I sat in Nepal and met his knowing gaze. “Graduation,” I confirmed.
“You were a cruel, cruel woman, Lauren Clark.”
“Lauren Coventry.”
He looked up, startled. “Lauren Coventry,” he repeated. He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table where his laptop lay, rubbing his forehead with one hand.
“Headache?”
“Brutal. But it’ll pass.”
“Do you have medication you can take?”
He ignored my question. “You did the right thing all those years ago.”
“I don’t know …”
“You broke my heart—there’s no denying that—but you did the right thing.”
“I spent months going back over that night. I could have done things differently. I could have—should have—said things better.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Remember me? I wouldn’t have heard anything short of a sledgehammer.”
I felt tears brimming in my eyes again. “I hurt you, Aidan. I shouldn’t have hurt you.”
He leaned in closer, until only his eyes and the top of his head were framed in the Skype window. “You did the right thing. And I think I loved you all the more for it.”
I looked into the tired, haunted eyes of a man who faced death with solemn lucidity, and I felt his courage bathing me. “I love you too,” I said with every ounce of conviction I should have used on our graduation night.
A flash of red in the doorway caught my eye. Ryan stood there, his jaw set.
“Ryan.” Guilt flooded me. I blotted my tears and tried for a disapproving voice. “What are you doing home so late?” It sounded phony and scared even to my ears.
The look he gave me chilled me. “Who’s that?” he asked.
I scrambled for an answer that would satisfy him. “My friend Aidan in the States. Come around here and say hi to him.”
He stared a moment more, then swiveled and went up to his room.
“Ryan?” Aidan asked from Pennsylvania.
“I don’t know how he got in here without me hearing him.”
“Probably trying to sneak in so he wouldn’t get in trouble.”
My mind reeled. What had he heard? What had he assumed?
“Ren?”
I looked at Aidan, torn between the friend battling cancer and the son who may have heard too much and concluded something awful. “You have to go,” he said.
“I do. Ryan is—”
“Go take care of things.”
“I’m sorry …”
“Don’t be. It’s been good seeing you.”
I leaned in, reluctant to hang up and eager to get upstairs. “You’re going to get through this, Aidan. You’ll have your surgery, they’ll take it out, you’ll try some new protocol. You’re going to make it through this. I believe it.”
He smiled in a way that made me really doubt for the first time.
“Talk soon,” he said. Then he hung up.
fourteen
IT TOOK ME SEVERAL MINUTES TO GATHER MY THOUGHTS. I sat with my laptop closed and tried to sort through the fears and guilt, seeking an obvious path forward and finding none.
I heard no response when I knocked on Ryan’s door. When I stepped inside, I found him under his fleece blanket, earbuds in, facing the wall. I stood there for a while, watching the light from the candle next to his bed flicker across the ceiling. Listening to the hiss of trebles escaping from his iPod. Wondering what misinterpretations and accusation filled his thirteen-year-old mind. I didn’t know what to say and feared what might happen if I spoke.
Ryan must have sensed my presence. He twisted around and looked over his shoulder. When he saw me standing near the door, he turned back to the wall and pulled his blanket up higher. I was his mother—but the inroads the status should have granted me had dried up long ago. I had no idea how to communicate with him. So I went and sat on the edge of his bed, hoping, praying another stilted prayer that the right words would come to me. Ryan scooted away and shrugged off the hand I laid on his shoulder.
“Ryan.”
No response.
“Ryan.” More firmly.
He tried to stop me as I pulled one of the earphones out of his ear. “Mom!”
Unable to formulate the thoughts I needed to express, I fell back on an old standard and kicked myself for it the moment the words were out of my mouth. “Where were you tonight?”
He turned just enough that I could see the defiance on his face. I wanted to grovel for his understanding. The weakness of it stunned me. I buffered my emotions with an internal pep talk about the conversation Ryan had interrupted. Regardless of what he thought he’d heard, there was nothing wrong about Skyping with an old friend who was facing a grave illness. That’s what I clung to as I stared into the abyss that separated me from my son.
“I don’t know what you think you heard when you came in,” I said quietly. He huddled deeper into his blanket. “I was talking to someone I’ve known since I was your age.” I hated that I was making excuses to my son. “He’s sick, Ryan. He has cancer. And he got some bad news today. We were talking about that when you came in.”
“You weren’t just talking.” His voice was muffled by his blanket.
“Yes, we were.”
He turned angrily toward me. “You told him you loved him,” he snapped. “I heard you!”
I resisted the impulse to chastise him about his attitude and his tone. I didn’t have the upper hand in this conversation—not while Ryan was imagining the worst based on a few snippets of a longer conversation. “What you heard is …” I didn’t know where to begin. “Ryan, what you heard was the tail end of a call between two old friends.”
“I saw your face, Mom!”
“I … What do you mean?”
His expression turned venomous as he remembered. “What about Dad? Are you going to tell Dad?”
I was appalled. “Ryan, there’s nothing to tell him. You’re completely misinterpreting—” I realized I needed to say the words. “If you think I’m having some kind of illicit relationship—”
“Shut up, Mom!” He pushed away from me, up against the wall on the other side of his mattress. “You’re lying. I know you’re lying!”
