“I get that,” I said. “But why the drugs? Why can’t she be awake?”
“When I was a kid, the mother wouldn’t even be at the funeral. She’d still be at home recovering. It’s a great physical burden. The soul takes extra energy to keep going.”
She smiled and pet the back of my head, frustrated by my incomprehension. It should have been intuitive to feel what she felt. To know what it’s like from both ends.
“It’s hard to explain,” she admitted.
We walked with our coats open. It had stopped snowing, but the crooked sycamores in the park were frosted white. It felt good to walk like this with my mom. It reminded me of why I loved her. She was willing to tell me things that others weren’t, to let me in on the secret tricks of becoming a person. She would reveal a lot about my father, when I was older, that I couldn’t have known otherwise. All my knowledge, in one way or another, started with my mom.
“Is it a cheat?” I asked, tracing tree limbs with my eyes. “Just a little cheat, right? Because no one wants to see a kid die. It’s too sad to see it through the mom’s eyes. With that bond.”
“Sure,” my mom conceded. She sucked her lips. “You could put it that way.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and braced my shoulders with her hands. She crouched down to my level.
“You should appreciate the bond most of all. Not the cheat.”
Charlie never recovered. He never integrated back into our family because he couldn’t feel comfortable. I could see this, even though it took me years to understand why. Charlie couldn’t even sit or breathe without thinking of his lost son. I’ve come to understand this too. There isn’t a graduation or wedding that goes by that I don’t think of Brandon and his lost inheritance — these acts of comfortable living that somehow make my family complicit in his death.
My father spent time in the hospital a couple years after Brandon died. He hadn’t been to the office in days. His body ached all over. He asked Mom to drive him to the hospital one night after dinner. We visited him every evening he was there and he was glad to see us. Mom reminded us to tell him he was a great dad as we walked in from the parking lot. He was excited that there was free pop on his floor, which was strange because we had cases of it at home. His face was like a child’s, sneaking us treats from the galley. He said he missed us so much.
When he came home things were marginally better. He went to the office every day and was home for dinner, but he never again showed that childlike, desperate love for his family that he showed in the hospital. He was worn out and slept on the couch with the TV on when he wasn’t at the office. He didn’t like to talk, not to anyone. Mom had us make cards for him on his birthday, even though we were too old for that, trying whatever she could think of to make things better. We painted Father of the Year on the side of coffee mugs.
(Betsy Updike)
Betsy Updike ran across the parking lot when Aaron took her picture, hands up to cover her face. She was heavy and short and stomped when she ran. She wore horn-rimmed glasses. Aaron chased after to tell her he meant no harm. This was outside the Von Maur. It was a cold, breezy day.
“I love your hair,” he said. “That’s why I was shooting a photo of you.”
Betsy wore a cardigan and had dark wavy hair that washed over her shoulders. She showed her teeth when she smiled.
When they got back to her house Aaron brushed her hair and they watched some movies she’d recorded on video tapes. He liked sitting behind her on the couch, his legs wrapped around hers, smelling the fruit of her shampoo. Betsy was a sweet girl. She was so eager to be loved that she nearly knocked Aaron over when they hugged.
Impertinent, Triumphant
She looked beautiful, of course. She had a long neck and a small face, lovely gray eyes. That’s why I kept looking. Her hair was wavy from some chemical treatment, and a dull, dull orange meant to be blond. She wore a terrycloth shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. She was really quite common. Modest chest, soft legs, a little bump where her stomach rose. I’d never seen a grown-up look so bored before, the way she slumped in her chair. I thought she was stunning.
There was a toy radio she listened to at her table, a tier below me on the hotel terrace, three patio umbrellas over. I noticed because the radio wasn’t an iPod, but a yellow plastic toy with a drawstring that fit over her hand, with black rubber grips and built-in speakers so everyone had to listen to what she played, a political call-in show.
I couldn’t turn away. Her face was round. The baby fat on her cheeks made her look younger than she was. She was nearly thirty, I’d learn. Her skin was firm and limpid as she sipped an Arnie Palmer with lips imperceptibly open.
We fought on the departing flight, my wife and I, on our way to Atlanta. She’d been hired to lecture about her work to the visual arts students of Emory. We always fought on airplanes, which made the fact that Jacq insisted I fly with her all the more maddening. Air travel set us off. We’re not alone in this, of course.
We lived in Alliance, Nebraska, and had been packed into a commuter turboprop at the airfield, a plane so small I couldn’t even sit up straight in my seat. I’m bigger and taller than a lot of people, but not so much that I don’t usually fit in an airline seat. I had to sit with my neck crooked. It could be that this made me ready for confrontation. But it was Jacq who brought along that fashion rag and let it sit open on her lap. There was a spread about a designer she knew from New York, some Parisian who spent all his time with other people’s spouses in Italy now. He insisted you call him Ampiere — his mother’s maiden name — but his real name was Walt Watson. His father was Texan. Ampiere was a nuisance in our lives. I thought I’d buried the magazine in the recycling before Jacq saw it.
I wasn’t going to say anything about the magazine that enraptured Jacq. I was going to hold my tongue and let her get this toxic energy out. So what if Ampiere was in a magazine. I was going to be a good husband, restrained, forgiving. I’d affect a touch of whimsy in the way I let my wife go on about an old flame. It only lasted until we were in the air. I couldn’t stomach disrespect then.
“Just look at Ampiere.” Jacq had to shout over the noise of the turboprop. “He always looks good on film, doesn’t he?”
“Have you heard from him lately?” I asked. “Do you think he remembers you?”
“Him coming out of a pool isn’t so bad either.”
I don’t recall much of what I said to her after that, but I remember every word of what she said to me. “Your job is the problem. A man shouldn’t be home all the time. No one should be.”
“After everything, and you still bring that up?”
“Oh, Sam. You’re a decent man. Don’t ruin yourself by trying to be clever.”
It was painfully annoying, but such is any relationship. I didn’t think it was a big deal. There was shouting, Jacq’s purse was spilled. A flight attendant had to intervene, some exasperated bitch who stood over us and glared. Drink service was cancelled.
I spent the first evening on the hotel terrace waiting for Jacq to return from Emory. My clothes were drenched with sweat — it was summer in Atlanta, in 2009—and I was thirsty for bourbon and fruit. Jacq was out with the department chair, some art students tagging along, maybe an assistant dean. It wouldn’t be late when she returned to the hotel, shortly after midnight. She’d be pumped up, though, on booze and admiration. She felt her success most tangibly when around sycophants. I felt it too.