It wasn’t until the families were at the burial that Brenda broke down, sitting there in the tent next to Charlie. After Pastor Harold blessed the body, as they prepared to lay Brandon at peace, Brenda leaned over and cried on Charlie’s shoulder, softly, in the language of grief. She pulled his arm and mouthed the word bastard. Charlie said nothing in return. She stood to scream at him, spitting, tried to curse him to the ground. Monte held her from behind, pulled her back. She kept screaming.
Sitting up in the backseat to see the commotion, my vision blurry from tears, I heard Brenda’s voice. I peeked over the door on my knees, my hands pressed to the glass. She stared at Charlie, standing above him, her face red and wet, her mouth open. She gasped for air with screams. Then her men surrounded her. Her father helped Monte pull her away.
Charlie hurried to the car. Mom’s high heels slipped on the ice but Charlie caught her before she fell. He held the door and helped her into the passenger’s side.
“It’s okay,” my mom told Charlie. “No one thinks it’s your fault.”
“The woman’s crazy. She has every right to be crazy and she is.”
“It isn’t your fault,” my mom insisted. “You’re a great dad.”
Charlie said he knew that. He put the car in drive then rode the brakes as he wove down the narrow brick roads of the cemetery hill, slowly, slowly, not an ounce of panic.
I asked my mom if we were going back to the church for the reception.
“Of course,” she said. “People will get excited. But we have every right to be there.”
Brandon had been rushed to the emergency room because of asthma attacks before. There were trips for bronchitis and heat-seeking infections that had no reasonable cause.
Todd and I once joined our father to deliver a prescription to Bancroft that Brandon needed. It was late and the small-town pharmacies were closed, so we drove in from Lincoln, stopping in Omaha at the all-night Walgreen’s before heading north on a two-lane highway. Charlie had made the trip a few times before that I’m able to recall.
It seemed like someone was playing a practical joke on us when we left that night. Charlie was so reserved. He drove below the speed limit. He stood with his hands in his pockets at the pharmacy counter as he hummed along with a song playing in his head. He paid with a credit card, which was an involved process in those days.
Brenda had a white two-story house with green trim across from the Methodist church in Bancroft. I recognized Monte’s car slumped in the carport, his red Monte Carlo. Even then it was an unfunny joke that he drove that car. Branches from oak trees littered the damp, early spring grass. We climbed those trees with our mom when we came to visit Brandon because Mom didn’t like being in Brenda’s house. Mom was short and had strong legs that were perfect for climbing. She would swing herself onto a low branch and dart up to the middle of the tree, daring us to follow. She’d leverage and tilt herself up the tree until the limbs began to bend under her, cradled in a bough we were too chicken to reach.
We looked back at the street from the porch that night and watched a car turn the corner. Its headlights were off. Two men were in the car, but I couldn’t see them distinctly. It was an older vehicle, something big, a Caprice. The men looked like gangsters to me, staring right at us as they were, but they were probably just farmers. Some guys drinking beers in their car that saw us drive by. People were protective of their own here. They noticed outsiders in expensive cars, like whatever year M5 Charlie drove then. He always drove a black BMW.
Charlie put his palm on Todd’s shoulder, he grabbed my hand and pulled to the door. We went in without knocking.
Monte slipped around the corner to greet us when he heard the door and accepted the white paper bag with the prescription in it. He stood with Charlie and talked baseball, moaning over roster moves the Cubs had made, before taking the medication to Brandon. Monte was really fond of Charlie, even as a boy I recognized this. He looked up to my father and tried to appear interesting when he was around him, asking Charlie’s opinion on sports and politics. Monte was a farmhand and did odd jobs around town in winter. He didn’t have a trade, but he was usually good at helping.
In the other room I saw Brandon sit up on the couch, gagging on his breath with a pillow hugged between his knees. Brenda rubbed his back and attempted a smile for us.
“How are you boys?” she asked, her voice smoky. Curly red hair fell over her face.
Monte told us that there were video games in Brandon’s room. Charlie nodded that it was okay, so we ran upstairs, treading the risers with both hands and feet like our greyhound climbed the stairs at home. The carpet was sticky and smelled like cigarettes.
In Brandon’s room, a small television sat on the floor next to leather-bound volumes of adventure fiction. We left the lights off and turned the volume down. Grabbed Nintendo controllers and sat on Brandon’s bed. We played Tecmo Bowl for a while, without passion, in the mechanical way kids pass time when their parents are busy. It was only the third quarter when Charlie yelled up the stairs that we needed to leave, and it didn’t bother us that the game wasn’t finished.
