by Robert Price
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Mrs. Hubbard opened her eyes she was surprised to find Father Hilliard standing over her like a concerned husband.
“Just resting my eyes,” she said, using a phrase her grandfather had used when she caught him napping in the rocking chair in the afternoon sun. Now that she had finally reached her grandfather’s age, it was her turn. “Sit for a moment, Jim,” she offered, calling Father Hilliard by his first name. She motioned to the armchair closest to her. “Sounds like it’s quieting down out there. You’ve been so helpful today, all of it—the funeral, the gravesite, the reception. Such a long day. I want to thank you.”
Several strands of gray hair loosened from her bun and tickled the side of her face. Reaching back, she returned them to their proper place. “I was just thinking about how much this house has seen over the years. You know, my father was born upstairs in Tom’s old room. And my grandfather, rest his soul—and don’t ever tell Elizabeth this or she’d have a fit—but he died in her room.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” said Father Hilliard. Turning around, he lowered his old body into the chair.
“Oh, I know I can trust you to keep a secret.” She glanced up to the mantle at the single thick candle and the headshot of Tom in his dress uniform. “Both of us can, can’t we? We’ve been doing it for years ... keeping secrets.”
“Casey,” the priest said, scrunching up his lips. An entire day of consoling people had worn the old man out. He was tired and wanted to let his and Mrs. Hubbard’s past stay where it was, in the past. What good could possibly come from revisiting our history? His weary gaze rested on a bookshelf by the opposite wall. “You sound clearer now than you have in days.”
“Strange, I’ve rested better here in this chair with everything going on around me than I have since the day he called to tell me he was going back over to the war.” She tugged on the sides of the black shawl. “Well, it’s over for him now, isn’t it? Nothing left but us.”
“God rest his soul.”
“Yes, God rest his soul.” Mrs. Hubbard softly rubbed both hands together and meditatively messaged each knuckle. She swallowed dryly; the medication and whiskey had left a soar paste in her mouth.
“Melanie stopped in,” she said, looking directly at the fire, stretching her arms. “I’m afraid she’s not doing so well. Do you know if she’s still here?”
“I think I saw her go out the door with her boyfriend just as I came in to check on you.” Father Hilliard removed his thick glasses and wiped his eyes. His age, the comfortable cushions of the stuffed chair and the heat in the room combined to make him drowsy and he yawned deeply. He could easily fall asleep.
“She was doing so well, too, before … I was so proud of her when she stopped drinking. I was happy to see she was starting to feel good about herself. But I could see it coming. Let’s pray that this time it doesn’t last long.” She turned to Father Hilliard: “May God go with her, Father.”
“God will,” Father Hilliard confirmed. He yawned again and stretched his back. He was on the verge of drifting off to sleep.
“Jim, why don’t you lay down upstairs and take a nap? The small room at the top of the stairs is open and I believe Elizabeth had the bed made. You can lie down for just a minute and rest your eyes.”
“I should head back to the rectory.”
“I’d feel much better.” She reached across the space between their chairs and placed her hand on his arm. “You, out there, driving around at night in this weather …” She let the words hang. “Is it still raining?”
Her arm, stretching toward Father Hilliard, blocked the path of a blonde, five-year-old boy who wandered in from the living room. The boy squished his face with disapproval just as Father Hilliard drifted off, head falling with a snort. Tommy dipped under Mrs. Hubbard’s arm and presented himself before her like a gift.
“My, who do we have here?” Mrs. Hubbard recognized the child from the gravesite. He had been there with his mother.
“Tommy Phillips,” the boy answered and stood politely in front of her, wondering what to do next. The boy’s attention was immediately drawn, however, to Father Hilliard’s bobbing head. The child studied the old man’s nostrils as they heaved in and out, and he examined the Father’s black and white tab collar as it disappeared and reappeared under his sunken chin. Mrs. Hubbard pushed at his arm to wake him up. Father Hilliard’s chest jumped. His sleep-filled eyes opened wide.
The boy stepped back. “Are you the priest?”
Father Hilliard knew the boy had said something but even with a hearing aid children’s high-pitched voices were difficult. And now, with his weary, sluggish head he had trouble focusing, too.
“Father, the child asked if you were a priest,” Mrs. Hubbard said slowly and loudly. “Honestly,” she added, playfully exasperated. She looked at the boy who appeared delighted that Father Hilliard was groggy and half asleep. “Upstairs with you, Father. Come on, I’ll give you a hand.” Mrs. Hubbard began to stand. The conscientious child positioned himself at her side, ready to assist.
“No, you stay, you stay,” Father Hilliard scolded as he shakily stood. He breathed heavily and slumped at the shoulder. “Small room at the top of the stairs, you say?” He patted her shoulder as he passed on his way out of the room.
Without hesitating, the boy hopped into the empty chair as if he were settling in for a chat. “You have a nice house,” he said. “Very big. Bigger than ours. Our building’s bigger, but our house is smaller. It’s an apartment.”
“An apartment. How nice. Tommy, where do you live?”
“Boston.”
“That’s lovely. Do you remember we met earlier today?”
“Yes.”
“Was that your mother you were with?”
“Yes, my mother. I think she’s here somewhere.”
He wriggled his small body all the way back into the chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. “You have a nice fire. I like fireplaces. We don’t have one, but I like them, overall, that is.” He ended the sentence as if he had just made an important point.
Tommy liked talking. He liked using words, big words, like adults used. From what he gathered by the expression on Mrs. Hubbard’s face, she liked listening to him. As he talked, he covered all sorts of topics. For example, his best friend Arnie, “Sad to say, has an absolute addiction to thumb sucking. Overall a rather terrible set of circumstances.”
