by Nikki Young
“I need to. I can’t live with her not knowing the truth,” I tell him, but even my words don’t sound like my own and nothing about them makes me move forward.
“I know,” he says, as he lets go of my hand and exits the car.
I’m not ready, but it doesn’t matter and I follow his lead. I feel like my body isn’t my own, following Benji up the walk and to the front door as I’m hit with déjà vu. Standing in this very spot just a few weeks ago, I was begging Samantha to talk to me, but unable to give her the answers she needed. I’m hoping today is different.
Benji’s hand is shaking as he lifts it to ring the bell. Just that small action shows me he’s as nervous as I am. Throughout all this, he’s remained calm and steadfast; he’s been my rock, but I can see it’s all beginning to wear on him. I don’t want him to fall apart too, and I know he will if this keeps up. I’m glad to know that after today we can start to figure out what a normal life will look and feel like. We’ll be done with all of this and we can finally move on…I hope.
We waited until the late afternoon in hopes that Samantha would be home from work; that is if she even works. I don’t know anything about her and Tommy’s life together. And before I can give it anymore thought, the door opens.
Samantha’s mouth literally drops open like I’m the last person she thought she’d see standing on her porch. Instantly, she’s defensive, crossing her arms over her chest, her mouth now set in a firm line.
“I told you not to come back here,” she hisses, and Benji takes a step back, but I don’t move. I’ve been here before and while I don’t know her well, I do know she’s not going to do anything rash. As much as she wants to hate me, she knows I’m the only one who has answers for her.
I saw it when I was here the first time. She wanted to unload everything on me, but something made her hold back. Whether it was fear or hatred or anger or just plain obstinacy, she will eventually give in.
“Samantha, please,” I say, remaining as calm as possible. “This is Benji Kennedy.” My eyes flicking over to where Benji is standing. “We grew up with Tommy and we’d like just a few minutes to talk to you. Maybe help you understand everything that’s happened.”
She lets out an irritated sigh, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s contemplating hearing me out or if she’s ready to tell me to fuck off. But before she can respond, the door is pushed open and Thomas is standing next to her.
Without giving it a second thought, she turns to him and in a sweet voice says, “Baby, go upstairs, please.”
Thomas looks up at her and then at Benji and me standing on the porch. He smiles at me and waves a little and I can’t help but smile back at him, completely enamored with how much he resembles Tommy. His beautiful brown eyes and his shy smile, his eyes so telling of what a wonderful person he will become. I saw it in Tommy and I can see it in Thomas. More than anything, Thomas is why I’m here now. I want him to grow up and not see the mistakes his father made, but see the wonderful man he was.
“I know you,” Thomas says, as he points to me and I almost respond in agreement since we met at the funeral, but he then points to Benji too.
I’m certain the look on all our faces says we’re shocked and I watch Samantha squat down in front of him, her hands on his arms. “Thomas, you don’t know them,” she says, softly as if to remind him he’s wrong.
“I do, Mommy,” he says and wiggles out of her loose hold before scampering upstairs.
Samantha runs a hand through her hair and again lets out a sigh, but this time I can tell she’s exhausted, this whole thing is taking a toll on her life, her family and her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, but her voice conveys she’s anything but sorry. It’s just an apology to fill the space. “I really can’t do this.” She shakes her head and just as she’s about to the close the door, Thomas returns and he’s holding something.
“Look, Mommy,” he says, flashing what appears to be a piece of paper at her. It’s clutched in his hand, the paper is wrinkled and tattered and as I look more closely, I notice it’s a photograph.
I step forward, but Samantha holds up her hand as if to tell me not to step any closer. She again kneels down in front of Thomas and takes the picture from his hand. Looking at it, she turns it over and reads what’s written on the back.
Her eyes fill with tears as she looks up at Benji and me and then back at Thomas. It feels like we stand in silence forever. None of us saying anything, the air between us heavy and any words we’d once spoken are now lost. I can feel the shift, the change in what was once a hopeless relationship, has somehow been altered with just a photograph.
“Thomas,” she whispers weakly, and he cocks his head to the side. His little mind wondering why she’s crying again, I’m sure. I can’t imagine what he’s seen over the last few weeks and how much his world has changed. “Daddy gave this to you?” she asks, and he nods.
“He did, but it was a secret. He told me that even if he wasn’t here, you and Grandma and Grandpa and these people,” he says looking at Benji and me again with that perfect smile on his face, “will always love me.”
She pulls Thomas into her embrace as she begins to cry a little bit harder. I don’t know what has changed or what about the picture has made her change her mind about us, but something is different.
She lets go of Thomas, but as she does, she whispers something in his ear and he nods his head, leaving the three of us alone as he makes his way up the stairs.
Samantha wipes at her cheeks and swipes under her eyes as she wets her lips and hands the picture to me.
Benji steps closer to me, his hand resting on the small of my back. I can feel the warmth of his touch through my coat and it’s enough to relax me. I find myself leaning against him as we both finally look down at the picture.
