“Gordie Howe and the sons-of-bitches who cloned him gave me my body.” Phil leans over and touches the incision on Jake’s chest. “Only you and Mom could give me a heart.”
Jake doesn’t say anything. “Okay. You win. The pig’s heart, I guess. Better than some damned machine.”
There is a moment of joy in the little room. The doctors, waiting only for permission, schedule the operation for the following afternoon. Jake kisses Little Jake and is then given a mild sedative. When he becomes drowsy, he is wheeled away from his family.
He never wakes up. An unexpected embolism causes a massive stroke during the surgery, and he dies.
Phil returns to the hotel in shock. Over the next few days, as they make plans for the dead, Phil says little. When Jake is finally and completely in the ground and they leave Carol to return to Albuquerque, Chela guides him carefully through the airports, ensconces him in the car, and drives them all home. For days afterward, Phil sits in the backyard, staring at the back fence. Over and over in his mind he wonders, if he had not forced the issue would Jake still be alive?
After a week or so, Phil starts to return to daily routine. He gets up early in the morning and plays with Jake until Chela gets up. When she wakes up some time later, the three of them have breakfast, and he goes to the shop. He tunes the machines for the electronic orders, programs tricky aspects of fabrication where necessary, and pounds steel himself when the automated systems are overwhelmed. By late afternoon, he is exhausted. When he gets home, Chela is already there, having picked up Jake from day care. The three of them have dinner together. Chela puts Jake to bed while Phil has a beer. Afterward, they sit together. Sometimes, they talk. Often, Phil says nothing, feeling empty from when he gets up in the morning to when he goes to bed. The guilt weighs sluggishly in his mind. He worries at it, walks around it, tries to ignore it, tries to move it out of the way. Like a boulder on the trail, it changes the path of his days.
One night, he mentions it to Chela. She is in the bathroom brushing her hair. Little Jake is asleep in a crib near the wall.
Chela stops and carefully puts down the brush. She comes into the bedroom and sits on the bed next to him, and says, softly and gently, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Phil doesn’t know what to think. “It might have made a difference. Or maybe it was just fate.”
She shakes her head. “Your car could have broken down in Amarillo and we would never have met. Then, Jake wouldn’t have come out here for the wedding after his first heart attack, which might have weakened him just enough that he died in the surgery. Should you blame the car? Did the car make any difference?” She pauses and he waits for her to finish.
“It’s chance,” she says finally. “It’s all chance. Chance you came through Portales. Chance you stayed and took the job with Frank. Chance I didn’t get scarred in a car wreck when I was ten. Chance the kid I was with did. Chance I didn’t meet someone before I met you. Chance you weren’t with anybody at the time.”
“Chance I met Esteban?” He smiles.
She smiles back. “Not quite. Esteban had been going to that bar for three years, looking for a husband for me. Finally, he found one that I could stand.”
He barks a short laugh. “No! Really?”
Chela nods. “Absolutely. He figured he’d have a chance to look over everybody that came through town. He’d tried every other way since I was sixteen.”
“Did he want a drunk for a son-in-law?”
“Did he get one?” she counters. “It was chance that brought you in there. Esteban took advantage of it.” She lays a hand on his chest. “It’s not your fault. It’s not mine. It wasn’t Jake’s. It was just chance.”
Phil plants a small garden like his father’s back in Massachusetts. In the mornings, before Chela wakes up, he takes the baby into the backyard. Jake is five months old. The mornings are cool but not cold, and the baby lies on a thick blanket, watching Phil work in the dirt.
Phil finds himself talking to Jake. He talks about Gordie Howe, about the winters in Massachusetts, about a problem at work. He tells Little Jake about Grandfather Jake. He describes Jake to him, telling him about how he usually spoke evenly and slowly, with long silences between the sentences, and how it used to drive Phil crazy when he was growing up. He talks about Danny, and how crooked and broken he had looked on the outside, and how clear-minded he was on the inside, about the letters he wrote that Phil still keeps in a box in the closet. He talks about Chela, how he has never, for one single moment, been able to tell what she was going to do next. Still, as surprising as she is, she always seems to do the right thing. He tells the baby about learning Spanish, how the sounds felt in the mouth and on the tongue, how Phil couldn’t understand Spanish and English at the same time, though it seemed Chela could. He talks about the desert and Portales and Albuquerque and Austin and Hopkinton, how the desert is so similar to Massachusetts in winter and so different, how the mountains had appeared to him when first he saw them, looking for all the world as if they were a great reptile lying sideways and at rest.