He also talked about his daycare teacher, Ms. Jermyn, and how intelligent she was: “My mother is in agreement,” he nodded. Then he mentioned that after daycare was when he was “most bothered” about not having a father, because that’s when some fathers came, at the end of the day, to pick up his classmates. But his best friend Arnie, the thumb sucker, was without a father, too, and that’s why they were best friends. But telling his mother about how not having a father sometimes bothered him would only make her sad, so he thought it best to keep that a secret.
Mrs. Hubbard hardly listened to a word the boy said. She caught only bits and pieces of things. Mostly she sat in awe, amazed at how much the boy looked like her own son, Tom, when he was a child. He constantly fidgeted and squirmed in his seat just like her son Tom had. The way he talked, completely unbridled, was the same way her Tom had talked. Along with her amazement, though, her heart ached as she listened. She wanted to hold the boy, to freeze him in time, to save him from growing any older. That way none of the things that had happened to her Tom could happen to him.
Perhaps he’s better off without a father, she thought, blinking back tears. And in that instant she saw how their home had once been—the arguments, the fights, the hatred. She remembered her husband’s hand hitting her Tom. He was a boy then, innocent, like this boy now. She saw her husband’s open callused palm draw back and drop, slapping her little Tommy’s tender skin until it burned red.
As she listened to the excitement bubbling up in the boy across from her, she recalled how, in the end, when T
om finally fled their home, there was no joy left in his voice. But there had been once. He used to love crawling onto her lap and sitting there, snuggling, holding onto her neck and talking on and on about whatever came to his mind. She would wrap her arms around him and sway and kiss his blonde hair and listen. Tommy knew happiness and he could love—yes, he could love. He could love, that is, until the day the black and blue wounds hardened and he swore he would never feel anything ever again.
“Get away,” he yelled at her one afternoon when returning from hunting in the woods with his father and uncles. She tried to comfort him, hug him, but he had been beaten, worse than usual. He was only ten. “I hate Daddy, and I hate you! Don’t touch me! Ever!”
And he never let her hug him again.
I did my best, the best I could—she told herself.
The little boy, sitting in the armchair across from her, continued to ramble on from subject to subject. As he did, Mrs. Hubbard glanced at the photo of her Tom on the mantle—the resemblance was close—but not close enough. She wanted to rush upstairs to her bedroom, get a photograph of her boy and then hold it up next to this child’s face and compare. Her memory may have failed in many ways, completely rewriting entire sections of her life, and on some days her illness controlled her so much that she slipped into delusions. But today, right now, she was crystal clear. There was no mistaking it; this was her son’s son.
Mrs. Hubbard became agitated. Where is that curly-headed woman I met at the grave? I want to talk to the boy’s mother. She tried to relax, knowing she should react differently, calmer. If she yelled out, caused a commotion, declaring this boy her kin, they would no doubt call her insane. But, in fact, she did feel like screaming, I’m not crazy; this is my grandson!
“Please,” Mrs. Hubbard said to the boy as calmly as possible, “would you please find your mother and bring her to me. I’d like to talk with her.”
Just as she spoke, she sensed a presence behind her.
“I’m here, Mrs. Hubbard.” Carrie Phillips paused before stepping further into the room. She felt tension in the air and worried she had frightened the older woman. “Mrs. Hubbard,” she said, “excuse me for eavesdropping, but I was looking for this little one and he seemed to be on such a talkative roll, I didn’t want to disturb you two.”
She offered the older woman a hand. “I am Carrie Phillips. I’m sure you don’t remember, but we met at the cemetery.”
“Of course I remember you. God love you, dear, of course I remember.”
“Hi, Mommy,” the boy said. “We were just having a nice conversation.”
“Yes, how very adult of you.” Carrie placed a hand on her son’s head. To Mrs. Hubbard she added, “He’s quite the conversationalist.”
“God love him, he is.” Mrs. Hubbard turned sideways in her chair to face the boy and mother. “I can’t get over it. I can’t believe it. God bless him.” She ran her fingers over her own face as she looked from mother to son. Some of the boy’s features were obviously from his mother, his mouth, maybe the tip of the nose and the ears. But the rest, the rest of his face was like her and her son Tom’s.
Carrie began to wonder if she had made the right decision. She watched the wells of Mrs. Hubbard’s eyes fill and guessed what the tears were about. Eerily, she recognized Tom’s face in Mrs. Hubbard’s. Not completely, there were some differences, but the elderly woman’s skeletal features were the same as Tom’s and even, Carrie now saw, the same as her grandson’s. It was in the cut of their cheekbones and jaws, and the way those bones dictated the square shape of their chins.
She had never seen a picture of Tom as a boy, nor of Tom with his mother, or with any family member. She had missed the resemblance earlier, at the gravesite. But now, sitting near Mrs. Hubbard, it was unmistakable—these two were grandson and grandmother. Suddenly, she wished she had foregone the reception and returned to Boston after the burial ceremony.
Mrs. Hubbard instinctively reached out to touch Tommy. Trying to avoid the touch, the boy sank back in his chair, frightened of the strange look on the old woman’s face.
“Yes, I’m very—” Carrie hesitated, unsure of the motivation behind Mrs. Hubbard’s thin arms reaching for her son “—proud of him.”
Mrs. Hubbard stopped reaching toward the boy and began to shake. “Stand, boy, let me take a look at you.”
The boy’s bottom lip quivered, yet without his mother instructing him to do otherwise, he obediently slid off the chair. Carrie thought then to remove the boy from the room, but she was too late. Before the boy’s shoes could touch the floor Mrs. Hubbard smothered him, sobbing out loud, “Tommy, Tommy! Oh, God bless! God bless!”