Hearts Left Behind (3 page)

For dinner Grandma made meatloaf, baked potatoes,
green beans, and a Jell-O salad.  I ate fast so I could start cleaning the
kitchen while she and Grandpa finished eating.  I was anxious to be alone,
so after putting the last plate into the dishwasher I said goodnight and headed
to my room.

Like every day of my new life, I had been thinking of
Ethan.  But it was always in the company of others and I needed to be
alone.  I also needed to be drunk.

Like every day of my new life, I cried.  I
imagined for the ten-thousandth time how lonely and frightened he must have
been.  How alone and forsaken he must have felt in those final moments
before giving himself up to death.

Like every day of my new life, I prayed.  They
were bitter and angry words spit out through tears and snot and gasping
breaths.  I tried to stick with the
Lord’s prayer
,
but vodka makes me angry and angry was my natural state these days, so it was
angry on angry.  I condemned God and then prayed for his
forgiveness.  I cursed Him and then I thanked Him for all my
blessings. 
Mos
t
of all, though, I questioned Him.
 
Just
questioned Him.
  You could convince me that Ethan dying was not God
punishing, but you could not convince me that this wasn’t God allowing. 
And truth be told, I hated Him for it.

For the second night of my new life, I slept
alone.  Slept, that is, until I awoke gasping for air at three in the
morning.  My choking dream had returned.  Head throbbing, chest
heaving, I sprang upright in bed and sucked in as much air as my lungs could
hold.  The
literally breath-taking
nightmare was as intense as it had ever been, maybe more so.  The muscles
in my throat were tight and they ached.  They hurt so much that my neck
was sensitive to the touch.

I flipped on the nightstand light, pulled the covers
back off my legs and looked at my angel-son, skin-painted on the inside of my
left leg just above the ankle.  I folded my leg in toward me and gently
rubbed a thumb across his cherub face.  Breathing easier now, I spoke his
name out loud just to hear myself say it. 
So that my
ears might know the sound of the name.
 
So that
my tongue might know the feel of the name.
 
So
that this world might not forget the name.

“Ethan,” I repeated.

I grabbed
a pen
and notebook from the nightstand drawer and wrote.

Dancing butterfly

Delicate and free

Carry this prayer to

The highest tree

A prayer of love

T
hat my son
might know

His Father above and

His father below

Blackbird’s brother

Heart on wing

Carry this prayer to

The King of Kings

Lift to the clouds these

Words of love

From the father below to

The Son above

Lord of Lords and

King of Kings

Accept this prayer of

Cloud and wings

And send a sign so that

I might know

That the son above loves

The father below.

I put the notebook back in the drawer and looked back
down at the angel tattoo on my leg.

“Ethan,” I said again. “Daddy loves you forever.”

The feather from the park was on the nightstand. 
I picked it up, closed my hand around it tightly, and turned out the light.

Yeah, that’s me
. 
The father below.

My first thought upon waking up the next morning was
that this bed had been a lot more comfortable when I was ten.  My second
thought was that I had not called home the night before. 

Tory answered on the first ring and we talked for a
couple minutes about a hundred different things.

“Daddy, guess what?”

“What?”

“Hillary got a new dog.”

“Oh, did she?  I thought she already had a dog.”

“She did have a dog.  Now she has two dogs. 
We don’t have any dogs because dogs wipe their butts on the carpet and not
toilet paper and you don’t like that, Daddy.  And, Daddy, guess what?”

“What?”

“Smoking is bad for you.  I’m glad you’re living
a tobacco-free life, Daddy.”

“You’re right, Sweetie, smoking is bad for you.”

“And, Daddy, guess what?”

“Sweetie, can I talk to
Mommy?”

“Okay.  Love you,
Daddy.  Bye.”

“Love you, too, Sweetie.”

She handed the phone to her mother.

“Hello.”  Neither warm nor cool.

“Hi, Tam.”

