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No, it shouldn't, doesn't. It goes on without Mike. It has gone on without Mike for so long that--. You can't tell people that the whole world is wrong, and can't be fixed. But it is.
I tug at the blanket, and tuck it in again under my space-age leg. Better plastic than cancer, but still. I can get around all right on it, for short distances. Beth's a bit of a mother hen about it, and I have to admit I enjoy the attention.
She brings me my lunch, which I ritually grumble about, to which her constant antiphon is how nothing satisfies me. It's another game of ours. She's a great cook (and knows that I know that), with a huge and patient heart, and I'm a pain-in-the-ass old man whom she honestly loves and takes care of. Bob has a prize, no question. Sometimes I think he takes her for granted, and I think what an idiot he is. Then I remember how often I took Maggie for granted, knew she would always be there. And I remember all the dreams I had for Mike when he was a newborn, wet and noisy-happy, suckling and snuggling at her beautiful pale tits. How he would grow. How we would share that growth. And I took those dreams for granted. Everybody does, I know, but sometimes the malevolent gods look down and choose one of the blind and blissful idiots to make an example of. Or sport of. I don't know.
The phone rings, and it's Bob. We say hello through Beth, and then she gets a serious look on her face, and says, "I'll call you right back."
"Problem at work?," I ask her, then add, "Never mind."
"I'm sorry. It's rude, I know."
I shake my head. "No, it's not. Some things are between husband and wife. I respect that."
Beth smiles. "Eat your veggies," she says, and goes into the kitchen. I let her have the last word this time, sometimes you have to, to be fair. I pick at my food--I used to have a huge appetite--and I'm happy for a few moments, cared for by my kids, the way some folks are not, in good health for my age, with a good book and good food in front of me. Then I start thinking about Mike again. Like I said, sometimes it goes away for a long time. But when it comes back, it's there for a while. Pain the way I felt it the day it happened.
Maggie and I got married right after the war, and knew we wanted kids right away. I come from a big, warm family, and she had always wanted to. I was her older brother's friend, and spent as much time at their house as I did at mine, even before we started going out with each other. I knew the tensions there between her folks, and felt bad for both kids. It's kind of funny, in a peculiar way; they're both dead now--she and her brother--and I'm the only one, so far as I know, who remembers what they went through: it's like they left me their bad memories. It's a wonder she turned out as warm as she did. She told me she used to watch other mothers to learn how to be one.
Anyway, we wanted kids, and we were well enough situated. Everybody was, back then. You could shit and make money. When we found out she was pregnant, we were happier than we've ever been in our lives. Young, in love, solvent, healthy, the world at peace--everything had come together. This was what life was supposed to be like. This was what my parents' life looked like, to me. And though there were things I found out later which changed that notion a bit, even now I think they basically had all that they could have asked or planned for. And back then, so did I.
Mike was a joy. God, he was alert from the beginning. And full of energy until he exhausted himself and would slip just as fully into sleep. We were exhausted, Maggie especially, but having him around energized us, which you needed to be, just to keep up with--.
I pull at the blanket, she didn't wrap it tightly enough around me, damn fool. Which I feel immediately bad for thinking when she comes in and tells me that Bob broke his ankle at work, and she has to pick him up at the hospital.
"Broke his ankle? He's in marketing, for God's sake."
"Pops" Beth glares at me, then sighs, then smiles. "You'll be all right here for a little while, right?"
"Yeah." Normally I'd tease her for thinking I'm helpless, and she'd tease me back, but after thinking bad of her--. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Should I watch your soap for you?"
She laughs. "I would never do that to you. Ann will fill me in."
"Okay." Ann lives down the block, and fills in all the wire services on what the stories of the day are. At length. Like I said, Beth's patient.
She tucks the blanket in again. "Sorry," I tell her. "My leg was hurting."
"Don't worry about it. And don't worry about him, he's fine." She gives me a kind of funny look.
"How'd it happen? I'm sorry, you've got to get going, and I'm asking stupid questions. Scoot. I'll be fine."
"If the kids come home from school?"
"I'll keep an eye on them."
"Thanks."
"At least I'll watch them misbehave."
"Pops."
I laugh. "I'll keep them in line, don't worry."
She grabs her bag, waves to me half-warmly, and is gone. Then it occurs to me what the wave and that last little look were about. I hadn't asked how he was. Well hell, dear, he's a big boy. It's a broken ankle, if it was anything serious--would she have told me? Jesus. I try and remember what her voice and expressions were like. Yeah, he's okay.
I'm alone. But sometimes I'm alone in this house even with everybody here. I click the TV off with the remote and realize that, even in her hurry, Beth had thought to give it to me. I turn off the light, and sit in the early afternoon shadows of the room. Mike, I miss you. I miss who you never became. It was July seventh, a Sunday, and we decided to go over to the river for a picnic lunch. She was, we found out two weeks later, carrying Peg. We had more than enough food left over from a cookout the night before: steak, potato salad, chicken, stuff like that. We picked up a bottle of wine on the way. There was a spot we used to go when we were first dating, a cliff above the river, to watch the sunset blaze the world, and we hadn't been in a while. It was a special spot.
