan, relieved, smiled, “Dude, it was the best. I wanted more playing time, but Coach won’t play freshman both ways, and we needed a Center who could shotgun snap, and…”

“You did great. Proud of you. First start on Varsity is a pretty big thing. Plus how crazy was that game? You must be wiped.”

“Extremely,” Bryan threw his bag down and sat at the foot of his bed.

“Look, kid, I have to talk with you about something.” Hal’s tone, the time of night, the location: everything was reading “bad news.”

They talked. They talked about the doctor’s visit that day. The tests. The lung cancer. Hal had gone through two packs a day since he was fourteen, so this wasn’t as much a surprise to him as it was a gut punch to Bryan. How far that kid had come in just a few years, and to hear Hal answer, “Six months,” was more than Bryan could handle. He wept into Hal’s arms, and Hal used all the strength he had in him to hold his gargantuan stepson up.

Hal was as stubborn as he was wise. He sped right through his six-months diagnosis. He shaved his head before the radiation took it out. He got a cat and named it “Chemo.” He kept on smoking, occasionally showing Bryan how he could puff a cigarette through his tracheostomy hole. But at around month fifteen, the cancer started to take its toll. Hal couldn’t leave the house. He dropped under a hundred pounds. He wheeled a small oxygen tank wherever he went. He was ever becoming less Hal and more the shell that Hal used to live in.

One night, three in the morning, Mom knocked on Bryan’s door. “Bryan, buddy, Hal fell out of bed again. Can you help?”

Bryan groaned, but he knew the drill. This had happened several times before, and in the last two months, Bryan had to lift and carry Hal to a number of places. He stretched his body and walked into his parents’ room; Hal was stretched out on the floor, moaning softly. He had been non-verbal for about a week now, but before that he insisted that he wanted to be home and not living in a hospital room waiting to die. Bryan bent down, struggled to gently reach around and underneath Hal’s frail frame, and he lifted. Hal looked at Bryan and smiled softly; Bryan smiled back. In that moment Hal took a deep, raspy, contentious breath.

And then he never breathed again.

Bryan understood what happened before he placed Hal back onto his bed. Mom screamed, cried. His sister called the ambulance, but it didn’t matter. Hal was gone. Bryan sat in his bedroom, his back against the wall he shared with Hal, as the workers wheeled away the body.

Weeks passed, and Bryan coped. Badly. He retreated back into himself, blocking out the world and losing himself in his feckless hobbies. One afternoon, Bryan came home from school. When he walked into his bedroom, Harold, Hal’s father and his grandfather, sat in his desk chair waiting.

“Hello there,” he said quietly in his proud, southern tone.

“Hey, Grandpa,” Bryan was slightly startled.

“Sit down, kid. Let’s talk.”

“Do you have cancer now, too?”

Grandpa laughed softly, “Not that I know of.” Bryan sat down on the bed. “How are you doing, kid?”

“Stressed. Missed a lot of school after, well, you know. Still trying to get caught up.”

“Your mom’s worried about you. Said you haven’t said more than ten words to her since Hal passed.”

“Just don’t have much to say.”

“You did… for a while.”

“Only because Hal made me.”

“No, that’s not true.”

Bryan shot him a nasty look.

Grandpa continued, “So talk to me now. How are you handling all of this?”

Bryan said nothing. He stared at his grandfather, no words, nothing but tears welling up in his red eyes.

Grandpa coughed, leaned forward, and broke the tense silence, “Okay. I’ll talk. Do you know what I miss most?”

Bryan lowered his head and breathed out an exasperated breath.

“Breakfast,” he continued, “See, Hal and I fought the whole time he was in high school. When he left for college, he left. Gone. Didn’t come back. He was off sowing his wild oats or what have you, and he knew I wouldn’t approve, so he never came home. I only started talking with him again a few years ago. Because of you.”

This piqued Bryan’s interest. He wiped the tears from his eyes and sat up straight.

“Hal called me out of the blue, said that he’d moved back into town and that he had met a woman. Your mother. He said he loved her and he wanted to make it a forever thing, but he didn’t know how to be a father to you and your sister. For the first time since he was twelve, he came to me for advice. When I met you, I told him what I honestly thought, which was that your sister was too old for him to have too big of an impact on, and that you might be too far gone.”

Bryan looked up, angry, “What does that mean?”

“You locked yourself in your room. You refused to come out. You wouldn’t have conversations with people. Whatever had happened to you before Hal had a profound and negative effect on you, and it showed. I told Hal that you’d be the hardest fight of his life, and that you were worth it. Saving you was worth it. But Hal had to commit. So once a week, every Monday morning, Hal walked next door and he and I had breakfast. He would talk about you, brag about you, get my advice on you. When he got diagnosed and had to leave his job, he came by every morning for breakfast. Every day for the last eighteen months. And most of the conversation was about you.”

“About what?”

“About this moment. About how you would respond to this. You’ve made so much progress since you became a part of this family. Hal was terrified that he hadn’t finished the job yet. That you might go back into the hole we found you in.”

“I’ll be fine,” Bryan shook his head, “I’ve… I don’t know. I’ve just never lost someone like this before. I just have to shake this off.”

“No. No you don’t. Don’t shake anything off. Who you are is who you are, and who you are is amazing. I’m just asking that you don’t lock yourself away.” He reached forward and grabbed Bryan’s hands. He needed his grandson’s full attention. He continued, working hard to mask the emotion choking every word, “You see, I made a mess of things with Hal. I have a lot of things I would take back if I could. But what brought Hal back to me was you. I had a few amazing years with my son that I wouldn’t necessarily have had were it not for his new son.”

“And I swore to him, every morning at breakfast, that I would pick up where he left off. I didn’t always get things right with him, but I made a promise to him that I would get it right with you.”

“Because he was so proud of you, son. He was so proud of you.”

Bryan wept. He lost himself, on his knees in his grandfather’s arms.

“You don’t have my name. And you don’t have my blood. But you have ‘Hal’ written on your soul now. You represent him, us, now. All you have to do is remember who you are, and who you represent.”

Grandpa pushed Bryan away and wiped the tears from his eyes, and he smiled, “And from now on, Saturday mornings: coffee, toast, eggs and bacon. 7 A.M. Don’t be late.”

That moment is what will always be burned in the mind of this young man putting the last coat of steel gray paint on the dated wood paneling. From there, he earned his Eagle Badge. He graduated high school. He packed up and left for college. He came back, married this beautiful woman who was now touching up the trim in the guest bath. Grandpa finished the job that Hal had started. He passed shortly after Bryan’s sons were born, and he was proudly able to hold both his great grandsons. Shortly before Grandma passed, she sold 948 to Bryan, and here he stands, putting the finishing touches on this house for the last time.

“I think we’re good in here,” Bryan calls down the hall to Anna; he wipes the sweat from his brow. “Master’s done.”

“Come check the bathroom and see if I missed anything,” Anna calls back, over the sounds of two little boys running up and down the echoing halls.

Bryan stops, listens, feels the empty room. Anna walks through the doorway and sees tears welling up in her husband’s eyes. One of the boys bumps into her leg as they sprint down the hall, “Babe? Are you okay?”

Bryan’s eyes dart all around the room, and a single tear rolls down his face. “Yeah, I’m good. Just a lot of… a lot of memories.”

She walks up to him and wraps her arms around his waist, “You’re okay selling this?”

“Oh, yeah,” he dries his eyes. He hugs her back, “This house was with me through a lot. Who knows how much these walls have seen?”

Enough, he thought; enough to remind him who he is, and who he represents.