“Hi.”

“How are you doing?  Miss me yet?”

“I was missing you before you left.”

“I can believe that.  But I think maybe you were
looking forward to missing me a little more.”

“Maybe a little,” she said, and I could hear the smile
that her words passed through.

“Are you doing okay?”

“We’re doing fine.  Tory’s been asking lots of
questions about both you and Ethan.”

“What do you tell her?”

“I tell her that we’ll see you soon and Ethan someday.”

She asked how I was and what I had been doing, if I
was still drinking.  My answers were short like she knew they would
be.  Some truth, some lies.  “You’re still planning on coming over
for Mother’s Day, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good.  I can’t wait to see you guys.  I’ll
call you again tomorrow, okay?”

“So?  How are you doing?” Grandma asked.

We were in the car returning from Glidden where we had
been grocery shopping. She
was wanting
me to bring up
Ethan.  I wasn’t going to.

“Fine,” I said.  “Thanks again for letting me
stay with you guys for a few nights.”

“Oh, that’s no problem at all.  It’s nice having
some company.  Your grandfather and I don’t get that many visitors
anymore, you know.”

At 40 miles-per-hour, the six-mile trip from Glidden
to Willow Grove can be excruciating, which is exactly what the drivers in the
line of cars behind Grandma were thinking, I’m sure.  That stretch of
route 38 has just enough curves and hills to make passing a near
impossibility.  When we came upon the one straight and flat stretch of
that part highway, three cars whizzed past, each with horns a-honking. 

“Oh, those must be friends of yours,” Grandma said,
“they were waving.”

“Yeah, and they think I’m number one, too,” I said,
under my breath.

As we approached my old high school, Grandma slowed
down even more and pointed at the small farmhouse across the road from it.

“You see that there? 
Ain’t
that something?”

She was pointing at a great big red hay barn that had
been around as long as I could remember.  Except that now it had a
hole
right through its center.

“Wow, what the heck happened there?”

“Them tornadoes we had a few weeks back here. 
Two touched down.  One got the best of that barn.”

What a strange sight to behold.  This big old
barn that had stood there forever now had a hole drilled right through its
center.  Like a freight train had driven right through it.

“It looks like God tipped that tornado on its side and
drilled a whole through its center,” I said.

“I believe God does things like that sometimes.”

“I believe God can be random and cruel, if that’s what
you mean.”

“There’s always a purpose, Tucker,” she said with the
kind of look that only the elderly can offer.  Her eyes were as blue with
promise as they must have been the day she was born.  Those eyes had not
aged at all, but the lids above them were heavy with years and the skin below
them sagged.

“Really?
  And what’s the
purpose of putting a hole through the middle of that barn, Grandma?”

“Maybe just to show us that it survived,” Grandma
said.  “That barn will come down some day, but it won’t be because of that
tornado or the hole that it left.  It still stands, even with the
hole
right through its center.  And besides, now you
can see what’s on the other side of it.  You never could before.”

“I looked, Grandma.  I didn’t see anything on the
other side.”

“I know, Tucker.  That’s what bothers me.  People
who don’t see
nothing
on the other side of something
like that, well, that’s about what they live for -
nothin
’.”

I see half the beauty I used to see and
twice as much despair
.

I’ve got
twice as much
ambivalence
and half as much of care.

I hear half your words of sympathy, but none of
them console.

I’ve got half a heart and half a mind and half of
me is
hole
.

This cross is twice as heavy, but I’m feeling half
as strong.

Today is half of yesterday, but the nights are
twice as long.

I’m stumbling through the darkness only half way in
control.

I’ve got half a heart and half a mind and half of
me is
hole
.

I burn with twice the rage and I’m only half
forgiving.

I’ve got twice as many children, only half of them
are living.

I have twice the faith I used to have but pray with
half a soul,

Cause
it’s hard to
feel complete when only half of you is whole.

