Incident in the Backyard at Noon on a Sunday

It was strange, how it happened that day, with the clouds becoming increasingly darker, and the boys playing in the yard.  It was surreal, and I couldn’t imagine myself ever in a predicament as such.  Yet there I was, and there they were, and no one else around. 

            The boys were playing with a bird they had found.  Well, not actually playing with it but, rather, torturing it.  Yes, they were torturing a baby Robin they had found.  It had fallen out of its nest, and was hobbling along in the yard.  Prior to this, the boys had been jumping on the trampoline, arguing about who would jump first and about who could spell “yellow” faster or some such argument, when the bird fell out of the tree and they both noticed it at the same time because of the way it had fallen.  It sort of jumped, helter skelter, from one low branch to the next until it landed on the ground, like in those action films you see where the man falls out of a four story building and bounces, rather luckily, from the third floor awning to the second floor awning, to the first floor awning, and finally the ground, where he gets up and runs, unscathed, away from his predator.  It was like that.  Totally unbelievable.

            It was fun; I mean to say, they were having fun, and I was watching it all from the kitchen window.  I was washing dishes.  Or maybe I was just standing there thinking what to make for dinner.  I don’t remember.  Either way, I was kind of lost in the moment, standing there and thinking, wondering what it would be like to be a boy again, to be young and running around and chasing a bird. 

            And then, all of a sudden, I began to think that perhaps this thing they were doing, this chasing the baby bird around and yelling at it and making fun of it, that it couldn’t yet fly, was not fun anymore.  At least not for the bird.  And I didn’t think it was all that great, but I stood there still.  Watching.  

            They had trapped it in a corner, up against the fence, and were standing there and laughing, pointing at it and slapping each other on the back.  I couldn’t understand the slapping each other on the back – some male bonding type of thing, some ritual rite of passage into male friendship, boyhood – but either way, they were having the time of their lives there in the back yard, as the baby bird, a Robin as I have said before, hopped back and forth and couldn't find a good chance to break free, to break past them.  And I wondered if it knew what was happening then; I began to wonder what it could possibly be thinking and if it could think at all, and if it knew the potential danger it was probably in. 

            The boys closed in on the bird then, and the sky was beginning to turn a metallic, shark gray.  A clap of thunder rolled along the outer edges of the horizon, and this made them jump and the bird jumped a little as well.  Something behind me made me turn, I don’t quite remember what it was now, maybe a click from the oven that I had pre-heating at the time, or a sound coming from behind the wall – a mouse, perhaps – and I took my eyes off of the display of evil transpiring in the backyard. 

            That must be when it happened.  That must be when the baby bird took it’s last breath and my son came running toward the house screaming my name and sounding quite hysterical, quite unlike anything I had ever heard, or ever want to hear again, for that matter.

            His friend, Matthew Sharp, a friend from kindergarten who lived down the street from us, was standing in the back still, by the fence, near the gate that leads out to the pasture, with his back to me, his back to the house, and I wondered what he had done.  That was the first thing I wondered.  What had he done?

I remember when I was about ten or eleven, and standing in the Snowwhite’s driveway, hanging out.  Maybe it was a Saturday, maybe it was summer, but either way, it was a tenuous feeling, my being there, as these were my enemies one week, my friends the next, something which was in short supply during the years I was growing up. 

Anyway, there was AC/DC on the stereo and motorcycles up on stands in the garage, and cuss words flying out of the mouths of every boy there except mine.  A frog had jumped from the grass onto the drive and Ben Snowwhite had taken his boot-covered foot and stomped the life out of it, blood squirting out from beneath the tread of the boot.  And they all laughed.  Like crazed hyenas, they all laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen, and Johnny, Ben’s older brother, made some crack about how he’d like to see my brother’s head under that boot, and I laughed too at that because if I didn’t, I likely would have gotten the tar kicked out of me right then and there. 

            And this is Matt.  In the backyard, this is what Matt is doing, laughing hysterically as he turns around with the twisted bird in his hand and a wicked grin upon his face.  There is something like guts or blood running down his forearm and up underneath the sleeve of his t-shirt.  I am still unclear as to what happened exactly, but I think it makes pretty good sense to me now, and I quickly check the hands of my son, who has found his way up the back porch steps and into my arms.  I check his hands for blood.  This is the first thing I do.  He is still crying hysterically and I know that this is not how he had intended for the game to end up. 

