“We heard about your loss, Tucker,” she says, sitting with Mr. Cooper and me at the table on the back porch. “And we’re so sorry.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cooper.”
“You were always such a good boy,” she says with a shake of her head and a frown that says “shame on the world.”
“You’re good people, too, Mrs. Cooper,” I say. “And so was Katie.”
Then we talk about Katie, and I tell them the story of the first time I met their little girl.
I was never one of those boys who thought girls were icky—not for even one day of my life. For me, little girls were always the melt away sweetness of a cotton candy at the county fair. They were red balloons and white doves and every other thing that rose high and lifted our eyes with them. They were bows and ribbons and every other thing that colored and adorned. And a pretty little girl has always turned me into a dopey little boy.
The story of the prettiest little girl of all begins in the summer of 1981, the year that I fell in love with Katie Cooper. The moving van was parked in the driveway of the Duffy’s old place across the street, and I rode by on my bike a few times to see if I could catch a glimpse of our new neighbors. On my third trip around, I saw a kid my age struggling to carry cardboard boxes piled high above his head.
“Hey, you need some help with that?” I yelled, steering out of the street and into the yard.
I jumped off my bike and let it coast-crash to a stop as I ran over to catch the top box that was sliding off. I caught it just before it hit the ground and cradled it under my arm like a fumbled football.
“Good catch, huh?” I asked, lifting myself up to see my newest Wiffle ball victim. I had been expecting to find a boy behind that stack of boxes, of course. What I found instead was the prettiest little girl of all, and I thought so the second I saw her freckle-faced smile peek out from behind the boxes that concealed her.
“Not bad,” she said. “Of course, it is the lightest box.”
I swallowed hard and a thousand spiny creatures crawled up and down my back, my neck, my limbs. With an open mouth, I gulped out a loud and stupid laugh. “HUH-HUH-HUH!”
She gave me a queer look and then a smirk that made me feel as though she had considered me, sized me up, and decided to like me all in an instant.
“I can carry a heavier box,” I said. Then added, “I mean, if you want.”
And thus began my first great romance.
“Yep,” I say, “I spent about one-tenth of a second disappointed that Katie wasn’t a boy and then I was head over heels in love with her every second after.”
Tears well in Betty Cooper’s eyes, and she puts a hand to her mouth.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Cooper.”
She gives me a mock frown and points her scolding finger at me. “Don’t you dare apologize for telling me you loved my little girl. You were the only boy who ever got to.”
Mr. Cooper gently rubs his wife’s back and, for the second time in my life, I feel like my love for Katie Cooper is a gift I have given. And, like that first time, I got a kiss on the cheek in return.
“Now,” Mrs. Cooper says with a sniff and a wipe of her nose. “Who wants some chocolate chip cookies?”
I spend the next hour drinking lemonade and eating chocolate chip cookies with Howard and Betty Cooper. I tell them everything I remember about their daughter, and they listen to me like wide-eyed little children hearing something brand new in a favorite story they have heard a hundred times before. So many stories that I had somehow forgotten to remember. We find joy inside those memories. Laughter, too. And as I walk back to my grandparents later that afternoon, I find myself wondering where Tammy and I will find our Ethan joy and laughter. Years from now, what stories will we comfort each other with? What stories can we comfort each other with, when we have none?
But there would be a story. One that we never could have imagined. And one that offered nothing in the way of comfort.
The Father Below
I’m sitting on a bench at the playground near my old elementary school when a child’s voice calls out, “Hey, Mister!”
The voice isn’t coming from memory—where I often live these days—but rather from one of the nearby swings. I had been alone here just moments ago, but somehow this little girl has snuck in under my radar.
“Yes?”
“Whatcha doin’?” she asks between smacks of bubble gum. I guess her to be about ten years old.
“I’m–sorry—what?”
The little girl pumps her legs and soars higher into the Willow Grove sky, speaking only when she reaches the highest point of her swing. “WHAT ARE … YOU DOING … HERE?”
Then she stops and sticks both legs straight out in front of her as if gliding in for a landing.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know. Just thinking, I guess.”
“Thinking?” she asks.
She pumps hard one more time and launches herself from the swing high into the air. Higher than I would have thought possible, and my heart skips a beat for her safety. A spastic gasp escapes me, and both arms reach out involuntarily as if to catch her from afar. Such a rise and fall would surely result in sprains or breaks for me, but she is without the rigidness and doubt of adulthood; she lands softly and safely, almost fluttering to the ground. Then, in a glorious ‘stuck the landing’ sort of way, she raises her arms high and lifts a smiling face to the heavens.
Bravo. I clap for her achievement.
“Thinking, huh? That’s what you came here to do?” she asks.
Walking toward me now, I see that she’s taller than I originally thought. And her hair—which had looked sandy brown in the sunlight—grows darker as she approaches. She gives me a reproachful stare that makes it clear I have disappointed her. As if she had been looking for me to be evidence that all adults weren’t hopeless bores.
