by Robert Price
Chapter Eighteen
Carrie Phillips tried to coax her son’s tears into remission, but they kept flowing—albeit only for a short time. Her offerings of hugs, chocolates and cookies helped some, but they were no match for all the attention he had begun to receive from a kitchen full of admirers.
The boy was beautifully cute. His eyes had puffed up like sugarcoated pastries and his face had swollen round like a ripe, juicy-red tomato with a stem of golden hair on top. All of his needs were being met—his mother’s presence, cookies and a room full of admirers. And with the sudden addition of the Dorsey children, just as quickly as they had started, the tears dried up—he now appeared on the verge of laughter.
Earlier, when Tommy’s tears had first started flowing, Teddy and Tammy Dorsey were on the couch in the airless reception room tying their fingers into knots while their mother and father offered their formal condolences to Mrs. Hubbard. The sight of the old woman had frightened the two children. To them she appeared creepy; hunched in a chair with a black shawl draped over her shoulders, she resembled a decrepit Angel of Death—complete with the fires of hell glowing in the fireplace behind her, just like they heard described at Sunday School.
Tammy, the younger of the two, was already close to tears upon hearing Tommy’s initial howls coming from the room next door. She looked to her older brother Teddy for help. He tried to remain strong, but the facade rapidly faded when he, too, heard another child’s tears. Propelled by a combination of fear of Mrs. Hubbard and a curiosity about the crying emanating from the next room, the Dorsey children jumped off the couch together and rushed into the kitchen. Once there, Tommy’s crying proved to be contagious. Within seconds their immunity diminished and the Dorsey children broke into tears, too.
When the gangly Ted Dorsey appeared in the kitchen doorway to check on what trouble his children could have caused, he found Carrie Phillips squatting between the three blubbering children holding a plate of cookies.
“These two are mine. What did they do?” he asked.
“Nothing. I think mine inspired them.” Carrie Phillips spoke as she stood and placed a hand on Tommy’s head.
With the addition of the Dorsey children, Tommy’s admirers had turned away: One tearful blonde boy was cute. Three wailing children in a kitchen full of adults were annoying. Sensing he was no longer the center of attention, Tommy stopped crying.
Carrie brushed her son’s hair. “It’s been a long day. And then these men started arguing by the bar. It scared the heck out of him.”
“I think this whole thing’s been hard on these two as well,” Ted said, rubbing his children’s backs as they wiped their eyes. “We were good friends with Tom,” Ted blurted out awkwardly. He’d always been uncomfortable around women he did not know.
When he hesitatingly extended a hand to introduce himself, he noticed the little blonde boy look up as if he had been addressed. “Hello there,” Ted said to the boy.
Carrie pulled Tommy close to her skirt. “Every time he hears the name Tom, he thinks someone’s talking to him. His name is Thomas, Tommy, too. I’m Carrie,” she said, shaking Ted’s hand.
“I’m Ted.”
Hardly a conversationalist, he wondered what to say next. But he decided that, although he didn’t know her, he liked this woman. Something about her seemed familiar, like someone he had known for years. He tried to relax. “Did you know Tom from Arlington?”
“Arlington, you mean Virginia? No, Tom and me, we first met ten or so years ago. I was really—well, I was shocked when I heard, or, that is, when I saw his name and picture on the news. I didn’t even know he was over there—I was just shocked.”
“My wife Shelly and I were, too. We were all high school friends.”
Ted hesitated again. Speaking of Tom’s death made him uneasy. In fact, the whole notion of someone his age dying was new. Other people in his life had died, aunts and uncles, but they were old. Even as a boy, he knew they were going to die; it was inevitable. They were only doing what they were supposed to do. A contemporary’s death, however, struck differently. This feeling that Tom existed somewhere in the past, and now that past was permanently gone, taxed Ted’s imagination. He struggled with the meaning behind his sadness—was he sad for the end of his past or for Tom’s death? Likely both.
Carrie noticed a change in Ted’s demeanor. He looked as confused as his son who had just finished crying. “You knew him well then?” she asked.
“He was an usher at our wedding. He called us before he went back over. So, you know, we kept in touch. Where did you know him from?”
“Just around, really—Boston. Then I bumped into him again, and, well, we became friendly. But I haven’t seen him in years.”
When she had left Boston that morning, Carrie’s goal was to introduce her son to his grandmother, but to keep their identities a secret so as to not call attention away from the day’s events. She had accomplished that goal at the gravesite. However, after the priest made an announcement inviting everyone to the Hubbard house, she realized she wanted more, not just for herself but also for her son. She wanted her son to have more of a memory of his father, something other than just a burial, so that when the boy was older and asked to know more about his father, she could explain it to him through the memory of this day.
