In This Life
Page 5
“You sure you can’t use some coffee?” she asked. “Or maybe a snack? I could whip up something if you’re hungry.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
But in fact exhaustion was catching up with me. I hadn’t slept last night and then spent twenty tiresome hours on the road thinking about regret and anger and loss and the time my pet mouse died when I was five and my father created a cigar box coffin for it before digging a hole and attending a very sincere funeral in the backyard.
“Do you want to see him?” Kathleen asked.
“See him?”
The idea was horrifying. All day I’d been willing my mind away from imaginary echoes of last screams and visions of charred bodies. It made sense that the remains would have been recovered by now and brought to town. The sight of blood had never bothered me, not even when it was my own. But I knew I’d break if I looked at what was left of my father.
“He’s asleep in his crib,” Kathleen said. “But you can take a peek in there.”
I breathed with relief. “You mean Colin.”
“Yes.” She tilted her head. “Of course I mean Colin.”
Kathleen set her cup down and motioned for me to follow her. The kitchen adjoined the living room, and then a short hallway branched off into two bedrooms. Kat led me to the smaller one and I blinked, trying to adjust my tired eyes to the dim light. There was a small bed occupied by a child. I had no idea what age the kid was but I could tell it was a girl. Kathleen touched the child’s sleeping face and then moved on to the little crib in the corner.
He slept on his back, his balled fists over his head. We hadn’t turned on a light but something about our presence seemed to disturb him because he scrunched up his face and let out a high pitched whimper that sounded like a small animal in pain. Then his face relaxed and he breathed evenly in peaceful slumber.
I didn’t know jack shit about babies.
Yet as I stood in a dark room beside Kathleen Doyle while we stared down at the tiny creature that was my brother it occurred to me that he was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Something fierce and foreign twisted in my chest as I watched him and I found myself wishing I’d visited right after he was born. My dad thought I would. He’d asked, even offered to pay for the plane ticket though he knew I didn’t need the money. I just needed to let old grudges go. And now that I was finally here, it was too late.
“You can pick him up,” Kathleen whispered.
I reached out to touch the baby’s cheek and then pulled back before I got there.
“Let him sleep,” I said.
Kathleen tucked the thin cotton blanket around Colin’s body and I took one last look before following her out of the room. She closed the bedroom door softly and took a seat on the living room sofa. Since there was no place else to sit I plopped down beside her.
“He’s a good baby,” she said and I noticed her eyes were teary again. “They just adored him, Heather and Chris. Heather was so happy to finally be a mom. They’d been trying to have a baby since they got married, you know.”
I coughed once and shifted. “No, I didn’t know.” My dad and I didn’t talk about such things, when we talked at all. There were reasons. Some of them had to do with Heather. The rest of them had to do with him and me.
Kathleen sighed and leaned her head back on the couch. “Jane got a call today from Brach’s Funeral Home up on Hart Street. They’re willing to take care of the arrangements for next to nothing. She’s supposed to go there to meet them tomorrow.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I said. A headache was blossoming, a bad one. I pinched the space between my eyebrows.
“You need some aspirin?”
“Yes please.”
Kathleen retrieved a pair of pills and some water. I ignored the water and swallowed the pills dry.
She sat down again and pointed to my bandaged hand. “What happened?”
I’d forgotten all about the man in the alley. It seemed like that incident had occurred three years ago instead of last night.
“Scraped my knuckles on the concrete changing a flat tire,” I said. I was a shitty liar. It just didn’t come easily to me.
She didn’t believe me. I could tell. There was something about the way her eyes changed that indicated she knew I was full of shit. But she was polite enough to change the subject.
“How long has it been, Nash?” she asked. “How long since you’ve been back? About five years?”
“Something like that,” I said, wondering how much she knew about the last fight my father and I had ever had. It was five years ago and our conversations since then had been carefully benign. But I remembered that night very well. Terrible things had been said.
“Go on. Marry her. It doesn’t fucking matter to me. We’re done.”
Fights like that can cleanse or they can ruin. Usually the latter.
