The Silent Treatment

It was a fight like any of the others we had been having recently.

Little did I know that it was the last fight we would ever have.

Our fight was about grades, as they all seemed to be at that time.

He had been heading out the door, dressed to go hang out in the woods with the little felons he called friends. I suspected they were out there drinking and I was absolutely sure they were out there smoking. I was tired of cleaning up after him and watching him slip slowly into delinquency. He told me he'd be back, and I told him to stop and come have a seat instead. He glowered at me from the door, knowing what I wanted to talk about and not liking it.

He slammed the door and came to sit on the couch, knowing he was about to sit down for another ass chewing.

His grades had come in, and they were the worst they had ever been.

When I told him this, he said it wasn't his fault.

I sighed. It was never his fault. Nothing was ever his fault. There was always someone else to blame, someone else to point the finger at, and it was never up to him to take responsibility. This was old ground, and we retread it as we had a thousand times. He would have to repeat the eleventh grade at this rate. He didn't care. He would have to quit his job if he couldn't keep his grades up. He didn't care about that either. I would snatch everything but his air, his car, games, computer, everything that mattered to him, and he would be stuck with nothing but studying, and that was the stroke that finally got through to him.

"Mom never had to stoop to this. Mom always knew there was a better way than to just punish me all the time."

He said exactly what he knew I needed to hear to lose my own temper.

"Well, she isn't here, is she Marcus? She's dead, or have you forgotten?"

I could see by his pained expression that I had touched a nerve. How could either of us forget that little fact? It just hadn't felt like home here without her. We had done a lot of fighting, staying cooped up in our rooms, and not a lot of talking about the hurt we both felt at her passing. She had always kept us from escalating to this level of arguments, arguments that would quickly come to the cusp of violence, I was starting to believe.

My wife had been the pillar that held our relationship up.

My wife had been dead for three months, and it had been the worst three months of my life. She died very suddenly and painlessly, the EMTs told me. She had been turning into the grocery parking lot to do the weekly shopping when a city bus had struck her car. Her car had rolled four times before coming to rest against a tree and the impact had killed her even as it smashed in the door of the car. I can remember when I'd gotten the phone call, sitting at my desk and preparing to file some reports.

I had given bad news to spouses like this a thousand times when I was on the force, but it's different when that kind of horror visits you personally.

We buried her in the family plot, and the two of us had gone home to try and make the most of the home we had left.

We had fought bitterly nearly every day since.

I saw Marcus tear up and turned away before he could see my eyes filling up as well.

"I hate you. I wish I'd been in the car with her."

That took me back for a moment, and I answered out of anger before I could stop myself.

"Sometimes, I wish you had to."

We were silent for a solid minute before he got up and walked slowly towards the hallway.

"Then don't bother worrying about me anymore. Maybe I'll go talk to mom, see if she wants to listen."

Then he stomped down hallways and slammed his door behind him, leaving me alone to feel like a shitty parent and the worst person alive. I spent the next few hours bustling about to distract myself. I made dinner, folded some laundry, and generally picked up while dinner boiled and simmered. When it finally finished, I assembled it on plates and took it to the door of his room, intending it to be a peace offering.

"Marcus?" I called softly, knocking on the door and leaning in close to listen. The other side of the door was quiet, not a sound, but I thought I could hear the creak of the mattress as its occupant rolled over. I sighed. He was ignoring me. That made me angry, I was trying to extend an olive branch, and he was ignoring me.

"Well, dinner is in the fridge when you decide to stop being mad," I said.

His dinner went into the fridge, and I decided to flip on my Xbox and try to block out his childish behavior.

I was still playing later when I heard his door creak open and the light footsteps he always used when trying to sneak out of his room. I ignored him as he scuttled up the hallway, clearly checking to see if I was in the living room. It had gotten dark a few hours ago, a check of the time showed me it was almost ten o'clock, and I was a little angry that he was still awake.

As he crossed behind the couch, I told him to get his food and go to bed.

"You don't need to stay up all night."

He didn't say anything.

He just scuttled off to his room and closed the door.

I went back to playing my game, and about an hour later, I took myself off to bed. I locked my door, just in case, but I wasn't expecting any trouble. My son was a hothead, just like his old man, but he wasn't usually violent. He was a good kid, but it was hard to see the good under all that yelling. I wish now that I had looked harder. Maybe I could have prevented what came next.

The next day was Saturday, and I spent the day cleaning and catching up on things. I didn't see my son all day. He didn't come out for meals or just to ask me if he could have any of the myriad of things returned for the weekend. This wasn't out of the ordinary for him. Last summer, he would stay up all night, and we'd never see him until one morning when he got a wild hair to wake up early. After last night, I was a little glad he didn't come out. I didn't really want to see him, and his silence was kind of nice.

