by Mitch Albom
“I lied. It was the worst lie I ever told....It wasn’t work. I went to play in a game...a stupid game....I was so desperate to please—”
“Your father.”
She nodded gently.
And I realized she had known all along.
Across the room, the Italian woman pulled her bathrobe tighter. She clasped her hands as if in prayer. Such a strange trio we made, each of us, at some point, longing to be loved by the same man. I could still hear his words, forcing my decision: mama’s boy or daddy’s boy, Chick? What’s it gonna be?
“I made the wrong choice,” I whispered.
My mother shook her head.
“A child should never have to choose.”
THE ITALIAN WOMAN stood up now. She wiped her eyes and collected herself. She placed her fingers on the edge of the dressing table and pushed two items close together. My mother motioned me forward until I could see what she had been looking at.
One was a photo of a young man in a graduation cap. I assume it was her son.
The other was my baseball card.
She flicked her eyes up to the mirror and caught our reflections, the three of us, framed like a bizarre family portrait. For the first and only moment, I was certain she saw me.
“Perdonare,” the woman mumbled.
And everything around us disappeared.
Chick Finishes His Story
HAVE YOU EVER ISOLATED your earliest childhood memory? Mine is when I was three years old. It was summer. A carnival in the park near our house. There were balloons and cotton candy stands. A bunch of guys who had just finished a tug-of-war were lined up at the water fountain.
I must have been thirsty, because my mother lifted me by my armpits and carried me to the front of that line. And I remember how she cut in front of those sweaty, shirtless men, how she squeezed one arm tight around my chest and used her free hand to turn the handle. She whispered in my ear, “Drink the water, Charley,” and I bent forward, my feet dangling above the ground, and I slurped it up, and all those men just waited for us to finish. I can still feel her arm around me. I can still see the bubbling water. That is my earliest memory, mother and son, a world unto ourselves.
Now, at the end of this last day together, the same thing was happening. My body felt broken. I could barely make it move. But her arm went across my chest and I sensed her carrying me once more, air passing over my face. I saw only darkness, as if we were traveling behind the length of a curtain. Then the dark pulled away and there were stars. Thousands of them. She was laying me down in wet grass, returning my ruined soul to this world.
“Mom...” My throat was raw. I had to swallow between words. “That woman...? What was she saying?”
She gently lowered my shoulders. “Forgive.”
“Forgive her? Dad?”
My head touched the earth. I felt moist blood trickling down my temples.
“Yourself,” she said.
My body was locking up. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I was slipping away. How much time did I have left?
“Yes,” I rasped.
She looked confused.
“Yes, you were a good mother.”
She touched her mouth to hide a grin, and she seemed to fill to bursting.
“Live,” she said.
“No, wait—”
“I love you, Charley.”
She waved her fingertips. I was crying.
“I’ll lose you...”
Her face seemed to float over mine.
“You can’t lose your mother, Charley. I’m right here.”
Then a huge flash of light obliterated her image.
“CHARLES BENETTO. CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
I felt a tingling in my limbs.
“WE’RE GOING TO MOVE YOU NOW.”
I wanted to pull her back.
“ARE YOU WITH US, CHARLES?”
“Me and my mother,” I mumbled.
I felt a soft kiss on my forehead.
“My mother and I,” she corrected.
And she was gone.
I BLINKED HARD. I saw the sky. I saw the stars. Then the stars began to fall. They grew larger as they grew closer, round and white, like baseballs, and I instinctively opened my palms as if widening my glove to catch them all.
“WAIT. LOOK AT HIS HANDS!”
The voice softened.
“CHARLES?”
Even softer.
“Charles...? Hey, there you go, fella. Come back to us...YO! GUYS!”
He waved his flashlight at two other police officers. He was young, just as I had thought.
Chick’s Final Thoughts
NOW, AS I SAID when you first sat down, I don’t expect you to go with me here. I haven’t told this story before, but I had hoped to. I waited for this chance. And I’m glad it’s come, now that it’s done.
I have forgotten so many things in my life, yet I can remember every moment of that time with my mother, the people we saw, the things we discussed. It was so ordinary in so many ways, but as she said, you can find something truly important in an ordinary minute. You may think me crazy, that I imagined the whole thing. But I believe this in the deepest part of my soul: My mother, somewhere between this world and the next, gave me one more day, the day I’d wanted so badly, and she told me all that I’ve told you.
And if my mother said it, I believe it.
“What causes an echo?” she once quizzed me.
The persistence of sound after the source has stopped.
“When can you hear an echo?”
When it’s quiet and other sounds are absorbed.
When it’s quiet, I can hear my mother’s echo still.
