After driving a few miles in silence, I found a moonlit pull-off overlooking Happy Valley. Shelly snuggled up to my side again, but I couldn't seem to let go of the steering wheel.
"I've never told anyone some of this stuff, Shelly. ...but it isn't right letting you believe I've led a completely innocent life."
"What do you mean by not completely innocent, Phil. You're scaring me. You don't have a child do you?"
It seemed like I was in a fog as I prepared to pour out my life's story to her.
"I almost killed myself when I was fifteen." I felt Shelly tense. "It wasn't suicide. It's just that I was so angry at everyone that I kind of went crazy for a while.
"You know how I tell you sometimes that I don't like to be called Carrots?"
Shelly looked even more apprehensive than before.
"I guess things kind of got really bad in middle school. I didn't develop physically as early as most guys in my class, so I kind of got teased a lot. One day I got hit in the eye by a dodge ball in gym class and they started calling Sissy Boy because I couldn't catch it. After my eye turned black and blue, and then green and yellow, they added Rainbow Brite to the list of names they called me. Then the next week a jerk named Chase Johns set me up in the locker room so when I looked up to answer his question, his junk was right in my face. After that I was simply referred to as `the faggot'."
"Oh, Phillip. I'm so sorry. I didn't know."
"Things kind of really got out of hand on my Fifteenth birthday. I was hangin' with a friend at the Dairy Queen in my home town when some lady walked right up to me and said...
"Oh you must be Gill O'Shea's son. Don't you look just like him? I'll bet he's proud of you."
"I remember just staring at her. I don't think she believed me when I told her I had no idea who the man was. It really freaked me out though, because that was like the third time it had happened in less than two months.
"My friend, Dakota, thought it was funny, and started joking about it because he had been with me the other two times it happened too.
"He told me I oughta look the guy up. That if I looked that much like him, I could probably give him a heart attack if I told him I was his long lost son. He thought it would be hilarious watching him squirm and said if I played my cards right, I could probably scare him into buying me a car or something to keep me off his back.
"I didn't really think giving some guy a heart attack sounded like fun, but it got me thinking again about something else I had been trying hard not to think about for a couple of years by that time. I don't look like either of my parents," I told her, pulling my wallet out to show her the family portrait. I often wondered why I was different than the rest of my family. Up to then, I forced myself to chalk it up to weird genetics or something, but at times I seriously wondered if my parents weren't holding the truth back from me. ...like maybe I was a foster kid, and my real parents didn't want to have anything to do with me.
"I guess that and the other stuff that was happening at school was more than I could handle, so I decided I had to find out about them. ...about me. At the supper table that evening I went fishing to see if what I had started to wonder about me might be true."
"I tried to make it seem like it wasn't' a big deal when I told them that people were asking if I was some guy named Gilbert O'Shea's son? But when I saw the color drain from my mom's face, and the way my dad was looking at her, I knew I probably didn't want to hear their answer. Like I said, I had often wondered why I didn't look like either one of them -- I'm short and round faced. Both of them are tall and thin. ...and I'm the only one in either extended family with red hair, too. I think my brain sort of short-circuited that night.
"That's when she told me there was something that she and Ed had been discussing whether or not they should tell me some day. She said she had made some bad choices she was young, and asked if we could talk after dinner? I sort of panicked when she nodded toward my brothers, Sammy and Aaron, like she didn't want them to hear.
"I remember I didn't feel much like eating after that, and asked to be excused." A chuckle escaped my mouth as I told Michelle how normally, getting away from the table before my plate was cleared of all edible food had to include ralphing or some similar gesture. "But that day, all mom said was `I understand Phillip,' so I knew it was serious.
"Fifteen minutes later, mom knocked on the door of my bedroom. When I didn't answer her, she pushed the door open and walked into my room. She asked if we could talk, but I was so upset I just asked her straight out if she and dad were my real parents.
"I had already decided the answer to my question, and my head was filled with all kinds of confusing thoughts about who I was, and more importantly, who's I was and why they thought I was such a bad person that they didn't want me.