When noon rolled around, and I hadn't heard a toilet flush or a footstep creek across the floor, I became a little concerned. I went to his door and knocked, calling his name, expecting to hear some response. There was nothing, not a sound from inside, and I started to feel angry again. I remembered how he had iced me out the night before and left without saying anything. If he wanted to play this silent treatment game, so could I.

I didn't think about it again until I was getting ready for bed, his door still not having rattled all day.

I showered, took my sleep aid, and went to bed. Getting comfy down under the covers, I started to think that maybe I should be more concerned. Was he sick? Hurt? Perhaps he was just waiting for me to apologize so we could go back to even footing again. I got half out of bed before my anger flared up again. He just wanted me to be the first to crack. I rolled back into bed, putting the pillows over my head as I tried to fall asleep.

I wasn't going to play these games with him.

I was not going to be the one to crack first.

I awoke in the middle of the night to loud crashing noises in the kitchen. I was next to the bed in a heartbeat, police training taking over, finding the box that held my handgun. I crept towards the bedroom door, quiet as a mouse, as the destruction continued to cascade around the kitchen. I wrapped my hand around the doorknob just as a sound like a stove tipping over crunched across the house. I winced, wondering who the hell was making such a ruckus in my kitchen. It had to be some meth head or something. No burglar would be this incompetent.

I opened the door quietly and tiptoed through the living room, boxer shorts being my only covering. The noise had stopped after the loud crash, but I was taking no chances. The last thing I wanted was to get jumped on as I came around the corner, and I kept my gun up and at the ready. When I peeked around the edge of the bar, I could see a huge mess spread across the usually pristine kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, food and juice spilled everywhere, and the stove was indeed flipped onto its face as it lay on the floor. Bakelite glass was scattered across the ground and added to the overall catastrophe that stretched the kitchen.

Of my intruder, however, there was no sign.

I searched the house and found no one. The door was locked, front and back, and none of the windows were open. It was clear that no one had broken in to trash my kitchen, and I could feel my anger flare up again as I looked at the disaster. Only one person could have been responsible for this, and he was currently pretending I didn't exist.

This time, I hammered on the door.

"What the hell? You ruin my kitchen, waste my food, and just scuttle back off to your hole? Get your ass out here and help me clean this shit up!"

Not a sound came from inside.

I was furious. Did he think he could just wreck the house and then ignore me? Who the hell did he think he was? He was on thin ice, and if this was the way he thought he was going to act, I would be going to his grandmother tomorrow and suggesting that she take him for a while. He was seventeen, after all, and if he wanted to act like an idiot, I was tempted to call the police. Let him spend a night in jail if this was how he wanted to act.

I threw the door open then, and there he was, lying with his back to me under his heavy comforter.

"Get your ass up. You can help me clean up your mess, and then we can have a long talk about why you think it's okay to destroy the kitchen."

He lay still, ignoring me, giving me the literal cold shoulder.

I took a step into his room, fists balled up as I prepared to turn him over roughly and shout at him until he decided to listen. I stopped myself, though, after that first step. Maybe this was what he wanted. If I had considered that the police might solve my problems for me, then surely he had as well. He was hoping I would get rough with him so he could get ME in trouble. Well, I was not about to play right into his hands.

I grabbed the chair from beside his door and wedged it up under the doorknob after I closed it behind myself.

Good luck wrecking up the place now, asshole.

I didn't sleep that night.

I cleaned the kitchen before dragging myself back to bed just as the sun came up. I was filthy, sweaty, and smelled strongly of Pinesol. The kitchen had taken a lot of work, and I fell into a filthy, thin sleep as I lay in my bed. My dreams were full of wrecked kitchens, thankless children, and lots of screaming. I slept poorly, despite my tiredness and woke up grumpy and sore. I saw that the chair was still there as I walked to the bathroom and sniffed. He probably could have opened that door, but it would have taken a lot of shoving. Likely, his activities the night before had taken a lot out of him, and now he was too tired to get up. Oh well, I thought, he'll get hungry sometime, and then he'll have to talk to me.

I showered, ate breakfast, and busied myself for the rest of the day. I kept listening for him, expecting to hear him curse as he discovered the chair or to get up to flush the toilet, but he never made a peep. His room was as quiet as a tomb, and he never so much as turned his tv on or walked to his bathroom. That should have raised a red flag for me, but I was still so mad from the night before. If he wanted to starve in there, let him do it.

I left him alone, and when it was time for bed, I crawled in gladly and was snoozing about the time my head hit the pillow.

I heard the chair scrape harshly across the floor at about eleven, and I climbed out of bed to go catch him leaving his room as the sound became harsher.

