My little boy can fly.
My little boy can fly.
The night before I left for Willow Grove, Tammy found me in Ethan’s room.
“Hey,” she said softly, arms crossed and leaning against the door frame.
Normally, I checked on her, usually finding her on the phone or crying alone in Ethan’s room. Sitting in the rocking chair in the corner and staring at the empty crib. Her arms wrapped around an ungifted Teddy Bear and that giant empty sorrow that I couldn’t chase away from her. She embraced it, favored it and would not let me take it away from her, however desperately I tried. However badly I needed to be able to. After a while I stopped trying. It’s harder to feel helpless that way.
“Hey.”
“How ya doing?”
“I’m fine, Tam.”
She looked down at the empty glass next to me.
“How many of those have you had?”
“One fewer than I need,” I said. And then added, “So far.”
She moved away from me and sat down on the loveseat by the fireplace. I thought about how we had sat there together the night before losing Ethan and I recalled everything from that one night in my previous life. How she was wearing the black turtleneck sweater I had given her for Christmas. How the flicker of the flames were reflected in her eyes. How the light from the fire seemed to settle over her in a soft orange glow. How our four hands caressed her belly.
“Your mom called earlier. She said to tell you she loves you.”
I nodded. “You two have a nice talk?”
I grabbed my glass and went to the kitchen before she could answer. She followed. She leaned against the fridge with her arms crossed in front of her and watched me make another vodka tonic.
I turned around and took a long sip. “You want one?”
She shook her head. “Your mom would like to be able to talk to you, too, you know.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to her.”
“What does that mean?”
I unscrewed the lid to the vodka and splashed more into my glass, filling it back to the rim. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I have nothing to say.”
“Well, sometimes it helps to talk.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah? Tell me, what does it help, Tam?”
She didn’t answer.
“My brother called yesterday,” I said. “You know what he asked me?”
She shook her head and I took another drink.
“He asked me how you were doing. Sure, at first it was like, ‘How you doing, bro—holding up ok?’ in that macho bullshit way. I said I was fine and that was the end of it.”
Everything began to swirl around me. I kept trying to refocus on Tammy, but my eyes couldn’t catch her.
“Well, he knows that you’ll talk when you’re ready to,” she said. “And he knows how strong you are.”
“HA! Is that right? Well, tell me, Tam—how strong am I? Strong enough for this? Strong enough to lose my son—is that how strong I am? Who the hell is that strong?”
“No. You’re not that strong, Tucker. I know you’re not.” She moved toward me, but I pulled back.
“I think I hurt less than you, Tam. I can’t imagine hurting more than I do right now and I hurt less than you—the whole world says so.”
I drank down the rest of my drink and put the empty glass on the counter next to the near-empty vodka bottle.
“Now, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
On the way home from visiting Grandma one night, I stop in for a drink at Joe’s Place, one of Glidden’s oldest drinking establishments. I nestle up to the bar and wait for my vodka tonic like a baby robin waiting for mama to come home with a big juicy night crawler.
Dad took me here once when I was in college. It was the only time the two of us ever went out drinking together. I had sat on this barstool and—for a while anyway—went drink for drink with that father of mine—the war veteran, the womanizer, the life of the party. I wanted to find something of him inside me that night, but all I ended up finding was a stupid college boy who couldn’t hold his liquor.
After I vomited in the men’s room, Dad said goodbye to his buddies and ushered me out. I was expecting laughter and jokes at my expense, but none came. Maybe because he was ashamed of me. Maybe because he saw I was ashamed of myself.
“Another one?” asked the barkeep, yanking me back to now. “Vodka tonic, right?”
I nod.
This is the problem with not moving far from home—with not leaving parents, grandparents, and history behind. You can’t rub your hands on the mahogany bar at Joe’s without remembering that part of your father is soaked in to the grains of the wood.
Grandpa Mueller, too. This had been a favorite hangout of his and I can see the face of my mother’s father looking back at me from inside the mirror behind the bar.
My world is haunted by all these ghosts. Some of them gone, all of them living. Memories of them all half buried beneath flimsy little tombstones in my mind that mark that which once mattered or—just as often it seemed—that which never mattered at all.
I hope that in some corner of heaven there is a tavern where I will someday reunite with all my family and friends. Where Grandma Gaines is young, Katie Cooper is grown, and Ethan is just whoever Ethan is. Some heavenly Joe’s Place where I can sit at the bar with Dad on one side and Grandpa Mueller on the other and we are all young and vibrant and full of life. So that each of us can be that particular sinner we are meant to be. Each of us battles to hold down the evil inside of us, and to hold off the evil around us. Because evil breathes and lives and is as omnipresent as God. You’ll find it in your safe places where it stays dormant for days and weeks, months and years. It lives and lurks there, greedily stealing in sin and in silence.
In stillness.
It isn’t always so easy to spot, evil. Usually it’s buried inside of some sort of want. The want of smaller things, bigger things, softer things, harder things, younger things, better things, things we don’t have.
