by Joanna Sims
Somewhere along the way, he had fallen asleep on the porch. The sound of the dogs barking excitedly awakened him; he squinted at the early-morning sun and winced at the stiffness of his neck from sleeping upright all night.
The dogs were barking their greeting to Savannah. Bruce watched as his wayward wife parked the truck and got out. She reached down to pet the dogs, but her eyes were on him. Slowly, deliberately, Savannah crossed to the porch. At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped, her arms crossed tightly in front of her body.
“Hi.” She had dark circles under her puffy red eyes.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he told her.
“I’m sorry I left like I did.” She apologized in a quiet voice. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He appreciated the apology, but all he wanted was for her to stay this time—to work through the loss of their son together, something they hadn’t been able to do before.
“I’m sorry.” He stood up; he wanted so badly to take her in his arms, to hold her, to comfort her. But he was afraid of being pushed away. “I thought—we all thought—that you needed time to heal before...” His voice trailed off. Would it always be hard to say his son’s name out loud?
She leaned against the handrail on the stairs, arms still crossed. “I drove around all night, trying to remember...trying to remember.”
Savannah met his eyes, her own eyes damp with a fresh cycle of tears. “I couldn’t remember anything. Not one thing.”
Her next words broke his heart. “Will you...” She stopped, cleared her throat, and then continued. “Will you please tell me about our son?”
* * *
She waited on the couch, surrounded by her dogs, while Bruce got his laptop from the bedroom. All night she had tried to remember her son, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her brain had betrayed her, robbed her of the precious memories of her only child. Now, she needed to be strong enough to find out about her son’s life—and his death.
“Oh...” Savannah’s fingers went up to her lips when Bruce handed her pictures of her ultrasound. “Look at him.”
Bruce joined her, sitting next to her, but not touching her.
“You were so happy that day. We found out Sammy was a Samuel instead of a Samantha.”
Savannah ran her fingertips over the picture, touching her son’s cheek. “He’s sucking his thumb.”
Bruce cracked a fleeting smile. “In the womb and out of the womb. We couldn’t keep his thumb out of his mouth. Or his toes, for that matter.”
She knew there would be more tears—how could there not be? She held on to the ultrasound pictures with one hand and wiped the tears from her eyes with the other.
Her husband turned on the laptop; folder after folder was filled with a treasure trove of pictures featuring their son, Samuel Jackson Brand.
“How in the world did you talk me into the name?” Savannah mused aloud. Samuel L. Jackson was Bruce’s favorite actor; he’d watched every Samuel L. Jackson movie at least twice.
“It took some doing,” Bruce acknowledged. “But you loved it.”
Picture after picture, Savannah began to create a three dimensional image of her son in her mind. He was a happy boy, full of energy and curiosity. He had loved all animals and anything with four wheels. Sammy had been an affectionate boy, always hugging someone in the pictures. And that smile—those dimples. He had been...perfect.
Bruce told her about the day they found out she was pregnant—it was a happy accident, an unplanned pregnancy with a rare but possible failure with the birth control pill. They had always wanted a family, but she’d wanted to wait until after she got settled in her career and decided to pursue a doctoral degree. He told her about the day their son was born; she had gone into labor three weeks early on a frosty fall morning. Bruce laughed a little when he recounted how they could see their breath while they were sniping at each other as they loaded into the truck to go to the hospital. He showed her the first pictures of her holding premature Sammy, his tiny pink body curled up on her chest as she smiled, with tired eyes and mussed hair, at the camera.
“I got it,” Bruce told her. “Right then, what parents were always talking about. I had no idea how much I could love someone until I first met Sammy.”
“I look so happy. In every picture with him. I look so happy.”
“You took to motherhood. I think we were both shocked at how much you loved it.” Bruce glanced over at her. “You kept on talking about how you wanted ten more just like him. Ten more.”
She had so many questions, and he answered every one. Except for the biggest question of all—the one she was afraid to ask.
“Do you need a break?” her husband asked her when she stopped commenting on the pictures.
“No,” she said faintly. “No. I don’t. I need to know what happened.”
Bruce closed the laptop and turned his head away from her.
“Sammy is gone because of me,” he told her in a harsh whisper. “I’m to blame.”
* * *
Savannah became a voracious consumer of home videos featuring her son—from the birth, which she couldn’t believe she let Bruce videotape, but now was glad for it, to Samuel’s first birthday party and so many more moments, both large and small, of her son’s life. She knew his smile now; she knew the sound of his voice, the wonder that always seemed to be present in his wide, bright blue eyes. But she didn’t know what it was like to tuck him into bed; she didn’t know what it was like to feel his kiss on her cheek. And there was a possibility that her memory would never return, and her only connection with her son was one-dimensional.
