Acts of Contrition

by Handford, Jennifer

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “There were a few times when Mom had had enough. Dad was drinking too much. It led to a bunch of crap. She basically threw him out. He’d binge, meet up with his ‘lady friend,’ and eventually crawl back to Mom.”

  For a long moment I just sat back, blinking at him as I assimilated this new information. “That does change things—the fact that they were technically separated.” Even then—in a situation that had nothing to do with me—I set my bargaining wheels spinning, rationalizing the lines of morality, testing the outer edge before the slippery slope turned into a landslide.

  Now it was Tom’s turn to blink at me. “I don’t believe being separated excused him from anything,” he said. “Marriage is marriage.”

  “Yes, but there is a start and a finish, and in their case, some ‘pauses’ in between.”

  “Nope,” Tom said. “The commitment is the bond. That should never be broken.”

  “Then why aren’t you harder on him?”

  “Because he couldn’t help himself—because of the drink.”

  I would come to learn that the booze was a perpetual Get Out of Jail Free card for Tom’s father and Tom’s brother, Patrick, a disease over which they were powerless.

  Domenic and Danny are rocking on chairs next to their grandparents and the girls are browsing in the gift shop when our name is called. We sit at one of the larger tables, order coffee and juice, hot cocoa for the kids. Once we put in our orders, and the kids go and sit by the fireplace to play the golf tee/pegboard game, we settle in for a conversation. The starting point is always the same. Never a gentle step onto solid ground. Something more akin to jumping off a cliff.

  “How’s Patrick?” Tom asks, broaching everyone’s greatest worry, his baby brother’s magnetic pull toward the pub and the bottle.

  “He’s good!” Sean says, always happier to skirt difficult topics, always happier to talk about the kids and their activities. “That little Mia, she’s a pip!” he says of Patrick’s five-year-old daughter. Patrick and his family live only a few miles from where Sean and Colleen live in Virginia Beach.

  Tom and I both look at Colleen, the one who is likely to have more information.

  “He’s sober, as far as I know,” Colleen says. “But I have a bad feeling.”

  “Why?” Tom asks, leaning in.

  “He wasn’t feeling well the other day so he stayed home and of course, you know Patrick, he didn’t call his boss to tell him that he’d be a no-show. His boss was furious. He had to let Patrick go.”

  “Does he have something else lined up?” Tom asks.

  “He’s trying,” Colleen says. “But mainly he’s back to talking about baseball, how he should have gone to college, how everything could have been different.”

  In high school Patrick was the star pitcher of the baseball team, an unassuming guy who could throw a fastball with bullet precision, leaving the batter shaking his head and feeling like a dope. He was recruited by a handful of colleges, and then, just as he was making up his mind between them, he was taken by the Arizona Diamondbacks with their last pick in the draft. Against everyone’s advice, he declined full-ride scholarships and tried to make it as a pro. And he appeared to be on his way, moving up in just a matter of months from Class A to Triple-A, with his agent talking about a possible late-season call-up to the big league team’s bull pen, when he blew out his shoulder. Instead of the pros, he ended up with career-ending surgery, months of physical therapy, and a deep depression. That was his first bender. It landed him first in the gutter, and then in rehab.

  “Do you think he’s going to drink?” Tom asks his mother. I see my husband start to agitate, watch his knee bob up and down, his fingers tap on the table.

  “By now I recognize the spiral,” she says, shrugging. “It’s always the same: he loses a job, starts to feel sorry for himself, falls into a depression about how it could have been different. You know, then we find him passed out in a ditch. What are you going to do?” Colleen looks away and takes a deep breath. We all know her stance. Though it kills her, she believes in tough love. Sean is the opposite, he’s more the enabler. And Tom wants to be the savior, the one who swoops in on a magic carpet, the one who rescues everyone from the pain.

  Sean puts an arm around his wife, comforts her. I wonder how she can take it. Comfort from a man who is partially to blame for his son’s affliction. Doesn’t she ever want to shout: Maybe if you didn’t hit the bottle so hard our son wouldn’t be in this spot!

  “It’s not too late for him!” Tom says. “He’s only thirty-five years old. He can still go back to school. He can coach. Is he going to his meetings?”

