Frank and me got married old, she says, for people our generation at least. Both past thirty. Even older by the time I fell pregnant with Chad. So he was our only one. She looks up toward the ceiling. Perhaps I should just say it more simple, she says.
She takes a deep breath. Frank never loved him. And I don’t know why. Maybe he never should’ve had children, or maybe it was something about Chad. But I adored him. I did, I still do.
Chad was smart as anything at school, I was so proud. But Frank wasn’t proud. I think it only made him jealous. Frank is a smart man, it’s true, he likes to watch the news and talk back, tell them what he thinks. He has all this knowledge, who knows where from, I certainly don’t. But once Chad was old enough he liked to talk back as well. But he talked back to his father talking back to the news. Anything Frank said was challenged. So that’s part of it maybe. And they didn’t just disagree on the news, they disagreed on everything. Even about facts, even about things as silly as the longest river in the world. So whenever they argued, Chad would bring back a book from school and point to the bit that, you know, said he was right all along. And Frank always said the book was wrong. Every time, the book’s wrong, the book’s wrong. The Webster’s Dictionary, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Frank never thought Chad was tough enough, you know, that he wasn’t growing up to be a real man. Money’s always been tight around here, so Chad had to help out on the farm and he hated it. He’d rather be doing his homework instead, which to Frank was perverse, a kid who likes homework. So he gave Chad harder and harder jobs to toughen him up. But all Chad ever got better at was schoolwork. He didn’t even play sports except when he had to at school. Not that Frank was ever such a star but he did like to watch and offer his thoughts.
But this is just stuff, you know, and I’m not saying it makes the rest of it make any sense. But there has to be something to everything, doesn’t there?
Anyhow, you get the idea. They didn’t seem to like each other much and then Chad went to college. Well, with such a good scholarship it didn’t matter what his father thought. He didn’t need us for the money all of a sudden. And I don’t think Frank ever said well done. Probably not. But anyway, that was the two of them parted for a while and perhaps for the best.
When Frank heard Chad was to spend a year in England all he did was snort and say it figured. I didn’t even ask what that meant and if I guessed I’d rather not say.
One day Frank was clearing weeds and he thought he’d probably got rubbed by some poison ivy around the side of his forearm. Well, Frank never really suffered much from poison ivy and it didn’t really itch him much. I just rubbed on some calamine and thought nothing more about it. But then this blister wouldn’t go away. Even two weeks later it was still there. So I made him go see the doctor.
Well, long story short, it was skin cancer. Skin cancer on the same arm he always hung out the truck window, I won’t let him do that any more. I was terrified, you hear such frightening things. I mean, cancer. I think even Frank was scared, not that he would ever say anything. But he went and borrowed all these books from the library, that’s how I could tell. Every day another few. He must have been through hundreds. But Frank keeps it all in, you know. He’s just a guy like that, typical man. He wouldn’t even let me come with him to see the doctor.
But they’d caught it and so they arranged to remove it and that’s when Frank agreed we had to tell Chad. Because how was I supposed to cope with everything? A husband with cancer. This place hardly makes enough for the two of us, we couldn’t hire any more help. And Chad wanted to be here anyway, that’s what I think. He may never have loved his father, and maybe he had no reason to, but we taught Chad right from wrong.
So he came back and took over the running of this place. We thought maybe a year would be long enough, we told him, just for a year. And he may not have liked the work but he knew what to do. The two of them even talked more than before. And while Frank didn’t want to tell me anything, Chad would ask him questions, so at least I learned a little that way. I didn’t even know there were different types of skin cancer until I heard them talking, right here at this table over dinner, Chad’s first night back. It’s a melanoma, Frank says. Now we have to wait and see. Chad tells him not to worry and not to think about doing anything. Frank says he feels fine but Chad insists. Tells his father he’s long earned a rest and he should save his strength. And I was so proud of him, you could see it just the way he held himself, my little boy all grown up. It was like when our daddies returned from the war, came back men.
So we waited, and Frank had to go back over and over for treatment, and then one day he comes home and says it’s not good news, the cancer’s back. Who knows what he was planning to do next, how far he would have taken it. But I thought that was it, the end. Frank went up to his room as if he was climbing up there to die and I fell face down on this table and cried with my son. And that’s when it came out. I suppose Chad must have read as many books as his father. Because when I said, how can a man die of such a little thing? And I said that I should have done something earlier but it looked like just a little red blister . . . Well, that’s when he started asking me questions. I was just so confused. Was it a blister or a mole, Mom? What colour was it? Was it round or irregular? So I described it, like a little red button, and that’s when suddenly Chad runs up the stairs and starts yelling all these obscenities at his father.
I have to go slow here to get the words right. Chad was shouting, Is it basal cell or squamous, basal or squamous? over and over. Yes, that was it. Well, I had to look up all the words later on. And Frank is yelling how he has no right and what does he know about anything anyway. And then Chad is yelling, I bet it’s not even squamous, it’s not, is it, you . . . and I won’t say the word he called his father, and whatever happened that word wasn’t right. It’s not even squamous, you . . . it’s definitely not a . . . melanoma and I bet it’s not even squamous.
Chad runs to his room and starts to pack right away. Frank meanwhile won’t say a single word to me. I’m in such a state here about my husband dying and now my son is shouting at him and leaving. So I run to my son’s room and he’s so angry he can barely speak. But eventually he grabs me by the shoulders. There was such a look in his eyes like I won’t forget. And he says to me, Next time he goes to the doctor, you go in with him, Mom. Dad had a basal cell carcinoma, not a melanoma, he’s a liar. You go and you ask the doctor the difference, Mom, almost no one has ever died from a basal cell carcinoma, it’s a whole different thing. Even if it’s squamous cell then it’s very low risk. You find out the facts, Mom, and then you can decide if you ever want to see him again. That’s your choice. But I will never ever come back to this place, you understand me? I will never come back unless that man is dead or gone.
Frank was at the door to the room. He starts saying things. Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be back, Mommy’s boy. That’s what he kept calling him, Mommy’s boy this, Mommy’s boy that. And you won’t stay away from your mommy for long. Just like when you were a boy. You’ll be back. And he had this look of . . . just this absolute horrible certainty. Sneering like he pitied his own son. And then he reaches out with his hand and says, A hundred dollars says you’ll be back. Chad doesn’t flinch so Frank keeps taunting him. You’ll be back, I’ll stake my life you’ll be back. And then Frank said, I always knew you were a little . . . and this time he didn’t say Mommy’s boy. And I won’t even use the word he said.