Tam and I laughed as our baby girl looked back and forth between the two of us from that counter top. Eyes wide-open, she looked wise somehow.
“Well, now what?” I had asked Tammy that day …
“Daddy!” Tory screeches from inside the van.
My eyes had been following them since they crossed the tracks, but my mind was disconnected from the moment and didn’t receive the message. Memory-blindness.
“Daddy!” she yells again, running toward me now.
I step down off the porch and bend down to wrap my arms around my little girl. She throws her arms around me and I lift her up for a kiss. She keeps her legs running in mid- air and kicks me below the belt three times. I yelp and fall to my knees in the middle of the yard. Still holding Tory against me, I fall backward and then release her to lie on the ground next to me.
“I missed you SO much, Daddy!”
“I missed you, too, Sweetie,” I say in a fake falsetto that makes Tammy and I both laugh.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply. When I open them again, Tammy’s upside down face is staring down at me and smiling.
“Well, now what?” she asks.
With Grandpa and Grandma more than happy to play babysitter to their great-granddaughter, Tammy and I are able to spend a lot of time together over the next few days. We go out to dinner, to the movies, to coffee shops. We talk. We are beginning to find each other again. Learning each other all over again—some of it old and familiar, some of it new and different.
I find those Betty Cooper-like upturns at the corners of her mouth and those gorgeous gray-green eyes that somehow always seem full of hope. Her sweetness and optimism, which I had feared might die.
Over dinner one night, I told her about the letters I had written to Beatrice Hart and Phyllis Ross and she encouraged me to write more.
“I don’t know, Tam. It seems kind of weird, doesn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she assures me. “Besides, if it makes you feel better, that’s all that matters, right?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“It helps them and it helps you. I think it’s wonderful.”
“Maybe,” I say. “We’ll see.”
I reposition my fork and knife next to my empty dinner plate several times and then drink the rest of my margarita. Her eyes hang on me as I do. Usually I am pretty good with silence, but if there is something being unspoken in that quiet space, I sometimes have trouble holding my tongue.
“You probably think I’m drinking too much.”
I caress the empty glass, stare down into it.
“It makes me feel better. And like you said, that’s all that matters, right?”
“Don’t do that, Tucker,” she warns. “It’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Well, it sort of is the same thing.”
“It’s not healthy. It’s destructive.”
“I’m not an alcoholic, Tam. I promise. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have what it takes to become one.”
“You’ve got alcoholics on both sides of your family. I’m pretty sure you do have what it takes. It’s in your blood.”
“Fine, the genes may be in me, but I’m telling you they’re recessive.
I redirect the conversation.
“What about you?” I ask. “What have you been doing to feel better?”
Relenting, she leans back in her chair and lets out a deep sigh.
“Actually, I’ve been going to this support group for parents who have lost children. I met a woman from Werton who lost her daughter to SIDS. We’ve had lunch a few times, talked on the phone.”
“Good, that’s good. I’m happy you’ve found someone who can help.”
“Oh, and I ordered these,” she says, reaching inside her purse.
She pulls out what looks like a business card and hands it to me. Printed on the front of the card, it says, This random act of kindness is done in loving memory of our child _____. After the word ‘child’, Tammy has written Ethan Merrill.
“Wow, this is great.”
“Isn’t it? I ordered them from this website the support group recommended.”
“So then what—you give a gift or something to someone and put this card in with it?”
“Exactly. You want to use one tonight? We could pay for someone’s dinner.”
We survey the restaurant. I point out a young mother and her two children who are sitting in the far corner of the restaurant. Her toddler son is crawling around the table while her daughter is waving a picture she has drawn in front of her face.
“I think we have our winner,” I say.
When we get home that night, everyone is in bed and the house is dark. I sneak into Tory’s room to give her a kiss goodnight, but she is awake.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, little girl?”
She shrugs her shoulders. I sit down on the edge of the bed.
“What’s the matter, Sweetie? Is something bothering you?”
Again she shrugs.
“Okay, it’s late. You need to get some sleep.”
I lean forward and kiss her forehead, pulling the covers up to her chin. As I start to get up, she says, “Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think Ethan is doing now?”
Moonlight seeps into the room between a gap in the curtains, shining a silvery stripe down Tory’s face. She looks back up at the moon, not at me, and I remember that favorite storybook of hers and how we would copy from it as part of her bedtime routine.
“I love you all the way to the moon, Daddy.”
“And I love you all the way to the moon and back, Little Nut Brown Hare.”
“I don’t know, probably playing with some angel friends. Maybe watching us, looking out for his big sister.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
Her gaze shifts away from the moon and locks on me.
“Can we go to the cemetery tomorrow and see Ethan?”
“Sure, Sweetie,” I say, kissing her again. “You bet we can. Get some sleep now, okay?”
I rise from the bed and walk to the door.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I wish I could have seen him.”
There are lots of things you have to think about when your baby has died. One of the hardest is whether you want his four-year-old sister to see her dead brother. Tammy and I chose to spare Tory that pain. To spare her the image that would be burned into her memory. The kind of image that nightmares were built around. What we didn’t realize is that in sparing her the pain, we cost her the only chance she had for a memory.
