Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

  He sat against the pitted brick near the spot where Danny had died. It made him feel close to his son, like visiting a cemetery. He reached into his pocket:

  …crossing the line.

  He cries a silent cry.

  In the night he feels

  alone. There is no

  mother or father, no one

  to tuck him in, to say good night.

  No friends come to play.

  It is so very co

  Jack pulled his legs up to this chest and rested his chin in his knees. He thought about Danny, not the boy who came here to kill himself, but Danny, eight years old, pushing his breakfast around on his plate.

  “What happened to your appetite?” Jack wanted to know.

  “I ate too much last night.”

  “Let me guess. You talked Rosalie into ordering Mexican.”

  “I didn’t talk her into it.”

  “Not José Sent Me.”

  “She said it was okay.”

  Jack smiled and began tapping the rhythm on the kitchen table. Danny smiled back at him, recognizing what was about to happen.

  Jack started if off: “The burritos are lethal and those beans are…”

  “Mean.”

  “Mean beans.”

  “Mean beans.”

  “You can serve me Doritos, Cheetos…”

  “Or Fritos. But not the beans.”

  Jack laughed. “Those beans are mean.”

  “Those beans are mean.”

  “They’ll empty you clean…”

  “Down to your spleen.”

  “Take the tacos with cheese-o…”

  “If you please-o…”

  “Or try the meat-o…”

  “But not the burrito…”

  “Those beans are mean…”

  “They’ll turn you green.”

  They laughed together.

  Jack said, “We haven’t lost a thing.”

  Danny rolled his eyes. “I know, and it made my stomach ache even worse.”

  “No one likes an eight-year-old wise guy.” Jack clipped Danny lightly on the chin. “How’d you like to loaf a little longer and I’ll drive you to school?”

  “I’d like to loaf all day and not go to school.”

  “Dream on, pardner. You can have fifteen minutes with your dad or you can ride the bus. Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it.” Danny still didn’t eat, but now he had that serious and solemn expression on his face. There was something on his mind and he couldn’t get started.

  “What is it?” Jack said.

  Danny shrugged his shoulders.

  “You can tell me. Is it school?”

  Danny shook his head. “I wrote something.”

  “Really?”

  “About my friend Eric.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “It’s really dumb.”

  “It can’t be dumb if you wrote it.”

  Danny thought this over and said, “Okay. But don’t laugh.”

  “I promise.”

  Danny took a piece of lined paper out of his notebook, stood up, cleared his throat and looked around the room, as though he were waiting for late arrivals to be seated. “My friend Eric is eight and he’s my friend to the end. A friend to the end means you understand things the other kids don’t. A lot of the other boys make fun of Eric because he’s not very good at sports. They don’t let him hang out with them. But Eric is very smart and funny. Last week, Eric had a birthday. When some of the bigger kids in my class found out I was going they said I was a weenie and they would beat me up if I went. They pushed me around after school all week but they didn’t really hurt me. Eric told them if they wanted to pick on anyone to pick on him because he was bigger than me. They just spitted at him and they kept calling us weenies and stuff. I was the only kid in our class who went to Eric’s birthday party. But his cousins and some relatives went so it wasn’t so bad. When I have a birthday I know Eric will be there.”

  Danny folded the paper and put it back in his book. He wouldn’t look at his father.

  “Come over here,” Jack said.

  Danny walked around the table. Jack put his arms around him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “That was a very kind thing, being Eric’s friend. And that’s a very beautifully written story.” Jack hugged him tighter. Danny hugged him back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the other kids picking on you?”

  “I don’t know.” Danny shrugged his shoulders.

  “Were you ashamed to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have felt something,” Jack said, keeping his voice soft, not stern or scolding.

  “I guess I was afraid.”

  “Of?”

  “You’d think I was a weenie because I didn’t fight them.”

  Jack smiled at him. “They’re the weenies. They’re the cowards. It took a lot of courage to do what you did. What did I tell you about thinking for yourself?”

  “Only sheep follow the herd. Smart people think for themselves and do the right thing.”

  “Give me a kiss,” Jack said. “I’m very proud of you. But more important, you should be very proud of yourself.”

  Danny let Jack hold him for a moment longer before he tried to squirm free but Jack held on to him a little bit longer than that.

  He asked Danny, “May I have it?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to keep the things you write. And because it’s very beautiful.”

  Danny gave this some thought before he consented.

  Later, driving to school with the top down, a tape playing, Danny, strapped securely in the front seat, tilted his head back to watch the sky skip by. “Dad, if you were going to do something that you didn’t think I’d like, would you still tell me? Before you did it?”

  “Of course. I don’t make important decisions without first discussing them with you.”

  “’Cause my friend Gregory is moving to Indianapolis and we’ll probably stop being friends and he’s real unhappy.”

  “I thought he was looking forward to moving there.”

  “He’s thinking of running away and hiding.”

  “I think he’s shooting without a script.”

  Danny didn’t think that was funny. “Gregory says his dad wouldn’t have taken the job except his new mom wanted him to.”

