Finding Jake

by Bryan Reardon

  I do not slow as I leave the pavement and cross through the Martin-Kleins’ lawn. From a distance, I see a break in the dead undergrowth. With a leap, I am once again in the forest.

  I do not go all the way. Instead, I stand near the pond, staring at the shadowy outline of the fort. A chilled breeze cuts through the skeletal trees, pressing its cold touch against my cheeks. My breath fogs, rising up before my line of sight, giving movement to the otherwise desolate scene.

  First, one step. Then a second. Tentatively, I approach the scene of Jake’s death. When I reach the spot, time ceases to exist. The sun sets behind a line of sentinel pines and long shadows creep across the forest floor.

  How do I leave? How do I get up and walk away? Jake will be alone, even though I know he is no longer here. I cannot let that happen. Instead I stay by his side. I sit at the ending. And all I can think about is the beginning.

  The alarm sounded at 5:50 AM on February 12, 1997. I still remember the song that played, TLC’s Waterfalls.

  A lonely mother gazing out of the window

  Staring at her son that she just can’t touch

  I reached across Rachel, feeling the swell of her belly under my elbow as I gently press the snooze button. A slight pressure moved across my skin, or maybe I imagined it. The night before, I watched as his little foot pushed out and across her tummy (at least it looked like a foot). I watched for some time after the movement stopped, hoping to see it again. Rachel said he quieted down but I waited a little while longer, just to be sure. Then I turned our light out and went to sleep, the last time I would do that as just a man. The next day, I would be a father.

  “Sweetie, it’s time,” I whispered.

  Rachel stirred, making that noise she’d made since I met her, a soft purrlike grumble, as if to say, I love you but let me sleep. I smiled, hugging her (and my son).

  “We can’t be late,” I said.

  I’m not sure why I thought we couldn’t be late. Five hours later found us sitting in a maternity room, anxious and bored at the same time. The induction began on time, right about eight AM and soon after the doctor broke my wife’s water. I will not go into details on that one. Suffice it to say I will remember but will probably not bring it up at any parties.

  As we played another sluggish hand of cards, my mind returned to a familiar thought: one I had on my wedding day; while I was sitting at my college graduation; during my first Holy Communion; and many other moments in my life. I expected some kind of grandiose display of amazingness in these pinnacle slices of time. Instead, during each one, I marveled at the utter triviality of the scenario.

  “The baby’s heart rate is dropping,” the doctor said. “We have to consider a C-section.”

  Rachel’s eyes opened wide. She had endured over twelve hours of induced labor. Before that fateful day, she confided in me that a C-section scared her to death. She had wanted more than anything to give birth naturally (not no-drug natural, just the old-fashioned way). Amazingly, she had never been under the knife in her entire life.

  The machine buzzed and beeped at the same time, startling me. My son’s beats per minute dropped to sixty-five.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  No one heard me, or at least no one reacted. The doctor spoke softly to Rachel but I could not listen. Instead, I just stared at the monitor, willing that number to go up. I hate to admit this, because it will sound odd, but I did this other thing, too. I probably will not explain it correctly, but I reached inside. In my mind, it was like pulling out a piece of my soul that I thrust free and offered to the tiny life inside my wife’s body. I tried to give my unborn son a slice of my own life. I felt the tug from my core as I held my breath, offering him everything. The number dipped even lower.

  The doctor turned to a nurse.

  “Prep delivery room four.”

  The nurse hustled out and the doctor leaned in toward Rachel once again. “We have to move you over to an operating room now. Your baby’s heart rate has dropped too low. Everything will be fine, but we will start prepping you for a section. Okay?”

  Rachel nodded. The doctor left the room and I hugged my wife. I could feel her sobs against my chest.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Those words tore my heart out. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. The doctors will make sure Jake’s okay. And I’m here for you. I promise.”

