Yes, it has only been ten days, but I already know those ten days will creep into ten months and then ten years and then the final days of my life. I’m as certain that my life has been permanently altered as I’m sure about the changing of seasons or the certainty that violence will always be a part of man’s deeds.
And now I’m worried about Amy. It’s not that I’m stronger than she is, but I’ve not lost the balance in my life. For Amy the loss of Truman has pushed her into a dimension where she only has her inner self to rely upon. I’ve longed for her to be with me in this, but I know that is an impossibility.
Amy probably sees my behavior as a betrayal. I’ve gone to work daily since the funeral; it’s the only way for me to remain sane. What she doesn’t know is that once I get to my office I close the door and tell Susan, my secretary, I am not to be disturbed. Lester Briggs can handle whatever needs to be handled. He’s been my smartest move since I began the business. Lester is smart, savvy about when we should expand and when we shouldn’t, and since the loss of Truman he and Susan have been my saviors. They just go about the business at hand and they have not troubled me with one single issue concerning TRUAM. I am grateful for that. I have whiskey in the bottom drawer of my desk and my only concern is whether I will get a DUI on the drive home. Twice, Susan has driven me the twenty miles to Persia. Lester has driven me once. Neither of them has said a word about my condition, nor I to them. We’ve made a tacit pact and all of us have stuck to it.
But the phone call this afternoon after my second martini has shifted my view of the future. It was Rich Beck. At first I didn’t understand who it was or why he was calling. I knew he was not calling to extend sympathy, and why would he? Amy and I hardly know him and his wife. Our only exposure to them has been at a few parties, and our knowledge of their son in the local papers as a high school athletic star, and the boy’s recent interest in Carly, and hers in him. But it became immediately clear he was angry. I remember I picked the phone up on the third ring. Amy wouldn’t answer it and there were parts of our life that had to continue to function despite our heartache.
“Yes,” I said.
“Mr. Engroff,” the voice on the other end said.
“Yes, this is he. May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Rich Beck. I suppose I should extend my sympathy about your son, and I will.” There was a silence on his end and I waited. I was certain he had something to say and I didn’t particularly care whether he got it said or not. I’d gotten to the point since my loss of Truman that mostly nothing interested me. I guess I was numb, as the conventional wisdom claims happens when a major part of your life goes missing.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, but I must lodge a complaint about your wife.”
This was not something I’d expected. I’d thought he was going to petition Amy and me to go to church or get involved in a group for parents who’ve lost their children.
“Who is this?” I wasn’t sure I had the right person after all. How could this man possibly have any complaints about Amy, who hadn’t left the house since the funeral? She was having everything we needed delivered.
“Rich Beck. My son is a year ahead of your…he’s a year ahead of Carly Rodenbaugh.”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought I heard you right. What kind of complaint could you possibly have about my wife?”
He laughed uncomfortably. He seemed to have lost some of his steam, probably when it dawned on him he was on the phone with a parent who not even two weeks ago had lost his only son.
“Well, Mr. Engroff, the truth of the matter is that your wife called Debra…my wife, and made the accusation to her that either I or my son Tommy killed your son.”
“Oh,” I said. “Are you sure this wasn’t a prank call?”
I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was possible for Amy to do anything at this point.
“No, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t. She, your wife, identified herself in such a way that Debra knew it had to be her. She didn’t want me to call you at a time like this, but I can’t have this sort of thing going on. I mean I understand the pain your wife…”
“No, Mr. Beck, you don’t. You don’t understand the pain at all.”
He didn’t and I wasn’t going to listen to him suggest he did; I wasn’t going to listen to anyone who hadn’t suffered what we’d suffered say they understood. I was actually embarrassed that Amy had done such a thing, but this wasn’t the Amy I knew. It was the Amy who had lost Truman. She was someone else now, just as I was someone else. That’s what a loss like this was doing to us. It was going to change us forever.
“Well, perhaps not…”
“Not perhaps at all! You don’t. I apologize for the call my wife made. She wouldn’t have done this ten days ago. She doesn’t even know you. I don’t even know you.”
“I just don’t want my wife upset. You can understand that. She was at home and suddenly she gets this call out of the blue making these ludicrous accusations.”
“Yes, and I’m sure your wife was upset, and rightfully so. I have no idea why Amy would do such a thing and I apologize she upset your wife. I’m sure it wasn’t Amy’s intention. I will speak to her about it.”
“Well,” he said, his indignation rising once again. “It can’t happen again.”
I wasn’t sure how to end the conversation. I realized I couldn’t promise Amy wouldn’t do it again. She had alienated herself from me, and isolated herself from the world. The call from this Beck only reminded me how Amy had sunk into her own interior life. I could hear the silence on the other end of the line. Rich Beck wanted me to assure him, right the wrong he and his wife felt from Amy’s injurious phone call. I thought for a moment of telling them what it felt like, what Amy was going through, what we were both going through, but I didn’t. Instead, I gently put the phone back into its cradle and downed the rest of my martini, wondering if I should have another before I went into the kitchen and made some dinner for my estranged wife and me.