I wondered how much the woman sitting beside me on the couch knew. She was Heather’s cousin after all and if Heather had trusted Kathleen with her baby then she might have also trusted Kathleen with her secrets. When our eyes met, something I saw in hers told me she knew a whole lot.
“Nash, I thought I heard your voice.”
I looked up to find Jane had joined us. She was bleary eyed and puffy faced and it looked like she was holding onto Kathleen’s paneled living room wall for support. I rose from the couch and embraced her thin body as she began to weep.
It was late and nobody was in a state to discuss anything serious, least of all Jane. Kathleen extended an offer for me and my eighty-pound dog to stay in her little apartment but I declined. However, I was glad to take her up on the offer to keep Colin here for the time being. I had decided to find a pet friendly hotel somewhere along the interstate but Kathleen produced key to my dad’s house and suggested that I stay there. It was obvious Kathleen had taken temporary charge of things but I was in no position to argue.
“They just completed the renovation,” she said. “And there are plenty of bedrooms.”
“I know,” I told her. I used to live in the damn house after all. For years it was an old Victorian eyesore that my grandfather never got around to restoring before he croaked on a golf course down in Scottsdale. Then it was my father’s constant project, always full of building materials and half finished rooms. It sounded like he’d finally gotten the job done.
Jane wasn’t really alert enough to drive but she insisted on going home so I offered to take her.
“What a beautiful dog,” she said upon being introduced to Roxie, who was happy for the attention from a new person as she panted on the seat between us.
Jane lived with her boyfriend in a charming cottage three blocks away from the center of town. She seemed a little out of it as she kept petting Roxie but that was understandable. The last twenty four hours had been hell for her. Jane was a young teenager when I was born and even though she was in her late thirties now she’d somehow kept the fragile vulnerability of a young girl. I hoped the death of her beloved only brother wouldn’t be the catalyst that sent her over the edge. As far as I knew, she’d been all right these last few years.
Jane’s boyfriend came outside to greet me when I dropped her off. Kevin Reston was still wearing the uniform of the Hawk Valley Fire Department and his long face was drawn with exhaustion but he shook my hand and awkwardly offered his condolences before escorting my aunt inside.
“I’m fine,” I said.
But in fact exhaustion was catching up with me. I hadn’t slept last night and then spent twenty tiresome hours on the road thinking about regret and anger and loss and the time my pet mouse died when I was five and my father created a cigar box coffin for it before digging a hole and attending a very sincere funeral in the backyard.
“Do you want to see him?” Kathleen asked.
“See him?”
The idea was horrifying. All day I’d been willing my mind away from imaginary echoes of last screams and visions of charred bodies. It made sense that the remains would have been recovered by now and brought to town. The sight of blood had never bothered me, not even when it was my own. But I knew I’d break if I looked at what was left of my father.
“He’s asleep in his crib,” Kathleen said. “But you can take a peek in there.”
I breathed with relief. “You mean Colin.”
“Yes.” She tilted her head. “Of course I mean Colin.”
Kathleen set her cup down and motioned for me to follow her. The kitchen adjoined the living room, and then a short hallway branched off into two bedrooms. Kat led me to the smaller one and I blinked, trying to adjust my tired eyes to the dim light. There was a small bed occupied by a child. I had no idea what age the kid was but I could tell it was a girl. Kathleen touched the child’s sleeping face and then moved on to the little crib in the corner.
He slept on his back, his balled fists over his head. We hadn’t turned on a light but something about our presence seemed to disturb him because he scrunched up his face and let out a high pitched whimper that sounded like a small animal in pain. Then his face relaxed and he breathed evenly in peaceful slumber.
I didn’t know jack shit about babies.
Yet as I stood in a dark room beside Kathleen Doyle while we stared down at the tiny creature that was my brother it occurred to me that he was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Something fierce and foreign twisted in my chest as I watched him and I found myself wishing I’d visited right after he was born. My dad thought I would. He’d asked, even offered to pay for the plane ticket though he knew I didn’t need the money. I just needed to let old grudges go. And now that I was finally here, it was too late.
“You can pick him up,” Kathleen whispered.
I reached out to touch the baby’s cheek and then pulled back before I got there.