  Rachel did not say anything else. Two orderlies (possibly the same two we’d seen that morning) appeared in the doorway. Cautiously, they wheeled Rachel and her bed out of the room and down the hall. A nurse approached me as I watched my wife being taken away.

  “Mr. Connolly, you can come with me. We need you to get scrubbed before you can go back with her.”

  There are moments in life when you are faced with an impossible decision; a choice must be made when you no longer live for yourself. Mine occurred at the single biggest moment of my life up until that day, the instant my son came into this world. Some details of that moment are my wife’s alone and I would not share them. What I recall was sitting on a stool at the head of my wife’s hospital bed. The nurses erected a screen just below Rachel’s chest, blocking the operation from our view, more Rachel’s than mine. I had been operated on in my life, but never awake like she was. I could not fathom what it must have been like for her.

  I did my best to support her. I held her hand as her body shuddered, sometimes from her nerves, other times from the manhandling of the operation being performed on her abdomen.

  “They’re pulling me,” she moaned, her voice thick from the epidural.

  “It’s okay.” I spoke softly to her. “Everything will be okay.”

  The nurses and doctors spoke confidently while they worked. I missed most of what they said but it sounded as if everything was proceeding as planned. I tried to find the monitor on my son’s heart but couldn’t. Maybe that was for the best.

  “It hurts,” Rachel said.

  “She says it hurts,” I told the nurse.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Tears rolled down my wife’s face as she stared up at the ceiling. The droplets melted into the coarse fabric pillowcase, leaving a slowly expanding dampness. I wiped one away and she flinched as if my touch hurt.

  “It’s okay,” I said again. I could not find any other words.

  “He’s coming,” the doctor said. “Do you want to see?”

  I stirred, a morbid curiosity piqued by her suggestion, but Rachel grabbed my hand. I looked down and she glared up.

  “Don’t look at me,” she ordered through a clenched jaw.

  I sat back down, nodding gravely. Neither the nurses nor the doctors took any notice. They continued their work.

  When Jake finally joined us, I did not notice the exact instant. Or maybe I will never remember it. The span from Rachel telling me to stay with her and when a nurse placed Jake on a small metal table vanished or never existed. Who knows? All I can remember is turning my head and seeing him. His eyes locked on to mine. I know every expert or know-it-all would say that it was impossible, that babies cannot see more than light and dark at that point, or whatever. I know the truth. Our eyes met. He looked at me. Tears welled in my eyes and I blinked them away, needing to see my son, for him to see that I looked at him as well.

  That look—it changed the world. Jake called out to me without making a sound. His tiny head tilted to the side, his red lips set in a straight line. He absorbed my everything, taking it in and holding so tight that I knew I’d never get it back. I disappeared that day, vanished and reborn as something entirely new. Not a stand-alone presence but part of a matrix of shared existence. At the time, I did not put a word to it, but later I would. The word, one I thought I understood before, but my prior comprehension fell woefully short, was love.

  “Do you want to hold him?” the nurse asked.

  I stood, my body feeling airy, al
most ethereal, as if Jake might pass right through me. My arms reached out and the nurse, having already cleaned him up a bit, swaddled my son so quickly that I barely noticed and handed that little dream to me. I felt his tiny weight pressing down on my forearms and knew he was real, that he would always be real, no matter what. My son looked up at me, his expression so untouched, so new, that I could not stop crying. I bent and kissed his forehead, my dry lips warmed by his skin.

  I do not know how long I held him. I lost track of everything but Jake until a nurse touched my shoulder.

  “Let’s give Mom a turn,” she said.

  My eyes widened a bit. I turned, slowly, and looked at Rachel. What I saw was a moment I could never undo. She stared at Jake, her eyes still so full of fear. Though the realization was never expressed as words, it swallowed us that day. This little infant, so small and frail, you would think him the vulnerable one. The truth is that the real vulnerability opened inside us. No longer did we live as ourselves. We lived for him.

