19

 

       ART

 

    Did you hear what I said?

    I heard.

    Well?

    Well what?

    You've got nothing to say?  He's your father.

    You'll do what you want.  What does it matter what I say?  What is it that you want me to say?

    How can you say that?  I never do anything without asking you?

    She shrugs and disappears behind the refrigerator. She begins making trips back and forth between the table and refrigerator, carrying tupperware and foil packages.

    Susan and Wes said they didn't understand why I'd even consider it.  Can you imagine that?  Some of the things they do, and they don't understand why I'd buy an old house to fix it up.

    You'd tell them you were thinking about it before you said anything to me?  She is angry.

    I didn't say anything.  He told them.  Your father told them.  He didn't ask my permission, and I didn't know anything about it.

    Still, you'd talk to them about it before you'd say anything to me!

    I ask you for what you think and all you can do is get all up in arms about who else knows.

    Well, who else does know?

    Nobody.  I don't know who he might have told.

    What is it you want me to say?  You want me to tell you to go ahead and pour all the money we have into that old house?  You want me to tell you to tell him, No, we got our own problems, no, we don't want to live with you, being in the same town is as much as I can take.  Is that what you want to hear?

    I want to hear what you think I should do.

    I don't know.  She stops moving for the first time since we've been home.  I don't know.  Whatever you decide will be all right with me.  I know you'd do it for my family, for my father. If you do it, it'll be for my father,          for me.  But you don't have to do that.

    It's what he wants.

    Yes.

    I don't know.  I've tried so damn hard to do what's right.  We pull up stakes and come back here.  We do what we think will make him happy ; it just doesn't seem          I don't know.

    She stops looking at me and goes back to filling the refrigerator with leftovers.  We are both embarrassed.  It is the first time we've talked about anything in          a long time.  It's not like her to allow something to become serious, to get to the point where I don't know is all she can say.  Her way is to laugh at me for asking and block it out.  Her way is allow me to fall on my face so she can laugh and say, Whatever possessed you to do that in the first place?

    I sit back in the too soft cushions of the couch.  It's almost completely dark out.  The crickets are alive in the night, telling me to listen.  Crickets are funny that way; they are always there, always chirping into the dark, but you don't always hear them.  Something'll happen, you'll sit down to think or a loud noise will stop them and then you hear them like it was all new and then your mind will wander off and they'll go          be gone.  But they'll always be there; that's what I mean by funny.  It's one of those things that if you got it you don't notice, but once it's gone, you miss it.  People tell you that and you never listen.  Parents tell you that and it's not until you're a parent yourself that you know what they were trying to say, not to you but to themselves more than anything, that they miss you now that you're gone.  I miss my little girl, but I don't tell her because it'd be too much to let her and that husband of hers know what they do affects me.  And I miss Eric even though he's not gone.  Probably worst of all, I miss my other boy, the one that we never had the chance to name.  He would have had my name, I think.  That's why I couldn't give my name to Eric; it was taken in my mind.  I never told her that was why and she never asked.  She just laid there, and her face was no different.  Three times I went in one of those clean white rooms, with flowers in my hand and all three times her face was the same.  Nobody would've ever been able to tell that one of them was born dead.  Born dead.  Something not right about that,  Those words don't go together, it's not possible to be born dead.  If he was dead before he was born then he was never born.  Stillborn they call it, but I say it's not being born, it's just          just          something else.  If he'd lived maybe he'd've been the son I need.  Maybe then          That's the way I feel, and I accept the guilt that comes with feeling like that.  I accept it as part of the feeling.  He'd be seventeen.

    Do you think you'd better go back up there and see if he's in bed for the night?

    What?

    Daddy!  She is looking at me from the doorway.  Do you think you should go up there and check?  It's dark. 

    Doug's still up there.  He can handle it.

    All right!

    He's done it before.

    I said all right.

    Yeah, but you're mad about it.

    What's the difference?

    I'll go.

    Don't bother.

    I'll go.

    She shrugs and goes back to what she was doing.  What are you gonna tell him?

    I don't know!

    Now who's mad?

    I just said I don't know and I don't know.  You don't tell me what you think but you want me to say.

    Well, it wouldn't be much different, would it?  I'm up there half the time taking care of him anyway.  He won't do nothing for himself.  If I didn't go up there two-three times a day, he'd be dead in a week!

    Elvira'd go up.

    Oh, Elvira!  She's not right since Earl died.  She just mopes around.  She can't take care of herself!

    She goes up to check on him, I've seen her.  And she'd go up a lot more often if you weren't always there.  People don't do unless there's the need.

    That's right, take her side!

    Side?  There's sides?  I'm not taking anybody's side.  I'm just saying that I don't think she's as bad off as you let on.  I think she's taken Earl's death a lot better than some would've.  I think she's held together real good.

    A lot you know.     

    Yeah.  A lot I know.  I don't know anything.

    What would you know about how somebody else would take it. 

    I don't!  Do you?  What do you know about it?  I shouldn't have gone that far; I knew that when I said it, before I said it.  We stare at each other for what seems a whole minute then she goes back to the refrigerator.  I stand there, knowing what I've done.  It's the closest we've ever come.  I step into the kitchen.  I'll go, I say.

    She gives me her back.

    The crickets stop when I open the door and my foot scuffs on the concrete.  Eric is on the porch, watching the beginning of the stars through the telescope Susan and Wes gave him for his birthday.  What kind of thing is that for a thirteen year old boy?  Have enough trouble with him gazing off into nowhere.

    Where you going?

    Up to check on your grandfather.

    You want me to go along?

    No, you stay with your mother.  She'll probably have something you should do.

    He nods, and before I'm to the car, I feel that I shouldn't have said it that way, that maybe I should have said yes and hugged his shoulders as we walked together to the car.  But it is gone.  The chance is gone, and I miss him most because, like his sister, I will drive him off.  Like her, he will come to the point where he can't stand it anymore, where his mother will become clear to him and I'll no longer be so big that he can't see beyond.  And then he will come at Christmas and birthdays and picnics.