It’s funny, growing up in such a small town, you’d
think that maybe I felt like I had missed out on a few things, but never once
did I feel that way.  It always seemed to me that Willow Grove was just
exactly the kind of place a kid was supposed to grow up, and if you didn’t –
well then that was just your misfortune.  We had about what you’d expect
for a town this size, I suppose –a couple baseball diamonds, a tennis court, a
playground and a basketball court.  There was also a library, a grain
elevator, post office, a barber shop, my Aunt Paula’s beauty parlor, a gas
station, Pease Lumberyard, The Spotlight Grocery, Brenda’s Café, and I
Like
Ike’s Ice Cream parlor. 

I Like Ike’s was kind of a neat little store, but I
once bought some Milk Duds there that tasted every bit as old as likable Ike
himself.  That’s why most of my Milk Duds were purchased at The Spotlight. 
Along with most of my Pals and Bazooka Joe bubble gum, pretzel sticks, Jolly
Ranchers, Jolly Good soda, candy cigarettes, baseball cards,
fudgesicles
, push-ups, and various other sugar
goodies.  It was also where Mom and Dad would send me to buy their
cigarettes.  I knew that smoking was bad for you, so it always made me
feel like a bit of an enabler, which was bad enough in itself.  But I also
felt like the person behind the counter thought that maybe I was buying them
for myself, which
was even more
disturbing to
me.  My routine was to ask for a pack of Winston’s, and then kind of shake
my head and shrug, and then snort out something clever like “Yeah, I wish my
parents would stop smoking these things” or, “These aren’t for me, you
know.  They’re for my dad.”

More than anything, the best thing that Willow Grove
had to offer was its citizens. 
People who found
contentment in who they were and what they had.
  Some people would
call that simple, others would call it enlightened. 
Whichever.
 
All I know is that some of the finest people I’ve ever met were born and bred
in Willow Grove, Illinois.  There’s just something very special about
growing up here that you can’t quite put your finger on.  It’s wholesome,
it’s pure, it’s Midwest heartland, but there’s something more than that
even.  Like there’s just something
understood
among its inhabitants, a commonness born into us that
we’re reminded of regularly.  You hear it in secret hushes blowing through
the trees, passed down in leafy whispers.  You see it in the winking eye
of a neighbor.  You feel it in the Sunday morning handshake of the
minister.  Everything is a reminder and a validation of who you are and
where you’re from.  With every whisper, every wink, every handshake there
is a lesson that’s being passed on.  And I wonder if maybe the truth is
that the citizens of Willow Grove just make more time for whispers, winks, and
handshakes.

Surely Norman Rockwell could capture this secret magic
of Willow Grove with a simple painting of an apple pie in an open windowsill or
of a small child riding in a wagon being pulled by a smaller child.  Or
perhaps Mr. Rockwell would have sat quietly in the corner of Brenda’s Hometown
Café and sketched weary-eyed men twinkling eye-smiles at each other over the
tops of tipped coffee cups that look too tiny and delicate for the hands that
hold them.  Hands
that at six in the morning are
already as dirty and rough as life on the farm.  Strong hands with thick
fingers that always made me feel small and dainty and quite lady-like thank you
very much, no matter my age nor my greater height nor how firmly I might try to
squeeze back.  These men are the only men I’ve ever known.  They are
at work before the sun is in these parts because that’s what their old man did
and they don’t know any other way.  They meet at Brenda’s for breakfast
after putting in a couple hours work and they always end up staying for an
extra cup of coffee.  Not because of what’s inside the cup, but because of
who’s across the table.

I spent the better part of the day painting those sun
porch stairs. 
Chipping away the old dead flakes,
brushing everything clean, and applying a thick first coat of barn-red.
 
It was a full day’s work, but with my choking dream looming, I was not anxious to
sleep again.  So after a supper of roast beef, mashed potatoes, green
beans, coleslaw, and a Matlock rerun, I walked down to
Mustang’s Corner Pub for a nightcap. 