It’s a picture of Benji and me that had to have been taken shortly before the accident, probably only a few weeks before. I remember it well. My head is resting on Benji’s shoulder and he’s smiling at the camera while I’m looking the other way. I remember Tommy had called my name just before Kelly took the picture, and I looked over at him. He mouthed the word ‘smile’, but it was too late, Kelly had already taken it.
Before I realize it, my body is flush against Benji’s, his arm now wrapped around my waist and that’s when I turn the picture over. My hand is shaking; actually my entire body is shaking. Without Benji this close, I don’t think I could stand, but as Benji’s arm tightens around my waist, I realize he’s feeling the same way.
It says, These people love you and they don’t even know you.
It’s written in Tommy’s handwriting and what he’s written is completely true. I don’t even know Thomas, but I love him with everything I have. He’s all I have left of Tommy and when I look up and take in Benji’s face, there’s a love there for Thomas, too.
I hand the picture back to Samantha and she smiles gratefully. It’s the first smile I’ve seen since meeting her and while it’s not authentic, it’s better than the scowl she’s worn. She steps aside, pushing the door open, she gives her head a quick flick as if to tell us to come in and then she says, “I think I’m ready to hear what you have to say.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Samantha leads us into the kitchen and as I walk through the house, I see pictures of Tommy with Samantha and Thomas. Baby pictures and pictures of smiling faces, happiness and joy and all the things that should grace a home. But underneath it all, the happiness is just lying on the surface. While the house is immaculate and beautiful, there is so much tragedy and sadness that fills it. I want to believe that when these pictures were taken and this house was purchased, when Tommy married Samantha, and when Thomas was born, that those days held true happiness; that Tommy’s life wasn’t always a desperate attempt to escape and forget the past.
I begin to get choked up when I see pictures of Tommy holding Thomas, kissing him and hugging him. It breaks my heart that his child will grow up without a father, th
at he will never know all the love and kindness that radiated from Tommy. What was left was a broken shell of his former self, wounded and scarred with nothing left to give.
Judging by his house and his wife and the fact that they had a kid together, he tried to recover, tried to carry on, but if anyone knows the difficulty in that, it’s me and clearly he wasn’t able to do it.
I can hear Thomas playing in his room and I’m overcome with emotion. I feel the tears well up in my eyes, wondering if he has any idea what has happened, what is happening. His life will never be the same. I find myself wondering if Samantha were to remarry quickly, would Thomas even remember his father? I hate myself for thinking it. It’s a horrible thought. Tommy was one of my best friends and in the end I should be doing whatever I can to ease some of this stress that has taken over his family.
“Campbell,” Benji says, and I realize I’ve disconnected, lost in my own depressing thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Are you coming?” he asks, as he looks back from where he’s standing in the kitchen; Samantha watching me with a sad look on her face. A permanent reminder of what she’s going through.
As I take in her face, I’m suddenly reminded of Tommy’s funeral and the two women I was seated next to and their discussion of Tommy’s suicide and Samantha and Tommy’s flawed marriage. “She never would’ve married him if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Thomas,” the one woman had said, and something about the comment hurt. I hated that Tommy wasn’t in love with his wife, that he married her out of obligation, but above all, that it ended this way.
But I’m hit with the realization that what was said is probably not the full truth. None of this is, there’s still so much hidden and after seeing Samantha, I know we all have a lot to talk about. No one grieves for someone they didn’t love, and the way I see Samantha suffering, I know she loved him.
We’re now sitting at the kitchen table, although none of us has spoken yet. The silence is hanging heavy in the air and when the first words are spoken, they’re loud and I immediately draw my words back to a whisper.
“I’m not sure where to begin,” I repeat, but this time I’m quieter. I shake my head; I never imagined meeting with Samantha would be this hard.
Whether Tommy loved Samantha or not, there is now another life involved in all this, a child who never asked for any of this. And while I fight with this thought, I also wonder what would’ve happened if Kelly hadn’t killed herself. Did Tommy love Samantha as much as he loved Kelly? How do you even explain any of it?
I’m now holding the picture of Benji and me that Tommy had given to Thomas, and as I turn it over in my hand, re-reading the words and looking at the picture, I begin to speak.
“I’m really sorry, Samantha,” I tell her, but I know those words will do nothing to ease her pain. They’ve been said to me more times than I can count and quite honestly, all they did was add to my hatred of the situation. What are they even sorry for? And those words will never bring back what was lost.
“Thank you,” she replies, giving the obligatory response, and already this conversation is off to a bad start, fake and contrived.
I look over at Benji who has been pretty much silent since all this began and I realize up until this moment, this is the first time we’re meeting with someone who has a connection to what occurred. She was more directly involved than I ever realized.
He takes a few seconds and begins the conversation I should have started.
“So, Tommy, Campbell,” he says motioning to me, “ and I all grew up together. I don’t know how much he’s told you, but there were actually five of us.”
As he speaks Samantha shakes her head as if to say she knows nothing, which I know is true. She admitted it to me when we first met and all she’s known up until this point is speculation and ideas that have been created by her mind; bits and pieces of information she gathered from Tommy while he was still alive. Yet none of it is whole and none of it is the truth.