“Me, too, Sweetie. I’m sorry.”
The next morning, I take Tory up to the playground to meet my new friend and to swing for a while. But again Swinging Girl is not here. It has been several days since I’ve seen her and this concerns me a little. It’s an irrational fear and I know where it’s coming from, of course. Having lost both Katie and Ethan, I realize that I’m destined for a future of irrational fears and over-protectiveness.
Tory and I walk through Bruner’s cornfield to the cemetery. She is enthralled when I tell her how Mikey Bruner and I used to hunt arrowheads in this very field. How this land had been full of those ancient relics from a lost time and a displaced peoples. How Mikey and I would roll them around in our hands and make up stories about each jagged little stone. The buffalo brought down by one, the cavalryman pierced by another. The broken points that had undoubtedly been chipped on the bones of its victim—arrows sticking out of chests like tombstones sticking out of the ground.
I think about how I used to go on long walks like this with my own dad. Everything seemed so simple back then, when I was the one looking up and it was someone else looking down. I guess things always seem simpler when you’re the one looking up.
Tory loves the fact that we have put her name on the back of Ethan’s headstone.
“That’s my name there—right, Daddy?”
�
�That’s right.”
“What does the part above my name say? I forgot.”
“It says ‘To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.’”
“Ethan lives in our hearts—right, Daddy?”
“That’s right, Sweetie.”
“So it’s kind of like he’s alive—right, Daddy? Because he’s alive in our hearts.”
“Yes, Sweetie. He sure is.”
“But, Daddy? What if we die and our hearts die? Then Ethan won’t be alive anymore either—right, Daddy?”
“No, he’ll still be alive and so will we. We’ll find different hearts to live in.”
“Whose hearts?”
“Our family and friends.”
Before leaving the Willow Grove cemetery that morning, I walk Tory past Katie’s gravesite. We don’t stop, though, and I don’t say anything to Tory about Katie. But it still feels like an introduction of sorts.
The last thing I do before leaving is to check and see if the letter I had left by Slim Jim’s grave was still there. It isn’t.
Things Lost, Things Found
The Willow Grove United Methodist Church has always praised God with a stoic reverence and I think that’s what had me wanting to go to church again. To silence the noise in my head.
This Sunday is special. It is Mother’s Day and my wife and daughter and mother are all here with me. Tory sits between Mom and Larry the same way I used to sit between Grandma and Grandpa Mueller. Mom has one arm draped across Tory’s shoulder, gently rubbing her granddaughter’s arm. Every few seconds Tory looks up at her and shows her the picture she is drawing on the back of the Sunday bulletin. Mom smiles proudly and squeezes her in close.
“Do you like it, Victoria?” Tory says to her namesake.
“It’s beautiful, Victoria,” her namesake says back to her.
Naming Tory after her did not make Mom love her granddaughter anymore than she would have otherwise, but I’m pretty sure it helped her love herself more. And the relationship between them was more special because of it.
Mom and Larry live in Glidden now, but still come to Willow Grove for church. Even though Glidden is only ten minutes away I hadn’t gone to visit them yet, and I know that Mom is probably hurt by this. She wants me to need her more. She had hugged me when we arrived that morning, but then turned her attention away from me and toward Tory. Swooping her up in her arms and giving her all the love and comfort that had been building up inside.
Tory returns to our pew after the children’s message and I get up to take her down to the nursery. Tammy gently pushes me back in my seat and whispers, “I have to use the lady’s room.”
She is teary-eyed and I know that she is remembering Ethan’s funeral and can probably see his little casket as clearly as I can.
Tammy and Tory leave and I lean forward to focus to the sermon, elbows on knees, head in hands. As Pastor Judy begins, I look at Mom seated next to me and I think how she must be missing her own mother this day.
I close my eyes and fade back to Sundays passed when Grandma Mueller would give me a piece of gum or candy from her purse once the sermon started. I called it her “Let’s Make a Deal” purse because it contained anything that Monty Hall could ever think to ask for. Monty could ask for a hairpin, tweezers, a hard-boiled egg, whatever, Grandma would surely have it in her “Let’s Make a Deal” purse.
Back then I would lean forward just like this Grandma would walk my back with her fingers. She’d rub gently or scratch little messages onto me.
Love you.
My boy.
Hi T (she always called me T.)
And then … I felt it.
Hi T.
I actually felt it scratched into my back.
I let out a gasp and jerk upright like you do when stirred from those pre-sleep dreams. I swing my arms wide for balance, accidentally hitting my mom with one arm and the back of the pew with the other. The eyes of the congregation turn to me. Pastor Judy stumbles momentarily, but presses on and things continue as normal.
“Are you okay,” Mom whispers.
An instant sweat pours from me. I turn and see that the pew behind me is empty.
“I’m fine. Did you … did you scratch my back?” I ask.
“No, I didn’t touch you.”
Hi, T—that was the message scratched onto my back. Hi, T like Grandma Mueller used to scratch-write onto my back. I try to determine whether I had actually felt it or if it had merely been a powerful daydream.
From behind me comes a muffled giggle. Tory had snuck back upstairs and is hiding on the floor in the pew behind mine.