I got about halfway across my bedroom when something hit my door hard enough to rattle it in its frame. I took a step back, startled, waiting to see if it would knock it in or simply keep battering at it. After the sound of breaking wood rattled across the room, I realized the something was the chair I had put under my son's door. After the chair shattered, it started battering the door with its fists, and I reached for the handgun on my nightstand and the phone on my charger. I dialed 911 and laid the phone against my ear, pointing the gun at the door steadily. I didn't want to shoot my son, but if he came in meaning to harm me, I would do what I had to do.

The operator picked up on the second ring.

"Nine, one, one, what is your emergency?"

I told them I needed some officers to come to my address. I told them my son was acting violently, possibly under the influence, and I desperately needed help. The operator could hear the sounds of someone trying to batter my door in and said she would dispatch help right away. She told me to stay on the line, and I did just that. My aim shook a little as something put a fist-sized hole in my door. The frame shook, and the surface bulged as whatever was trying to break it down tore through the first layer of the door and into the interior.

I haven't prayed since my wife died, but I prayed then that whatever God resided overall wouldn't make me shoot this child that I had raised.

I saw something crawl through the hole in the blackness of the darkroom and reach for the doorknob.

I leveled my gun and prepared to fire if the door opened.

It slid around the knob, and I heard it twist just before the lock caught.

Thankfully, I had remembered to lock the door.

It had fumbled at the simple turn-lock when the first blue and white flashed showed through the windows.

The black thing retreated then, and the silence that followed it was almost deafening.

I snuck across the room to the door, gun leading as I peeked out into the hall. The shadowy hall was empty, the door to the living room closed, and I shoved the door open noisily as it hung broken on its henge. The police were banging on the door, calling to see if someone would let them in. I put my gun on the bookshelf by the door, not wanting to get shot by mistake, and I called to them to tell them I was the caller and I was opening the door. The door came open, and they had their hands on their holsters, waiting to see who would open the door.

They took in my boxer shorts and my scared face and asked me what had happened.

I told them everything. I told them about the fight I'd had with my son. I told them about how he'd been in his room for days on end, only coming out at night to eat or cause trouble. I told them about the mess in the kitchen, even showed them some pictures I had taken on my phone. I told them about the silent treatment we'd been engaged in for the last few days and how tonight had simply been the icing on the cake.

They agreed to come with me to talk to him.

I knocked on his door, already knowing what I'd find. There was no response. The cops looked at me skeptically, but I told them this was just how it had been lately. I opened the door to find him turned away from the door, blankets pulled up over himself, the same way he had been the last time I'd come to talk to him.

"Marcus," I said, trying to keep my voice even, "you need to stop playing games and talk to these men. You went too far; my door is destroyed. You need to get up and tell these men what you did."

Marcus said nothing.

That's when my temper flared again, and I strode forward to yank the blankets off the bed.

"Get the hell up and stop being such a child. I know you can…."

When the blankets came off, I saw the dried blood soaked into his mattress. It had soaked into the mattress, pooling on the floor beside the bed, and Marcus lay on his side as his eyes stared sightlessly at the wall. His body had begun to bloat, the skin darkening, and his wrists were jagged rips up his arms. The knife he had used was still clutched in his hand, and the blade was dark with dried blood.

I spent several hours in the police station, shaking and trying to come to terms with what had happened.

The cops hadn't put me in handcuffs, professional courtesy, I suppose, but they had implied that they suspected this wasn't as cut and dry as it looked. I suspected that they thought I was attempting to cover up a murder, but when the coroner report came back, they determined that he'd been dead for a few days. The going consensus was that he had killed himself after our last fight. They found a note on his desk, and if they hadn't already thought I was a shitty parent, that sealed it. Not only had I essentially let my son kill himself and ignored him for the next two days, but I had driven him to it as well.

The note he'd left said, "If you wish I had died in that crash so much, then let me just give you what you want. I'll be sure to tell Mom why I'm here so soon."

They cut me loose an hour ago, but all I can do is sit in my car and shake.

Part of it is grief. I can't believe I have to go back to that empty house by myself. I can't believe we'll never be able to put this all behind us and move on. I can't believe I'll never get to see him grow up and have kids of his own. I've lost everything now, my son, my wife, and everything that made my house a home.

But I'd be lying if I said that some of it wasn't fear as well.

Because if my son was dead, what was the thing that destroyed my kitchen and came after me tonight? It passed within a few inches of me on that first night, and thinking back on that makes me shiver. The cops ignored me when I asked what I was supposed to do about whatever attacked me tonight. I know they think I'm making this all up, trying to garner some kind of sympathy for my negligence, but I know what I saw.

I saw that long shadowy arm creep into the hole in my door.

If it wasn't my son, then what the hell was that?

As I sit in my car, writing this, I don't know if I'll ever go home again.

I don't even know if I have a home anymore.