When You Went Away

by Michael Baron

  “They would have been better off with you on the mound this afternoon,” I said to my game buddy.

  The Yankees’ starter settled in and the team got individual runs in the third and the fifth. Still, going into the top of the sixth inning, the score was 5-2. As the television broadcast went to a commercial break, Reese took the ball and tossed it to the floor. I figured this was just a function of his endless flailing about with his arms and settled him back on the couch to retrieve the ball for him. Less than fifteen seconds later, he threw the ball again, this time making a series of loud noises to accompany the effort.

  I picked up the ball and wedged Reese into the corner of the couch before handing it to him. He held it as well as he could in his little hand and then flapped his arms and sent the ball flying again in my general direction (behind himself, actually, but that’s not the point). I laughed at this, causing him to laugh. This also announced to him that it was showtime. When I gave him the ball again, he looked at me, chuckled, and then flung both arms outward, the ball flying off to the other side of the coffee table.

  Four more times Reese threw the ball and I retrieved it for him. He accompanied each throw with grunts and laughter. Then I handed him the ball again and he took it in both hands and gnawed on it with a dedication that made it clear that our game of catch had ended.

  I pulled him up on my lap and he sat there, gumming the ball, until the Yankees rallied in the eighth. Ultimately, they wound up falling short, leaving men on second and third in the ninth and losing 5-4. Reese stayed on my lap the final three innings. I was never happy to see the Yankees lose and I really hated when they lost on Opening Day. But the exhibition of pitching prowess that took place on my very own couch softened the blow considerably. In another five years, Reese’s Tee-Ball opening day would be as much of a red-letter day as the Yankees’ first game.

  I was utterly fascinated with ball games when I was a kid. I always played with a ball in the house, and the constant thunk-ing of a rubber ball against the wall drove my mother crazy. I had a catch with my dad whenever possible and, by the time I was six, I not only had Little League in the spring and flag football in the fall, but I always organized games with the neighborhood kids – even playing with the twin four-year-olds who lived behind us if there was no one else around. And if I couldn’t get a game going, I went out to the backyard by myself, devising ways to play imagined team games that involved throwing a ball to a particular spot or hitting it or kicking it a certain distance.

  I wondered what games Reese would make up with his friends and by himself. He unquestionably had a willing partner to play catch with whenever I was home. Would he be ready to roll a beach ball back and forth by the time he was one? Could he run bases or kick a soccer ball when he turned three?

  For the first time, I thought I understood why so many men had a thing about raising “their boys.” Certainly, I didn’t feel this way because of some gender hang-up I had about sports: I remember listening enviously as Tanya talked about her tiny female friends who played Little League and basketball. I would have gladly played catch with her if she’d shown the slightest inclination toward it. But the difference was that even if we had, I wouldn’t have stepped back into my own childhood the way I had after this random game of fetch. Of course, I related to various stages of Tanya’s development on a per sonal level, but Reese would encounter the experiences, rituals, and particular passages that a boy went through. I’d only now come to realize how fascinating that was going to be for me.

  • • •

  Work was something less than what it had been. It didn’t offer a place to hide as had been the case when less overwhelming stresses prevailed upon me in the past. And given my emotional paroxysms, the relative evenness of my days in the office barely maintained my attention. I did my job as conscientiously as I could and offered my staff as much of myself as possible, but I was not fully engaged.

  The confounding messages I received from Marshall since my return exacerbated this. Where once he had been my unabashed champion and someone I could talk to about anything, business or otherwise, he now seemed determined to make sure I remembered my obligations to the company. The very mention of Reese made him irritable, and I was back at the office less than a month when he stopped even pretending to be interested in how I was feeling about Maureen and Tanya.

  The one thing about Eleanor Miller that kept me fascinated was my developing friendship with Ally Ritten. The day after I returned from Pittsburgh, she stopped in to ask a work question.When I looked up at her to respond, she walked to my desk and sat across from me. She could tell from my expression that something was seriously wrong.We talked for a long time about it, and while it didn’t really make me feel any better, it was a relief to be able to get this out instead of repressing my feelings the entire workday.

  After that, our office friendship hastened. She made a habit of checking in on me a couple of times a day and I even stopped by to see her on occasion. This was the most active social relationship I had at work since Marshall and I first became friendly. And I relied on it. When my personal pressures became too intense, when my anxiety over Tanya threatened to overtake me, when the mundane nature of my job numbed me, or when Reese did something especially cute the night before, I went to Ally.

  Toward the end of April, she came to my office to discuss her progress on a new product. As was typical, the conversation segued from business to personal with me telling her about Reese’s fascination with a battery-operated puppy Codie brought him when she last visited and which he had discovered anew the night before. We laughed about his attempts at conversation with the toy and then Ally settled back in her chair.

  “Do you think you’d like to go get some dinner Saturday night?” she said.

  The invitation shouldn’t have surprised me. Certainly, our friendship had been moving in an “off campus” direction for a while. But I was a little flustered and not entirely sure what she meant by it.

