Chapter 1

It was the first time since I’d landed last Thursday that I had time to sit and listen to the peacefulness of the island around me. The last few birds putting themselves to sleep; someone’s air conditioner, an occasional car going by slowly on the narrow road that ran past the property. In tune with the ocean’s heartbeat, the wind made music by playing through the tops of the palm trees, and their fading shadows danced against my bedroom wall.

It was the first time I felt like I maybe, possibly, could have a future, make a life here, and have a new family as well. I didn’t know what to make of it all, the bad or the good, but I was learning to accept life as it came, and to not judge so much by my own understanding, maybe not to judge at all. Though I saw no possible way that much of what had happened so far could have been called anything but dreadful.

I can’t say ‘everything started to go bad when I landed’, because it goes back so much farther than that. Maybe it all started when my mom first started doing drugs when she was my age. Maybe it started before that, when her dad started drinking when he was her age. I don’t know, but that ‘sins of the father’ crap sure casts a long, long shadow. I’m never going to have children; so it can all stop with me. The family I make will not be a typical one.

So there was my mother, already smoking dope and making bad choices by the time she turned seventeen. I was conceived that night, but she didn’t know by whom. All she knew was when her dad found out she was pregnant, he said she had to marry someone, and he suggested his old pal Anthony, who just happened to be his supplier of illegal substances.

I should feel sorry for her, but she made her choices and to my knowledge, never regretted them. She and Tony were terrible parents, but my grandmother helped to raise me. She’s probably the only reason I turned out as well as I did. That and the fact that my so-called parents didn’t want to waste their dope on me and that I didn’t want to be anything like them.

Last Thursday was my seventeenth birthday. Of course there was no party, there never was, but my stepdad came into my room in the morning and said, “Pack some shit, Aiden. I found your dad and he wants you. You’re getting on a plane at eleven A.M.”

To say I was confounded and bewildered barely touched the surface. A feeling of joy suffused me like I had never felt before, and I was amazed and gladdened and even a bit ashamed that I had always thought he hated me. I couldn’t catch my breath for worrying about what I was leaving behind at short notice—a few friends, some plans we had made, a summer job, but I could work around it. Imagine—my father, meeting him, getting to know him, oh my God! The questions I would have! Leave it to my mom and stepdad to make something so miraculous be so difficult to grasp, let alone to prepare for it.

I threw some clothes and a book or two and my iPod into my school backpack, got dressed and tumbled downstairs to grab a bite to eat. Surprisingly, my mother apologized for the short notice. She cast her eyes at Tony and stammered, “Sorry it’s such short notice but it all just came together, right, Tony?” As she always did, my mom looked at Tony as if he was god, like his approval was everything. Tony smiled and added, “We’ll send your shit over if he wants you to stay a while. Clothes and whatever. Don’t worry about it.”

It wouldn’t have done any good if I had. Within an hour I was being dropped off at the airport with my backpack, my fears and excitement, and a ticket to Maui in my hand.

We’d moved a lot when I was a kid, mostly because we had to, and sometimes even in the middle of the night. I think Tony worked a fairly steady job, maybe in construction, but most of it went for booze and cigs and other stuff I won’t mention. Sometimes I wondered what was wrong with my mother that she never complained, never demanded nicer clothes for us. I wondered if maybe she wasn’t all there or had some kind of mental retardation. Neither of them paid me much attention, except for a couple of times when out of the blue Tony went ballistic and beat the crap out of me and I had no idea what for. It only happened the two times, and both right after his brother had been there. Uncle Ward would sit there drinking whiskey, watching every move I made like a hawk after a wayward chicken. I didn’t like him and wouldn’t leave my mother’s side while he was there.