by Pamela Morsi
“I’ll be back,” she whispered.
He relinquished her unwillingly. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“I need to put in my diaphragm,” she said.
He didn’t release her, but it was a moment before he spoke. And when he did, it was with laughter.
“You give me way too much credit,” he said. “I’m so exhausted, I was barely able to brush my teeth. I know I can’t make love. I just wanted to hold you. Is that okay? Can I just hold you?”
Claire snuggled back into his arms. “I’d love that,” she told him.
Jack sighed.
“Are you worried about Bud?” she asked him.
“No, I just called up there. No news really, but he’s still hanging in.”
“Good.”
“I was thinking about what it must have been like for them,” Jack said. “You know, to lose your only child.”
“Oh, God, it must have been horrible,” Claire agreed.
“I can’t even imagine it. When I think about Zaidi and Peyton and Presley, it just makes my heart pound. If anything happened to them, I just don’t know how I bear it.”
“I’m glad they had you,” Claire said.
Jack raised up on one elbow to look at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m glad he had you here with them, to help them get through it,” she said. “You know sometimes when we lose people we love, it becomes all about regrets. ‘I should have done this or I should have said that.’”
“I should have visited them more,” Jack said. “I should have brought the kids here so they’d know them.”
“Yeah, that kind of thing,” Claire said. “It’s pretty typical for us to think like that. It’s good that you can know that when it really mattered, when they were living the worst time of their life, you were here. And you made that time better for them.”
“I can’t take any credit for that,” Jack said. “I don’t even remember it and it was my mom’s doing, not mine.”
Claire ran her hand lovingly down the side of his face. “No, no credit,” she agreed. “But also no regret.”
Bud
Dead in the water. The sun was setting and I was dead in the water. I was glad. Strange, the truth of that. I was glad. No one deserved to survive. I certainly didn’t deserve it. And I wouldn’t. If I could just get the buckle undone on my life vest, I could go down easy. But I didn’t have the strength to pull on it. Dead men can’t move their arms. Dead men just bob on top of the water until the predators come.
“Grab the float and we’ll pull you in.”
A man moved into the line of my vision. He was one of the men who’d been standing on the fish, the fish playing the music.
“Come on, bud, there’s sharks out here,” he said.
I wanted to ask him how he knew my name, but the saltwater had raked my throat raw—there was no way I could speak.
He swam all the way to me. Grabbed the lifesaver himself and then he grabbed me, shoving his arm down the front of my vest and then crooking his elbow as if he were hoisting a sack of fish.
“Pull us in,” he hollered.
We began moving in the water, closer and closer to the music. I paid no attention to it. I was focusing on the sun on the edge of the horizon. It was my last sunset and I didn’t want to miss it. In just minutes the sharks would come. I was glad I was dead and wouldn’t be able to feel a thing.
Suddenly I was being dragged out of the water. Dozens of hands reached for me. I felt the coolness of the night, followed by the burn of a fire.
“Damn, how long has he been in the water? The flesh peels right off of him.”
“Hold him by the vest until we get him belowdecks.”
“Did you see all those fins in the water? The guy was five minutes away from being somebody’s dinner.”
“I just thought it was a pile of debris on the water,” another said. “If he hadn’t signaled me, I wouldn’t have sent up the alarm.”
A face appeared right above me. “Hey, flyboy? Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
I could see him. I could hear him. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t squeeze his hand or make any gesture. Finally I blinked. I blinked and I blinked.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay. Don’t try to talk.”
A medic examined me and someone dribbled some cool water down my throat.
“We’re probably going to have to hurt you to get you to sick bay,” the medic told me. “But that’s just because you’re sunburnt and you skin is so soft from the water. You’re going to be okay.”
“Yeah, you’ve just been rescued by the U.S. Navy,” someone else called out.
It was unreasonable. Improbable. Unbelievable.
I never believed it.
I had been plucked out of the water and sent to rest in a clean, dry sick bay. No, that was beyond possibility, but here I lay.
But this wasn’t sick bay and I hadn’t just been plucked out of the ocean. It was just another dream. One of the dreams that weren’t dreams. I finally talked about it, maybe understood, after Jackie left.
They say that in raising children the days are long but the time is short. That was only too true in the years after Toni had left for school. Geri and I were no longer kids, and at the end of the day we were always tired, but somehow the energy we needed to keep up with Jackie was always there when we needed it.
Jackie’s first word was Bud.
He was sitting in his high chair, tired of being there and not at all interested in the bits of squash Geri was feeding him, even when she mixed them up in his favorite sweet potato. He wanted to be rescued and held up his arms to me.
“Bud!” he said.
Geri laughed. “That’s Grandpa,” she corrected him. “Say Grandpa.”
“He can call me Bud,” I assured her as I unhooked him from the seat and pulled him up. “We’re pals.”
“Let me get his bib off and clean his hands,” she said, reaching for a napkin. “He’s going to get his dinner all over you.”
