How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets by Garth Stein

Author:Garth Stein
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2009-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

EVAN WORKS HARD for the next few days. Not hard at his job, hard at Dean. He tries to entertain Dean as thoroughly as possible. Nary a moment passes without some scheduled activity. They hang out at Fremont Guitar together, then they go for dinner, then to a movie or to see a band somewhere or to hang out with friends. Or he drags Dean to Lars’s house, wherein the band hangs out in the basement and listens to the demo over and over, talking about what might become of it, while Dean spends the evening upstairs in the den playing Gran Turismo. With so much to do, Dean seems bored.

A full week passes like this. Evan doesn’t call his parents and they don’t call him: the “go fuck myself ” comment probably was too much for them. He doesn’t call his brother and his brother doesn’t call him: Charlie has always been famous for being able to block out the little nuisances in his life (his brother, his son, his wife . . .) in order to better concentrate on his work. He talks to Mica briefly a couple of times, but she’s on the go, go, go.

And then a funny thing happens. Evan takes Dean down to the indoor skating park near Safeco Field, where Evan is forced to act fatherly for maybe the first time when he tells Dean that, no, he won’t buy him a two-hundred-dollar pair of new blades, and, yes, Dean will have to use the junky rental skates; and, while Evan is watching Dean grinding any rail he can find and landing some precision airs, being smooth on his transfers and even adding a three-sixty to the tail of his frontside gap (like Evan knows what that means; but the kid sitting next to him in the bleachers with the cast from his wrist to his shoulder is busy doing a competent play-by-play:“One day I’ll work for ESPN and cover the X-games, ” he says), his cell phone rings. Caller ID: an area code he doesn’t recognize. Jamaica?

“I found you.”

For a moment he thinks it’s Mica, and that thought makes him practically cry: she found him. A statement that resonates so deeply. No one has ever said that to him before. No one has ever found him before.

“I’ve been waiting, ” he says. It sounds kind of romantic.

“I can’t do it.”

What? It’s not Mica. It’s someone else.

“Who’s this?” Evan asks.

“It’s Ellen. I can’t do it. I can’t do what you ask.”

Oh, shit. Ellen. Ellen. Evan gets so focused on certain things that other things go on and he doesn’t even think about them.

“What do you mean?”

“I believe you, ” she says.“I agree. I loved Tracy and I love Dean. I would love to take care of Dean, to raise him. But I have to agree with you that it would not be good to raise Dean near Frank. And I know that Tracy would never have it that way. Never. She would prefer Dean be with you.

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