"She couldn't even answer me so I started shouting at her to just tell me. That's when I found out that she was my mom, but that Ed wasn't my dad. When she saw how upset I was she tried to calm me down by telling me that Ed chose to be my father after I had been born. ...That they had only met each other when she was still in the hospital.
"That's about the last thing I remember hearing her say. I guess all of the hurt and bitter feelings I had bottled up for two years came spewing out at that instant. I have no idea now why I was so angry, but I just couldn't control myself. I began cursing and yelling at her."
My body suddenly convulsed as a sob forced its way into my throat. Shelly pulled me into an embrace, her moist cheek against mine.
"Shelly, I still remember exactly what I screamed at her. I told her she was nothing but scumbag liar for not telling me the truth about Ed."
Another sob choked off my next sentence as the pain of reliving that moment seemed so real.
Shelly moved her hand to my shoulder to comfort me. I looked over at her. There were tears running down her cheeks. I flashed a wry, pain filled smile.
"Shelly, I heard words come out of my mouth that day I didn't even know I could say. She was in shock after I called her a slut ...just sank to her knees beside my bed without denying it. I practically jumped over her to run from the room and out the back door.
"I had no idea where to go, since my best friend, Dakota, lived five miles from my house. I ended up walking into town and just wandering the streets for a while."
Another sob choked my words as I got to the part that I was so afraid of telling her.
"That night while I was walking, I met this guy I knew from school. His name was Casey Alvarez. I kind of knew from what guys said about him that he might be gay. He was always friendly to me, but we had never really hung around with each other.
"We walked around for a while without saying much before he finally asked me if I ever got drunk. When I told him I had never even tasted beer, his eyes lit up. He said it would make me forget about everything, and that he knew where he could get some for free.
"I followed him as he led me through an alley to a garage several blocks away from where we were. When we got to the entrance door, he knelt down, lifted a paver, and pulled a key from its hiding place."
"We went inside and found a coffee can to use as a cup. I think he wanted to see me get hammered, because he kept telling me to take another gulp. We finished off one full can between us, and I started to get nervous about getting caught. I knew what we were doing was wrong, and told him we should stop, but he filled the can again. This time, he took a few big gulps and then dared me to chug the rest of it. I was starting to feel dizzy and thought he might be right about how getting drunk would help me forget my troubles, so I chugged the entire can. He filled it again and before I knew it, I could hardly stand up. He was wrong about me forgetting my troubles though, and on top of that, I felt sick as a dog.
"After passing the can back and forth between us for a couple of hours, he laughed at me and said he should be getting home. He dragged me through the door and into the cold night air. I had no idea where I was, but I think I told him I would be okay if he pointed me toward my house.
"He must have known where I lived, because he guided me to Center street, turned me in the right direction, gave me a push and told me, `later, Phil.' I can still hear him blowing chunks into a shrub before I got ten steps away. He must have been sick as I was.
"I managed to stay on the sidewalk, even though I stumbled a few times, but as long as I didn't turn my head too quickly, I was able to keep making progress toward my house.
"Eventually, I found my way back home and let myself into the house well after midnight.
"I was so glad the door was unlocked so I didn't have to ring the doorbell and have mom or dad see me like that.
"My untouched birthday cake was sitting in the middle of the table in the kitchen. I looked at the words `Happy 15th B-day Phil' written on top of the cake in blue frosting, and then all my anger boiled over again. I leaned over the table and with both hands, turned the cake into a pile of crumbs and frosting. Then my stomach erupted right on top of the mess I had just made.
"Stumbling back the hallway, shaking the cake fragments off my hands as I went, I managed to get my bedroom door locked just in time. Mom whisper-shouted at me to open my bedroom door, but I just cursed at her and crawled into bed, listening to her sobbing in the kitchen as she was cleaning up the mess I made.
"You know what I told her, Shelly?"
Shelly draped her hands around my neck and pulled me toward her.
Tears poured down my face as I recalled screaming "Get out of my life you Eff'n bitch."
It took a minute or so to compose myself again, but I had to go on. I had to get to the important parts -- the part she had joked about -- the part, more than anything, we both needed to hear.