I feel ashamed now that I tried to take my life. It is such a precious thing. I had no one to talk me out of my despair, and that was a mistake. You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.
As for what’s happened in the two years since, there are so many details: the hospital stay, the treatment I received, where I’ve been. Let’s just say, for now, that I was lucky on many levels. I’m alive. I didn’t kill anyone. I have been sober every day since—although some days are harder than others.
I’ve thought a lot about that night. I believe my mother saved my life. I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you’ll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn’t.
But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.
So this was my mother’s story.
And mine.
I would like to make things right again with those I love.
Epilogue
CHARLES “CHICK” BENETTO died last month, five years after his attempted suicide, and three years after our encounter on that Saturday morning.
The funeral was small, only a few family members—including his ex-wife—and several friends from his childhood in Pepperville Beach, who recalled climbing a water tower with Chick and spray-painting their names on the tank. No one from his baseball days was on hand, although the Pittsburgh Pirates sent a condolence card.
His father was there. He stood in the back of the church, a slim man with stooped shoulders and thin white hair. He wore a brown suit and sunglasses, and left quickly after the service.
The cause of Chick’s death was a sudden stroke, an embolism that went to his brain and killed him almost instantly. Doctors speculate that his blood vessels may have weakened from the head trauma of his car crash. He was fifty-eight when he died. Too young, everyone agreed.
As for the details of his “story”? In putting this account together, I checked into nearly all of them. There was, indeed, an accident on the highway entrance ramp that night, and a car, after clipping the front en
d of a moving van, went over an embankment, destroyed a billboard, and ejected its driver into the grass.
There was, indeed, a widow named Rose Templeton, who lived on Lehigh Street in Pepperville Beach and died shortly after the accident. There was also a Miss Thelma Bradley, who died not long after, and whose obituary in the local newspaper identified her as “a retired housekeeper.”
A marriage certificate was filed in 1962—a year after the Benettos divorced—for a Leonard Benetto and a Gianna Tusicci, confirming an earlier marriage in Italy. A Leo Tusicci, presumably their son, was listed as a student at Collingswood High School in the early 1960s. There were no other records for him.
As for Pauline “Posey” Benetto? She died of a heart attack at age seventy-nine, and the details of her life match the accounts given in these pages. Her humor, warmth, and motherly wisdom were attested to by her surviving family. Her photo still hangs at the beauty parlor where she worked. In it, she is wearing a blue smock and hoop earrings.
Chick Benetto’s final years seemed to bring him some contentment. He sold his mother’s home in Pepperville Beach and directed the proceeds to his daughter. He later moved to an apartment to be near her, and they reestablished a relationship, including Saturday morning “donut runs” in which they caught up on events of the week over coffee and crullers. Although he never fully reconciled with Catherine Benetto, they made their peace and spoke regularly.
His salesman days were over, but until his death, Chick worked part-time with a local parks and recreation office, where he had one rule for the organized games: Everyone gets to play.
A week before his stroke, he seemed to sense that his time was short. He told those around him, “Remember me for these days, not the old ones.”
He was buried in a plot near his mother.
BECAUSE THERE WAS a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story. But what family isn’t a ghost story? Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.
And even though Chick is gone now, his story flows through others. It flows through me. I don’t think he was crazy. I think he really did get one more day with his mother. And one day spent with someone you love can change everything.
I know. I had a day like that, too, in the bleachers of a Little League field—a day to listen, to love, to apologize, to forgive. And to decide, years later, that this baby boy I am carrying will soon be called, proudly, Charley.
My married name is Maria Lang.
But before that I was Maria Benetto.
Chick Benetto was my father.
And if my father said it, I believe it.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Leslie Wells and Will Schwalbe for their editing; Bob Miller for his patience and belief; Ellen Archer, Jane Comins, Katie Wainright, Christine Ragasa, SallyAnne McCartin, Sarah Schaffer, and Maha Khalil for their tireless support; Phil Rose for his wonderful art; and Miriam Wenger and David Lott for their keen eyes. Special thanks to Kerri Alexander, who still handles everything; to David Black, who buoyed me through countless chicken dinners; and especially to Janine, who heard this story on quiet mornings, read aloud, and gave it its first smile. And of course, as this is a story about family—to my family, those before me, those after me, and those all around me.
This book is dedicated, with love, to Rhoda Albom, the mommy of the mummy
Copyright
“This Could Be the Start of Something Big”
Copyright © 1956 Rosemeadow Publishing Corp.
Copyright Renewed 1984, Assigned to Meadowlane Music, Inc.
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
Copyright © 2006 Mitch Albom, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.
ISBN: 9781401388898
1. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 2. Mothers—Death—Fiction. 3. Suicidal behavior—Fiction. I. Title.
First eBook Edition: March 2007