Brenda and Brandon were still on the parlor couch when we came down. He looked better then, sucking vapor from an inhaler. I thought his inhaler was bug repellent the first time I saw it, the blue plastic cartridge and white spray. We were at the park in Bancroft, whipping each other off the merry-go-round. Sitting in the gravel, I misted some on my legs. “Don’t do that,” Brandon said, pulling it away from me. “It’s expensive.”
There was a great deal of talk about medications at the reception. Brenda had to be knocked out because she’d tumbled into a state of hysteria. There was speculation about what prescriptions would be forthcoming.
I didn’t understand why a mother would have to be put under after her child died.
“It’s common,” my mom explained. We were on a walk in the park near the church. “There’s a special bond between a mother and her child. Emotionally. Spiritually. It comes from being in the womb. A physical connection. A child should never die before their parent. It’s too much to bear.”
“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 ye
ars 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.
My wife could be unbearable when she was pleased with herself—I think she knew this—so it was unfortunate she was such an accomplished woman. She was an artist—wiry strong, lean, all bones and muscle—and very busy. The fees she collected for lectures and appearances provided for our lifestyle, but that also meant she was expected at parties and openings most of the year, in far-flung conference rooms and auditoriums. Her profession demanded she travel. I travelled with her. She needed me to keep her grounded, to talk back. That’s why I had to go with her on airplanes; that, and because she feared we’d die apart. She couldn’t stomach the idea of dying without me.
Jacq was supposed to visit a gallery in Savannah the next day where a collector had bought one of her collages. This was a seminal piece for her, one she hadn’t seen for years, and she was eager to reconnect with it. Jacq’s meme consisted of landscape art she made with tufts of prairie grass and matted buffalo hair. She had a peculiar relationship with her patrons, I thought, because of her medium. Most people knew her from her early work, when she reconstructed the sediment record of canyons with menstrual blood and acrylics. The pieces were really quite accurate, in a way. She often overstated line and could have made bolder use of color and space, but it didn’t really matter what I thought. I did product descriptions for a conglomerate of online specialty stores. It was all niche stuff—we rode the coattails of SkyMall—nothing I’d buy myself. The job was done mostly through e-mail and that meant I could travel freely. I didn’t need to work, but I liked having something to do. There’s joy in being recognized as good at something, no matter how insignificant that thing is.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stand being around people who adored Jacq’s work. I didn’t exist to her admirers. Actually, it was worse than that. They saw me, they knew I was Jacq’s husband, and just wished I wasn’t there. At galleries, museums, private showings, art schools, universities—it was all the same. Whether they were trendy or rustic, retro or futuristic, queer or confused, they all made vile faces at me, using the tannins of a bitter wine to twist their mouths. They’re sinister people.
I assumed Jacq messed around. She’s an artist, after all, and it was easy to believe in the trappings of that identity. Beautiful, stylish people could be persuasive, young men whose pants bulged, experienced women who did interesting things with their smiles and stroked Jacq’s jaw with their long fingers. She might have had flings, spontaneous encoun
ters, maybe in a gallery restroom while I was occupied at a crowded opening night soirée. It was possible such things happened. Most people would understand how that worked. Jacq had a history, a notorious past her friends liked to reminisce about, a young woman in the city. You can do the math.
When we met, Jacq said she liked me because I was stable. “A nice, trustworthy man,” she called me. It sounded like an insult coming from her.
Sitting out on the hotel terrace in Atlanta that first night, ruminating over a neat bourbon, I thought that an affair of my own was a distinct possibility. If Jacq had done it, so could I. I watched the girl with the toy radio stare off into the distance, listening to talk; I worried about what Jacq might do with the assistant dean, or a visiting professor from Lyons, if there was one. There’s something noble, isn’t there, about being the second one in a marriage to stray. If you are the aggrieved and you stand up for yourself, people should applaud.
Jacq went to Savannah the next day in a hired car. Riding in cars she managed fine without me. She liked talking to the driver, finding out about his family and where he came from. It’s different with pilots, who you’re not allowed to see work. With a driver, you know if they’re paying attention, or if they’ve had a few drinks, or if they’re sleepy. If they’re sleepy, you can chat to keep them awake. Drivers like to chat. They never seem to be from the place where they are, so you can ask how they ended up in Georgia, driving Lincoln Town Cars. That’s what Jacq would do. She grew up in Ohio, the third daughter of auto workers, and ended up spending most of her life in New York City, painting with her menstruations. She understood better than most how funny life could be.
I saw the girl on the hotel terrace again that evening. She was at the same table as before. When I asked about her, the waiter told me she’d been there all day. “All week, sir, to be exact. Hasn’t moved as far as I seen. She just sit with that radio.”
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