All summer he works in the garden and speaks to little Jake. Chela does not interrupt him though at times he sees her watching them in the window. As the baby turns over, then crawls, he starts to notice little mannerisms he had always associated with Jake: a turn of the head, a roll of the eyes, a clasp of the hands. He wonders how that can be; the baby never really knew Jake and there is no genetic contract between them. One day, he is in the bathroom washing his hands and he sees himself in the mirror clasping his hands in the same way. He stares into the mirror. He can see no resemblance between him and his father, but he realizes that’s where he must have learned that movement. Little Jake must have learned it, and perhaps all of his grandfather’s mannerisms from him. It comforts him as he grieves. Jake Berger left no biological legacy to the world, but he lives on in what Phil has become, in what little Jake is becoming.
That November, Carol comes out to visit. She rents an apartment close to them and stays the winter. By April, she is ready to go back to Hopkinton.
Phil gives up his graduate classes at the university. He and Mishra form a partnership and the business doubles in size in just a few months. They hire new staff and still have too much business. Gradually, they find themselves brokering whole jobs to other fabrication firms around the country.
Chela, for her part, is more and more in demand for digs in the area. She has become adept at relations between the Southwest tribes and the archeologists. All Indians have strong taboos about disturbing the dead, and most have a deep and justified distrust of archeologists. Chela has over the years earned the respect of the Navajo and Hopi, among other tribes, and is trusted by them. This has become her archeological specialty.
Phil and Chela look for a larger house, one with an adjoining apartment, and find one close to the shop. That November, when Carol comes down for the winter, they are ready for her, and she has her own place upstairs for the next five months.
Jake grows into a quiet, serious little toddler. Given to smiles rather than laughs, he talks early, and likes to help dig in Phil’s garden. Phil can keep the damage down to a minimum most of the time, but over the season there are shortfalls as Jake learns to distinguish broccoli from Brazilian pepper and tomatoes from toadflax. Each day as he watches Jake, he learns something about his own father or about Chela. The boy reflects his mother like the moon reflects the sun. Phil is grateful whenever he sees something of himself. It surprises him that he doesn’t feel upset that Jake takes so much after Chela and so little after himself. When he mentions this to Chela, she says he just doesn’t see it. Jake takes after Phil all the time.
Phil’s grief crusts over and smooths itself as time passes. He discovers himself feeling happy for no apparent reason. He finds that surprising, and the surprise itself is disconcerting. Was I unhappy all these years? He’s not sure.
Phil and Chela measure time in terms of Jake: Jake was five months old
when his grandfather died, we bought the house when Jake turned one, we took such and such a trip when Jake turned two.
The week before Jake turns three, Chela is involved in some delicate negotiations between the Navajo, Hopi, and Paiute tribes over an archeological dig in the mountains near Colorado. That Friday, she races home from Shiprock on Interstate 64. It’s a pitch-black, moonless night. Her car slips on the icy bridge in Waterflow, over the Westwater Arroyo. The car tumbles down the ravine and lands upside down. Chela is killed instantly.
ACT IV
Little Jake is in bed asleep when the policemen come and notify Phil. Phil immediately knows what has happened, without being told. There is a vast, cavernous silence that has opened up in the world, and everything seems distant, unreal, cold.