That night, Savannah crawled into bed exhausted. She hadn’t slept the night before, and the entire day had been spent trying to download every recorded second of her son’s life into her brain. Bruce had been able to talk at length about their son’s life—but he wasn’t able to talk to her about his death. It was as if the words were stuck somewhere deep inside, and he just couldn’t get them out. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she needed some time to reflect on Sammy’s beautiful life before she started to mourn the tragedy of his death. So she hadn’t pushed Bruce. She didn’t push him.
Bruce had stayed up long after she had turned in; when she felt the weight of her husband getting into his side of the bed, Savannah rolled over onto her back. As much has she had tried to fall asleep—as tired as she was—sleep escaped her. And what made it worse was that already they were shutting down, both of them. They hadn’t told each other that they loved each other—and even though she obviously still felt it, she couldn’t find her way to say the words out loud. It was so easy to see, so easy to understand, why they had ended up separating. Sammy’s life had been such a source of joy and bonding between them; losing him had broken them apart.
“Bruce.” She could tell by his breathing that he was still awake.
“Yes?”
You have to say the words, Savannah. Say the words.
“I love you.”
After a moment of silence, not turning toward her, Bruce said in a clear voice, “I love you more.”
Savannah reached out to touch her husband’s back. “Will you take me to see Sammy tomorrow?”
Three full heartbeats of silence, and then Bruce said simply, “Yes.”
* * *
For the second time in a very short time, Bruce returned to the family cemetery. He had worked very hard to push this place out of his mind, to shove aside the emotions attached to the place of his son’s final resting place—but the truth was, this little plot of land, with its small marble headstone, was never far from his waking thoughts. The image of it had lurked in the background, haunting him.
“Your parents weren’t so sure about burying Sammy here.” Bruce shut off the engine. “But we both wanted him to be close. Sammy loved Sugar Creek. Eve
n as young as he was, I could see that this ranch was in his blood.”
They met at the front of the truck, and to his surprise, Savannah reached for his hand. Did he deserve this kindness? He didn’t think so. But he was grateful for it. Together, hand in hand, they walked on the overgrown path the short distance to the plot of land surrounded by the black wrought-iron fence. They didn’t say anything as they made their way over to Samuel’s grave, but Savannah gasped when she saw the fire truck that she had found in the garden.
His wife dropped to her knees next to their son’s headstone, her finger lightly tracing his name etched into the white marble.
“‘Samuel Jackson Brand. Beloved son.’” Savannah read the simple wording on the grave. She had selected the headstone, the font style and the modest wording.
Seeing his wife on her knees beside their son’s grave was more than Bruce could stand. He turned away, tears in his eyes, and walked back to the truck. How could he expect Savannah to forgive him if he couldn’t find a way to forgive himself? Bruce climbed behind the wheel of his truck and watched Savannah through the windshield. She deserved to take as much time as she needed, to have this private moment at her son’s graveside.
The pain he saw in his wife’s eyes was the pain he felt in every layer of his body; it never really faded. That sorrow was a pain he had just had to learn to live with; now Savannah would have to learn to live with it again, too.
When Savannah finally stood up and started to walk back to the truck, Bruce hopped out and met her at the passenger-side door. He held the door open for her, his eyes sweeping her face. Her pretty oval face, a face he knew well and loved so much, was wet with freshly shed tears. He took a cloth handkerchief out of the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her before he gently shut the door.
Savannah was blowing her nose loudly as he got back behind the wheel. He didn’t start the engine; he just sat there, staring at their son’s headstone.
“I only left him for a minute,” Bruce said, still staring straight ahead, not wanting to look at his wife’s face. “I promise you—it was only a minute.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Savannah watching him, hanging on his next words.
“But one minute was too long,” he said with self-recrimination. “One second would have been too long.”
Savannah put her hand on his leg, and this show of compassion, this show of support, gave him the strength to continue.
“You were in Tennessee visiting your sister,” Bruce told her. “And I was going to spend some quality time with the little man.” He laughed a hollow laugh. “I couldn’t wait to spend that time with Sammy—I had so many plans. So many plans.”
Bruce swallowed hard, choking back tears. “Right before we went to the airport, you told me that you had washed the towels, and all I had to do was get them out of the dryer, fold them and put them away in the bathroom.”
He shook his head in disgust. “I have looked back at that moment a million times; why didn’t I just take the towels out of the dryer when I got home? What was so important that made me put it off?”
Savannah’s hand tightened on his leg.
“That day, I took him to the creek and he chased minnows for an hour. A whole hour. I can remember so clearly how loud he was laughing, stomping his feet in the water, trying to catch those little minnows with his chubby hands.”
He glanced at Savannah, who had turned her body toward his. “Sammy loved water. Even when he was a baby, we never had to fight with him to get him into the bath. It was no different that night...” His voice trailed off as the memories, beautiful and horrible, came flooding back to him. “I put him in the tub for his bath that night. I remember he was excited about the new tugboat toy you had gotten for him. We played until that poor kid was all wrinkly from being in the water for too long...”