“Let him sleep,” I said.
Kathleen tucked the thin cotton blanket around Colin’s body and I took one last look before following her out of the room. She closed the bedroom door softly and took a seat on the living room sofa. Since there was no place else to sit I plopped down beside her.
“He’s a good baby,” she said and I noticed her eyes were teary again. “They just adored him, Heather and Chris. Heather was so happy to finally be a mom. They’d been trying to have a baby since they got married, you know.”
I coughed once and shifted. “No, I didn’t know.” My dad and I didn’t talk about such things, when we talked at all. There were reasons. Some of them had to do with Heather. The rest of them had to do with him and me.
Kathleen sighed and leaned her head back on the couch. “Jane got a call today from Brach’s Funeral Home up on Hart Street. They’re willing to take care of the arrangements for next to nothing. She’s supposed to go there to meet them tomorrow.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I said. A headache was blossoming, a bad one. I pinched the space between my eyebrows.
“You need some aspirin?”
“Yes please.”
Kathleen retrieved a pair of pills and some water. I ignored the water and swallowed the pills dry.
She sat down again and pointed to my bandaged hand. “What happened?”
I’d forgotten all about the man in the alley. It seemed like that incident had occurred three years ago instead of last night.
“Scraped my knuckles on the concrete changing a flat tire,” I said. I was a shitty liar. It just didn’t come easily to me.
She didn’t believe me. I could tell. There was something about the way her eyes changed that indicated she knew I was full of shit. But she was polite enough to change the subject.
“How long has it been, Nash?” she asked. “How long since you’ve been back? About five years?”
“Something like that,” I said, wondering how much she knew about the last fight my father and I had ever had. It was five years ago and our conversations since then had been carefully benign. But I remembered that night very well. Terrible things had been said.
“Go on. Marry her. It doesn’t fucking matter to me. We’re done.”
Fights like that can cleanse or they can ruin. Usually the latter.
I wondered how much the woman sitting beside me on the couch knew. She was Heather’s cousin after all and if Heather had trusted Kathleen with her baby then she might have also trusted Kathleen with her secrets. When our eyes met, something I saw in hers told me she knew a whole lot.
“Nash, I thought I heard your voice.”
I looked up to find Jane had joined us. She was bleary eyed and puffy faced and it looked like she was holding onto Kathleen’s paneled living room wall for support. I rose from the couch and embraced her thin body as she began to weep.
It was late and nobody was in a state to discuss anything serious, least of all Jane. Kathleen extended an offer for me and my eighty-pound dog to stay in her little apartment but I declined. However, I was glad to take her up on the offer to keep Colin here for the time being. I had decided to find a pet friendly hotel somewhere along the interstate but Kathleen produced key to my dad’s house and suggested that I stay there. It was obvious Kathleen had taken temporary charge of things but I was in no position to argue.
“They just completed the renovation,” she said. “And there are plenty of bedrooms.”
“I know,” I told her. I used to live in the damn house after all. For years it was an old Victorian eyesore that my grandfather never got around to restoring before he croaked on a golf course down in Scottsdale. Then it was my father’s constant project, always full of building materials and half finished rooms. It sounded like he’d finally gotten the job done.
Jane wasn’t really alert enough to drive but she insisted on going home so I offered to take her.
“What a beautiful dog,” she said upon being introduced to Roxie, who was happy for the attention from a new person as she panted on the seat between us.
Jane lived with her boyfriend in a charming cottage three blocks away from the center of town. She seemed a little out of it as she kept petting Roxie but that was understandable. The last twenty four hours had been hell for her. Jane was a young teenager when I was born and even though she was in her late thirties now she’d somehow kept the fragile vulnerability of a young girl. I hoped the death of her beloved only brother wouldn’t be the catalyst that sent her over the edge. As far as I knew, she’d been all right these last few years.
Jane’s boyfriend came outside to greet me when I dropped her off. Kevin Reston was still wearing the uniform of the Hawk Valley Fire Department and his long face was drawn with exhaustion but he shook my hand and awkwardly offered his condolences before escorting my aunt inside.