            I am afraid, suddenly.  I am afraid of approaching Matt and trying to speak to him.  I am afraid that all of my childhood fears about the Snowwhite’s and about growing up without friends, and without a father to show me what it is like to be a man, will come spilling from me - blood from a slit throat, a twisted neck. 

I am afraid that I will take my anger out on this boy of five. 

I fear that everything I say to him will sound wrong. 

I fear what he will think of me as his friend’s dad, and that he will go home today and tell his father that his friend cried and that only babies cry and that I was upset about a stupid bird that was probably going to die anyway.

I hold my son and let him know that everything will be okay, that the bird didn’t feel any pain, that Matt made a mistake today by killing that bird, and that God will punish him one day for being cruel to animals.  This I don’t know if I believe, and a whole flood of memories rushes back just then, memories of the catholic church and of Father Harlan, and of Sunday mornings as an altar boy, and of my ruined family, the one that did not stay together even though they were catholic, and of the priest who touched me inappropriately even though he was a catholic, and all of this and more that has happened to me, all of this stuff that should never have happened because it wasn’t the Catholic Way.

So I don’t know right now, as a father of three, a married man of thirteen years, if I really believe that everything is going to be all right; I don’t know if I really believe that there is a god who will punish people for their earthly wrong-doings, for the crimes they somehow get away with while enjoying their time here on earth.  And I lump five-year old Matt into this category, into this category of evil because of what he has done to the bird and for laughing and thinking it funny; but even more so because of how he made my son feel. 

And I don’t know anything in this moment, really, except that my son will be a good person, that he has feelings, and that I am at least partially responsible for this.  I clean Matt up, drive him to his home, leave him with his father.  We don’t say a word to each other, where usually there is at least light conversation about the weather, our jobs, our kids.  It is awkward, but all I want to do is get out of there; all I want is to forget, and to bask in the glow of the knowledge that the past is the past.

Silent Affirmations

It was her silent affirmations that kept her from going completely insane.  Merely being in the same room with him was not enough anymore, talking to herself, answering herself.  No, it seemed there was something lacking, something not quite right.  And telling herself that things would eventually turn, that there would be some incredible change in the course of things that would make it all go back to the way it used to be?  Well, this was the most nonsensical thing of all, and only served to fuel her already overloaded imagination.

Her mind wanted to rest, to be set free.  As vulgar as it sounded, she needed him to go.  And how to tell him?  This, of course, was always the question.

Mrs. Mercer? 

The attending appears out of thin air, or perhaps from the recesses of her mind.  Summoning her now, it seems.  Mrs. Mercer gets up, follows the nice, young nurse, her hospital smock a blue the color of a clear northern sky.

It is November.  Outside, lawns are still green and flecked, here and there, with spots of brown, patterns of fallen leaves, reminders of a changing season; reminders that change is imminent - a cloud that has shifted shapes, a reminder she did not want.

Inside, white painted walls, sterile corridors filled with the bleeps and whirring of machines, framed prints of flowery landscapes and sandy beaches, places the inhabitants of the Hearthstone Manor Rest Haven will likely never see. 

            Mrs. Mercer is led through a set of double doors marked Employees Only and into another room contiguous with the faculty break room.  It is here where they gather and talk about their families, their troubles, sometimes their patients.  But probably not this last item.  Probably not the patients, what with constantly soiled bed pans and under-garments, crying through the night and begging to be set free of this plight, like old age or illness had happened upon them as a result of some evil-doing. 

            And one of these patients is a Mr. Frank Mercer.  Frank waits for his wife every day, inside of a room that he does not share.  She had requested a private room for him, the very most private of rooms, for they were still quite young when the accident occurred and, well, a private room was only appropriate.   

            Now, it seems, none of that matters, and she sits down in an over-sized leather chair opposite the wide, polished mahogany desk that is Dr. Bloom’s.  She has not been in this office before today, and wishes never to be here again.  It has an ominous feel to it, dark and desolate, a rainy day turning to an even rainier night. 

            Dr. Bloom extends an arm, offers her a chair, the attending retreats to a dark corner of the room.  Will she wait there for this meeting to be over?  Will she listen to every private word the two, Doctor and Patient’s Wife, share in this most intimate moment?  Mrs. Mercer hopes not, but then realizes it does not matter in the least.  She plans only on listening.  She can almost predict the words that will escape the good Doctor’s mouth. 

            Mrs. Mercer.

            She waits for him to speak, to continue, stares at the corners of his mouth, how they seem to turn ever so slightly up on one side and down on the other. 