“Well,” she says, “what are you thinking about?”
A good question without a good answer. I had come here to think about everything and nothing at all.
“I’m not sure.”
“That seems dumb.”
I laugh and concede, “Yeah, I suppose it does.”
“I came here to swing.” Then, after a moment, she adds, “I don’t think you came here to think. I think you came here to sit.”
“You know what? You’re right,” I say, rising from the bench. “No more sitting. It was nice talking to you.”
As I walk away, she calls out to me one more time.
“Hey, mister?”
“Yes?”
She blows a bubble and pops it with her pinky finger. “I’m just saying that if a person comes to the playground, maybe they should swing or something. That’s all.”
… seeing Tucker with the girl on the swing. It was like going back in time. Though this girl didn’t bare any real resemblance to Katie Cooper. Yet there was something about her. Maybe it was her innocence. Her naiveté. It was reminiscent of Katie and it both excited and sickened him. All at once it was that summer again. And that secret was fresh and new. The sleeping monster inside of him stirred. Alive and kicking like a newborn baby …
After dinner, I head to my bedroom. I love my grandparents, but cannot tolerate anyone’s company right now. Even theirs.
When I talked to Grandma on the phone about staying here for a little while, she didn’t ask for how long, she didn’t ask why, she didn’t ask anything. She just told me that they’d be glad to have me and that she’d make up my old room. So that’s where I slept that first night—in the same room I slept in as a boy. I could have asked for the larger bedroom that had belonged to my little sister Heather when we were kids, but there was less comfort in that thought.
Being there again is a strange sensation. I almost convince myself that I’m a little boy again and that my brother and sister are in their rooms down the hall, not yet asleep. A feeling of being safe settles on me, like when I used to crawl into bed with my Mom and Dad during a thunderstorm. Nestled between them. Soft
ness on one side, strength and shelter on the other. Like being inside of God.
As I drift off, I try to feel like that little boy. Try to think his thoughts, sleep his sleep, dream his dreams. But I can’t. That little boy is dead.
Like every day of my new life, I have been thinking of Ethan. But it’s always in the company of others, and I need to be alone. I also need to be drunk.
Like every day of my new life, I cry. I imagine for the ten-thousandth time how lonely and frightened he must have been. How alone and forsaken he must have felt in those final moments before giving himself up to death.
Like every day of my new life, I pray. They are bitter and angry words spit out through tears and snot and gasping breaths. I try to stick with the Lord’s Prayer, but vodka makes me angry and angry is my natural state these days, so I am angry on angry. I condemn God and then pray for his forgiveness. I curse Him and then I thank Him for all my blessings. Most of all, though, I question Him. You could convince me that Ethan dying is not God punishing, but you could not convince me that it wasn’t His allowing. And, truth be told, I hate Him for it.
For the second night of my new life, I sleep alone. Sleep, that is, until I awake gasping for air. My choking dream has returned. Head throbbing, chest heaving, I spring upright in bed and suck in as much air as my lungs can hold. The breath-taking nightmare is much more intense. The muscles in my throat are tight and achy. They hurt so much that my neck is sensitive to the touch.
I flip on the nightstand light, pull the covers back off my legs, and look at my angel-son, skin-painted on the inside of my left leg above the ankle. I fold my leg toward me and gently rub a thumb across his cherub face. Breathing easier now, I speak his name out loud just to hear myself say it. So that my ears might know the sound of the name. So that my tongue might know the feel of the name. So that this world might not forget the name.
“Ethan,” I repeat.
The feather from the Cooper’s yard trembles on the nightstand. I pick it up, close my hand around it tightly, and turn out the light.
Dancing butterfly
Delicate and free
Carry this prayer to
The highest tree
A prayer of love
That my son might know
His Father above and
His father below
Blackbird’s brother
Heart on wing
Carry this prayer to
The King of Kings
Lift to the clouds these
Words of love
From the father below to
The Son above
Lord of Lords and
King of Kings
Accept this prayer of
Cloud and wings
And send a sign so that
I might know
That the son above loves
The father below.
The next morning, my first thought upon waking is that this bed had been a lot more comfortable when I was ten. My second thought is that I had not called home the night before.
Tory answers on the first ring, and we talk for a couple minutes about a hundred different things.
“Daddy, guess what?”
“What?”
“Hillary got a new dog.”
“Oh, did she? I thought she already had a dog.”
“She did have a dog. Now she has two dogs. We don’t have any dogs because dogs wipe their butts on the carpet and not toilet paper and you don’t like that, Daddy. And, Daddy, guess what?”
“What?”
“Smoking is bad for you. I’m glad you’re living a tobacco-free life, Daddy.”
“You’re right, Sweetie, smoking is bad for you.”
“And, Daddy, guess what?”
“Sweetie, can I talk to Mommy?”
“Okay. Love you, Daddy. Bye.”
“Love you, too, Sweetie.”
She hands the phone to her mother.
