The Family Hightower by Brian Francis Slattery

window, a sign that maybe they should all back down, but they don’t. Instead, they have it all the way out.
    â€œYou aren’t even my real father anyway,” Petey says, because he knows how much it hurts Terry when he says it. He’s expecting, then, the usual script. But I’ve raised you as if you were. How could you be so ungrateful when I love you so much. But this fight is different, because they’ve all reached the ends of their ropes.
    â€œYou’re absolutely right,” Terry says. “I’m not. I’m Andrew and Julia’s father, and look at them. Such good kids. Those are mine. Your father ran off before you were born, and we haven’t heard from him since, have we? He doesn’t give a shit about you, just like you don’t seem to give a shit about us. You’re nothing like us, and do you know what? I’m glad. I’m glad, because it means I don’t have to live with the idea that the fuckup that you are is part of me.”
    Muriel cringes, like she’s been hit.
    â€œWhat did you say?” Petey says.
    Terry’s shocked. He can’t believe he let himself say something so hateful, and his shame smothers his anger.
    â€œI’m sorry, son,” he says.
    â€œDon’t use that word,” Petey says. “You don’t get to take back what you said.”
    â€œI know. I’m sorry.”
    Now Petey’s just shaking his head. He wants to cry like a small boy, so that maybe his parents will comfort him, but he’s too proud to do it.
    â€œI’m never coming back here,” he says. “Never.” They watch him leave from the window, and something in the way the son’s walking makes Terry believe Petey was telling the truth.
    â€œOh God,” Terry says. “What did I just do?”
    Petey calls home every few weeks, even though half the conversations end in arguments. He lies about where he’s living. Says he’s in Cincinnati with a few of the guys he met in rehab. Says he’s in Pittsburgh, working as a security guard. Says he’s thinking of moving to New York, and Terry can understand this. He’s been on the interstate through Youngstown, seen the highway signs pointing to New York already, even though it’s almost four hundred miles away. Go east, and it’s the next big city; the way the highway has it, it seems sometimes like New York’s the only big city, though Terry knows that isn’t true. Hong Kong and Tokyo can make New York seem bucolic, and he hasn’t been to Mexico City, Beijing, São Paulo, has only heard what they’re like. Then there’s the rest of the world, the big cities of Africa—and this is the late 1980 s, when there are still more rural people than urban. That’s going to change in a matter of a couple decades, it’s all only going to get crazier. When the satellite images of the world at night come out, we’ll all be able to see just how we light up the planet, like one big city, and quite a few places burn brighter than America does.
    â€œWant to party?” Petey says to Curly. It’s 1989 , in the neighborhood of Ohio City, on the corner of Bridge Avenue and West 28 th Street, Cleveland. The prostitutes are out and trying to reel in customers, but there’s that charge in the air that happens when men are more in the mood for fighting than fucking. It’s already a bit loud on the corner; the dealers are having a good night so far, but it’s going to turn bad, end in sirens and screaming, a couple people going to the hospital and one going to the morgue, all because a man can’t help himself.
    â€œYou paying?” Curly says. “I don’t have the bread for that.” Remember, Curly’s there for crack, Petey for cocaine.
    â€œSure, I’m paying,” Petey says. He shoves his hand in his jacket pocket, pulls out a thick wad of bills. Counts out twenty fifty-dollar bills,