by Robert Price
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Jon, where the hell are you?” Elizabeth yelled from the living room. Her dumb-ass cousin Tony had just told her, the Quinns and Neil Bingham that her deceased war hero brother had been gay.
Tonight, not only has Tom been accused of abandoning a son, now he’s a homosexual as well. She was furious and yelled again, “Jon!”
“Did you lose your husband, Lizzy?” Peter Hubbard sarcastically asked and then cocked his head to enlist his brother Alley’s support. No one else was in the living room, just the old brothers sitting under the tall window.
“What of it?” she demanded.
“Nothin’, nothin’ at all,” Peter Hubbard replied, tapping his hands on the wooden arms of the same chair he had sat in all day.
“I have no idea why you two jackasses are still here,” Elizabeth muttered, stomping out of the quiet living room and back into the reception room where she once again met up with her mother, Carrie Phillips and the boy.
“Elizabeth,” Mrs. Hubbard asked, “what’s all that yelling about?”
Her attention was still on little Tommy who now stood at her knees twisting the golden tassels on the fringe of the black shawl. “If you’re looking for Jon, I think I heard him in the kitchen,” she said flatly, encouraging Elizabeth to move along.
“Well, you all seem to be getting along famously,” Elizabeth said sharply. She looked at Carrie Phillips who, sitting on the couch, hardly looked up at her when she walked into the room. That woman thinks she’s so clever, bringing the boy here to manipulate my gullible mother. Elizabeth glared at Carrie. “Did you hear the latest about the boy’s father?” Elizabeth seethed.
Carrie looked up, concern flashed across her face; her son was still blissfully ignorant as to his father.
Carrie wanted to first talk with the Hubbard family about how to tell the boy. But she had decided against rushing into that discussion; it was best to wait until they had accepted the idea that Tom had actually abandoned a child.
During the course of the evening, with events unfolding as they were, Carrie had concluded, almost immediately upon Elizabeth’s negative reaction, that if the family were unwilling to accept her son then she would hold off on telling the boy about his father. After all, she needed to protect her son from any unnecessary emotional harm.
And, separately, she figured that at some point in the near future she would have to have yet another difficult conversation with the family, this time about the land. If it were indeed Tom’s land, she would need to consider her son’s financial future; there would be summer camps, music lessons, college tuition and many other expenses, opportunities that Tommy might otherwise miss because of her limited financial resources. The land could change all that.
Elizabeth responded to Carrie’s look of concern with a smug expression. “Well, there’s now a rumor that Tom wasn’t the man you claim him to be.”
“Elizabeth!” her mother scolded. “I think I heard Jon talking to someone in the kitchen. Go see.”
Like an upset child, Elizabeth stomped towards the door. As she did, one of her high-heeled shoes pinched the inside of her foot. The sharp pain made her want to cry out. She channeled the pain into a fiery hiss, “I can’t believe you’re buying into this crap, Mother,” and slammed the door behind her.
On the kitchen table, Ezekiel had spread out all the photographs he had brought with him in the small knapsack. There were vacation photos from Puerto Rico and Costa Rica; shots of the two of them at friends’ weddings, backyard barbeques and beach outings; and pictures of their house in Arlington, Virginia.
Standing out among the many pictures was a series of Christmas photos. Each featured Tom and Ezekiel in the same spot in their living room in Arlington, year after year, with a different decorated evergreen tree behind them. Ezekiel laughed as he pushed the other photos aside and placed the Christmas series in chronological order. Jon, Gabriella and Patella huddled around as Ezekiel spoke about the evolution of the precariously placed self-timer cameras.
Over the years, Ezekiel explained, their strategy of picture-taking changed from simply tilting up the angle of the camera with a couple of quarters on the arm of their couch, to placing the camera on an elaborate makeshift tower Tom fashioned together out of a foot stool, an upside down trash bin and two thick picture books. The older photos featured cut-off foreheads and half-faces, while the most recent ones rivaled any photo taken with a well-placed tripod.