“Ryan!” The hardness in my voice was more about my guilt than about his lashing out.
“All you’ve done is lie! Ever since …” His chin began to quiver.
“Ryan …” My breath caught on the sob I was trying to repress. “What are you—ever since what?”
Something came across his face then—something so foreign it stunned me into silence. His eyes were suddenly clear and meeting mine with a directness that frightened me. He sat up, his back to the wall and his knees drawn up in front of him. “Get out of my room, Mom.”
“Ryan—”
“No!” His face was flushed but his eyes—my son’s eyes—were brutally cold. “You’re a liar. A cheating liar! Calling this guy and telling him that you … That’s gross, Mom! It’s disgusting!” The words hit me like a physical blow. I thought I saw a shimmer of tears in his eyes right before he lay down, drew the blanket up again, and turned back toward the wall. “Leave me alone.”
“Ryan …”
“Get out of my room!”
He lay immobile. I sat on the edge of his hard mattress wondering what I could say that would debunk whatever sordid conclusions he’d reached. I sat until I realized my arguments would only exacerbate the scenarios in his mind. I stayed until my legs could carry my weight again, until his breathing slowed and eased. His body relaxed. He turned and burrowed his face into his pillow.
I didn’t want to log in the next morning. I’d slept fitfully and didn’t want new messages to further muddy the conflicts in my mind, but I needed to know that Aidan was okay. If the quiet, undistracted hours of my nights led to morbid thinking, I couldn’t imagine how rife with fear they’d be for him.
I fought the urge to take the laptop somewhere private—unwilling to capitulate to the tin
ges of guilt that hovered on the edge of my consciousness. I’d spent the night begging God for peace and found myself still caged by nagging discomfort. The water came on upstairs. Ryan was in the shower. I opened the laptop on the kitchen island and logged on.
i’ve got to tell you, ren, the last time i saw that kind of look on your face was when we got caught barefoot in your mom’s big blue storage container. probably didn’t help that we were wading around ankle-deep in grapes we’d spent your entire allowance buying. kids, right? and too many episodes of ‘i love lucy’ …
sigh. that look worried me a bit. not sure how to say this, so i’ll just blurt it: if this is harming you in any way … ren, i don’t want you to be dragged into something that’s uncomfortable just because the internet exists and i’ve got a thing in my brain.
i’m being as serious as i know how to be right now. i’m still the stupid kid you knew in a lot of ways, but i hope—i hope—i’ve shed some of my trademark self-absorption in all these years. you know, that breed of stupidity that made it impossible for me to consider that what was fun for me might not be good for you. like turning seven pounds of grapes into homemade ‘wine’ so we could sell it to our fourth grade friends. or ditching college to run off with our art.
so. say the word. even if this is where our reconnecting ends—it’s been good enough to make me feel … i don’t know … hemmed. does that make sense? the ragged parts and random pieces wrapped and sealed. there’s comfort in that.
i finally got off my butt after i hung up with you and wandered over to the parents’ place. i think they had a feeling about this scan too. it hit them pretty hard, but i don’t think they were surprised. do enough internet research about glioblastoma and you’ll come away with pretty low expectations.
my mom ranted a bit about me going into the city alone for this kind of thing. you know how she is. ranting is her love language. my dad smacked me on the shoulder and offered me a beer. we talked about my options. mom teared up a couple times and dad gave her the usual look. they’re doing the best they can.
i assume i’ll hear from scheduling tomorrow. they went ahead and did what lab work they could when i was there, so it should be pretty straightforward. we like to say the second time is easier, but that’s not true with getting your skull cracked open. and saying good-bye. not sure that gets any easier either.
gotta get to work. insurance, as usual, is not wanting to cover the next surgery. it’s been an upward battle since labor day’s big surprise. i guess they’ve googled it too. a forty-year-old in the fifth month of a three-to-six-month prognosis doesn’t seem like a very good investment—even to me. and i’ve never been very good with numbers. so … calls to make. forms to fill out. advocates to contact again. i’d say it’s a major headache but that’s a bit redundant, considering.
don’t harm yourself or your family for me, ren. stay close if you can. (please.) but i’ve got weeks and you’ve got years. this recovering narcissist wants you to know that it’s okay. love the ones you’re with, right? and if this hinders that …
i hope you’re sleeping as i write. seeing your face and hearing your voice was—no words. i know you know.
still.
I knew he’d logged off long before, but I answered quickly anyway.
I’m waiting for Ryan to come down for breakfast now. Thank you for the message I found minutes ago. I know your concern is real. So is mine. I feel torn between conflicting needs and loyalties. All good—all essential—but perhaps not intended to inhabit a person all at once. I’m grappling with it, but not willing to let you go. Be assured of that, Aidan. There is an urgency to this reconnecting that stuns me. It’s a good and a horrible thing. And vital somehow. So I’m not going anywhere. Just processing and measuring and not yet concluding. Part of me thinks there will be plenty of time for that later.
Tell me when you have any news, okay? And everything else. Tell me that too.
I’ll check for you later.