            All right, then.  Mrs. Mercer, your husband.  I do not give him more than two weeks at most.  His health is deteriorating rapidly, and he still will not breathe on his own, of course.  It is my professional opinion that you call the family in to say final goodbyes.

            Mrs. Mercer?

            Mrs. Mercer?

            Dr. Bloom has come out from behind his desk, having been standing the whole conversation, unable to sit down, wringing his large hands inside and out of one another.  He sits now, opposite Mrs. Mercer in a matching leather chair, and takes her hand in his.  It is ice cold, though she does not feel him take it. 

            Mrs. Mercer?

            Perhaps, in our silences, we can imagine……..

Waiting at the Curb

My mother drove me to school that day.  I am going to St. Edward Catholic High School and at the time, I think I am a sophomore.  I hate this school.  I hate this school and I hate these kids and I hate dressing up and wearing these goddamn cloth neckties every day.  I don't look right in these clothes and I don't say too much about it to my parents, but I hate it more than anything else I can think of.  And the kids make fun of me.  But there is something I hate more than the clothes. 

These fuckers. 

I hate these fuckers. 

She pulls up and it is just me because my brother is still at the junior high school.  She sits there for a minute and I go to grab the handle and get out, and she says my name. 

She never says my name when I get out of the car. 

She just lets me go. 

She always just lets me go. 

I look at her and she asks me how I would feel if she were to leave her husband, my step-father.  She tells me she has been thinking about it for some time now, that she is not happy, and that Lisa, my step-sister, is old enough now to understand divorce.  

I just look at her.  

I've been through this before, although I was pretty young and don't remember all of the details of my mom and dad divorcing.  It was a good number of years ago.  I look at her still, not really believing that she is saying this to me, that Lisa is old enough to understand divorce. 

Understand divorce? 

Really? 

What's there to understand? 

That you're not willing to try anymore?  That you're actually willing to take that risk to allow your children with only one parent, when everything tells you that two is better than one; when you know for a fact, without a shadow of a doubt, that one and one is two?  

But maybe, I tell myself, maybe I am wrong.  Maybe I am wrong to want my parents to stay together if they just don't love each other anymore.  Of course!  For fuck's sake! Of course!

I look at her still and I know she is waiting for an answer.  Her face is wrinkled, deep lines like a crumpled piece of paper run over her cheeks, make creases at the corners of her eyes. 

Crow's Feet. 

They call them Crow's Feet. 

She looks old to me and I do not answer her, only shake my head and leave her there at the curb, watching me go and I remember that this is not the first time I left her waiting.  Back in freshman year, waiting at the front door and leaning forward to grab a kiss goodbye.  

Only I couldn't.  

The carpool had just pulled up and Becky and Joey D. were in there with Becky's mom and I could just hear the shit I would get if they knew I still kissed my mother goodbye.  Is this where it started?  

Is this the point, the crucial point where she began to pull away from me?  

Would she really think it was me pulling away? 

Shouldn't she know that this is only teenage stuff? 

That what she really needs to do at this point is hang on and never let go?

Force me to talk to her?

Force my brother and I to get along no matter how much we told her we hated each other? 

Force this goddamned family back together again? 

Couldn't she make that happen? 

Couldn't she?

Coupla' Days, Pt. III

It is night. Micki took the kids to her mom's house for a couple of days. It’s funny to me how she calls her mother "mom," while mine I call "mother." Seems impersonal, uncaring.

She sits across me from in our small but comfortable kitchen. I have made coffee, but only because I plan on having some. Though she drinks a mug of it, I do not make it for her. 
I hope she knows that. 
It's not something I can actually tell her without sounding like an idiot, though. "I didn't make this for you, you know. I'm not doing anything for you, you know." Yeah, that would sound real good. Not at all immature.

While the kids were here, my mother pretended to be asleep the whole time. 
"It must be hard, raising girls," she says now. 
Her voice is soft and gravelly, barely more than a whisper. I do not wish to engage in this conversation. I will not allow her to continue.

"I love them, mother. I guess you wouldn't know about that." I look her straight in the eye and I speak each word slowly, with conviction. I regret them almost as soon as they are out, as a tear spills to her lap and her face drops.

No, I will not allow myself this feeling. I have no right to feel pity for this woman. She's the one who did the crummy job raising me, the one who decided to move away when the going got tough, when she had made more mistakes than she knew what to do with. She cannot possibly provide me anything I don't already have in abundance. I will simply let her stay until I can figure out where else she can go.