“Tory, did you do that?”
“Yes,” she giggles.
But she couldn’t even read yet, so she couldn’t possibly have done this.
“How? Why did you write ‘Hi, T’?”
“I didn’t, Daddy. I was drawing a picture.”
Some people get a burning bush, I get pillow feathers and back-scratched messages. That I believe these things were signs—did it make me a man of greater or lesser faith? If there is a God, He certainly has a sense of humor.
“Daddy, I don’t want to be downstairs. I want to stay here with you.”
Just then Tammy returns looking for Tory, giving her that hands-on-the-hip mom-frown when she sees her with me. I pull Tory close to me and kiss the top of her head. And when I do, I smell that odor of laundry detergent and cigarettes that I’ve always associated with Grandma Mueller. It comes and goes like a pin-prick, but I have no doubt. It was definitely her smell.
I want to believe there is life beyond this one and that maybe it exists within some other world interwoven with our own. That the inhabitants of this ‘Other World’ have simply passed through a one-way door that takes them out of the world we know, but they were are somehow still around, wanting to reach out to us. To scratch their way through the dimensional doors between us. And that sometimes with enough struggle on their end and enough need on our end they were able to break through—even if just to drop a feather at our feet or scratch a message on our back. Anything that might stir us and get us to move from where we are to where we are supposed to be.
Is this where I’m supposed to be?
Did I really believe what Mr. Innocent was telling me?
Charlie seemed pretty damn sure that Slim Jim had been innocent of Katie’s murder and that notion stirred a hibernating-bear of a thought from deep within me. Poked at it with a stick until it woke up and growled at me.
Maybe I was contriving a mystery so I could have something different to think about other than Ethan? And even if there was some truth to it, what good could come of it now? Who could be helped by my trudging around in the past like this? Not the Coopers. Their daughter was dead and they had made whatever peace they could make with that fact years ago. They knew who had killed Katie. There was no unsolved mystery here, so why create one?
I had come back to Willow Grove to find peace with my own child’s death. To learn how to let go. But instead I was reaching back to grab hold of something that everyone had let go of years ago. And it felt good to think I could help someone—even if it was a dead someone. I needed something to fix, but the question remained … was anything even broken?
Later on that Mother’s Day morning, Tory and Grandma Gaines sit together on the front porch swing. Tammy cautions Tory to slow down and to stop leaning so hard on her great-grandma.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Grandma says. “I’m old, but I’m tough.”
“When I asked Daddy how old Great-Grandpa was, he said that Great-Grandpa is so old that when he was a little boy he ate whole loaves of bread and rode a bike with square tires. Did you have a bike with square tires when you were a little girl, Grandma?”
“Hey, you weren’t supposed to tell anybody I said that!”
Grandma laughs and tells Tory a few tall-tales of her own before taking my two ladies into the house to finish preparing lunch. Old family ghosts keep that empty swing moving and the chains cl
anking and I sit down next to them for a couple minutes before going inside to visit with Aunt Paula and my dad.
Dad was already in the easy chair watching a baseball game—the remote in his right hand and aimed at the TV, poised to raise the volume at a moment’s notice. Paula was sitting at the dining room table in the adjacent room, staring down at the Sunday paper through bifocals.
“Who’s winning?” I ask, sitting down on the chair next to Dad.
“Hi, Tuck,” he says. “Not the Cubs.”
There is a tension to our relationship that had not been there when we were both younger. When, perhaps, the role of father and son is more clearly defined. I think it started when Tory was born and he became a grandpa. The week after her birth, Dad bought—for the second time in his life—a 1967 Oldsmobile 442. The first 1967 Olds 442 he had bought, appropriately enough, in 1967. But I came along in ‘68 and he ended up trading in his muscle car for something more family appropriate. If this 442 doesn’t help him recapture some youth and glory, I’m going to recommend a 1980 DeLorean, some plutonium, and a flux capacitor.
When lunch is over, Tammy tells me, Dad, and Grandpa that the least we could do was to do the dishes considering the mothers had spent all morning making their own Mother’s Day meal. I start to argue, pointing out that I had offered to make hot dogs or mac and cheese, but Grandpa interrupts.
“The least we can do, huh? Well, never let it be said that Hollis Gaines won’t do the least he can do.”
Then he winks at Dad and me.
“Tucker, Ronald, to the kitchen.”
While we cleaned the kitchen, Tammy had gone to the florist to buy flowers for Ethan’s gravesite. When she returns, her eyes are red and she has mascara streaks down her face. She motions for me to come outside and I join her on the porch.
She starts speaking the second I close the door behind me and it’s as if I have joined her in the middle of a story she has already begun.
“So as I was leaving the flower shop, the lady behind the counter calls out to me. She held up a single rose and said ‘Here, this is for you. Happy Mother’s Day.’ And as soon as she said it, I knew it was from Ethan. I mean, I knew it. I felt it and the thought of him popped into my head on its own, you know? Like out of nowhere I had this intuitive certainty that it was from Ethan before I even had a conscious thought. Does that make any sense at all?”
Where the Broken Lie Page 9