  “He tells me he is,” Colleen says. “I know they’re offered every night in the church hall right next to his house.”

  “He has to keep up with the meetings,” Tom says. “He doesn’t stand a chance if he’s not working the steps, leaning on his sponsor. You know what? I’m going to get involved, call his sponsor. Maybe Patrick’ll come up and stay with us for a while. I can give him some work to do around the house. Maybe some neighbors need some work done. Nobody’s as good with a hammer as Patrick.”

  Tom’s face is turning red and his eyes are welling up, so for his sake I’m careful to conceal my irritation at the thought of Patrick unpacking his problems under our roof. Tom can’t stand to think of his baby brother floundering, veering into the path of destruction. Tom needs to stick his hand in it somehow, control the situation, pull his brother out of the GD gutter. Tom told me that when he boxed in college it all came down to instincts, knowing when to step out of harm’s way. He ignores this instinct when it comes to his brother, and Patrick doesn’t have a shred of it, a guy who seems helpless to do anything but lead with his chin.

  “Oh, honey,” Colleen says. “Your brother knows you’re here. He knows we’re all here. We can’t do it for him. You know that. He needs to face this on his own. All we can do is offer him our love and support.”

  “Have you talked to Kathy?” I ask.

  Colleen gives a little shrug. “As much as she wants to be talked to.”

  Kathy, Patrick’s wife, is patient and good but has always kept her distance from the rest of us, almost like she wants to minimize the collateral damage should she and Patrick fail. I’ve taken the opposite strategy: diving headlong into Tom’s family, like paying a premium on a life-insurance policy.

  “How can I just sit idly by and let him self-destruct?” Tom wants to know. “How can there not be more for us to do? He’s my brother. It’s not right that I get to have this great life, with a job and a house and a family, and he gets to be cursed by the Morrissey plague.”

  An unwelcome thought gnaws at my consciousness: that life has a way of evening out, that the tables may someday turn, with Patrick thriving and Tom and me festering in a ditch.

  “Pick up the phone, son,” Sean says. “I’m sure he would like it if you just called him and talked to him.”

  The food comes and we corral the kids back to the table. It’s a frenzy to get them situated with butter, syrup, and jam. We help the boys cut their pancakes, get an extra plate for Emily so that her French toast isn’t touching her scrambled eggs. Sally polishes off her meal before most of us have started, pulls out a Little House from her bag, and starts reading.

  I squeeze Tom’s leg under the table. I know he’s hurting. He takes Patrick’s failures so personally, as if he could have done something to change his brother’s path. But I know that there is guilt in being successful, in having what his brother doesn’t. Tom looks at me, fakes a smile, and offers me a bite of his pecan pancakes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Admitting Wrongs

  TOM

  IF YOU’VE NEVER BEEN KNOCKED out, it would be nearly impossible to imagine what it’s like to be bouncing on your toes one second and then flat on your back the next. You regain your sight before your hearing, so as your eyes flutter open, you see the ref’s fingers flipping out in a counting motion before you hea
r the numbers coming from his mouth: seven, eight, nine.

  I never set out to box. A recruiter saw me working out on the bags one day in the college gym and convinced me to give it a try. I had the right body type and, most of all, my reach was good, my arms a good inch longer than most others’. The workouts were tough and it didn’t take long before I was in awesome shape, but I never got too into the actual fights. Being knocked out made me feel like I’d somehow been tricked, and knocking the other guy out just made me feel like a creep. I’m not much of a fighter, I guess.

  Which isn’t to say I don’t have a temper. My Irish blood boils easily. I often worry that Sally inherited that gene from me, the way she gets worked up sometimes, so competitive and confrontational. Today I found my fingers clenched in fists twice: once when talking to Mary about that asshole Landon James, pretty boy running for the Senate. And again when I heard about my brother falling off the wagon. Poor Patrick, a magnet for bad luck.

  I never minded that Mary had boyfriends before me. Hell, I had girlfriends, too; I get that we were already thirty years old by the time we met. But she was stuck on that loser for six years. I mean, hell, she must have really wanted him to stick around for that long. And she still gets jittery when we talk about him, like she can’t control the octave of her voice. It bugs me that after all these years he still gets under her skin.

