Levesque
Rain slapped harder at the windows. He looked at the clock in the kitchen. Just after midnight. He should be trying to sleep. He knew it would be a struggle. He’d worry about the business. He worried about it every night. He’d worry more now with the loss of merchandise. Insurance would cover it.
It was the being robbed in the first place. His father never would have allowed it to happen. Fuck his father.
He’d been 21 when he threw his father across the basement lounge at the store. His father had jumped and told him if he touched him again, he was calling the cops. He’d stood over him and told him to go ahead, because they wouldn’t understand a word he spoke, since his teeth would be all over the floor.
The old man had looked scared, but he knew better. The old man was scared of no one. It had just been surprise. Surprise that his son who had never been good enough at anything was standing over him in a menacing fashion.
Too many times, it had been Levesque quivering in a corner, watching the old man wail on his mother as she’d tried to protect him. Always body blows. No visible marks. Nothing anyone outside the house would recognize.
That’s why no one questioned when she died after collapsing in the driveway when Levesque was ten. The doctors had no cause of death. Her heart had just stopped working. Levesque figured she’d just had enough of the abuse. The physical was tolerable, the verbal was debilitating. He couldn’t blame her.
The old man had been a pillar of the community. He served on the city council. He was a Deacon of the catholic church. He had a sizeable donation for every cause and always a few dollars for those down on their luck.
He was a man of severe discipline; from the tight crew cut he always had his hair cut in, to the strict routine he kept to every day, never breaking, even for his son. He expected the same discipline of his son. This had been at the fore of many of the beatings his mother took on his behalf. His father took no pleasure in Levesque’s sniveling, so he instead wound up on his mother, who refused to cry out.
Levesque’s weakness drove the old man to the edge. The old man didn’t accept weakness in anyone. He consumed no alcohol as he believed it a lack of strength. The verbal assaults laid out for Levesque when he cried at a gash or a scrape, or when he complained of having been bullied were worse than the cause of the pain.
As much as the old man despised weakness, he was a great believer in respect, and demanded it from everyone. He also gave it out to everyone, that was until they disappointed him, or had cause to lose it, something Levesque figured he must have done while in utero.
The old man had never treated him with even a shred of human decency. Levesque had been a punching bag for his verbal assaults for years. If he brought home straight As, his father wanted to know why they weren’t A+s? If he hit a home run, he wanted to know why he hadn’t hit it farther, provided he could be bothered to attend the game.
Levesque also knew the respect was a front. The man was a simple asshole, who thought he was above everyone around him. He was a bully. The only problem was no one had ever reared up and hit him back in the mouth.
Levesque had figured it out not too long after his mother died. She’d been willing to stand up to him by not crying out when he beat her. The only problem was she it took all of her strength. She didn’t have the power to hit him back.
Levesque blamed his father for his mother’s death. He burned with a silent rage. He’d carried the rage with him through the years. Hating the man every day, even more so now that he was gone.
Two days after Beth had told Levesque about the baby, his father had disappeared. No note. Nothing. Not a trace. He’d gone in to work that Monday and his father hadn’t shown.
The police had searched for a while. They’d checked his father’s house and found his Lexus in the driveway. All his clothes were in the closets. Nothing had appeared out of place.
There weren’t any real leads. Just a few whispers. People who said they’d seen him filling his gas tank at a Mobil station on outer Lisbon Street. Others who said they’d seen him flying across the New Town Bridge. There were some other rumors about gambling debts owed to some of the guys who ran the illegal shacks on the outskirts of town. Nothing concrete.
The police had assumed foul play, but without clear signs of any violence, they hadn’t had much to go on. The only peculiarity had been the emptying of his father’s checking and savings accounts. All the cash withdrawn the morning he disappeared.
Along with the robbery and murder, today marked ten years since his father had gone missing. He raised the bottle of Stoli to the reflection in the window. He took a long drink to his father’s disappearance.
