Leaving Home: Short Pieces (3 page)

Abe reached into one of the boxes and took out a fistful of picture books, jammed them back into the shelf. “Just because you’re ready to give her up,” he said, “doesn’t mean I am.”

Sarah’s face bloomed with color. “Give her up?” she whispered. “Is that what you think I’m doing? For God’s sake, Abe, all I want to do is function like a normal human being again.”

“But you’re not normal. We’re not normal.” His eyes filled with tears. “She died, Sarah.”

Sarah winced, as if she had taken a blow. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

Abe sank onto the floor, his fingers speared through his hair. After a half hour, he stood up and walked down the hall to their bedroom. He found Sarah lying on her side, staring at the sun as it shamefully scuttled off the horizon. Abe lay down on the bed, curling his body around hers. “I lost her,” he whispered. “Please don’t tell me I’ve lost you.”

Sarah turned to him, and rested her palm on his cheek. She kissed him, all the words she could not say. They began to comfort each other – a touch here, a brush of lips there, a kindness. But when their clothes had dissolved into pools on the floor; when Abe braced himself over his wife and took hold of her body and tried to settle her curves against his canyons; they did not come together seamlessly, the way they used to. They were off, just enough to make it uncomfortable; just enough for her to say Let me try this; and for him to say, Maybe this way.

Afterward, when Sarah had fallen asleep, Abe sat up and stared down at the end of the bed; at his wife’s feet hanging long and white over its edge.

The next morning, Abe and Sarah lay in the dark. “Maybe I need to be alone for a while,” Sarah said, although it wasn’t what she’d hoped to say.

“Maybe you do,” Abe replied, although it was the opposite of what he meant. It was as if, in this new world, where the impossible had actually happened, nothing fit anymore: not language, not reason, not even the two of them.

When Sarah got out of bed, she took the sheet with her – a modesty she hadn’t needed for fifteen years of marriage. It prevented Abe from seeing what he would have noticed, in an instant: that the growth Sarah had experienced was exactly the same amount Abe himself had diminished; and that, if you could measure anything as insubstantial as that, it would have been exactly the same size and scope as the daughter they’d lost.

Sarah reached the suitcase, even though it was stored in the top rafters of the attic. Abe watched her pack. At the door, they made promises they both knew they would not keep. “I’ll call,” Sarah said, and Abe nodded. “Be well,” he answered.

She was going to stay with her mother – something that, in all the years of their marriage, Abe never would have imagined coming to pass; and yet he considered this a positive sign. If Sarah was choosing Felicity, in spite of their rocky relationship, maybe there was hope for all children to return to their parents, regardless of how impossible the journey seemed to be.

He had to pull a chair over to the window, because he was no longer tall enough to see over its sill. He stood on the cushion and watched her put her suitcase into the car. She looked enormous to him, a giantess – and he considered that this is what motherhood does to a woman: make her larger than life. He waited until he could not see her car anymore, and then he climbed down from the chair.

He could not work anymore; he was too short to reach the counter. He could not drive anywhere, the pedals were too far from his feet. There was nothing for Abe to do, so he wandered through the house, even emptier than it was. He found himself, of course, in his daughter’s room. Here, he spent hours: drawing with her art kit; playing with her pretend food and cash register; sifting through the drawers of her clothing and playing a game with himself: can you remember the last time she wore this? He put on a Radio Disney CD and forced himself to listen to the whole of it. He lined up her stuffed animals, like witnesses.

Then he crawled into her dollhouse, one he’d built for her last Christmas. He closed the door behind himself. He glanced around at the carefully pasted wallpaper, the rich red velvet loveseat; the kitchen sink. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where he could stare out the window to his heart’s content. The view, it was perfect.

You were in such a hurry to arrive. There I was, in the middle of a class IV hurricane a month before my due date, packing a bag for the hospital between contractions, as gusts of rain rattled the house. There was your father, videotaping through the windshield as he drove; the eerie bank of tollbooths on the highway unmanned and free for all. And then, suddenly, there
you
were: long and skinny and undercooked, still missing your eyelashes and fingernails. In all my life, I had never seen anything as remarkable as
your
life. As the doctors and nurses wandered the halls of the hospital, quarantined by the storm; as reporters on the grainy television overhead talked about waves breaking over the sea wall and coastal flooding; I held you tight.
You
, I thought,
already have a story to tell the world.

You were in such a hurry to arrive, and now, eighteen years later, I’m having a hard time letting you go. I know that the whole point of parenting is getting your child to the point where he can forge his own path. I know that a hatchling who is six feet tall and sports size twelve shoes is not really a hatchling anymore. And I know that the preparations for this moment have been ongoing – from packing up your clothes to selecting the desk lamp for your dorm room, from writing out directions to help you do your own laundry to opening up a bank account in your name – all these tiny hallmarks that let a stranger see, at close range, you are no longer a child but an adult. Yet now that we’re actually in the moment – driving to the school that will serve as a bridge to your future – I feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten. Did I tell you that you have to change the bag inside the vacuum every now and then? Do you have any idea how to sew on a button?

I have equipped you with extra long sheets and a television set and a credit card with your name emblazoned across the bottom. Boxes are piled high in the back of the car, full of your softest tees and your broken-in jeans, your favorite books and your iPod speakers, everything you assume you will need to recreate home. In a few hours, after we have unloaded and unpacked and made the bed and hung your posters on the walls, I am going to hold you tight and tell you for the thousandth time how proud I am of you. I’m going to paste a smile on my face and I’m going to say,
Work hard! Have fun!