  And Patrick, my baby brother cursed with the Morrissey taste for whiskey. He can’t help how he is, any more than if he were a diabetic. Bad luck follows him. When he was in high school he pitched five no-hitters in a row, all while batting .440. The scouts were wining and dining him—not just the Diamondbacks but the Tigers, the Phillies. They’d take him to Outback Steakhouse: Give this kid your biggest and best filet, a lobster tail, and throw in a Bloomin’ Onion, why don’t you? They were schmoozing the hell out of him. Mom told him to be smart: go to college. Take the scholarship money. Dad was Dad, caught up in it all, telling him, “Son, when are you ever gonna have an opportunity like this again? God’s smiling on you, son. Take a chance on the big leagues.” That left me, the levelheaded older brother who always had the right answers. Patrick looked up to me like I could see his future and knew just how to steer him. He would have done whatever I said. I started out in Mom’s camp, told him to think of his future, to go to college. That the chances were slim to none that he’d be called up from the minors.

  But then there was the night in June when he was pitching against his American Legion squad’s bitterest rivals. Legion games don’t usually draw many fans, but this one did—partly because of the rivalry, but mainly because of Patrick. Word was out: the Diamondbacks had drafted him. I was sitting on the metal bleachers, breathing in the aroma of cigarettes, hot dogs, and popcorn. Patrick had a perfect game going and the crowd started chanting his name, “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick,” until finally there was just a combined roar, a crescendo of unified spirit, cheering on my brother. The stadium lights, the smells, the sounds. The electricity—I really felt it, like someone was running a current through the bleachers under me.

  As each inning passed and I watched my baby brother pitch flawlessly, I started to reconsider my position. His skill and poise were years beyond high school. That’s when I got it: He wasn’t just a good high school pitcher, he was an awesome pitcher, period. He already had four legitimate pitches and a fastball in the mid-90s. He didn’t just show promise, he issued guarantees. That’s when I changed my mind. I pulled him aside later that night. I told him that he oughta take a chance. That he was good. Really good. That he ought to go with the scouts, go to the minors, take the risk. He was so excited because, of course, I was telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. He wanted my blessing to take a chance and here I was, giving it to him.

  By month’s end he was playing for the Diamondbacks’ Class-A affiliate in South Bend. Three weeks after that he was in Double-A Knoxville, his ERA at 2.40, his strikeout total climbing. The D-backs were gearing up for a postseason run, and when the rosters expanded in September they were certain to add bull-pen help. Knoxville worked Patrick hard, showing him off—and then his shoulder blew.

  The stars in my brother’s eyes went dark.

  He saw what was behind the curtain—promises balanced on shaky ground—and the disillusionment was nothing short of devastating. We talked about college even though the scholarship offers were gone, but he had no interest. The one thing he wanted in life was gone.

  His failure—the loss that led him to the bottle—was my fault. He should have gone to college. He might have had a future.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Shortcomings

  TOM’S PREOCCUPIED FOR THE REST of the day. At night, after I put the boys in their room, I hear Tom call Patrick on the telephone. I hear Tom’s gentle voice. “I know, it’s hard. I know you can do it. Are you going to your meetings? Do you want to come stay with us? I know, it’s hard…”

  I walk into Sally’s room, my birthday girl, my ten-year-old. “Double digits,” I say to her. It blows my mind to think that she’s ten. My once chunky, silky-smooth bundle of adoration has grown into a long-legged beauty with her head held high. Only years away from boyfriends and driving and college. I sit on her bed, lean into her, kiss her face. I mash my cheek against hers, hold her tight, stroke her hair. “What a day,” I say. “Nailing a goal on your ten-year-old birthday.”

  “It felt so good, Mom,” she says. “I wish I could make a goal like that every day.”

  “I don’t think it would feel so special if you did it every day,” I say. “It’s the scarcity of things that makes them so amazing.”

  “You act like we’re scarce,” Sal says. “But we’re here every day.”