“But when I opened the cabinet to get a towel—” Bruce’s voice cracked on the words, and he sniffed loudly. “I only left him for a minute. Just one minute.”
“Oh, no.” Savannah gasped as she put the missing, unspoken pieces in place. “No.”
He couldn’t say the words, “Sammy drowned.” He just couldn’t. It was his fault that their son was gone—accident or not. If he had just gotten the damn towels out of the dryer before he put Sammy in the tub—their son would still be alive. Their son would still be with them, and they would have never separated, they would have never gone through a divorce, and she would have never been with Leroy.
Savannah didn’t yell at him or accuse him. Instead, she moved onto his lap, wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly while years of anger and self-loathing and sorrow poured out of him.
“I’m so sorry, Sammy...” he repeated over and over again. “I’m so sorry.”
Bruce held on to Savannah, hugging her nearly breathless, as they wept together, mourning the loss of their precious son for the first time together. After they’d buried Samuel, Savannah had stopped touching him; she’d stopped sleeping in their bed. And, on his part, he didn’t want to talk about Sammy. It was too painful. Unlike Savannah, who’d spent hours sitting on Sammy’s brand-new “big boy” toddler bed, clutching his favorite stuffed toy to her chest, he’d wanted to strip the room and lock the door. Their grief took them down different roads; their grief had ended their marriage. Only time would tell if their son’s tragic death would rip them apart again.
* * *
That night, they made love for the first time since she’d found the picture of Samuel. It was a quiet, poignant expression of their love, slow and tender. They held each other, kissed deeply and lingeringly, and mingled breath and sweet words of love. Savannah understood now why they had separated and eventually filed for divorce. One of her many flaws was her inability to forgive; she held herself and everyone else to very high standards, and this often led her to fail to forgive flaws in herself as well as others. She had turned her back on Bruce. At the time when he needed her the most—when he needed her to be his best friend and wife—she had walked away.
Yes, it was Bruce’s terrible misjudgment that had resulted in their son’s death. But wasn’t she also culpable? Had she shown her husband some compassion, their marriage would have survived. And she would never have ended up in Leroy’s muscle car the night of the crash.
The next day, they went to see their therapist together.
“I’m glad to see the both of you.” Dr. Kind gestured for them to take a seat.
They had made an appointment with the psychologist; neither one of them wanted to see their marriage implode as it had before. Bruce didn’t hesitate to agree to go back to see Dr. Kind. This was a signal to Savannah that Bruce was “all-in” with their marriage, and that gave her the strength to tackle her emotions around the death of her son without destroying her relationship with Bruce.
“So, where would you like to start today?”
This time, they were sitting side by side on the couch, which was an improvement from the last time they had sat on this sofa together.
“Do you want me to start?” she asked her husband.
He nodded, so she filled the psychologist in on the events of the last week—learning that she was a mother, and that her son had drowned on her husband’s watch.
“That’s a lot to learn,” Dr. Kind noted. “And a lot for you, Bruce, to relive.”
They both nodded. It was, in truth, more pain than any couple should have to endure.
“And how do you feel, Savannah, now that you know the truth?”
Savannah hesitated. “I feel...everything. Depressed, furious, cheated, guilty...”
“Let’s explore the guilt,” Dr. Kind said “What do you feel guilty about?”
“The divorce.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Bruce objected. “We both had our fingerprints all over that.”
“Has any of this jarred memories for you, Savannah?”
“I remembered that we called Samuel ‘Sammy.’ I remembered his favorite stuffed animal. But that’s all...”
“How did Savannah behave toward you after Samuel’s death?” the psychologist asked Bruce.
Bruce didn’t answer right away; Savannah gave his arm a little shake. “It’s okay. You can tell me. That’s why we’re here.”
Her husband swallowed hard, his hand clammier to the touch. Then, he cleared his throat and said, “She stopped loving me.”
* * *
To hear Bruce say that she had stopped loving him had left her temporarily speechless and stunned. He hadn’t said it to hurt her; he hadn’t said it to be mean or vindictive. He had said it because that was how she had made him feel when she stopped kissing him, stopped holding his hand, stopped making love. She was certain that she never stopped loving Bruce. Not when she had left their marital bed, not when she had moved out, not when she had gotten involved with uncomplicated Leroy, and not when she had filed for divorce.
“I’m sorry, Bruce,” she said on the drive back to the ranch.
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“Yes, I do,” Savannah was quick to say. “I left you when you needed me the most.”
“I think there’s a whole lot of people in this world who would think that you had all the reason in the world to leave me.”
Savannah reached out her hand; Bruce switched hands on the steering wheel so he could take it.
“Maybe so. But they’d be wrong.”
Chapter Eleven
That was the first of many sessions that the two of them had with Dr. Kind. It wasn’t always easy, and they weren’t always happy with each other when they left a session, but they were talking—and they were still together, and that was the goal.
Savannah flopped down on the couch next to Bruce, and tucked her feet beneath her.