  “It’s not at all like that,” Jack explained. “They would have moved whether or not his father remarried. His father got a better job in Indianapolis.”

  “Gregory says if his dad didn’t get married they wouldn’t be moving,” Danny insisted. “You’re not going to get married and make us move away from here, are you?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Danny sit up straight. “Do you want me to?”

  “No. But Granpa married Grace after Granma Martha died.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Gregory’s dad got married again.”

  “That doesn’t mean I will. Not without clearing it with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “What if I don’t like her and you still wanted to marry her?”

  “I don’t think I could like someone you didn’t like. Doesn’t Gregory like his new mother?”

  “He says she doesn’t like him or Chris.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that happening.”

  “Don’t you want to?” Danny asked.

  “Get married? I don’t really give it much thought. I like the way things are.”

  “Me too.” Danny went back to watching the sky.

  Eric dropped out of Danny’s life after the third grade, and Gregory moved away, but Danny made new friends: C.J. Ainsley, brooding and melancholy, the opposite of his buff and gregarious father; Rick Harrison, gangly and restless; Brian Clarke, their leader and protector. And it wasn’t long before the four boys became an inseparable quartet. They all joined the Scouts at the same ti
me, and Little League. Only ten days ago, the boys came to the house to cheer Danny up after he lost the semifinals. So how the hell could Danny have killed himself?

  Was there something lacking in Danny? Jack wondered. Some flaw masked by the equanimity? Was there something there all the time that stood out and said: “Your son is different from the other boys.” That said, “This is why Danny couldn’t bear to live,” only Jack never knew what he was seeing?

  Jack sat in the shadow of the ruins and looked out across the river where the sorry little tarpaper shacks were sunk into the lush soil, where the stink of boiled cabbage and sour diapers hung in the air and carried across the river along with the stink of failure, the culture of failure, a door opened and a yellow light spread across the black ground like an apology. It was just before sunset and behind dimly lighted windows there were halting shadows, which were people and their lives. Someone spoke unrecognizable words that sounded tenderly human and so sad Jack had to get up and leave.

  He walked down Chestnut Street, the clean sidewalks edging up to the evenly cut grass. Where the white-shingled houses of Gilbert’s middle class sat, with their small gardens in the back with trellises and spring vines. He stopped to watch the quick shadows behind the curtained windows, listen to muffled voices, pick out a word, a sentence. He could not take himself away from this street, from the neat hedges, the comfortable chant of the lawn sprinklers, the unceasing movement. He could not take himself away from the fathers and sons.

  He pressed his nose against other people’s lives and envied them in a way he would have found unthinkable, unnecessary, twenty-four hours ago. Now he would be any one of them, if only for a day; if only to anticipate the sound of the screen door slamming, the footsteps on the stairs, the sounds that tell you all is well. He wished he could walk up one of the trim little paths, knock on the front door and say, “I’m Dr. Owens, let me sit with you awhile.” “Let me tell you about my son.” “Let me tell you who he was.” He wished he could invite himself inside and be part of someone else’s family, someone else’s story. But all he could do was stand apart, alone in the shadows of the oak trees, and listen to the hiss of the street lamps, watch front doors open and people he did not know walk down the sidewalk, skateboard over the curb, drive cars. All he could do was want what was happening inside those houses and feel the absence of all that had been his just the day before, as though the strength of his desire, the power of his envy, might alter this irremediable night.

  Then he was walking again, where the town met the edge of soy fields and alfalfa was beginning to show through the soil. Where the sun was setting and the air grew dense with carbon dioxide, and the scent of spring crops and fertile earth spiraled up from the ground, spanning the darkness like a veil. He was going home.

  There were messages waiting for him. Lois, Eileen, a couple of Danny’s friends asking Danny why he wasn’t in school. Bob Garvin, calling from South Wellfleet: “Getting things ready for you guys.” Yoshi in Maine: “Nick and the boys can’t wait.” Clive Ebersol, calling from Canada to talk about the fishing trip.

  There was so much to undo. So much summer to cancel.

  Jack made the calls to Canada and Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut; to airlines and inns. To people he’d known for most of a lifetime, who asked for no explanations and gave their sympathy. To strangers with nothing to give but their indifference and inconvenience. By the time Jack fell asleep on the couch, there was still more summer to cancel, more summer to undo.

  He awoke with the morning sun shining in his eyes and the telephone ringing on the floor. It was Detective Hopewell: “The coroner turned in his report, Dr. Owens. It was death by asphyxiation. Thanks for your patience.” And Jack remembered everything.

  “When can I get him out of there?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Did they have to…”

  “Think of it like surgery,” Hopewell answered in the detached voice. “So we can be certain about the time of death and the cause. I’m sorry about the delay.”

  Jack hung up the phone and screamed, “Goddamnit.” He sat on the edge of the couch, breathing heavily through his mouth.