Amy
Ten days after Truman’s death
I heard Truman last night in his room. I awakened at three a.m. to a noise that was strange and also familiar. Strange because it’d been so long since I’d heard the noise. Long. How much time is long? For me it was a lifetime ago. Truman rattling around in his room, doing something to satisfy his curiosity about the world. Such as the time he’d taken apart a fan to see how it operated. He’d always been fascinated with fans. It was his first word. Not Mommy or Daddy or yes or no, but fan. I remember him pointing with his chubby little child finger at the fan and saying, “fan.” Not, “fan?” No, not Truman. It was almost always a declarative statement with him, very seldom a question. So he’d taken the fan apart and inside he’d found this part he was certain made the blades rotate. He took the electrical cord from the fan housing, connected it to the part he assumed made the fan spin—I don’t remember how he attached it, but Ethan had said afterward it was fairly ingenious—and then plugged it into the outlet. The result was that the circuits for a few of the rooms blew out and the outlet in Truman’s room was destroyed. He was five at the time.
Truman is always thinking about things most people don’t think about. As a consequence, there were odd noises, thumping sounds coming from his room. The number of times he rearranged his room in seventeen years and one hundred and twenty-six days is staggering. I remember at one point he wanted to be an interior designer. That aspiration lasted a few months. The fan incident was only one of a myriad of experiments he enacted in that lovely green room—green was Truman’s favorite color. Who can’t like green? It’s the color of trees and grass and ocean.
Truman’s room is three rooms down from ours. There are two guest rooms between and so at first I thought it was Ethan. He often wakes in the middle of the night to go down and drink whiskey, or read his biographies or autobiographies or historical novels in the library. He is no longer sleeping in our bedroom, and I’m glad for that. I can’t think with him in here. I went t
o the door and opened it and listened. The sound was definitely coming from Truman’s room. I crept down the hallway and looked at his door, expecting to see light coming from underneath it. There was none, but the noise was still there. I knocked lightly on the door—something I always did; Truman hates loud noises and also having his privacy invaded—and there was no response, but the noise continued.
I went back to the guest room adjacent to our room and opened the door. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw Ethan was lying on the queen bed. The blankets were thrown away from his body and he had both hands cupped between his knees. After a while I heard the steady breathing of his sleep.
“Ethan,” I said. I listened again and his breathing was still steady. I could smell the faint hint of alcohol.
“Ethan,” I said again, louder. I heard him stir. “Ethan.”
“What?” he finally said.
“Truman’s in his room.”
Ethan sat up and put his feet on the carpeted floor. I could see him sweep back his hair and rub his face as if he were washing it.
“Amy, please,” he said.
By now I was used to Ethan’s skepticism about our son. I knew he didn’t believe, as I did, that there was still a chance.
He sighed loudly. He stood and came toward me. I knew he wanted to put his arms around me.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just listen.”
I walked to the hallway and he followed. There was no sound and I heard Ethan sigh again.
“Amy,” he said, imploringly. “Please, Amy, don’t.”
“Fuck,” I said. “I heard him! Just fucking fuck!”
He grabbed my wrist forcefully and pulled me toward Truman’s door. “Let’s the both of us see, Amy.”
I wrenched free from his grip and pushed at his back. I’d never done that before, never touched him except with tenderness.
“Oh, no you don’t! I’m not going in there. I can’t go in there.”
“Why?” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. I had the suspicion he thought Truman was in there, too. He bent down and looked for a sliver of light from underneath the door.
“There’s no light on in there, I know that. I checked before. But I heard him in there. He was banging around.” I almost laughed with relief. “The noise woke me up.”
He put his hand out again. “We’ll look together, Amy. Please come in with me.”
I shook my head. “You’re not doing that to me. I know what you want and it’s not going to happen. You might want this, Ethan, but you’re not bringing me with you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He went to Truman’s door and turned the knob. My hand went immediately to my throat. I closed my eyes. I could hear him open the door and turn on the light. Then there was silence for a moment. I opened my eyes and Ethan had disappeared from my sight. The door was left open and the light was on and from where I stood I could see the corner of Truman’s dresser and above that a mirror. I turned quickly away, my heart racing as if I’d just run a long race. I wanted to ask him if Truman was there, but I didn’t. I waited with my back turned from the room and the light casting itself into the hallway as if that were energy from my son. I began to cry in anticipation; Ethan took so long to come out.
Finally, I saw the light disappear from the hallway and then I heard the door close. I could hear the padding of feet and I closed my eyes and said a small prayer and then I felt a hand on my shoulder and my spirit fell like a diver submersing in water.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.
“Sorry about what? I heard him in there. Are you telling me he doesn’t have the right to exit his room whenever he pleases? I heard him. You can believe me or you don’t have to. It’s up to you, but I know what I heard.”
I stooped down to come away from his hand and I walked back toward my room, but Ethan sprinted after me and came around in front of me.
“I wish it were true.” He began to cry. “I wish it were the plain truth, Amy.”
I tried to go around him but he moved in front of me. He put his hands out without touching me and I had to stop.
“Who did you call this morning?” He must’ve been confused; it was now yesterday morning.
