In for a penny, in for a whole life. Of course, that life was as fake as everything in this townhouse.
“I should have told you a long time ago. You may never forgive me. And that’s all right; I’ve got it coming.”
“Son, I could never—”
“Don’t say what you could never do, until you hear me out.” He’d started now. On with it. “The morning it happened, Mama had told me twice to take a shower and get dressed. It was going on eleven o’clock. I was playing video games and I kept telling her just a minute. She was pretty aggravated with me to begin with and, I admit, I was tired of her nagging me. I didn’t see what difference it made when I took a shower. So anyway, Papa called to say his car was broken down on the interstate. He’d been down to Birmingham for something. Some early breakfast meeting, I think. He was about thirty miles out of town. Of course, you know that part I guess. Anyway, he wanted me to come get him.
“She came in there where I was and said, ‘Brantley, your grandfather has had car trouble and needs you to come get him. Now, I’ve already told you. Put that remote down and get in that shower. Right now. It’s hot and he’s sitting in his car on the side of the road. You need to get there before the wrecker does.’ Well.” He closed his eyes. “It made me mad. Stupid. I was about to top my high score. I threw the controller down and said, ‘Why do I have to do everything?’ Funny. I never really did much of anything. I’ll never forget the look on her face. She put her hand up and said, ‘Pardon me, my little prince. I’ll do it myself!’ And she left. And you know what? I was glad. I still didn’t get dressed. I sat there and played that stupid video game until—well, you know that part. That’s what I was doing when you came to tell me. You had to send me to the shower before people starting coming.”
There it was done. Charles’s eyes had never left his and his expression remained neutral the whole time.
“And?” Charles said.
And what? Wasn’t that enough? “Don’t you get it? She left mad. First, if I had gone, it wouldn’t have happened. A minute sooner or later, it wouldn’t have happened. Second, she was so mad at me. If I had not been hateful, if she had not been mad, she would not have had the wreck.”
Charles put his head in his hands. “Oh, Brantley. Oh, Son.”
“Even if we can’t come back from this, even if you never forgive me, it’s a relief that you know. I’m tired of living a lie.”
Charles looked up and met his eyes. “Son, I knew about this. I always knew.”
That could not be true. His father could not know this and not blame him. “But how?” he asked because he could not get the question out about the lack of blame.
“Your mother called me on the way to pick up Alden. She was pretty steamed at you and she ranted for a minute or two. Then we started laughing. We kept saying back and forth to each other, ‘Why do I have to do everything?’ It was pretty laughable, considering the extraordinary effort we put into making your life easy. But we decided no video games for the rest of the summer and no taking the Play Station with you to Vandy. And then she said, ‘Oh, Charles, what are we going to do for entertainment when he’s gone?’ I assure you, Brantley, she was not mad at you. You were normally so obliging. You were just lazy that morning and had had a gut load of being told what to do. And you sassed her. That’s what teenagers do, though you not as often as most.”
Brantley was speechless. Or very nearly. There was something else he had to know.
“Big Mama?” It was all he could get out.
“Of course she knew. Your mother called her after she called me. She said we were being too hard on you. ‘He’s a good boy and he works hard!’ That’s what she said every time you needed punishing. Brantley, this is nothing. Please, for the love of God, Son, let this go. I should have talked to you about it at the time, I guess, but I never knew you were feeling guilty. And I was half crazy myself.”
It couldn’t be this simple—free absolution that he didn’t deserve. “Still, if I had gone—”
Charles shook his head. “Brantley, it was an accident. An accident. Do you think I haven’t wished a million times that I had told Eva to stop and get me, that I’d ride with her to pick up Alden? Or to let me go instead? The fact is, a semi blew a tire on the interstate and landed in your mother’s lane. It seems outrageous to say, considering what it did to our lives, but what happened isn’t complicated. And we’ve got some life left. We need to live it.”
He would not have welcomed relief even if it had come. “Still. The last thing I ever said to her was mean. Nothing will change that. And you know she told Papa, so the last thing he knew was that I wouldn’t come get him like he asked.”
Charles nodded. “We don’t know that she told your papa, but you’re right—she probably did. We’ll never know what they said, but I know this. There has never been a man who loved a grandchild more than Alden Brantley loved you. Besides that, he liked you. He liked your company. And I promise you this like I’ve never promised anything before: a silly teenage tantrum is nothing compared to a love like that.”
Charles got up and retrieved a package from the shopping bag he’d brought in. He’d certainly picked an odd time to give out Christmas presents.
“I haven’t seen this but I’ve heard about it. Lucy sent it to you. I want you to open it and have a look.”
Perplexed, Brantley unwrapped the package. Inside was a leather photo album with his initials embossed on the corner. This wasn’t an album with plastic sheets inside to slip pictures in. She had gone to some trouble to get this. The pages were high quality cotton rag and on the first page, she had written in calligraphy, “Brantley Charles Kincaid . . . The Beginning.”
The first picture was of his mother sitting in a hospital bed with him in her arms, and his father and grandparents looking on. Underneath she had written simply the date—but around the photograph, she had drawn the most wonderful fanciful pictures of the sandman, Humpty Dumpty, puppies, Peter Pan, and smiling moons. There was no connection between the little pictures. It was as if she sat and thought about a baby boy and drew what came to mind. And it was perfect.
As was the rest of the book. It told the story of his baby years, childhood, and teen years with photographs and her wonderful drawings. Birthdays, first day of school, Halloween, Little League, with Santa Claus, first communion, proms, in football uniforms and letter jackets. She had not used a lot of photographs—just her little drawings and one perfect picture per event showing one perfect love between a boy and his family.
It must have taken her hours and hours.
The last picture was of his mother and him right before his high school graduation. It was a candid shot that he had never seen, taken, it seemed, between the many pictures he’d posed for. Mama was coming for him with a hairbrush in her hand and he had his hands up, warding her off. He remembered now how she had not been satisfied with how his hair looked under his cap, and kept fussing with it. In the picture, they were laughing and she was looking at him like he was the only thing in the world that truly mattered.
He wasn’t sure how long it had taken him to go through the book—it seemed a lifetime.
“Now, Brantley,” Charles said, “look at that book and try to tell me that those thirty seconds seventeen years ago defined your relationship with you mother and your grandfather. With any of us.”
And he turned back to the first page. This time he and his dad looked at the book together. They laughed and told stories. There were even a few tears, something neither man would ever admit.