Marie Sexton - Coda 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (7 page)

“So you quit trying?”
“I think that’s what he wanted.”
I thought she was wrong. No child wants his mother to give up on

him.

We lay for a while in silence, suddenly awkward. The bed we were sharing suddenly felt cold.
I was torn. On one hand, I felt sorry for her. She’d been young and without any kind of support. Certainly Cole’s father hadn’t helped matters any. Jon had always assumed that Grace avoided Cole because she was busy being a social butterfly. I didn’t think that was true. I sensed she was terribly lonely and had avoided her son simply because she didn’t know how to make things right. Still, I couldn’t understand how little effort she’d made. “You should have come to the wedding.”

“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of embarrassing myself.”

Anger flared in my chest. “He’s your son. It was an important day for him. For both of them! And all you could think about was yourself?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

 

That was good, because I didn’t.

J
ON called early the next morning to let me know they were home but hadn’t met with Thomas yet. I hung up and lay in bed for a moment, thinking about the night before. I was nervous about facing Grace, not because of the sex, but because we’d gone to sleep with things tense between us. I couldn’t comprehend some of the things she’d done— telling Cole she’d meet him for Christmas but never showing up, not calling on his birthday, not coming to the wedding—and yet, I didn’t think she was a bad person. Not really. I thought she might be even more damaged than her son.

I found her in the kitchen getting ready to make breakfast. “There’s coffee,” she said, pointing to the pot.

 

“Thanks.”

I poured a cup and sat at the table, watching her lay bacon in a frying pan and crack eggs into a bowl. “Are you the one who taught Cole to love cooking?”

She shook her head. “I could never cook like that.”

 

“I didn’t ask if you taught him
how
to cook. I asked if you’re the one who taught him to love it?”

She bit her lip. “I guess I’d like to think so.” She put her head down so that her hair fell between us. I almost laughed at how similar it was to something her son would do. “I’m glad you talked me into coming.”

“I’m glad too.”

She turned the bacon, continuing to avoid my eyes. “You were right last night, you know. I’ve been a terrible mother.” That wasn’t exactly what I’d said, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t think she wanted me to. “I can still remember the day I lost him.” She took the bacon out of the pan, laid it in even rows on paper towels. “He was twelve. I’d quit traveling with them by then.”

“Why?”

She put new slices of raw bacon into the skillet. “I hated coming to Europe. I always ended up feeling stupid. New York was the only place where Nicholas had friends—well, business acquaintances, really—who were as crude as I was, so when he offered to let me leave, I moved there. But whenever the two of them came back from Europe, they’d stop in for a few days, and we’d pretend to be a family.”

Cole still stopped in New York on his way home from Europe, more often than not, although he rarely stayed in the city. “I see.”

“I’d been out partying the night before. I’m not proud of that, but it’s what I did back then. A lot. They’d just come home from Rome, and Cole was absolutely ecstatic about it. He couldn’t stop talking about the Coliseum and the Forum. He had this book with overlays that showed how it was back then compared to now, and he was trying to show it to me. But I was fighting with Nicky. You know how you do that, when they’re little? You’re fighting right over their heads, but you’re trying not to let them know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, Cole kept trying to get my attention, saying, ‘Mom, look at this,’ and then….” She shook her head. “I don’t remember exactly how it came about, because I was so focused on his father. But suddenly Cole said, ‘Mom, you don’t understand.’ And I turned to him, and I said, ‘Darling, it’s not that I don’t understand. It’s that I just don’t care.’” She shook her head and reached up to wipe her eyes. I hadn’t realized she was crying. There had been nothing in her voice to give it away. “And I’ll never forget the expression on his face. It was like I’d slapped him. He just crumpled. He didn’t cry—I’m sure he thought he was too old for that—but he ran off. And still, I thought, he’ll get over it. But they left again that night, and later, I found that book buried in the trash. He’d ripped the pages out of it, and all I could think of was him being so hurt.”

“Why didn’t you call him? Why didn’t you tell him you were sorry?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I told myself he was only being a kid, that he’d get over it.”
“But he didn’t.”

“I didn’t see him again for almost eight months, and by then, he could barely look at me. He refused to hug me. He—” This time her voice did break. She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook.