Her head slowly rises from its defeated position. The tears have dried up, and I can hear her shallow breathing. We sit and stare at each other. Her eyes are glossy and she is far away. I wonder what she thinks, but do not ask. There is an impressive display of pill bottles set up next to her on a TV tray that I set up for her because I didn't want her wheeling around the kitchen, taking up everyone's space and making a nuisance of herself. Not that she could actually wheel herself.

And how did we get to this point anyway? When I glance up and look at her, and she's looking at me like this is the place for her, like this is what all kids should do for their dying and aging parents, I have to quite literally hold myself back from jumping up and wheeling her out to the curb.

No one else in the family could take her. That's what I'm supposed to believe. They actually said that to me, that I was the one who should take ma because I was the oldest, and they would do it too, had they the extreme misfortune of being born first. 
Lovely. 
What a prize for being first. I always thought it was supposed to be a trophy, a big ass-kicking, shiny, gold plated trophy with my name engraved on the front name plate, and the word "WINNER," in great big, shiny gold letters. 
Gee, I won. 
Yeah.

________________________________________________________________________

In the morning, I get up to leave for work and the phone rings. It's grandma.

"Well, how does she look?"

"Not so good, gran. All she does is sit in her wheelchair and look around the place or sleep. Wanna talk to her?" I honestly don't believe she will want to talk with her only daughter, but she surprises me. It is to be a morning of surprises, regardless of what I might have to say about it.

"Yeah, sure. Put her on." Rustling on the other end of the line, gran's poodle yapping away, grandma breathing her smoker's breath. Carlton Reds. I remember them well.

I bring the phone into my mother, who sits at the TV and stares at a blank picture tube. She looks up at me but I'm not sure she knows I'm there. I hand her the phone and go into the kitchen. I can barely hear her as she speaks to grandma.

"Ma? Yeah, pretty good. You? No, Ma, I don't want you to come over. I don't need anything. Yeah, kids are great. Such angels they turned out to be, huh? No, look, no, Ma, I really should hang up. I really shouldn't get into this with you."

She hits the off button on the cordless. For a moment I don't hear anything. I make another half pot of coffee and head to the door for the paper. 
A cold hand reaches out to touch me as I walk past. It feels like rubber, like a cold, rubber hand; a prank hand you'd buy at the novelty shop. 
I don't want to turn around. 
I don't want to see the tears well up in her eyes, sit and listen like a good son to her sorrows and all the things she regrets. 
I don't want to sit and listen to how much she missed me while I was growing up, how much she wished she hadn't made the choices she made, and how damn much she wants to be a good grandma. 
I don't want to hear. 
I won't listen to it.

Lowering my gaze, I note that her eyes are dry. Her lips, too. Her hand, the one on my arm, barely touches me, but fights to maintain some type of a grip.

"Johnny, when I go…” That is all I hear. I am outside for my paper before she gets the chance to finish.

At work later that day I think about ma. I think about how I walked out of the room on her, not a word of comfort from my mouth, not a word at all. She is dying and it's not like I didn't know that this was the inevitable end for her. For any of us, for that matter. But it was a different feeling, a feeling that it would go on forever, that she would live with us indefinitely, that maybe we would even talk peaceably. Maybe the girls would come to know their grandma, listen to stories from her childhood, laugh when they heard baby stories about me, like the time when I smeared poop on the wall next to my crib. I thought a lot about what could happen. I have dreams on many nights; forever it seems, about what it would be like to have a mother, a grandmother for my girls, a mother-in-law for my wife. Everything in its place, a place for everything.

________________________________________________________________________

The girls are still at Micki's mom's house. They called today to say they would be staying on a coupla' days longer. I sit here with a beer in one hand and a cigarette dangling from the fingers of the other. Billowy gray plumes of smoke drift up to the ceiling and linger there awhile, then disintegrate. Carlton Reds. The dark living room becomes sinister, obscure. If Micki came home now, she would probably think she had the wrong apartment because I don't smoke, only on occasions. I’m glad she won’t bring the kids home to this.

Mom died sometime during the day. I found her still sitting in the same position I had left her in this morning. Her head is covered. She wore the hat to conceal her head, bald from cancer. Her shriveled hands lie still in her lap, the urine bag and catheter lie on the floor next to one big wheel of her chair. I unhooked the dreaded contraption for her when I got home.

I take a drag from the cigarette, inhale deeply. I think about the smoke and how it rages through my lungs, looking for a place to hide, a place to sleep for awhile, the cancer soon to follow, claim my life, too. I think I'll sleep for a coupla' days, dream about my Mom and how it should have been, dream about the perfect place to scatter her remains. I try and remember why I had become so bitter, and realize that I cannot.