“Hello.” Neither warm nor cool.
“Hi, Tam.”
“Hi.”
“How are you doing?” I ask. “Miss me yet?”
“I was missing you before you left.”
“I can believe that. But I think maybe you were looking forward to missing me a little more.”
“Maybe a little,” she says, and I hear the smile that her words passed through.
“Are you doing okay?”
“We’re doing fine. Tory’s been asking lots of questions about both you and Ethan.”
“What do you tell her?”
“I tell her that we’ll see you soon and Ethan someday.”
She asks how I am and what I had been doing, if I was still drinking. My answers were short like she knew they would be. Some truth, some lies. “You’re still planning on coming over for Mother’s Day, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Good. I can’t wait to see you guys. I’ll call you again tomorrow, okay?”
I wait for Tammy to hang up first and then sit there and listen to the dial tone. That should be the official sound of “Death,” I think to myself. But there had been life on the other end of that phone just a minute ago. “And Tory should be the official sound of “Life.” Even when mundane, there is so much power in life. Sometimes especially when mundane. The normal thoughts of a four year-old could be so life affirming. That little girl makes me happy.
“So? How are you doing?” Grandma asks.
We’re in the car, returning from Glidden where we had been grocery shopping. She wants me to bring up Ethan. I’m not going to.
“Fine,” I say. “Thanks again for letting me stay with you guys for a few nights.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. It’s nice having some company. Your grandfather and I don’t get many visitors anymore, you know.”
At forty miles-per-hour, the six-mile trip from Glidden to Willow Grove can be excruciating, which is exactly what the drivers in the line of cars behind Grandma are thinking, I’m sure. That stretch of route 38 has just enough curves and hills to make passing a near impossibility. When we come upon the one straight and flat stretch of that part highway, three cars whiz past, each with horns a-honking.
“Oh, those must be friends of yours,” Grandma says. “They were waving.”
“Yeah, and they think I’m number one, too,” I mumble.
As we approach my old high school, Grandma slows even more and points at the small farmhouse across the road from it.
“You see that there? Ain’t that something?”
She’s pointing at a great big red hay barn that has been around as long as I can remember. Except now it has a hole right through its center.
“Wow, what the heck happened there?”
“Them tornadoes we had a few weeks back. Two touched down. One got the best of that barn.”
What a strange sight to behold. Like a freight train had driven right through it.
“It looks like God tipped that tornado on its side and drilled a hole through its center,” I say.
“I believe God does things like that sometimes.”
“I believe God can be random and cruel, if that’s what you mean.”
“There’s always a purpose, Tucker,” she says with the kind of look that only the elderly can offer. Her eyes are as blue with promise as they must have been the day she was born. Those eyes have not aged at all, but the lids above them are heavy with years and the skin below them sags.
“Really? And what’s the purpose of putting a hole through the middle of that barn, Grandma?”
“Maybe to show us that it survived,” Grandma says. “That barn will come down some day, but it won’t be because of that tornado or the hole that it left. It still stands, even with the hole right through its center. And besides, now you can see what’s on the other side of it. You never could before.”
“I looked, Grandma. I didn’t see anything on the other side.”
“I know, Tucker. That’s what bothers me. People who don’t see nothing on the other side of some
thing like that, well, that’s about what they live for—nothin’.”
When we get back, I send Grandma inside and carry the groceries in myself. Howard Cooper, in his garden once again, smiles and waves at me. Seems like he spends all his time these days tending to those plants and flowers. No radio playing. No headphones. Just Howard Cooper and the tools he needs to help things grow. I didn’t remember him being such an avid gardener. As a kid, I suppose I wouldn’t have noticed one way or the other. He could have been a gardener all along. Or he could have started after Katie died.
I feel an overwhelming urge to have something to take care of. I want to fix the hole in that barn, but know that’s beyond my capabilities. I will have to find something else that needs repair.
Repairs and Reparations
I almost fell out of love with Katie once.
It happened about a week after her arrival in Willow Grove. I was on my way uptown to buy a root beer when I spotted her and Son Settles walking along the railroad tracks together. They were walking toward town, so they must have been returning from what I could only assume had been a long romantic walk.
They were holding hands. Gross. Then Son said something that made Katie laugh which was even grosser.
I put my head down and turned back around toward home.
“Tucker!” she yelled.
I kept walking.
“TUCKER GAINES!”
I turned around to see Katie let go of Son’s hand and wave at me. The smile on Son’s face faded.
“Tucker, wait up.”
She said something to Son that I couldn’t hear. He shrugged and smiled sweetly. Then he gave me a nasty scowl as soon as Katie turned her back to him and ran toward me.
“Hey, where are you going?” she asked.
“Home. I was going to Ike’s to get a root beer, but I’m not thirsty anymore.”
“Tucker, why are you walking so fast? Slow down. What’s the rush?”
She grabbed my hand, but I yanked it away.
“Tucker, what’s wrong with you?”
Where the Broken Lie Page 2