  “Kids are different,” I say. “A mother’s love for her children, it’s like…” I struggle to finish my sentence because the words I feel are bigger than the letters that could comprise them. “It’s precious. Like it is scarce. You’re right.”

  “You’re silly,” Sally says.

  “I know,” I say, and stop myself from telling her what it’s like to be a mom: walking along a cliff of worry, breathing even though you’re holding your breath.

  “Happy birthday, ten-year-old,” I say. “You really are my special gift, Sal. God really was smiling on me and Daddy the night you were born.”

  “Tell me the story,” she says, snuggling her body around her pillows.

  I can tell from the tone of her voice that she’s asking for my sake, not hers. Sal knows how much I love traditions, stories. She’s indulging me tonight. She’s outgrown my nostalgia, but she knows that I haven’t.

  “I thought you’d never come out,” I say. “I’d been at the hospital for an entire day and a half, when all of a sudden I started to feel different, like there was all of this weight pressing down on me. I told Daddy, ‘I think it’s time,’ and Nana and Pop, and Grandma and Grandpa, and all of your aunts, filed out of the room, hollering, ‘Good luck! We love you!’ Then you started to come out, and when Daddy saw your little face he started to cry like I’ve never seen him cry before. ‘She’s beautiful!’ he yelled, and then the nurse held up a little mirror for me to see you. I propped myself up on my elbows and saw your little head and the mat of copper hair swirled against your scalp and I thought, ‘Oh my, she’s got her daddy’s hair,’ and it was the happiest sight I had ever seen in my whole life because I wanted you to look like your daddy. I wanted you to be a daddy’s girl because I knew how much Dad would love being your daddy. As much as I loved you and wanted you, I had already carried you for nine months. It only seemed fair that Daddy should get something, too. Then you slithered your way out of me—”

  “Ooooh, yuck!” Sally squeals.

  “The nurses got you cleaned up, put you on my chest, and when I looked at your face for the first time I thought that I’d never catch my breath again.”

  “Because I was so adorable.”

  “You were adorable,” I agree, “but you didn’t look like I expected. I though
t you would look like Dad, because I had seen your hair first, but you didn’t, really. You were your own person from the start. And I guess it was just the awesomeness of it, of you being you, not me, not Dad. It hit me so hard in my chest that this whole being-a-mother business was a lot more than I thought. And when that thought settled, I just stared at you, and Sally, I’m serious, there were no words to describe what it was like to hold you that first time. I just remember thinking, there is no WAY that there is another mother out there who loves her daughter as much as I love my new daughter. That’s how I felt. Like my love was the fiercest, the biggest, best love in the world. I felt sorry for every other kid in the world, like ‘Oh, poor things,’ because there was no way that their mothers loved them like I loved you.”

  “Until you saw Dad’s love,” Sally says, filling in the words for me, having memorized this story throughout her life.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Until I saw how Daddy loved you. He cradled you and rocked you, and the grandmas and the aunts had to beg him for a turn to hold you. That first night I was so tired, I fell fast asleep. When I woke up I saw Dad on the sofa holding you, tears streaming down his face, singing some song he made up.”

  “ ‘Sally, my girl, best in the world,’ ” Sally sings.

  “Yep.” I nod my head. “That’s how it went.”

  I kiss Sal and tuck her blankets tightly around her, and walk out of her room singing, “ ‘Sally, my girl, best in the world.’ ”

  Once in bed, I open my book and stare at the pages, but think of Landon James. There were four years in between the time I met Landon for my first and second time. Following his stint as a summer associate, he went back to Chicago to finish his last year of law school. That year, in a weak moment, I wrote him a letter, asking him what he had been up to, telling him how I had left the law firm and was finishing school. It was juvenile on my part to think that a rising star like Landon would have an interest in an undergrad office clerk like me. He never responded to my letter and years passed by, but still I never forgot him. All I needed to do was to close my eyes and imagine our first night at Old Ebbitt Grill, and like that, I could feel his hands pushing up my thighs, the brush of his lips against mine, his fingers finding flesh under my blouse as he kissed me good night. I could see perfectly well how his face changed when he’d told me about his friend who had committed suicide, and more than anything, I could call up the determination in his voice as he spoke of the future.