“What’s a few vegetables between friends,” I answered.
I don’t think I can ever get over J.D.’s death. But having Jackie in our lives kept us moving forward in a time when we might have given up.
I continued to work nights as a postal sorter, though I could see retirement as the light at the end of the tunnel. The process was more and more mechanized every day. Being able to tinker with machines became as much of an asset as knowing nearly every zip code in the state.
Geri still did a lot of sewing, but a new interest now claimed her weekends. She’d discovered garage sales. It was as if it were her personal duty every Saturday morning to visit every front yard and driveway with a sign in front of it. She’d pour through every castoff in every box, and she’d come home with a car full of clothes and toys. And she refused to carry more than twenty dollars in her purse.
Jackie and I would pass this time walking up to Main Street, looking in the store windows and talking to the old timers. Everyone commented on how quickly he grew and how much he favored me in looks.
“That boy’s going to be even taller than you, Bud,” I was told. “For sure he’s going to play Cedar’s basketball.”
I laughed off comments like that, knowing in my mind that Jackie would be long gone from Catawah by high school. I knew it was true. But I still lived my life as if he’d be with us forever.
Toni called long-distance every Sunday night. Sometimes Jackie would talk to her and sometimes he couldn’t be bothered. She visited as her schedule permitted. We were always glad to see her, and happy that she and Jackie could be together. But we also cringed each time, fearing that she would say she just couldn’t go home without him. Every time that didn’t happen, it gave us a false sense of hope that we never spoke of aloud.
By the time he was three, he spoke of his mother as if she were some princess in a fairy tale. Geri or I would tuck him into bed and he’d demand a story. But he didn’t want pirate
s or dragons or flying saucers.
“Tell me a story about my mommy,” he would say.
We didn’t know all that many stories, but we’d tell what we knew and make up the rest. The fact that he never asked about his daddy was curious, I thought at the time. I only realized later that, in our grief, Geri and I went through our days without ever speaking his name aloud.
About that time there was a small stir among the citizens of Catawah. A group of young people purchased the old Mehan farm south of town. Piggy Masterson insisted the long-haired freaks ought to be run out of the country. And every preacher in town was concerned that “Free love” was being practiced “in our very midst.” As if that were something entirely new.
Maybe it was a shared interest in recycling. Or maybe it was because she knew exactly what it felt like to be an outcast in her hometown, Geri got to know those strange people and decided she wanted to be friends.
“Raising children has changed since we were parents,” she insisted. “You and I are too old-fashioned and what Jackie needs is to be around boys and girls his age.”
“He’s always around other kids,” I pointed out. “Your family is in and out of our house so much, I ought to install a revolving door.”
“Family is nice, of course,” she said, “but we don’t want Jackie growing up thinking he’s a second cousin to every person he ever knew.”
So one sunlit Sunday when Jackie was a busy, curious two-year-old, we were invited out to the commune for an afternoon picnic.
The farm took up almost an eighth of a section, just shy of eighty acres. There were a half dozen young families all trying to live off that plot of land. I can’t testify one way or the other about free love, but there were lots of kids and plenty of room to run, and Jackie, in his sneakers, did his best to keep up with them.
It was a bit tougher for me to fit in. I was nearly thirty years older than the men of the group. I was clean shaven and my hair, almost completely gray, I kept trimmed neatly above my collar. Many of these fellows had wild moustaches and beards and they all wore their hair long. Some of them just let it hang down to the waist, others had braids or ponytails. I admit to being taken aback by this. But that didn’t last too long. Maybe it was meeting so many different kinds of people during the war, but I found myself more curious than repulsed. And, of course, if they were Geri’s friends, they must be all right. She was always able to see through to the heart of people.
They showed me around the place. They had huge expanses of vegetable gardens, the cleanest chicken coops I’d ever seen and they’d just gotten started keeping honeybees. They were heavily into recycling and composting, which I’m sure won over Geri’s heart.
“We’re hoping next year to get a cow,” Brad, a very tall skinny blond fellow, told me. “It would just be so cool to make our own butter and cheese.”
The other guys agreed.
“We had a cow during the Depression,” I told them. “It kept us in milk and butter and earned us what little cash money we had. But I can’t honestly say I was sorry to see old Becca go. I feel like I spent half my childhood snuggled up against her with my hand on her teats.”
They laughed.
“I guess you kept her in a barn,” another boy named Tom said.
“At night,” I answered. “In the day I could open range her. That’s getting harder and harder to do these days. I don’t suspect your neighbors would appreciate it so much.”
They all laughed again.