After they leave, he sits in the dark next to the phone. I should call Esteban, he thinks. I must pick up the phone and call Esteban. But he can’t make himself move his hands, can’t make himself stand. Carol. She’s just upstairs. Call her. But he can’t even turn his head. The only sound he can hear is the sound of Jake’s sleepy breathing from down the hall, in and out. It seems as if death has been taking slow steps toward him all his life. First, Danny. Then, Jake. Now, Chela. Little Jake breathes in a slight whistle. Phil wonders if it will stop. What would he do if Jake were to stop breathing? Would he be able to move then? Or would he stop breathing himself?
I could die right now, he thinks. I could just let go and drift away. Did she feel that way?
It seems that Jake’s breathing is the only thing holding him to the earth at all.
He can see in his mind the highway through Waterflow. He has driven that road before. He can see the patch of ice forming on the bridge, sees Chela hitting the patch and the car turning, Chela panicking and trying to regain control.
I never taught her to drive on the ice, he thinks to himself. I never saw the need.
There is a hitch in Jake’s breathing as the boy starts to wake with the dawn. Phil shakes his head and stands up, able to move at last. First, he calls Carol and tells her. Then, he washes his face in cold water. He picks up the phone and dials Esteban’s number from memory.
“Esteban,” he begins in Spanish. “There has been an accident.”
After that, he waits for Jake to wake up.
Phil is struck by the dull tedium of death. As when Chela and his mother buried his father, there are endless details to be addressed. How is Chela to be buried? Should she be cremated? Where is it to take place? What kind of coffin? What kind of urn?
Matia, looking old and sad and grand, takes over. The funeral is a large and colorful affair to which Jake feels no kinship at all. She knows which relatives to notify, how to drape the casket, what flowers to send to which church. Esteban’s sole task is to grieve with Phil. Phil’s sole task is to grieve with his son.
Little Jake does not cry immediately when he is told. He asks again when Mama will be coming home. Each time, Phil starts the story again. Mama has gone away. She won’t be coming back. She will always love you, but she can’t be here any more. Jake listens, blue eyes intent. Then, he asks again.
By the time of the funeral, Jake has stopped asking. He does everything asked of him without complaint or comment. Not much is asked. He submits to every caress, hug, and embrace as if he were somewhere else. Only his clenched grip on his father has any life to it. It is so strong that Phil has to change hands often.
Once the immediate death tasks are done, Phil must manage the lesser tasks. He settles the insurance, makes sure the deed to the house is in proper order. When the insurance check comes in, he pays off the mortgage of the house. The rest he puts in a trust account for Jake. Mishra calls him to see if he’s all right. He asks when Phil is coming back to work. Never, Phil wants to scream into the phone, but instead says he doesn’t know.
He spends all of his time with Jake and Carol. Jake had crawled into bed with Phil the night after the accident. Phil hadn’t the heart to put him back. Now, each night, Phil wakes up to find Jake nestled spoon fashion against his chest.
Finally, after a month of mourning, he goes back to the shop. Standing there surrounded by automated machines, he realizes that he never wants to be here ever again. He walks into the office and sits down across from Mishra.
“Buy me out,” he says quietly.
Mishra reaches into the drawer and pulls out a document and gives it to him. “I thought you might feel that way.”
It is something he and Jake discuss, as much as a thirty-eight-year-old man can discuss anything with a three-year-old boy. When Carol leaves in the spring, they sell the house to follow her to Hopkinton. Matia and Esteban come up to see them off.
“You’ll be back,” says Esteban, looking up at him. He touches Phil on the chest. “We are in your blood.”
Phil nods in agreement. “Someday.” It’s all he can bring himself to say. He hugs them three or four times. They can’t hug Jake enough. Finally, Jake, Carol, and Phil get in the truck, and the three of them start the long drive to Massachusetts.
This grief is harder to bear than the death of his father. This has unnaturalness to it, bitterness, a sense of outrage. On the trip to Massachusetts, Jake sees the Grand Canyon for the first time. Watching his son marvel, Phil feels he is witnessing Little Jake for two people, himself and Chela. He must see things for her as well as for himself. When they stop for a day to play in the park next to the Mississippi, he tries to see it as Chela might have seen it, for the first time. He wonders how Gordie Howe must have felt when his wife died.