I thought how foolish a question it was. I call people all the time. How did he think his whiskey and gin arrived? How did he think his food appeared on the table for him or in the refrigerator for him to take out?
“What?” I said. “What do you mean who did I call? Why are you asking such an impossibly stupid question, Ethan?”
I could feel his anger rise. It settled on my face.
“Did you call Debra Beck this morning, Amy?”
In the darkness of the hallway I looked at Ethan and thought of him as he was when we were young, when we first fell in love. He reminded me of Truman in so many ways. His black eyes, the shape of his head, his muscular shoulders. And for some reason I thought of the time we went to Brandon, Vermont. We’d gone up to visit a college friend of Ethan’s and we rented a cabin just outside of town. Brandon is a picturesque New England town, with a town square similar to Persia’s. Truman was less than a year old at the time, and I remember we’d come back to the cabin from seeing Ethan’s friend and had decided to give Truman a bath. The cabin only had a shower and so we bathed him in the kitchen sink. He was like a fat Buddha and he splashed the water, soaking both of us as we laughed at his pudginess and his black eyes watching us. He knew exactly what he was doing; he knew he was making us wet, and that was the first time I knew he would always be fascinated by how people reacted to his actions. I remember Ethan saying, “His eyes are watching us to see what we’ll do.”
Ethan laughed uncomfortably. I laughed at him as I picked up Truman, soaking, and washed his rear, soft and fleshy as a peach.
“Oh, listen to who’s calling the kettle black. You do the same thing, Ethe.”
“Do I?” he asked.
And the curious thing was that, even with the question, I’d proven my charge. Ethan watched me closely as I rinsed Truman, his little legs pedaling the air as if he were on an invisible bike, and then wrapped him in a towel.
“He’s always watching us as if we’re some kind of experiment. I love that he does that. I think he’s brilliant,” I said, a catch in my throat with the three of us in the room.
I took Truman to his basinet and put him in a cloth diaper—no Depends for our baby, Ethan said—and then put him in a sleeper. Ethan watched over my shoulder and I could feel and smell his soft and liquored breath on my cheek—we’d had drinks with his friends.
“What have we created, Amy?” he said laughing.
My soaked shirt was beginning to chill me, I remember. “We’ve created Truman Engroff.”
I turned to Ethan to see what his face was telling me. He was beaming with pride and happiness, but there was a small sliver of doubt there as well.
“How will he turn out?”
I turned and put my hand to his cheek and felt the stubble of beard and warm skin. I loved his looks, his eyes, his lips.
“He’ll turn out like us, Ethe. Are you glad for that?”
“Yes,” he said, and he took Truman up in his arms and held him close to his wet chest. And Truman was looking at me over his father’s shoulder and it was as if he were saying, “Yes, I will turn out just like you two.”
And now Truman was gone from Ethan’s life and Ethan was questioning me. He wanted to know who I was in this dark hallway and I was going to play the game Truman always played. I was going to watch how it all unfolded.
“Yes, I did call Debra Beck today. Why?”
He laughed as if my response was stupid. “You accused either her son or husband of killing Truman?”
“Murdering him, yes. Don’t you think, Ethe, that ‘murder’ is much more civilized a word for what has become of our son? Doesn’t that fit your conclusion of his future much better?”
“You need to see someone. You need to seek…”
&nb
sp; I slapped him across the face and it stopped him from finishing. I’d never hit him before, never been violent with him before. He looked at me for a long time, his hands to his side, and I thought for a moment he was going to strike me. He didn’t, and I waited. He just stood there breathing heavily, his bare feet planted on the wood flooring as a dim light began to appear in the windows.
“Who else do you imagine would do that to our son such as was done to him? You know those people as well as I do. I thought and thought about it and I know it was him. He is the voice of this despicable town. He signifies everything that is bad in the world with his homophobia and his noise and his obnoxiousness and his leering eyes. Someone right in this town took Truman away from us and I know it was him or that terrible son of his, Tommy or Richey or whatever his name is. He took Carly from Truman because both of us know that Truman loved Carly…he would’ve married her eventually…”
“Are you kidding me?” he said, incredulity in his voice. “Are you fucking kidding me, Amy?”
“Not because he isn’t gay, of course he is, but because they suited each other so well! Carly always wanted Truman, since they were little children together, and I know she can’t live without him. It was only a matter of time before Truman decided he would marry Carly and live with her the rest of his life…the rest of his life! And then that other boy came along and so Truman, being Truman, stood by and allowed it to happen. You can call it gentlemanly or civil or indifferent, but it was only temporary and he knew and I knew it and Carly knew it.”
I stopped and waited for him to say something, but he just stood there in the middle of the hallway with his arms nearly tied to his sides, his hair wispier now than it had been when he was in his twenties, and it stood up in the front from when he’d been sleeping before and I wanted to pat it down, but I didn’t because…well, I don’t know why I didn’t, actually, but I didn’t, and I waited and he didn’t move even though I knew by then he must’ve been dying for a whiskey, as I was already thinking about wine and, for some strange reason, about champagne.
Beneath the Weight of Sadness Page 14