  There is no dog this time. No one is there to lead me out of the woods. In the end, it is weakness. The cold cuts through my damp running clothes and my body shakes violently. I close my eyes to the darkness and walk away, walk home, and sleep.

  CHAPTER 32

  DAY TWENTY-SOMETHING

  The next morning, I get the mail. I do not want to, but I do. Once back inside, I walk calmly into our dining room. This is where I always put the mail. Today, it seems like a foreign place, a room I have never seen before. Paintings and family pictures still hang in the same spots. Sitting at my dining room table, I am surrounded by a border of floral wallpaper I’d meant to take down when my kids were young. There are pictures of Laney and Jake surrounding me. One shows them swinging side by side at the elementary school. Laney’s full, downy hair flies behind her like the flames from a cartoon jet engine. Jake is . . . smiling.

  I glance at each picture on the wall. Our dining room is a collage of their childhood, but my eyes focus on one thing—Jake’s face. Smile, smile, smile. Okay, there are frowns, too. And looks of surprise. These are the pictures Rachel and I chose, picking the younger ones out of a box in the office upstairs and taking them to the photo shop she always loved, choosing the more recent ones from her laptop and printing them ourselves in black and white (or sepia if we felt particularly artful).

  Life is kind of like that, picking the memories you want to frame. We all have an idea of how it should be, all smiles and swing sets. There are the more unsavory moments that we leave in the box stashed up in the darker parts of our psyche. We know they exist but we don’t go flaunting them in front of the dinner guests.

  In that moment, I frame my son’s life. I see him rounding third, helmet brim low, mouth set with fierce determination. I feel that pride like it is happening right this second. I stand in the sand watching the waves roll over him, his body at once helpless and in such graceful control. I see him frozen in time, water cascading around him as he checks to make sure his little sister is okay. In my mind, in my heart, I frame a snapshot of him in the talent show, and jumping high in the air to catch a pass.

  “Oh, Jake,” I whisper, smiling despite the tears.

  My memories are little flashes of light in the darkness. They sparkle and glow, but fade under the weight of what life has become. That darkness fuels the slow decline that is my life since the shooting. I don’t know how to pull myself back up.

  That’s when I see the purple envelope. I reach out, tentative, like checking the sharpness of a knife with a fingertip. When the thick paper touches the pad of my index finger, I know it is real. It is something unexpected and I am frightened by it.

  When my finger and thumb grasp the corner, the paper is cool to the touch. Slowly, cautiously, I slip it out from under the circular. It is a letter, the address scrawled in the unmistakable script of a school-age girl. My heart stops dead in my chest. For the letter is addressed to my son.

  Why? My first thought—it is a perverse, sick joke. But that is not possible. I spasm into motion. In a jerky, desperate slash, I tear the envelope. My hands are shaking as I pull a sheet of notebook paper out, one with a jagged line of flimsy barbs where it has been torn from a spiral binding, so like Jake’s final note. I read:

  Dear Jake,

  My name is Jaimie and I am writing to you from California. I wish you could read this letter. It is not fair that you can’t. When I saw the stories about you on the news, even before everyone knew the great thing you did, I understood. I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but I felt like I knew you. That maybe you and me are alike. See, I’m quiet at school. I don’t always talk to people. Sometimes I don’t talk to anyone. My mom tells me that it’s just who I am. I guess she’s right. But just because your mom says something, doesn’t mean you believe it, right?

  I guess it’s strange that I’m writing this letter. If my mom knew, she’d never, ever let me send it. And I doubt it will ever be read. But you made a difference, not just to those kids in your school that you saved, but to me, too, even though I am so far away. Sometimes people say stuff about us quiet kids, or any kid that isn’t like everyone else. That’s what they did to you. Maybe now, now that they were proven so wrong, they can see that just because someone is different, it doesn’t make them bad. That maybe we should take the time to see what someone is really about, like you, before we decide who they are.