When, at last, they come to the old house in Hopkinton, it is early summer and the lawn and gardens are overgrown. It is so different from New Mexico. He wants to feel as she might have, coming from her ancient Spanish ancestors, to see this place as fresh and new.
There are gaps of time over the summer and fall. A month might pass where he remembers nothing except what happens to Jake. It is as if Phil is only alive through Jake’s eyes and fingers.
Jake’s fourth birthday marks the anniversary of Chela’s death. Phil acts purposefully unexcited about the prospect. He is determined that Jake’s birthday not be permanently marred by the death of his mother. With Carol, Phil puts together a small party composed of Jake’s new friends and their parents. The day before the party, Phil finds Jake in the living room, standing before the old and beaten piano. The orange paint is just as ghastly against Carol’s New England wallpaper as it had been in New Mexico. Jake’s right hand is resting on the keys but not pressing them down, as if he were trying to feel the weight of the music in them. Tears are falling down his cheeks.
“Jake?” calls Phil softly. “What’s the matter?”
Jake draws his hand across the keys gently without making any sound. “Mama liked to play the piano, didn’t she?”
Phil comes and sits on the floor next to him. Jake doesn’t take his hand from the keys.
“Yes,” Phil says.
Jake lets his hands fall and crawls into Phil’s lap. “I want to play, too,” he says. “Can I learn?”
Phil can barely speak. “Yes.”
When Jake starts kindergarten, Phil is at a loss for what to do with his time. As long as he can work outdoors, he works on Carol’s house. Carol is nearing eighty now. Though she is still strong, the years have taken their toll. Phil builds an enclosed wrap-around porch for her and Jake.
Over the fall, Phil and Jake have fallen into the habit of getting up early, before the bus, and walking along the lake in the park nearby. Phil guards these times jealously. It is his favorite time with Jake. This year, the winter grows cold early and snows late, so that when Christmas rolls around, the lake is flat ice in all directions. In the distance, they can see kids playing pond hockey. Phil leans down to the edge of the lake. Under the initial sandpaper, the ice is hard and smooth. Perfect hockey ice. Thoughtfully, he stands again and replaces his glove.
Jake is looking at the game in the distance. “Let’s go watch them.”
“That’s hockey?” Jake asks.
Phil nods, thinking Jake must have heard about hockey in school. Hockey hasn’t been mentioned around Phil since before Jake was born.
“Did you ever play?”
Phil looks down at Jake. The blue eyes are all that he can see of himself in the boy. The rest is Chela’s.
“Yes,” he says finally. “A long time ago.”
“Were you any good at it?”
Phil nods. “I was pretty good. I haven’t played in a long time.”
“Is it fun?”
“It’s like flying.” He thinks a moment. “It was the most fun I ever had as a boy.”
Jake thinks for a moment. “Why did you quit?”
Phil shrugs. “It’s complicated. I had to leave home. I had to grow up. All that meant I had to quit.”
Jake thinks about that for a moment. “Can you teach me?”
Phil looks down at him. The nervousness and apprehension fall away. Christ, it’s been over twenty years! I’m a forty-one-year-old man. Isn’t it time I let that go?
“Yes, I can.”
He’s rusty on skates, but, after a few days of practice, sore muscles, and several bruising falls, he starts to remember his skill. It is as if a long dormant muscle is awakened. He finds himself enjoying skating again.
Jake learns to skate easily and is soon asking to play hockey. Without quite knowing how it comes about, Phil finds himself the team coach. They are a motley collection of five- to seven-year-old children, and he’s not sure he’s up to the task. They have a good, though unspectacular, winter season. Phil continues coaching over the summer season.
Each hot summer morning, he finds himself looking forward to coaching them with an eagerness that feels brand new. Every Tuesday morning, he is on the ice, carefully teaching them how to skate, how to hold themselves, how to keep their balance when they bump into each other. The mite league doesn’t allow checking; that comes later, when they eventually graduate to the peewee league. But Phil keeps it in mind. If they stay with it, the shift won’t take them quite so off guard.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Page 23