  “Dinner?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is this not something you do with colleagues? I kinda thought –”

  “– No, sorry, of course I do this kind of thing with colleagues,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure what “this kind of thing” was. “Though I haven’t exactly been painting the town since Reese was born.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “Paint the town?”

  Ally laughed. “Would you like to go to dinner. Painting the town might be a little beyond both of us.”

  I tried to think about this without appearing to think about it. “I’ll have to see about getting a babysitter. Lisa mentioned something about sitting on Friday and Saturday nights if I promised not to stay out too late. I didn’t give it much thought when she said it, though.”

  “If you can, it would be great. And I promise not to keep you out long.”

  I smiled. “I think her definition of ‘too late’ and mine are pretty different. I’ll ask her and let you know.”

  “It’d be fun.” She stood up and walked toward my office door. “Give me a call later.”

  When she left, I felt the momentary thrill of doing something new – quickly replaced by a frisson of concern.

  Had I just agreed to go out on a date?

  TEN

  Cashmere Blend

  Codie came over for dinner again that Friday. I studiously avoided mentioning my dinner with Ally the next night, though I couldn’t really explain to myself why I was doing so. It wasn’t that hard to avoid the subject, actually. Since I returned from Pittsburgh, if we weren’t on the floor playing with Reese, we were talking about Tanya. I think Codie in some way felt responsible for the way things had gone at the River concert. She had broken a confidence (though she had every reason to do so) and sent me out there and it had all turned out badly. I’m sure in her mind it might have been better if she’d never said a word.

  And so we spent a great deal of time speculating. If Tanya was still with the Riverriders, she
was in Columbus, Ohio and heading off tomorrow for Kansas City. What did she do during those hours in the van? Did she spend them dreaming about her future or brooding about her devastated past? Could she still smile as freely as she did that night before she saw me or had I wiped the smile from her face? Had the well documented (and I had read every document I could get my hands on) merriment of this band of itinerants soothed her soul, or proven too blithesome, too irrelevant now that she understood first-hand how cruel and indiscriminate the world could be?

  And what of Mick? Had he comforted her that night after I left? Had he provided her something in his misguided interpretation of various philosophies to ease her mind, to get her through the oppressive first days? Or had he proven woefully inadequate once real-life darkness obscured the fantasy darkness for which he was equipped? I remembered how the two of them didn’t seem particularly connected when I watched them that night before approaching Tanya. Were they just giving each other space, or were they drifting apart?

  We couldn’t answer any of these questions, but still Codie and I explored them extensively. Just as people recounted the details of some public disaster repeatedly, I found a certain solace in the re-creation of that night and the events that led up to it. I’m not sure why that was. Certainly, it wasn’t the belief that if I kept reliving it, I could change the past in some way. But I found that recalling those moments offered me something that passed for understanding. And what I came to understand just a little bit more every day – helped in great part by Codie’s familiarity with the situation – was that the results were unavoidable. There was no way that I could have brought Tanya back home. Nothing I could have said, no action I could have taken.

  During a break in the conversation, we stopped to admire my son. He could sit up by himself now and this offered him an entirely different perspective on the world. He was pointing constantly, as though his new eye level afforded him an angle on things that suddenly made them new and interesting. Codie sat next to him and followed his outstretched fingers, naming various items around the family room.

  “Your parents are missing out on this,” I said.

  She turned away from Reese and looked over with a sadness that immediately clutched at me. “I know. I can’t get them to come up here.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve tried. I invite them to the house every time I talk to them.” She sat next to me against the coffee table. “It’s my mom. There’s something going on in her head that I can’t get to. I know she misses Maureen like crazy – Tanya too, for that matter – and I know coming up here now that they’re gone is very hard. But I never thought she’d be the kind of woman who avoided her own grandson.”

  “They were insatiable when Tanya was born. Maureen and I actually had to pretend to have other plans in order to get a few weekends alone.”

  “I know. She complained to me about it when I called home from college.”

  “This isn’t healthy. She needs to come up here and spend some time with Reese. She needs to spend some time in this house and see it as something other than the place where her daughter died.”

  Codie tilted her head back and neither of us said anything for a minute. “Let’s double-team her,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s call her on the phone together. Right now. She’ll have a much harder time saying no to both of us at once.”

  I got the two cordless phones and Codie dialed her parents’ number.

  “Hey, Ma,” Codie said when Grace answered.

  “Hello, dear.”

  “I’m at Gerry’s. He’s on the other line.”

  “Hi, Grace,” I said.

  “Oh, hello, Gerry.”

  “Mom, Gerry and I were wondering what you were doing a couple of weekends from now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We want you and Dad to come up for a few days. Reese has been asking for you.”

  “Reese?”

  Codie looked at me apprehensively. “Your grandson, Ma.”

  “I know who Reese is, Codie.”

