“Well, then,” the old man says, “if you’re sure. Thanks for bringing the kid back.” He salutes and disappears into the house. I turn the key in the ignition, put my foot on the kick-starter. The kid nods, as if this makes sense, and I stomp down once, but it is not hard enough, and the motor doesn’t catch.
“Crap,” I say. Then, “I’m sorry.”
He cocks his head, just like that bird, narrows his eyes, and pulls his eyebrows together. “Do I know you?”
I say, “I don’t think so. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Just — I don’t know.”
“I only got back to town a few months ago,” I say.
“From where?”
“California.”
“Why’d you come back here?”
“Family stuff.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I get that.” He offers the hand that doesn’t have a bird attached, and I reach for it, squeeze, and let go. “Anyway,” he says, “thanks for the ride.”
I say, “No problem,” and give the bike another stomp. This time it starts. Slim backs away, waves, and turns to head for the house. I look past him at the still-open door, but since the sun is directly in my eyes now, I can’t see anything behind it — can’t see if anyone else is in there, watching me watch my son walk, for the first time.
15. All That Water. All Those Bridges
My father dies. Peacefully, as they say, in his sleep. They also say dying like he did feels like drowning. Right now I wonder if there is anything that doesn’t.
We were never, that I can recall, very close to many of the neighbors or the folks in town, though we did know some well enough to call them friends. My mom and dad went to PTA meetings, gatherings at the grange hall, to dances sometimes. But we lived a long way out, and it never seemed to matter that we just had each other to hang around with. When it comes time to plan a memorial, or a wake, or whatever, then we are sort of at a loss. And by “we,” I guess I mean “I,” since my mother wants no part of it.
The second night, after he has been gone for one full day, she comes outside at midnight to meet me on the grass. She leans back on her hands, legs stretched straight out in front of her, face to the sky, hair loose and brushing the ground behind her.
“What if,” she says, “you only ever got to see this once.”
“What?” I say, but it is only a reflex. I am not blind.
“All these stars,” she says, pretending my question really does require an answer, like I’m sure she did at least a million times when I was a kid. “The doves and the piglets.” It has never occurred to me that maybe she was the one who taught a lot of these things to Mick in the first place. Or to me, and I just gave all the credit to Mick. Is that possible, as clearly as I think I remember it all?
“I don’t know,” I say. “I bet it would kind of blow your mind.”
“You’d never stop talking about it,” she says. “Not ever.”
I close my eyes for a minute and reopen them to watch the sky explode. I do this over and over. Every time it is different. Every time it is the most miraculous thing.
I feel her lie down beside me, and she slides her hand toward mine so just the outer edges of our little fingers are touching. “Thank you for coming home,” she says.
I can’t believe she’s thanking me. Now. I think, All that water. All those bridges. “Mom—” I say, quietly, instead of hollering.
She says, “I know, Riley. We were never meant to be perfect. Especially you and me. Maybe we didn’t do it right, but we did it.”
Whatever it is. I am happy for her. For getting to that place. And I can do this thing: meet her halfway. “Thank goodness we weren’t meant to be perfect.”
She laughs. It is like seeing the night sky for the first, and only, time.
• • •
I pull it together long enough to put a notice in the paper saying if anyone wants to drop by the house on Saturday, that would be really nice. We’ve already had him cremated, so there is no casket or cemetery to deal with. Mom says he would have hated that part anyway; would have preferred instead to be buried in the backyard, or chucked into the river. She was all for either of those options, but for some reason I decided it would be better to leave at least a couple of laws unbroken.
People come, a lot of people. They tell me about times my father helped out, with a calf, a tractor in the ditch, a truck off the road in a blizzard. A few even mention his first wife, delicately, in the context of how lucky he was to have found my mother after the accident. And how fine a young man Mick had been turning out to be. They were sorry, they said after all these years, for our loss. Losses.
Gail comes. She is with her husband, and she keeps staring at me. She looks old and sad. I tell her I’m sorry I didn’t write back after the last letter. It was more than I could deal with. I hope she understands. I can see she doesn’t, but I can’t do anything about that now.
No one stays very long, but they leave enough food to last the two of us at least a month. I fit it all into the fridge and the freezer somehow, and we head outside to drink a beer. Before we go, I find a pack of cigarettes my father had stashed in a cupboard, not really hidden, just out of sight. I put them in my pocket, take them with me. I don’t think I want a cigarette; think instead I just want the temptation so I can resist it, so I can congratulate myself for some damn thing.
I was supposed to come back sooner. I have known this, in some not-as-hard-as-I-made-it-to-get-to place, forever. Known that these people, my people, were not exactly encased in amber, waiting for me to come along with my little rock hammer.
I took too long. I barely had time to say hello. Among other things. I missed you, Dad. I’m sorry I missed you, Dad. But, hey, can you still help me get this boulder off my chest? I don’t know who else to ask.
“Do you think,” I say to my mother, “some people are too good for this world?”
“Your father and your brother,” she says, as if she is agreeing with me.
“Yes.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Those two were certainly good enough.”
“I lost everything,” I say. “Everything of Mick’s.”
She says, “No, you didn’t. Go look.”
She is biting her hair. I can feel her body vibrating. She reaches for my hand and squeezes. Then she’s gone, like a cat burglar, through an opening in the fence where a gate used to be. I am on my own to see what’s left, which is as it should be. Certainly she already knows. I could understand if she was sick and tired of knowing.
I drink her beer after I have finished mine, stare at the house for a while, go on a ghost hunt. It’s not hard to find them; they haven’t left the premises.
There are still a few boxes in Mick’s closet — stuff I didn’t take when I left, even though my name is still written on a lot of it. I didn’t take it because there was only so much room in the trunk of my car, and I didn’t know, really, where I was going, as the West Coast is a very long one. And maybe I knew enough to keep something in reserve. Maybe I at least knew that, but I had forgotten.
I find drawings of animals, birds, the river, the mountains, wildflowers, me. In a small, obviously handmade wooden box is a photo of a young man, maybe eighteen or nineteen, I have never seen before. It is quite old, cracked around the corners and overexposed, a little bit out of focus but still somehow recognizable, as is the shadow of the person who took it. There is a drawing of this boy’s face too, and next to it a self-portrait. They are not identical, but there is no mistaking the resemblance.
I make a ring of the drawings, lie on the floor in the middle of it. I reach out and put my hands on every piece of paper I can touch, waiting for one, any one, to touch back. The cool floor holds me there while I follow the cracks in the ceiling to the cobwebs in the corners. I flop my head to one side and look under the bed. Dust bunnies and his other guitar. The classical one. If I tried to tune it, I know it would just piss me off, but I am almost tempted to try. Almost.