Benji keeps talking, “There was Sam and Kelly, too. We were inseparable. But when we were nineteen, it all ended.”
I reach over with my hand and cover Benji’s hand that is resting on the table. My touch stops him and I immediately pick up where he left off. I don’t want him to do this alone, especially since it’s me that Samantha blames.
“We were in a car accident that killed Sam and instead of staying, we left. We left Sam and the family in the other car dead. Tommy was the one who witnessed most of it.”
I’m not sure how much more to say. There are secrets that Benji and I keep still between us for a reason, but I don’t know if they’re necessary for Samantha to understand the turmoil that plagued Tommy’s life.
I look over at Benji and with a small shake of his head I know to leave off the fact that the two of them watched that young boy die in the car.
“At the time, Tommy and Kelly had been together for about four years,” Benji adds, but he pauses as he tries to figure out exactly how to explain Tommy’s relationship with Kelly. “A week after the accident, Kelly killed herself. It devastated Tommy and that’s when things slowly started to unravel.”
Samantha has yet to say anything and I’m not certain how much further we should take it. It still doesn’t give her an accurate description of the trouble and horribleness that we would all come to face at the hand of our decision. I can only hope it’s enough to allow Samantha to forgive me and forgive Tommy for what he’s done.
“This explains a lot,” Samantha finally says. “I always thought it was you he was hung up on,” she states, looking over at me. “But it wasn’t. It was the other girl. It makes more sense now. Her death and the accident, his drug use and the response he had to his parents death.”
“What?” Benji practically shouts, and if he hadn’t beaten me to it, I would’ve said the same thing. “Tommy’s parents are dead?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I have a lot to share with you too,” Samantha says, as she takes a deep breath. “I always thought this was something that was between Tommy and me, that our relationship was just shit because of how we got back together,” she says, as she adds quietly, “Not like we were ever really apart.”
I give her a confused look, not understanding exactly what she’s saying. Like Samantha, Benji and I know nothing about Tommy’s life after the accident.
“We met after he transferred to the University of Wisconsin, but I never really knew much about his life before that. He told me he needed a change and I never questioned it.” She runs her hand through her hair and lets out a sigh as she continues. “We were young and I guess I never realized how out of hand his drug problem was. It was college. We all drank and did drugs, but as the years went by, Tommy didn’t stop like most people did. We graduated, got jobs, moved in together, but as much as I loved him, I’m not sure we were ever happy.”
I often find myself wondering what our lives would’ve been like had the accident not happened. Would I have ended up with Benji? Would Sam, Kelly and Tommy have stayed together or would they eventually have realized their arrangement just wasn’t possible? Each of them realizing one loves the other more; Kelly loving Sam more than Tommy and Tommy loving Kelly more than anyone. Would Tommy have eventually asked her to choose?
I feel sorry for Samantha because I know Tommy didn’t love her like he loved Kelly. It just wasn’t in him to replace her and not that that’s what I think he was trying to do, but I do think he was trying to numb the pain.
I give Samantha a weak smile, hoping she sees we understand what she’s going through, how difficult it must have been for her to live all these years without an explanation of why Tommy behaved the way he did. And even after now knowing what he dealt with, I’m not sure it eases any of her years of trying to help him and the suffering she still feels.
“I wanted to save him,” Samantha says, laughing a little but there’s no humor to her tone. “You know, like the love of a good woman can save anyone. But even I knew it was a lie.” S
he shakes her head at her comment, but I understand. She wanted to see the good in Tommy and at some point she must have or she wouldn’t have stayed. He was an amazing person, kind and generous, his personality was infectious.
Benji and I say very little as she keeps talking. I imagine most of this she has kept hidden from her family and friends, because the more she talks the more that comes out. Like she’s wanted to say it for years. There’s a comfort factor with us that she hasn’t found with anyone else. We understand what she’s been dealt and we would never judge her choice to stay with him. Had things between the three of us not ended badly, I know Benji and I would’ve stood by Tommy, too.
“I finally tried to give him an ultimatum. I tried to tell him it was drugs or me, but there was a part of me that just couldn’t leave him. I had moved back in with my parents, but I still couldn’t cut him out of my life. I worried about him constantly and spent just as much time with him as I always had. Then I found out I was pregnant.”
“What changed?” Benji asks, and I already know. I’ve had this talk with Samantha and while I know it wasn’t something she wanted to share at the time, she still did. But as she tells it now, I can see she’s more comfortable talking about it than she was before.
A simple smile crosses her lips as if she remembers the moment and discussing it has brought back all those feelings and emotions. “He stopped everything as soon as I told him. No more drugs. It was unreal how easily it all ended.” She stops, and I see the tears form in her eyes. “We were normal for like five minutes.” Samantha looks away and mumbles, “I’ll never know normal again.”
I want to tell her that we all make our own normal and not to live with what people expect you to be and do. One day her life will be normal again, normal to her. It might not be the mom and dad with the two kids living in the perfect house with the perfect marriage. Her and Thomas’ life will always be flawed, but what happens in the future is up to them. And as I sit here and listen to her talk, I know I want to be part of that future. I want to be part of Thomas’ normal.