  “Grace,” I said, “I’d really love to have you stay with us for a little while. The weather is getting nice up here. And you wouldn’t believe the tricks the baby can do now. He sits up, he holds a spoon, he blathers unintelligibly, – a couple of weeks from now, he’ll probably be juggling.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Ed about this.”

  “Mom, you don’t need to talk to Dad. You know he’ll do whatever you want to do.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “I’m not sure,” Grace said haltingly.

  Codie offered me an exaggerated shrug. “Not sure of what,Ma?What’s the matter? Do you have a critical meeting of the gardening club or something?”

  “Come on, Grace,” I said. “It would be great to see you.”

  Grace’s voice sounded heavier when she spoke. “I don’t think so, Gerry. I’m just not sure I’m ready for him.”

  I frowned at Codie. “Well yeah, Reese can be a handful, but you’re an old pro. You kept Codie in line, right? And I’ll spot you.”

  I heard a rushed intake of breath on the other line. “Let me think about it. You know, this isn’t a good time.We were due at the Folds’ ten minutes ago. I’ll call you.”

  Codie pretended to pound herself on the side of the head. “Mom, I’ll call you about this in a couple of days.”

  When we cut the connection, Codie and I looked at each other. I didn’t know what to say, and all she could do was shake her head.

  “What do you think she meant by that?” I said.

  “By what?”

  “The part about not being ready for Reese.”

  She shrugged.

  “You don’t think she somehow blames him, do you?”

  “Blames him? For what?”

  As ridiculous as it sounded to me, I said it. “I don’t know, for killing her daughter?” The medical examiner had speculated that the blood clot came during childbirth. Grace knew this.

  “Oh my God,” Codie said, nearly whispering.

  • • •

  Reese was crying hysterically when I got home the night I discovered Maureen dead. I knew instantly that something was wrong because Maureen wouldn’t let him cry like that. I ran up the stairs, retrieved him, and held him to my chest, trying to alleviate his heaving with only moderate success. Livid splotches pocked his face and his cries were raspy. He had been doing this for a while.

  “Maureen?” Toting the baby, I left Reese’s room to look for her, growing more apprehensive with every step. I found her lying in our bed, unconscious.

  I called an ambulance and tried as hard as I could not to panic. I called Gail and asked her to come to take care of Reese in case I had to go to the hospital. The baby was still bawling and I warmed a frozen pouch of breast milk, feeding it to him while I sat next to her on the bed. As he sucked on the bottle, he began to relax, which was considerably more than I could say for myself. I didn’t want to think what I was thinking. I didn’t want to wonder what I was wondering.

  The paramedics swept in a short while later. They spent about ten minutes working on her and then told me they needed to get her to the Emergency Room. While they were taking her down the stairs on a gurney, Gail arrived. She saw Maureen’s body and choked back a sob.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, handing her the baby. “I need to go.”

  “What’s happening?” she said as the gurney passed her. She looked horrified.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my eyes riveted to the paramedics. “Pray for us.”

  “Good luck, Gerry.”

  I hurried to get in my car and stay behind the ambulance. But I knew Maureen was already gone. After all these years, I just knew it. I stood by and watched while they attempted to resuscitate her, already feeling the pain of separation, already feeling more desperate than I felt my entire adult life.

  When they turned off their machines and the doctor came up to me to offe
r his regrets, I barely heard him. Life without Maureen was inconceivable. Literally inconceivable. I stood over her body for more than an hour, not knowing how to leave her. Not knowing how to take a single step forward without her.

  They left me alone to cry, to hold her hand, to say things I don’t remember. Eventually a doctor asked if I wanted to call someone to take me home. He said that he had a prescription for me. I told him I couldn’t take drugs; I had a son to take care of. This sent him away and I knelt next to Maureen’s body again.

  When I got to my car, I tried for a half hour to pull myself together enough to leave the hospital parking lot. I couldn’t do it. Eventually, Tate came to get me.

  Reese was screaming again when we got home. Gail tried to calm him down, but he wouldn’t be mollified. I took him from her and walked him, jiggling slightly the way I had only two days before when Maureen teased me and things looked brighter than they had in months.

  Eventually, the baby stopped crying.

  That made one of us.

  You were always easy to take care of when you were a little kid. You slept through the night by the time you were ten weeks old, you ate well, you rarely got sick, and you learned how to crawl and walk without destroying any of our valuable property (of which, admittedly, there was little at the time). You even potty trained easily.

  I’m sure a lot of this had to do with having your mother around all the time. She was so relaxed and she loved you so absolutely that it probably didn’t make a lot of sense to you to give her trouble. And I think when someone constantly gets positive reinforcement for good behavior (and your mother was very big on positive reinforcement) one tends to feed on it.

  You certainly made things a lot easier when I came home from work. Those were “push” years for me. I not only had to establish myself firmly in my career because it was what I wanted, but because we needed the money that promotions provided. There were times when I came home very late or when I worked after dinner. Even when you were three or four, you rarely hassled me about this, content to snuggle with your mother on the couch and watch Sesame Street videos or play Yahtzee or Candy Land until bedtime.