I stayed where I was, watching her, imagining the man I knew as the boy he’d once been. A boy whose excitement had been crushed, who had secretly slipped his treasure into the garbage can because it had become a symbol of his inadequacy. “The bacon’s burning.”

She shoved the skillet off of the burner and turned the knob to the off position. I didn’t feel like eating. I suspected she didn’t either.
The thing was, I understood how it could have happened. I could remember times I’d snapped at Jon when he was small. Times I’d asked him to please, for the love of God, just stop talking for five minutes straight. I’d once told him that I’d rather listen to yowling cats than hear him sing. I hadn’t meant it. Like so many parents, I’d only wanted a moment of silence, but I realized six weeks later that he’d quit singing altogether. The difference was, I’d been there to realize my mistake, even if it took longer than it should have. I was able to apologize and make things right. Did that make me a better parent? Or just a luckier one?
But even that wasn’t the worst of my sins.

“When Jon was nearly two years old, he went through this stage where he refused to stay in his crib. He was big enough to climb out, and he’d come to our room and get in bed with us. He’d toss and turn and kick me in the back. I was having a tough time at my job in those days, and I complained to Carol about having to get up and go to work each morning when I couldn’t sleep at night. So one week, Carol decided to teach Jon to stay in his room. For three nights, she sat in the rocking chair in his bedroom, trying to keep him in his crib, but rubbing his back to keep him from crying so he wouldn’t wake up the rest of us. She barely slept. And at some point that same week, our air conditioner quit working, even though I’d paid to have it fixed the month before.” Now it was my turn to look away from her. I concentrated instead on my hands, clenched in my lap. “It was Saturday, and Carol was exhausted. She put Jon down for his nap, and I told her to go nap too. That I’d watch our six-year-old, Elizabeth. But I had to call the AC company too, and they were telling me how it was a busy time for them—lots of air conditioners go out in Phoenix in August—and how they couldn’t come for several days. And I was so mad, you know? It felt so justified at the time, and I yelled at them and demanded that they come out sooner.”

“And did they?”

“I don’t even remember.” She didn’t answer, maybe sensing how dark my mood had become. “It wasn’t until I hung up the phone that I realized Elizabeth wasn’t in the living room where I’d left her. And I couldn’t hear her.” There were tears running down my cheeks, and I slowly wiped them away. “I can still remember that horrible terror.” I reached up to touch my chest. “Right here. I could feel it. I knew something was wrong, even though I tried to tell myself she was fine.”

“Was she?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
I shook my head. “No. I found her floating in the pool.” “Oh, George!”
“She was facedown, and she wasn’t moving.” I choked and wiped

futilely at my eyes again. I finally looked up to find her watching me, her eyes, exactly like Cole’s, so wide with horror and sympathy. Her slender fingers, also like his, touching her lips. “She was my baby. I mean, Jon was younger, and you have to understand, I loved them both. But Elizabeth? She was….” My voice trailed away as I tried to put it into words.

“Your daughter,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
“George—”
She was going to say what people always said, that it wasn’t my

fault, but I didn’t want to hear it. Just like she didn’t need me to lie about her having been a good mother, I didn’t need her to lie about who had allowed Elizabeth to drown. “The thing is, two days later, I was holding Jon. He was sound asleep. I don’t know where Carol was. And I said to him, ‘If only you had stayed in your bed, your sister would be alive.’” I had to stare down at my lap again. I quit trying to dry my eyes. “I was the one who insisted that Carol keep him in his bed. If I’d only let him sleep with us. If I’d waited until later to call the AC company. If I’d only locked the gate on the pool. But instead, I blamed him.” She waited silently for me to take a tissue from the box on the table and blow my nose. “He wasn’t even two yet, and he was asleep, so he couldn’t have heard me—”

“Of course not.”

“But sometimes, I’ve wondered. Especially later, when he was so determined to prove himself—working sixty-hour weeks, killing himself at a job he didn’t even like—I had to wonder if he didn’t hear me, somewhere in his mind. If he didn’t know that for that one day at least, I blamed him.”