Mustang’s
had been I Like Ike’s in a previous life but shared
little resemblance to that old ice cream parlor.  There were small
flickering TVs at either end of the bar and a third one above a booth in the
far corner of the room.  There were three patrons in the place when I
walked in. 
Two sitting next to each other on the far
right side, one sitting by himself in the middle of the bar, close to the taps.
 
I took a seat on the near side of the bar closest to the door.  The
bartender approached from the corner of my eye.

“So what are we drinking tonight, pecker?”

I didn’t recognize the voice, but I recognized the
“pecker”.  I lifted my eyes to see an older version of a face I once
knew.  A sparse light-colored handlebar mustache framed the small, pursed
mouth.  Chewing tobacco packed tight under the lower lip, a tattered LA
Dodgers baseball cap on his head.  Part Yankee, all
Rebel
,
both shone bright in those intense gray-blue eyes.  Looking up at him –
and it seems like I’ve been having to look up to see the face of Son Settles my
whole life – I said with a half smile, “Hey, Son.  Say, uh, that’s not the
same cap, is it?”

This got a laugh out of him.  At least I think it
was a laugh.  It sounded a little like “Shut your white-collared,
book-learning mouth, pecker.”

“No.  No, it’s not the same hat,” he said.

A big fat silence followed, during which Son stood
tall behind the bar, hands on hips and looking at me hard.  I looked back
at him even harder, though I could see where to Son it might have just looked
like I was staring at my feet and squirming on my stool.

“Well,” I said lifting my head again, “I am sorry
about that hat, Son.  Probably should have said that a long time ago.”

“No worries,” he said. 
“Pecker.”

I ordered a vodka tonic and stared back down at my
feet as Son went off to make it for me.

If Son Settles had ever been a friend of mine, it was
just barely.  I carry some of the fault for that, of course.  Things
might have been different with Son and me had I not thrown his LA Dodger cap in
the toilet the first time we met. 
Charlie
had brought Son over to my house that warm summer’s day in 1978, and despite
the fact that he was two years older than
me,
I was
not intimidated by Son in the least.  We talked baseball and when the
discussion grew into a “my team’s better than your team” argument, I told him I
was going to take his Dodger cap off his head and flush it down the
toilet.  When he dared me to do it, do it I did. 

When I look back on this, I see something in myself
that has always been there and it is this.  I have always hated the notion
that someone might find me predictable.  I don’t know why, but like I say
I think it’s always been there.  It was certainly there that July
afternoon in 1978.

When Son pulled his Dodger’s cap out of the toilet and
shook it dry, he wore a look of utter astonishment on his sun-browned
face.  But just beneath that was another look, a sort of calm before the
storm expression that I would come to see time and again in the years to come -
usually right before a random ass-kicking.  I guess being unpredictable
was important to Son, too.

We talked a little bit that night at
Mustang’s, Son and I.  It wasn’t a
bygones-be-bygones conversation, but it was nostalgic and it was nice and we
did laugh a time or two.  It occurred to me that Son and I were never
really enemies
so
much as friends who just didn’t like
each other very much.  It’s hard to have enemies in a town like Willow
Grove.  You can’t really afford them.  A different town, yeah, Son
and I sure could have been enemies.  There was always something unclean
about that boy.

Late in that night, I had the choking dream
again. 
Except it was different this time.
 
This time, there was an actual dream and I remembered it.  It was one of
those mind-working-overtime dreams where separate realities are fused
together.  Where the sleeping intellect tries to make sense where sense
has not been found.