  When the time comes in my life when I can take the easy way that’s wrong or the hard way that’s right, I am going to think about you and remember what you did for your friends. I just hope everyone else does, too.

  You will never be forgotten.

  Love,

  Jaimie

  CHAPTER 33

  DAY TWENTY-SOMETHING

  The next morning, I cannot get that girl’s letter out of my mind. Not entirely sure what I am thinking, I pace around the house, my lethargy replaced by a twitching potential energy. I feel the need to act.

  The thought materializes out of the ether. Ill formed, it pulses like an amoeba. Where it originated, I cannot recall. I simply act, unfettered and without forethought. Using Safari, I find what I am looking for in a town in West Virginia. When I call and ask, the woman on the other end gives me the answer I hope for, the one I somehow knew she would have.

  “We have one left, actually. A boy. If you can get down here to pick him up in the next week, he’s yours.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” I say.

  “Isn’t it quite a drive?”

  I shrug, although I know she can’t see that. “Six, seven hours.”

  She is dubious. “If you can make it . . .”

  “Count on it.”

  I shower and dress for the first time this week. Standing in front of the mirror above the sink, I pull out the shaving cream and a razor. When I wipe my hand across the fogged glass, I see my reflection. Droplets of water distort my vision, diffusing the lines of my face. The shadow of my growing beard juts out, dominating the visage. I like it for what it represents—change. So I put the razor and shaving cream back in the medicine cabinet and walk downstairs, running a hand through the week-old stubble.

  When I finally make it outside the house, the sun has risen to dance among the treetops. Long shadows crisscross the yard and a cardinal darts out of our landscaped bushes and alights on one of the skeletal branches. I watch it sit, motionless, on the limb, its vibrant red contrasting with the stark near-winter grays. I can look at it. It hurts, but I can do it.

  The writer in me wishes the day to be spring. Winter signifies death, the end of a cycle. I do not feel that, at least not in the moment. Instead, I feel a new beginning. It is not one to be excited about, or even nervous. This beginning is tentative, full of nostalgia and longing. Nevertheless, my soul stirs and I think that tomorrow may dawn and the balance of my will might tip. As slow and gnawing as my decline progressed, it now withdraws at the same clip. It is a step in a direction. Right or wrong, however, seems to matter far less now.

/>   Taking a deep breath, I get in my car and drive. I have three stops. Two I dread. When I reach the first, I park the car on the street and walk up the driveway. When I ring the bell, Mary Moore, mother to my son’s homecoming date, opens the door. When she sees me, her eyes widen. I try to smile but know it appears forced. I jump in with both feet before she can slam the door in my face.

  “I’m so sorry for what I did. I—”

  She cuts me off. “I understand, Simon.”

  This is, I think, the first time either of us has used the other’s first name. I feel a strange closeness to this woman, this fellow survivor, and think she must feel the same.

  “I don’t know why I said it.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I should not have gone to your house that day. I just . . . ever since . . . I feel like I’m walking around in a fog. It’s like there’s nothing left to live for.”

  I take a step forward and she laughs, waving off my attempt at a supportive, yet awkward, hug.

  “Don’t worry. I’m out of tears. At least for the moment.”

  I nod. “Me, too.”

  There is nothing left to say. I realize I didn’t need to say anything, but as I walk back down the drive, I admit to feeling slightly better.

  The next stop is much harder. The second Mary. Just driving to the house turns my stomach, but I push through. I fight the urge to flee after I ring the Martin-Kleins’ doorbell. I came to tell them that they are not to blame, even though I know they will blame themselves forever. I have no delusions of grandeur, I do not think my simple words will change their lives. But I need to say it.

  I stand on the stoop, wetting my lips, waiting. The seconds tick by but no one comes to the door. Finally, after ringing the bell two more times, I turn to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I am sure I see the curtain in one of the windows flutter. When I spin around, there is no one there. I stare at the spot for a moment longer. After that, I leave, knowing I won’t come back again.