“You saw him recently in Boston?” Ted was only half listening to Carrie. His own sadness and confusion weighed on him. Additionally, he was trying to keep an eye on his children. The two had bonded with this woman’s son and they were now confidently following the boy through the maze of adults in the kitchen. Typically, his children were shy around older people. He noticed, however, that little Tommy was not.
“No, not recently.” She hesitated, and then added, “It would have to be almost five years ago anyway. That was the last time I saw him.”
Carrie watched her son move about the kitchen. He would join a group of adults, stand there and look up at them until they looked down at him, and then, as if approving them, he would smile and move on to the next group.
“He’s a pretty friendly boy,” Ted remarked.
“His father could be, too.” Tommy reminded Carrie of his father. Tom Hubbard had had that same confidence. Completely at ease in a crowd, he could talk to anyone.
She had fallen in love with Tom Hubbard almost immediately. She was an undergraduate, a junior at Simmons College, and Tom appeared ideal—older, tall, blonde. And when he looked at her, she melted. They went out only twice. Then he disappeared. Although she dated many other men after Tom, they never measured up to him.
“Yes, he gets his extrovert character from his father.”
About six years ago they bumped into each other again in Harvard Square. He invited her for a cappuccino, apologized for disappearing and magically re-entered her life. He would come to Boston and stay for two, three days at a time, then leave. She never asked him why or where he went, but she lived for their time together.
Then she became pregnant. He demanded she get an abortion. She refused. By the time little Tommy was born, Tom had stopped visiting. Every once in a while she would contact him, but it was always a disaster. The last time they talked he called her a whore and said the boy belonged to someone else.
“Did he come today, his father?” Ted asked.
Carrie looked down at the plate of cookies she held. Leaving Ted’s question unanswered, she stepped to the closest counter and placed the plate down, returning to Ted’s side in time for Shelly Dorsey, Ted’s wife, to join them.
“She seems to be holding up. Such a strong woman,” Shelly said, referring to Mrs. Hubbard, and then, turning to Carrie, “Hi, I’m Shelly.”
A tinge of jealousy clicked in the back of Shelly’s mind, comparing her ridged body to Carrie’s softer cuteness. She glanced at her husband.
Ted swallowed guiltily: “Shell, this is … I’m sorry?”
“Carrie.”
“She came up from Boston,” Ted added.
&nb
sp; “Boston! Gosh, Tom got around. I was just commenting to Mrs. Hubbard that it’s amazing how many people are here. His life touched so many. Wouldn’t you agree?” Shelly asked Carrie.
“Yes,” Carrie answered. “I was surprised when we got to the cemetery.”
“Ted got to go. I stayed home with our children.” Shelly pointed to the boy and girl who were still tagging along behind Tommy as he continued to inspect the adults in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry I missed it. Tom was such a wonderful man. Did your husband know Tom well?”
“My husband?”
“Oh … I’m sorry. You said ‘we,’ so I just assumed—” Shelly apologized, embarrassed. She wanted so much for people to think of her as astute, as something more than just a stay-at-home mom. But her stated assumption that Carrie was married and that it was her husband who was connected to Tom only proved how unworldly she was.
“My son and I went to the gravesite,” Carrie pointedly responded. Since Tommy’s birth, she had considered herself an independent woman, working full-time and taking full responsibility for raising her child. “I’m a single mom,” Carrie said, motioning to Tommy.
“That one? … He’s adooorable.”
“A little social butterfly,” Ted added.
“Thank you,” Carrie said. “He can be a handful at times, but he’s the love of my life.”
“Aren’t they all?” Shelly leaned forward, and, much to Carrie’s displeasure, put her hands on her knees and called for Tommy’s attention as if calling a dog.
The boy ignored her.
“My, but isn’t he a little young to be going to a gravesite?”
Shelly inherently questioned the judgment of all single mothers: If they had done things differently in the first place, they wouldn’t be in the jam they were in now. “It must have been a traumatic experience for him?”
“Not at all,” Carrie answered. “I thought it was important for him to—” she stopped, realizing that she wanted to explain who her son was and why they were there.
Earlier in the day, when the priest had announced the reception and she decided to attend, her motivation had been unclear. She had simply wanted to give Tommy a fuller picture of his father, a memory to hold on to. But now, speaking to the Dorseys, she understood for the first time what she really wanted—someone else, someone from Tom’s life, to know that Tommy was Tom’s child. And she wanted to explain to someone, Tom’s mother perhaps, how Tom’s life, and his absence since her son’s birth, had shaped their lives. But these were not the people to share this information with.
“Well, I had two reasons for bringing him.” Carrie spoke like the junior high school teacher she was. “First, to share with him my own sadness, and second, to teach him a lesson about war’s consequences.”