“Tom called tripods ‘unnecessary, fancy-schmancy’ equipment. He insisted we didn’t need one. And he was right, because he could build anything out of nothing,” Ezekiel laughed again.
“He was so proud of this last one,” Ezekiel passed the picture to Gabriella.
“Bonito,” Gabriella said. Though she did not understand his explanation, she heard the affection in Ezekiel’s voice. She held it for Patella who smiled in agreement.
“And this one, it’s just our noses.” Ezekiel touched the photo and the four of them laughed together.
Jon moved the images around on the table. There was his brother-in-law, a clean-cut, sturdy, blonde man. He could see very little of his dark haired wife in Tom’s features—just the eyes mostly. Tom had the same steady, warm, but protected gaze as Elizabeth. Even with a broad smile, his eyes looked as though they had a story to tell, but chose to hold back instead—just like Elizabeth’s eyes.
Jon picked up a photograph and studied it. There was Ezekiel, taller and bigger than Tom, smiling in his colorful Hawaiian shirt, hands resting on Tom’s shoulders. And there was a tanned Tom, smiling with the same cheekbones, balled jaw and square chin that he had passed along to the boy in the next room. And for the first time since Elizabeth had told Jon about Tom’s death, he felt as though he had actually lost something. He looked around the kitchen, half-expecting to see Tom there by the sink, at the refrigerator, coming in the back door. Jon felt the back of his throat tug the way it had when his first child was born.
Gabriella placed her hand on Jon’s back to offer support. She knew more about death from war than most and she could see Jon was feeling Tom’s absence.
Ezekiel took Jon’s hand. They sat together, Jon, Ezekiel, Patella and Gabriella, in respectful silence with the photos spread in front of them on the kitchen table. Jon’s mind finally cleared—unlike earlier, during the burial’s moment of silence, when his mind had wandered, unfocused. Then, instead of praying or grieving, he had found himself scanning the crowd, guessing each mourner’s relationship to Tom. At last, with this small group at the kitchen table, Jon finally let the loss of his brother-in-law wash over him.
“For Christ’s sake, Jon, here you are.” Elizabeth stepped into the kitchen, slamming the door to the small sitting room behind her. “Do you know what’s going on in that room? That little wench is using her boy to manipulate my mother!”
Jon quickly composed himself and the temporarily bonded foursome separated.
Elizabeth positioned herself at the head of the table, oblivious to the quiet grieving she had just interrupted. The tendons in her neck flexed.
“Oh,” she said, snapping back into the role of domineering hostess. She reached across the table towards Ezekiel—“Elizabeth, Tom’s sister. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No, not really.” Ezekiel shook her hand. “At least not in person.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth mockingly apologized, interpreting the comment to mean she was rude for not having introduced herself sooner. “With the number of guests here today, I couldn’t break away and meet everyone. I apologize for missing you.”
Gabriella and Patella heard the strain in Elizabeth’s voice, like that of a spoiled child, and moved to the dining room to busy themselves.
“I imagine the day has been stressful for you,” Ezekiel spoke softly, agreeing with Elizabeth. “My name is Ezekiel.”
“Yes, it is,” she replied, attention shifting to the array of photographs on the table.
Jon moved aro
und the table next to her. After seven years of marriage, he had learned when it was best to give Elizabeth a chance to catch her breath. And then, sometimes, like perhaps now, there would be a rare opening, a crack in her armor, when he could intercept her anger and steer it off course, disarming her with his quiet affection. He stood near Elizabeth and took her hand.
Using one finger Elizabeth dragged a single photograph across the table and then spun it around so it faced her. It was of Ezekiel and Tom, arm in arm, holding a “sold” sign on the front lawn of a small house. She remained silent as she reached across the table for another. Then she reached for another and another, slowly moving the photographs around the table until the bulk of them lay in front of her.
Jon waited, prepared for whichever reaction Elizabeth might have—denial, dismissal, anger, acceptance, or even love. Jon was ready for her tears—and if not tears, he was semi-confident he could handle her anger.
Ezekiel just hoped for the best.