Evil is a dragon monster, but not the fire-breathing kind that lives in fairy tales. This dragon monster is a slimy microscopic parasite that burrows, chews, and claws its way deep inside of some thing, some place, some one and attaches itself there. It sets up camp, makes a home, and then it spreads.
You will find it near you and around you. And if you are honest, you’ll find it within you. You can hide and be cautious and you can check over your shoulder, but it will find you.
… he had felt something change inside him that day Tucker’s little girl went missing. Or then again maybe not. Maybe something unchanged inside him. Maybe it was all just monster food. He couldn’t embrace his monster, but he could no longer deny it either. It hadn’t, as he had hoped, died after that day with Katie. Which meant it would never die. A thought that depressed him. He couldn’t defeat the monster, but maybe he could hide from it …
“At age five Tucker is very concerned about death. He doesn’t want anybody to die.”
My mother wrote these words in my baby book over twenty-five years ago and I have not wavered on the matter. I still don’t want anybody to die. This probably made me a weak Christian, but I’ll take that bird in the hand every time. This life has always been good enough for me.
I suppose that the antidote to this fear of death is a strong faith, but my faith is just one of my ten thousand weaknesses. But in defense of the Weak in Faith everywhere, I have to say that it would be a hell of a lot easier to believe in a God who took the time to actually talk to you once in a while. I don’t mean talk to you through feathers or back-scratched messages. I mean talk to you in a sitting down to dinner and discussing our day sort of way.
“How was your day today, Tucker?”
“Good, God. How was your day? Dinner smells wonderful. Filet mignon again!”
Even better would be God the career counselor or God the life coach.
“What should I
do with my life, God?”
“Have you thought about missionary work, Tucker? Or perhaps a career in advertising and sports marketing?”
Why not give us tangible proof of heaven? I mean, to get the big payoff in the end, we’ll still need to be good people and follow the Ten Commandments and help old ladies cross the street and all that. But why make us wonder if we’re doing it all for naught?
I suppose it has something to do with the importance of the mystery of faith, but I don’t want my God to work in mysterious ways. I want my God to work in pragmatic ways, which I think would actually go over pretty well with people.
Within a matter of days and in a non-committal sort of way, death began to settle inside of Grandma. Still I was not really saddened. Death quietly crept into the room on tippy-toes like some exaggerated cartoon monster and I sat back and waited for her to transform, as if I was waiting for a green light to turn red.
Grandma’s three day stint in the rehabilitation center became four. Four days became five, five became never-to-leave. Even though I loved her as much as ever—maybe even more after these weeks with her and Grandpa—the thought of her death did not sadden me. I found an almost anxious comfort in the fact that she was going to die. Like it was a return to the natural order of things. She was seventy-seven years old; it would be okay for her to die.
Or maybe Ethan’s death had permanently changed me, made me hard. All I knew was that the fact that life actually ends for each of us at some point was a concept I had struggled with my entire life and yet somehow I was almost indifferent to the prospect of losing her.
I loved Grandma very much.
I would miss her dearly.
It was okay if she died.
Still, I visited her every day. She always looked tired but seldom complained. Every time that I was there Dad was either there, too, or had just left or was going to be arriving shortly. Most times I brought Tory with me. She would hold tight to my hand as we walked those grim hallways that lead to Grandma’s room.
Old eyes fell on her tenderly. Old hands reached out for her. Old smells enveloped us, seeped inside. In us, they saw their past. In them, I saw my future. The place frightened Tory, but she always wanted to come. Always wanted to see Great Grandma.
One time as we were leaving, Tory said to me, “Dad, how come Great Grandpa isn’t in here, too?”
“Well, Great Grandpa isn’t sick like Great Grandma is, Sweetie,” I said. But I knew what she was asking.
“But Grandpa Ron isn’t sick and he’s always here with Great Grandma.”
“It’s very hard for Great Grandpa. He visits a lot, but it’s hard for him to see Great Grandma feeling so sick.”
The truth was that I had wondered the same thing myself. I hadn’t asked him about it, though. Didn’t have to, as he was always volunteering excuses.
He felt a cold coming on and thought it best to stay away for a couple days. Dugan Clark was coming over to give an estimate on re-roofing the house. The truck had stalled on him and he had spent all morning working on the engine.
Grandpa visited his wife, but not like a husband. He came and went like a neighbor or a second cousin or a volunteer from the church. Two or three times a week, maybe fifteen minutes at a time.
“It sure is nice of Grandpa Ron to stay with Great-Grandma all the time, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Tory, it sure is.”
“It’s because that’s his mommy, right Dad?”
“That’s right.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, Tory?”
“If you get sick like that someday, I’ll stay with you, too. Every day. I promise I will.”
When we get back to Willow Grove, I hand Tory off to Tam who sent our little girl to bed for a nap. I head up to the playground in search of more “mouths of babes” type wisdom from my swinging friend. But there would be no such insights on this day.
As I approach the park, I see the limp body of Swinging Girl lying across the arms of Son Settles.