We never blamed each other for what happened. Some people would have. And anytime one of us tried to take the blame, the other fought it. We weren't drunk, we'd barely touched the wine. We kept a close eye on him, but you only have to look away for a few seconds. We kept him on the side of us away from the cliff. Which was tough to do, he didn't have the terrible twos, he had the curious twos. After a while, he settled down with his stuffed dog, sharing his sandwich with it and speaking to it softly, til he fell asleep. Maggie and I snuggled and giggled, glancing back at him sometimes, but mostly staring out over the river, at the tiny houses scattered on the hills of the far shore. There were a few thin clouds scattered around the sky. We looked again at him--the last time--and smiled at each other.
"He loves that dog," Maggie said.
"I know. We should get him a real one."
"When he gets a bit older. Right now, we don't have the time to take care of it."
"Yeah." I kissed her, and held her, and kissed her again. It wasn't very long, but when I looked over for Mike, he was gone.
"Maggie."
"Ohmygod."
She told me later that she knew right away something terrible was going to happen. At first, I didn't worry too much, I figured he was exploring the trees close by, perhaps hiding behind one, snickering. He loved to hide. But he wasn't there.
I tried to keep Maggie calm, but she kept calling his name louder and louder, with a tone of increasing desperation in her voice.
"You'll scare him, sounding like that," I told her.
"Where is he? Oh God, where is he?"
I sent Maggie back to where we'd been, in case he wandered back. Then I followed her back and, as she gripped my hand, looked over the cliff. I saw nothing. There was a grey, littered strip of shore between the base of the cliff and the water. Out on the river, a tugboat shoved a garbage scow toward the sea. Gulls circled above it. Gulls picked among the trash on the shore below us.
"Nothing down there," I told Maggie. I looked to the left and saw, through the stand of trees nearby, a small form wandering near the cliff. He was carrying the stuffed dog.
"Mike," I shouted. He looked up.
We ran toward him, shouting. Maybe he was scared of the noise, I don't know, we slowed down, stopped shouting, but he kept walking slowly, looking back at us, closer to the edge. Then he stopped.
Then he disappeared. Maggie screamed.
I click on the TV, look to find some kind of movie or something. I'm not really in the mood to read. I wonder how Bob managed to break his damn ankle. He's a good man, overly serious sometimes. But he was never graceful, physically. He gets that from me.
It's cold in here.
I've tried to imagine what it was like for him to fall, but I pull away from it, as if I were looking down from where he fell, or falling with him. Somehow, don't ask me, that seems cowardly or disloyal. That I can't do it. We never did look at the body, til they'd cleaned it up. Some guy fishing on the far shore had seen him fall, and called the cops. Maggie lapsed into a long depression, and I thought that we might lose the child she was carrying, but she was a strong-souled woman, and straightened herself out. But she was never fully the same after that.
Beth brings Bob home a little while later. It turns out he broke his ankle playing basketball during lunch. I've seen him play, he's not real good, but he never stops trying.
"You damn fool," I tell him. "You went diving after the ball or something, right?"
"No, Pops. Denny Watson fell on my ankle. He's kind of big."
"He's huge," Beth says. "He was at the hospital," she explains to me. "I thought he was going to break down and cry. He really feels badly about it."
"He should," I tell her. "Does it hurt much, kiddo?"
Bob grimaces as he sits. "It's not too bad. The doctor says it was a clean break."
"That's a hell of a thing for a grown man to do," I tell him. He glances at the ceiling, and I smile. "Don't get a bee in your bloomers. As long as it's a clean break, it should heal properly, right?"
"That's what the doctor says."
I can't help laughing. "And as soon as you get clearance from the doctor, you'll be right out back there."
Bob glares at me, then laughs in spite of himself. "Hell yes."
"There's no quit in your husband, Beth. I'll give him that."
"Of course there isn't. It's one of the things I admire about him." I don't know what she's angry about, but she can't stay mad for long. Soon she goes into the kitchen to make us tea. "No sympathy," she says, "unless you behave. Both of you."
"We'll be good," I tell her, and she snorts.
She brings in the tea in a few minutes, and we sit together, the three of us, and argue cheerfully over what to watch. Bob likes the news, I like game shows, Beth likes talk shows. Somehow, we compromise on cartoons. Bob doesn't like to use painkillers, says they blur his mind. I agree with him, but I'm not a fanatic. I can tell his ankle's bothering him, but he's pretty tough. He'll be okay. He likes being active, though, so he's going to be pretty restless. I feel sorry for Beth. Although she'll enjoy taking care of him. And he'll pretend he's not secretly a little bit pleased with the extra attention. Don't know where he gets that from.
It probably sounds like I'm a sonofabitch, but sometimes I can't help resenting my own kids for being there when Mike is not. I love them, they were great kids and they've turned into pretty impressive adults. Maggie and I were pretty lucky, we worked hard at it, but there's always--.
I don't know what to do when I get like this, now that she's gone. Hell, I didn't know what to do then, but she was there. Sometimes I'm in a hole in the center of my family, a hole where Mike should be. Sometimes I can't get out.
There was this book Bob used to love when he was in high school, which I never really saw the appeal of. The character is a jerk. But I remember the part where he's trying to save all the kids in the field. We can't stop all of them, he says. But the one I couldn't stop was mine. Since then, I've been alone. I never told the kids that, or even Maggie. But I've been walking alone, in a cold bright wind, along a cliff.
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