It started with the sound of Tammy screaming from a
room at the end of a darkened corridor.  I am in a hospital and our child
is in danger.  I sprint down the hallway, but the floor is icy slick and I
can’t keep my balance.  I slip and slide, tumble and fall, rise and run
again.  Except now the corridor is rotating slowly like I’m inside a
cement mixer.  My right arm is stiff, supporting the weight of my leaning
turning body against the wall.  Tammy’s cries continue to pour out from
that distant room as I inch forward.  I realize then that her guttural
wails are coming from the room at the end of the corridor and darkness shines
from that room.  Darkness shined, that’s the only way I can describe
it.  Like the light at the end of the tunnel, except the exact
opposite. 

Tammy’s voice was louder now, shrill screams
piercing.  “Stay away from him! Keep your hands off my son!”

I turn the corner of the room and the first thing I
see is
myself
sitting in a rocking chair in the
corner. 
Like some child’s toy left in a disturbingly
awkward pose.
  A mannequin with a face of exaggerated features
carved on petrified wood. 
Bright red cheeks, bulging
eyes with long lashes and thick frowning brows.
  Mouth and lips
carved into a frozen wicked sneer.  Suddenly, mannequin-me jerks his head
toward real-me and locks his eyes on mine.  I find contempt in his eyes,
not sure what he finds in mine.  I turn and see Tammy on a gurney, a man
in doctor’s scrubs stands on the other side of the cart, bent over her
torso.  At first it looks like the man has no arms, but then I realize
both of his arms are wriggling deep inside of Tammy’s stomach, like someone
trying to reverse the sleeves of an inside-out sweater.  His arms fish
through the insides of her abdomen and she
writhes
in
spasms, but there is no blood.  Then with a violent jerk, he pulls both
hands out.  Tammy deflates before my eyes and the man stands bolt
upright.  Arms extended, he holds a silent child out in front of
him.  Then, for the first time, the man looks at me and I recognize him
but cannot make out the face.  I know him, I don’t know him.  Both
hands are around Ethan’s neck and the man turns him so that I might see Ethan’s
face.  Except that it is not Ethan’s face, but rather it is the face of
Katie Cooper.  And then the man with the face I do and do not know
smiles a razor blade smile and winks
.

The next morning, I applied the final coat of paint to
the sun porch stairs and then mowed the yard with Grandpa’s rusty old Wheel
Horse.  That afternoon I went to the playground and I found my little
bubblegum-smacking advisor right where I had left her, swinging on her
swing. 

We said hi to each other and then sat silent. 
Swinging Girl on her swing, pumping and gliding.
Thinking
Man on the bench, head in hands.  I lifted my eyes and we exchanged small
smiles.  Hers was gentle and knowing and it made me feel like I was the
child here.  She seemed too wise to be the child she was.

The exchange of silent stares had me feeling
anxious.  Like when the teacher asks you a question you should know the
answer to and then hammers away at you with silence while everyone waits for
you to say the answer that they all already know. 

My silent panic was interrupted by the crunching sound
of Swinging Girl leaping from her swing and landing hard on gravelly
ground.  I looked up and saw her foot-scratch a dirt line in the pebbles
to mark where she had landed.  Quietly and without looking at me she
hopped back onto her swing again and pumped her way to new heights before
launching and landing again, this time about six inches farther than she had
gone the first time.  Again she marked the spot.  Again she got on
the swing, again she launched and landed.  Another few inches farther out. 
Two more times she did this and set new Swinging Girl records each time.

On the next attempt, though, she landed in the same
spot as the previous attempt.  She tried one more time and again she
merely tied her previous record.  This time she dug a deeper, longer line
to mark the spot.  She looked over at me and gave me a familiar look, the
kind of look that only the elderly can offer.  She blew a big pink bubble,
then turned and left the park.

The last time I had been inside the Willow Grove
United Methodist Church was for my son’s funeral
.  Walking through the narthex, my breath quickened as I
envisioned Ethan lying in his coffin.  I wondered how I would react if
somehow that
deathbox
was still there, entered the
chapel and saw that it wasn’t.  I stared at the emptiness that occupied
the space where it had been, like whatever it was on the other side of the hole
in that barn.