We compared knowledge on alfalfa and Bermuda grass. I suggested that they consider black-eyed peas, tasty to both man and beast. By dinnertime, we were companionable enough. The meal was set out on long tables in the shade. It reminded me of the old-time country feeds I attended when I was a boy. Although the food was not as I’d remembered. None of those light-as-air biscuits and everything seasoned with pork fat. At their table everything was nearly half raw and the bread was so grainy it sat on my stomach like a brick. But there was lots of conversation at the table and plenty of smiles. There was no children’s table, nor a high chair to be seen. All the little ones were interspersed among us. Those less able to get along found themselves between two parents. Jackie sat between two girls about eight or nine, both with long, tidy braids. He seemed delighted by the attention.
“So the kid is your grandson,” Brad said. “How’d you and Geri end up with him?”
“His mother is in San Antonio finishing college,” I answered. “She thought he’d be better off here with us.”
Brad nodded.
“Where’s his father?” someone asked.
From all the way at the other end of the table, I could feel Geri stiffen. We were still not comfortable saying it aloud, but I managed.
“Our son was killed in Vietnam,” I said.
There was a gasp from someone and a moment of complete silence at the table. Then across from me Brad spoke for all of them.
“Bummer, man,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
The world continued to spin and I tried to keep moving. One crisp fall morning in the wood shop I put Jackie to work on a length of wood with six bolts to be tightened. It would keep him occupied and the pint-sized wrench wasn’t all that dangerous. Geri’s birthday was coming up and I had no idea what to get her. That morning, I got down the remnants of the treasure box J.D. had been building for her. It was a good idea, I thought, to finally get her a place to store stuff other than under the bed. But when I saw the pieces that J.D. had cut, my brow furrowed. It wouldn’t make a big enough box for anything. I thought he’d meant to make something for her scrapbooks and photos, but this box was just slightly bigger than one you might put together for jewelry. Which, I suppose would have been fine, if Geri had been a woman who had jewelry or wore jewelry. She was a woman who neither owned nor was interested in the stuff. Anything she came across, she always gave to her sisters. And even her own wedding band was, more often than not, sitting on the windowsill above the kitchen sink.
What in the world had J.D. been thinking? I wondered to myself. He surely knew his mother better than that. I put the wood back on the top shelf.
“Maybe someday you can make a jewelry box for your mama,” I told Jackie.
“Will it have bolts?”
“It will if you want it to,” I told him.
Toni graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She was pretty low-key about it.
“To do anything that intrigues me in my field, I need a master’s degree,” she told us.
A master’s degree sounded fine to me. She could go to school forever as far as I was concerned. Jackie was settled in with us so well, a few more years wouldn’t be a problem.
I’m not sure when I first heard the name of Dr. Van Brugge. Toni told us when she started dating again. She told us how strange it felt and joked about how the men at school all seemed like boys. The first thing I remember about the doctor happened after she’d been dating him for several months. She’d come for a weekend visit and we were sitting around a warm fire in the living room. Jackie was already in bed. I was shelling pecans as the women talked.
“Everybody respects him,” she told Geri. “He is a very smart man with a kind heart and a wonderful future. A woman would be a fool not to fall in love with him.”
Geri nodded sagely. “But you haven’t been able to,” she stated.
Toni shook her head. “He’s not J.D.,” she said. “I like him. I respect him. But I just…I don’t know. J.D. was my soul mate. I don’t know if a woman ever gets that again. Maybe a good provider who loves and cares about me is enough?”
I don’t remember what Geri answered, but I gave the man no chance at all.
Less than a month later, Toni called us to say that they were engaged.
I was flabbergasted. Totally caught off guard.
“You knew it was going to happen sometime,” Geri pointed out.
“Yes, but not now, not him.”
“It’s not your choice.”
>
Her parents wanted her to have the huge, society wedding they had been unwilling to give her when she’d married J.D. The thing was eight months in the planning alone. We were invited, but Jackie was not.
“My stepmother just thinks he’ll be a disruption and will cause people to talk,” Toni explained. “Ernst’s mother doesn’t like the idea, either. They’d both like to pretend I was never married before. But I’ve refused to wear white. All I can do to honor J.D.’s memory is to wear his favorite color.”
She urged us to leave Jackie with one of the aunts, but we decided not to go. If Jackie wasn’t going to be welcome, we didn’t want to attend, either.
It’s strange to admit it, but we weren’t really so offended. We felt bad for Jackie, but for ourselves we were secretly hopeful. Maybe Jackie’s presence could continue to be an inconvenience to Toni and an embarrassment to her new husband. If that happened, then Jackie stayed with us.
They went to Europe for three weeks on their honeymoon. With that and the busy schedule before the wedding, Toni had not been to see Jackie in almost three months. That’s a very long time in the life of a five-year-old. Though she’d continued to call when she could, Toni had missed Jackie’s birthday and he hadn’t even noticed.
But just two weeks after they settled back into their life in San Antonio, Toni called to say they were coming up for the weekend. We told Jackie and he was more excited than if a circus had come to town.
“How many more sleeps before my mommy’s coming?” he asked at least a hundred times in the three days that he waited for her.