Son takes a quick look around, doesn’t see anyone. Doesn’t see me approaching from behind him. Her body cradled against his, he starts toward the street where his car is still running and the passenger-side door is open. As he scuttles toward the car, his L.A. Dodger baseball hat blows off his head.
“Son!” I shout.
He stops, turns around and faces me.
“Tucker?”
Running toward him now, I say, “What the hell are you doing, Son? Put her down.”
“She’s not breathing, Tucker! She’s not breathing!”
“Put her down,” I command. “What did you to her, Son? What the hell did you do?”
“Do to her? Tucker … this is my daughter.”
Son Settles a father? It didn’t seem possible. And until this moment, I wasn’t even a hundred percent convinced Swinging Girl was even a real person.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes! I came to take her home and when I honked, her hands slipped from the chains and she fell off the swing. The fall must have knocked her out, but why is her face turning blue?”
Gum.
“Here, give her here.”
Sitting on the ground, I hold her back against my chest, slide my arms under her armpits, and locked my fingers in front of her chest. On the third attempt, a wad of gum comes shooting out of her mouth. She coughs and gasps for air the way I do after my choking dream. It makes me thirsty for air myself and I inhale as much of it as I can.
“Oh, thank God. Thank God,” Son repeats, and he is crying.
Son Settles’ daughter started breathing again, and he is crying.
I stare at him, count the tear drops on his cheeks as if they are tiny measures of his love.
Swinging Girl leans back against my chest. I inhale deeply again, trying to breathe enough for the both of us.
Just keep breathing, little girl. Keep breathing forever.
“Come here, baby girl,” Son says, and Swinging Girl crawls into the arms of her father.
Looking at me over his daughter’s shoulder, Son says, “Thank you, Tucker. Thank you.”
I stand up and walk over to where that Dodgers cap is lying on the ground. I pick it up, dust it off, and hand it to him.
“You’re welcome, Son.”
That night, I ask Tammy to go up to the tavern with me and she surprises me with a yes. We tuck Tory into bed and leave her in the care of her great grandfather, then walk up town to Mustang’s.
Son is back behind the bar and there are a few more patrons than I had come to expect. I seat Tammy at a table by the window and go to the bar to get drinks.
“Hey, Son. Give me a draught and a Malibu and pineapple.”
I must have said it quietly because Son cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers back at me, “It’s okay. It’ll be our little secret.”
Laughing, I say, “No, the Malibu is for my wife.” I motion to the table by the window.
Son takes a peek over at Tammy who waves.
“Well, I’ll be darned. Say, where’s the dog?”
“What do you mean? What dog?”
“You know, the dog that helps her cross the street and stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just get the drinks, huh?”
“Bring’em right over,” he says, still laughing at himself.
As I walk away, he calls out to me. “Hey, Tuck—”
“You’re welcome, Son.”
Son brings the drinks to our table and makes like he is doing it for his old buddy and not just to get a better look at Tammy. He puts the Malibu and pineapple in front of me and acts surprised when I slide it across to Tammy. Quite the charmer, that Son.
“First round’s on the house,” he says when I hold out the cash for the drinks.
I introduce the two of them and make small talk long enough that I suspect it might get the second round on the house, too.
When he leaves, I tell Tammy some of my Son Settles’ stories.
“So I guess you’re not
enemies anymore, huh?”
“Ah, it sounds worse than it was.”
And that was the truth. We’d had our run-ins, sure, but hell, we managed to co-exist in the same small town for ten-plus years. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we were just two guys without much in common who got along fine.
Tammy stares down at the table and smiles.
“What? What’s so funny?”
Looking up she says, “Not funny. Nice. This has been nice.”
I survey the tavern and its patrons. Dark and smoky, dirty and outdated.
“Yeah, nothing but the best for my baby,” I say.
“You know what I mean, it’s nice being together like this. It’s been nice being here with you.”
I reach over and grab her hand.
“Tam, it’s nice being anywhere with you.”
“Well, I’m glad that you talked me into coming to stay here. It’s been good for Tory, too. She was really missing you. She needs her daddy.”
“Her daddy needs her. I’m glad you guys came. I didn’t really think you would.”
“Tell the truth,” she says. “Part of you didn’t want us to, did you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that part of me that likes to get drunk and feel sorry for himself.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got a part of me that likes to pull the blankets over my head and cry in bed all day.”
“Yeah, but you don’t, do you? Hell, you couldn’t. Not with me around. You had to take care of Tory.”
Tammy and I both know I’m selfish. She left it unsaid.
“Has it helped? Being here, I mean,” she says.
It’s a good question. Saying yes justifies coming here, but is it true? I was still drinking. I didn’t miss Ethan any less. Yet the memories of the town. Of my childhood. There were moments in the day where my mind went places without Ethan. The memories of Katie Cooper and Slim Jim gave me something different to be sad about, which I welcomed. Seeing old friends and swapping stories. Seeing familiar places and retracing childhood footsteps.
“Yeah, it’s helped some. I’m no less sad, but maybe a little happier—you know?”
As we sit there and get drunk together, I tell Tammy everything that has happened in the days since I returned to Willow Grove.
Where the Broken Lie Page 12