I braced myself as the sound of Ryan’s slippered feet reached me from the stairs. I got the baked oatmeal out of the fridge for him and was reaching for the yogurt when I heard him go out the front door.
“Ryan?” He was already down the steps and headed for the gate. I went after him. “Ryan!”
He pulled his bicycle out of the shed without looking around, and I moved past him to block his exit through the gate. “Ryan.”
He stood there holding his bike, looking away, chin jutted out, waiting for me to allow him to pass. I reached for one end of his handlebar and shook it. “Look at me, Ryan.”
He raised dull eyes.
“Tell me what you think you heard last night.”
“I don’t want to.” He looked away again.
Sounding for all the world like someone who had something to hide, I said very slowly, “It’s not what you think you heard.”
“Okay.” There was no conviction in his voice.
“Do you understand me? He’s a friend from home.”
“Can I go now?”
“We need to talk about this, Ryan!”
“I’m going to be late for tutoring with Miss Moore.” He shoved past me and I watched him go. He opened the gate, pushed his bike out ahead of him, then disappeared from sight.
I sat on the ground right where I’d been standing. Muffin pranced around me, thinking it was time to play. I let my eyes skim over this place that had been our home for over two years. The house with its small, barred windows and gray paint. The garden with its wide array of barely living plants. The birds whose communications skills put ours to shame. All of us. It wasn’t just Ryan who had gone virtually mute in recent months. Sam and I still talked, but our words rang hollow with lowered expectations and prejudged conclusions.
And into the dearth of meaning had come a vestige from the past, a man whose face-off with death had lent his waning strength more vitality than the three of us together could muster. I wondered about the timing of his reentry into my universe. I’d been so programmed all my life to see God’s hand in coincidences that I wanted to assign this to him too. Could the random conjunction of Aidan’s cancer and Sullivan introducing me to Facebook be anything less than miraculous? And what if I hadn’t sought her out three years ago in an effort to get the family to Nepal? What if we’d never decided to make the move? Could Aidan have found me if I hadn’t found Sullivan?
My mind reeled with the mysteries that orbited around a central question mark. My conscience demanded answers, exhausted by my studious avoidance of considerations like rightness and repercussions. In a sense, I’d lived the days since that first Facebook message just as Aidan had lived the first three decades of his life: in determined oblivion. And probably, as he had, with a high risk of regret.
I scratched Muffin’s head and stood, walking back toward a house that felt like solitary confinement. I’d get dressed, give Suman instructions, head off to school, be a dutiful teacher, then head home and hope for signs of life from Ryan. I’d perform my rituals with the passivity of someone who has already given up. And into that blandness would come thoughts of Aidan—proof that I had been alive before this pitiful stranding.
Reminders that I wasn’t dead from a man who would be soon.
The return from language school took longer than usual, an accident on the outskirts of the city having forced my bus to take an alternate route. I pushed through the gate and greeted the dog, eager to get to my laptop.
Then I looked up and found Sam sitting on the porch.
“Sam?” He’d only been gone two days. I felt a trickle of dread run down my spine. “Has something happened?” He came down the steps toward me. “Ryan. Is it Ryan?”
He held up both hands. “Honey—no. Nothing’s wrong.”
His arms came around me and held me close. “What are you doing back so soon?”
“I just decided to come home.”
I leaned back. “But … your trip.”
“Prakash is going on without me.” He
kissed me, I thought, with inordinate fervor.
“You just … came back?”
He cocked his head and gave me a look, his arms still around me and his face close. “I’m not sure whether you’re surprised or disappointed.”
“Surprised,” I said, forcing a smile. “Just surprised.”
He kept his arm around me as we walked into the house. “I’ve rescheduled our Nagarkot trip for this weekend—just you and me. We leave on Friday and get back on Sunday night. Is that okay?”
My thoughts should have been on the luxury of getting away. Instead, they were on Aidan. Two days before we left. Three days gone.
“This all seems a little rash,” I said. I tried to lighten the comment by adding, “I haven’t ever known you to be an overly spontaneous person.”
He cringed a little. “Thank you?”
I stared at him as he poured some coffee from the pot he’d made and handed it to me. “What’s going on, Sam?”
“I told you.”
He was pouring himself a cup. I laid a hand on his arm to get his attention. “This isn’t like you.”
“Again,” he said, putting the pot down, “I’m not sure if you sound surprised or disappointed.”
“It’s just—”
“Not like me. So you’ve said.”
He moved into the living room and I followed. His backpack was just inside the door, his jacket draped over the back of the couch. He had reentered my life eighteen days before he was supposed to and my world felt off-kilter. He sat and put his mug on the coffee table, and I saw something that looked like confusion and determination flash across his face. “Here’s what happened.”
I sat in the middle of the couch and tried not to let my eyes linger too long on the laptop charging in the dining room.
Sam steepled his fingers and pressed his lips together, sure signs that he was measuring his words. “So … I got as far as Ghorahi. Met up with Prakash there and hopped on the bus to Nepalgunj. And I had this—I don’t know what to call it.” He looked genuinely bewildered. “It felt like a decision had already been made and I was just then hearing about it. I … I had to come home.” He shook his head.
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