I'm glad the girls aren't here right now to see their grown daddy cry. My littlest angel always used to tell me she wanted to see my cry. She didn't think boys knew how. And to tell you the truth, I didn't think I would remember how. Certainly not over my Mother, anyway.

There is something so final about death. All the possibilities in life are taken away, all the chances you wanted to take, all the things you wanted to say, the people you could have comforted. I don't regret much about the way I have lived my life, about how unforgiving I may have been, how unwilling to take chances, give people chances. But looking at my Mother, her lifeless body slumped in her wheelchair, I think that maybe that part about my life has changed. I'll have to think on that one for a coupla' days.

Coupla' Days, Pt. II

The airport. 

Shiny, chalk white. 

Almost too white.

I feel like I am in a hospital waiting to be seen by a doctor. I don't like it one bit. 

And then I see her. Only what I’m seeing is not her; it can’t be her. 

It's a skeleton and I'm back in my room at the house on Chester Street. The skeleton moves slowly yet certainly and I know I will not be able to do a damn thing except lay there under the covers and wait until the vision fades. It comes across the floor and it jangles its bones. They clank together as they swing toward me and I begin to feel a wet spot between my legs where I have just pissed myself. 

And here is my mother as I am thrown back into reality. 

And I am repulsed.

She is wheeled across the shiny linoleum of the airport lobby area. 

The stewardess looks at me. 

And I don't move. 

I only stare.

Yes, she is my mother I want to tell the stewardess, only I don't want her. I smile at her. The stewardess, that is. She is pretty and I would rather take her home instead. Think of the fun we could have, you and me, I think. Dinner, movies, the beach, trips to foreign countries.

My mother motions to me. The stewardess turns and disappears, heading back up the tunnel to the plane.

Mother’s eyes are an uncertain color. Oily, dark, sunken into her head. Black rings engulf them, and the glasses upon her nose can serve no imaginable purpose. Her hands are shriveled, crippled, and there is a tube leading out from under her hospital smock. It leads to a bag under the wheelchair and as I watch, it fills some of the way up and still she motions for me to come closer.

I take large steps and quickly I am behind the chair, pushing her to my car, not wanting to speak to her. I only want to get her home before anyone sees me with her and I have to identify this hideous woman as my mother. If this sounds illogical, it probably is. It's not like I would run into anyone I know at the airport in the middle of the night on a weekday. Only I don't care, I am so damned ashamed of this woman.

We do not speak on the car ride back to the apartment. 

A one hour drive from the airport. 

I had no idea the silence could be so thick. 

It is rich and syrupy and I love it because I have no intentions of speaking with her. 

What would she have me say?

Once in the apartment, I sit and stare at her until light breaks through the living room shades. Micki doesn't ask why I did not come to bed the night before, and she keeps the kids away from me for most of the next day. I love them, I miss them, but I need time to process this thing that has just happened.

The phone rings.

"Johnny boy." An old childhood name only my brother can get away with, except I don't think it is all that funny at the moment.

"Lee, what do you want?" My mother sleeps across from me in her wheelchair. I don't know if she would have been more comfortable somewhere else for the night, but I didn't care enough to ask. It is 7a.m. and Lee is talking to me as if nothing has happened. Maybe in his life nothing has, but mine is a whole different story.

"John, what's ma doing?"

"I don't know."

"What? She's in a wheelchair, for God's sake; it’s not like she went out for the night. What time did you get in, anyway?"

"I don't know. Listen, can we talk about this some other time? Mick wants to go out today, some outlet mall. Will you be around later? I'll call you back." Anything I can do to get him off the phone.

"Yeah, sure. 

Listen, Johnny, you're a good son to take her in, man. 

You should know that."

I hang the phone back in its cradle and look at my mother. Her eyes are closed and her glasses rest in one hand. I have a sudden urge to snatch them from her and smash them under my foot. Elsie, my youngest daughter, creeps into the living room and sits next to me on the couch.

"Daddy, is that grandma?" She whispers this so close to my ear that I can feel her breath and my ear tickles and I love her so much that I don't want her to get wrapped up in all this... this crap, but I don't know what else to do. I nod my head. It doesn’t require much effort.

"What's that?" She points to the urine bag that is still only filled as much as it was when we came in last night. And then she notices her hat. "Why does she sleep with her hat on, Daddy?"

"Cancer, honey. She lost her hair."

"Does it hurt?"

"No, honey, it doesn't hurt." 

I wish it did, though, I want to add. 

I don't.