There’s so much, though, that I won’t be saying to you today. It’s the lump sum of the twenty-five year lead I’ve got on you – a quarter century of mistakes and triumphs. But unlike the litmus test for when you take a Tylenol versus when you call the doctor – something we discussed this past summer – these lectures aren’t quickly memorized. They can’t be tucked like notes between the folds of your comforter and the chapters of your paperbacks, inside the jewel cases of your CDs. Lessons of the heart are different that way; they have to be learned on your own.

So although I am thinking it, you won’t hear me tell you:
Do what you love
. Have you ever heard a five-year-old say that when he grows up, he wants to be an advertising executive? I didn’t think so. A crazy thing happens at university – kids who once wanted to be astronauts and ballerinas and firemen somehow morph into bankers and public relations specialists and sales managers. Practicality – such as paying the bills for the first time in your life – is a heavy-duty abrasive that wears the sharp edges of a dream to fit into the round hole of reality. Remember me – with my one-in-a-million career path – the writer I hoped to be, instead of the teacher I assumed I’d be. Don’t listen to people who ask you what on earth one does with a degree in Egyptology. If it’s what you fall asleep thinking about, and wake up excited about, it’s what you should pursue. The rest (including a paycheck) will somehow sort itself out.

You won’t hear me tell you:
See the world through your own eyes
. When you were ten, you stood up in class and blurted out,
I love math!
It was an outburst of sheer enthusiasm, followed by a chorus of snickers from the rest of the class. I remember cringing, because I knew how much you’d be teased. But you know what? You
did
love math. You still
do
. And you knew even at that age that your voice had just as much right to be heard as anyone else’s. That’s still true – whether you are talking about religion, politics, or sexual orientation. You’re smarter than I ever was. You’re self-motivated. You have the persuasive ability to talk a polar bear into moving to the Bahamas. Sure, it’s easier to be a lemming, to agree with what the majority says and does. But it’s more meaningful to be the dissenting vote, because – who knows? – you just might make someone else think twice.

And, a codicil:
This planet is smaller than you think
. I don’t just mean that environmentally – an arena where you’ve taught me, instead of the other way around. I mean that there will be plenty of people who do not think the way you do – whether that’s in a class at college, in the workplace, in your country. Don’t judge someone just because their opinions are different – lest they do the same to you. Instead, ask them if they want to grab a cup of coffee. Start a conversation. Listen. Open their minds – and your own. Focus on what’s good, instead of carping about what’s lousy. Is your waitress particularly attentive? Tell her how much you appreciate it. Write a letter to the editor of the local paper, praising someone who’s done a great job. For some reason, discontent spreads virally, and edges out kindness. Make some room for it.

Expect to cry
. Real life isn’t fair. People get promoted who don’t deserve it. Politicians get elected when they’re not the wisest choice. You finally get the courage to ask someone out – and you get rejected. Baseball players make millions and teachers can barely pay their mortgages. Here’s a
bona fide
fact: You’re not going to get straight A’s in college; you’re going to have professors who play favorites. So be it. One of the best lessons you’ll ever learn is how to pick yourself up again, and in order to do that, you have to stumble.

Fall in love
. Once, you and I had a conversation about whether or not love was a miracle. You said no – that there are natural phenomena that can’t always be explained by science. I said yes – that in a world of six billion people, finding someone who gets you is pretty miraculous. I hope I get to prove you wrong. I hope you find a partner who makes you a better version of yourself, simply by association. I hope you find a person who loves you not because you’re perfect, but in spite of the fact that you’re not.

There are so many other things I won’t say to you: B
e history, instead of just watching it happen from the sidelines
.
Try something new, even if it scares you to death
.
Learn because you love to learn, not because you’re being tested
.
Don’t whine – there is always someone who’s having a worse day than you are. Be honest with yourself, and you’ll never have anything to hide
. But all of these things you will discover, in due course.

Growing up isn’t about age, and it isn’t about experience. It’s a very real threshold, much like the one we’re standing on now at your dorm room, between two schools of thought. One minute, it’s all about you – and the next, it’s all about the people that surround you. As soon as their well-being is more important to you than your own, you have crossed that threshold; you can call yourself an adult.

I have always loved you, but I can very distinctly remember the moment I realized how much I
liked
you as well – not just as my child, but also as a fellow human; as someone I would pick as a friend, even if you had not been placed strategically in my life’s path. I was on a book tour in Rome and I had brought you along. After an hour of walking in circles, due to my geographical incompetence, you ripped the little map out of my hands.
You
, you said firmly,
are not allowed to use this anymore
. And just like that, you became the grownup, and I followed you like a child to our destination.

It was not the first time we had been on an unknown road together. Eighteen years ago, you were the one who showed me how to be a mother – a baptism by fire. You loved me, even during the times I wasn’t sure I was doing it right or well, simply because I was yours. During that hurricane in 1991, when I held you for the very first time, I could never have imagined that this is where we would both end up.

Now, as you bend down to embrace me, as you say goodbye, I think of all the things I’ve taken for granted: The ability to hug you whenever I feel like it. The pitch of your voice. The mess on the floor of your room. A standing invitation in front of the television, to watch a new episode of Project Runway. Your incredible photographic memory. The seat height in your car, which I always have to readjust. Your sarcasm. The beauty of you doing a one-and-a-half off the diving board. The way you roll your eyes, but ultimately share your chocolate with me.

So, here is my brave smile, the one that will crumble as soon as I am safely in the car, where you can no longer see me.

Work hard! Have fun!

And maybe there is one last thing I will say: Eighteen years ago, when I saw you for the first time, I was wrong. The story you’ll tell the world, Kyle, is not the one about how you arrived…but instead the one about where you are headed.

I can’t wait to hear every word.