She crossed the room to sit in the kitchen chair next to me. She scooted it closer and reached out to take my hand. “He couldn’t possibly know.”

“Probably not. But that’s not even the worst thing I did to him. It may be the worst thing I’ve ever done as a father, letting my daughter drown, but for Jon, the worst damage came later, when he told me he was gay.” I shook my head. “I didn’t take it well.”

“You seem to have accepted it now.”
“Have you?”
She blinked at me. “I don’t understand.”
“Is that why you’ve abandoned Cole? Because he’s gay?”

She shook her head. “No. I never meant to abandon him at all. It felt more like he was taken from me, and I guess…. I don’t know how to go back. I don’t know how to make it up to him. Not after so many years of failing.”

“He’s your son. He needs you.”

 

“I told you. He’s his father’s son.”

“Not really. Not in the way you mean. He could care less about the type of society his father lived in.” She sounded skeptical, and I sighed, frustrated that she couldn’t see it. “Think about it, Grace. He could have gone to any school in the world, and yet he went to a state university. In Colorado no less. His best friend in the world teaches high school math. And he married an accountant. He sold his house in Orange County years ago, and he prefers Phoenix to the Hamptons. He’s more yours than you know. You’re worried about impressing him? He doesn’t need to be impressed. He just needs you to be present and accounted for.”

“He’ll never forgive me. I don’t even blame him for it, to be honest.”

“He will, if you give him a reason.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know if I can.” “Why not?”
“Because you’re right. I’m afraid of him.”
“Well, he’s afraid of you, so you should get along just fine.”

T
HE rest of the holiday was pleasant. We used the symphony tickets Cole had given us, although we snuck out during intermission, vowing we’d never tell either of our sons that we found it mind-numbingly boring. We went skiing. Best of all, I found a book of crosswords at a newsstand, and we spent the mornings at the table, working one or two puzzles over coffee. It was my favorite part of the day. We only had sex one other time, but she slept in my bed each night.

She talked about Cole a lot, especially as she grew more comfortable with me, but I was surprised at her tone. It was as if she really had lost her son. As if she was talking about some other boy, long since vanished, only a memory, now grown hazy with time. As if she didn’t realize the man she’d seen on Christmas was her own flesh and blood. There were times I wanted to shake her. I wanted to yell at her, “Your son’s not dead! Stop talking about him like he is.”

Yet I never did.
The truth was, I was happy in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. It wasn’t love. Love felt like a fairy tale I’d long outgrown, but there was something comforting about having a warm body in the bed with me when I fell asleep and hearing her breathing next to me when I woke.

At the end of the week, she helped me pack all the gifts and ornaments into boxes to ship back to Phoenix. Jon and Cole had gone home in such a hurry, they’d left half of their stuff behind. I found the box of baby items Grace had given them sitting next to the couch.

“Leave it,” she said. “Maybe the cleaning staff will take it.” “Cole will want it,” I assured her. “Eventually.”
She reached up to touch the back of her head, frowning. She’d

continued to wear her hair down, but it was as if now she was searching for the tight knot it normally lived in. She seemed confused not to find it there.

“Grace?”

 

She sighed and sat down in the same chair she’d sat in on

Christmas day. She hid her face from me by staring at her lap. “I screwed up, George.”
“We all screw up—”
“No, I mean this week. He made an effort, and I threw it back in

his face.”

I thought over the couple of days we’d had together before the boys had flown home. It hadn’t gone as smoothly as I had hoped, but I still wasn’t sure what exactly she was referring to. “When?”

“The bread pudding.”
“Because youdon’t like it?”
“There’s more to it than that.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

Once again, I hadn’t realized she was crying. She was good at hiding it. “Remember I told you about skiing in Vail?”

 

“Yes.”

“There was a lodge on the mountain, and we’d go there to warm up in the middle of the day when we started to get tired. And we’d always have bread pudding and hot chocolate.”
“So he made it to remind you of the good times?”

“Yes.”
“And you pushed it away.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“I told you I screwed up.”
“You’re not kidding.”

“I was so angry about the nanny thing, and so hurt, and I saw a chance to hurt him back, and I took it.” She looked up at me. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Why did I do that?”