  For the rest of the morning, Jack listened numbly to improbable conversations studded with the words arranged and arrangements. He felt as though he were standing outside of himself when he called the morgue: “You’ll have to make arrangements with a licensed funeral home, Dr. Owens…” When he called his father: “Harry Weber’s made all the arrangements. The Collier Funeral Home in Gilbert is going to fly Danny to New York tomorrow. You don’t have to do a thing. It’s all been arranged…” When Jack called Lois to ask her to go to New York with him tonight, she told him she’d arrange everything. Stan Miller said he’d already arranged for Jack’s grades to be postponed. His friends asked if they could help with any of the arrangements. And later, sitting in the living room with Mr. Collier of the eponymous funeral home, Jack was told that all arrangements had been made.

  Collier was a man of hushed and muted tones, earnest and controlled, from his deep blue suit and dark maroon tie to the modulated timbre in his voice, inoffensive, restrained and solicitous. A compelling presence, inviting a painless passivity while he “arranged everything.”

  Surely there was some comfort to be taken, surely that’s what Collier thought he was offering, what everyone thought they were offering. But what was being arranged? Danny was dead. He was lying alone and cold on a slab in the morgue and Jack had to get him out. But there was no urgency in Collier’s voice, and this was so very urgent. There were only good manners, funereal decorum. It was just another procedure, like Hopewell’s investigation, the coroner’s autopsy. Just another job to do and be done with. But nothing was getting done.

  “I want Danny out of the morgue,” Jack insisted.

  “It’s all arranged,” Collier said, his voice calm, unctuous, annoying.

  “I don’t think you understand.”

  “We understand fully.”

  “Not if you’re sitting around making arrangements. I want my son—”

  “Your son,” Collier said gently, “has been resting in our home”—he looked at his watch—“since eleven-fifteen this morning. I’ll call my office right now for a confirmation.” He reached for his cell phone. “Yes,” Collier told Jack, and placed the phone back in his pocket, “Danny is in our care.” He made a satisfied adjustment to his tie.

  In our care…

  “Be assured, Dr. Owens, your mother’s in our care.”

  She had been sick a long time. There’d been time to prepare. Time to explain.

  “Is Granma going to die?” Danny asked.

  “She died today.”

  “Is Granpa sad?”

  “Very sad.”

  “Are you very sad, Daddy?”

  “Yes, I’m very sad.”

  “I’m very sad, too. Does she hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Cousin Philip said I’ll never see Granma again.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where did she go, Daddy? In the ground?”

  “Try to think that Granma’s gone on a journey far away, for a long time.”

  “Like Mummy?” Danny asked. “Mummy’s gone away for a long time.”

  “A different kind of going away. It’s like Granma’s taking a long rest. It’s like sleeping in a very peaceful place. That’s why people say ‘rest in peace’ when someone dies.”

  “Will I die when I go to sleep?” Danny asked.

  “No. Little boys don’t die in their sleep.”

  “Only old people, right?”

  “That’s right. Only old people.”

  At the funeral, large and splendid, relatives and friends, men who were made rich by Jack’s father’s inventions and who, in turn, had made Jack’s father rich, stood three and four deep at the graveside and listened to the eulogies. Women whose homes and lives were made beautiful by Jack’s mother’s interiors, women whose committees his mother
had chaired, whose societies his mother had joined, whose charities his mother had made more charitable, said their sad farewells before the coffin was lowered and the earth piled on.

  Later, after the funeral, after they’d sat with relatives and friends, who talked and reminisced; after they sat with his father, who cried and reminisced; Jack and Danny sat alone in the guest room of his parents’ apartment. Danny curled himself into Jack’s lap and said, “It’s like going away for a long time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there a God, Daddy?”

  “Some people think there is.”

  “Do we?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think God’s in heaven, and Granma’s in heaven with God. And she’s having fun. Only sometimes she gets tired and has to rest.” Danny looked at Jack expectantly.

  “That’s a very good thing to think.”

  “But she misses Granpa,” Danny added, “and sometimes she cries.”

  “Dr. Owens,” Collier said, with a delicate clearing of the throat, “one other thing. Is there any particular clothing you’d like Danny to wear, or shall I arrange—”

  Jack sat in Danny’s room, among the books and clothes. Mutt burrowed his nose into one of Danny’s shirts. Jack held Danny’s blue suit across his lap, cradling it as though it were the corporeal Danny, as though Danny might feel the embrace. Jack felt no need to rush. He was content to sit in the bedroom and run his hand back and forth across the jacket and pants, to touch the pair of shoes and socks, the white shirt, Danny’s favorite regimental tie. It was the only comfort he could find, touching the clothes his son had worn. Jack was in no hurry to leave this room and move that much closer to Danny’s burial. There was no urgency now. He would go to New York. There would be a funeral. It would happen soon enough—too soon by a lifetime. It had all been arranged.

  It was the silence that was disturbing. Jack could not get used to it and he was unable to ignore it while he made a few arrangements of his own: he called the vet so Mutt could be boarded. Called Lois about the flight to New York—she would pick him up at four. While he packed his clothes, and later, while he sat on the back porch with a cup of coffee, doing nothing in the long afternoon, there was always the silence, the absence of Danny. Jack didn’t know how to sit with it, how to wait with it, and when he heard the car pull up at the front of the house and the doorbell ring, he did not mind the interruption.