“It Gets Easier,” And Other Lies They Tell You
August 28th, 2006
August 28, 2006
I have a small suitcase with three changes of clothes, all uncarefully packed around a scrapbook. I have my computer; my bag. That’s when I see him cycling aimlessly—really, it’s too aimless, unliterarily so—in a teeshirt. Around and around across the street from my house, at the edge of the park. I hate when he cycles in the dark. When he spots me he wheels over and we embrace until it feels like the stickiness of August won’t ever separate us.
There was never a time we had trouble saying anything. Words came easily, affection naturally. “Baby,” “sugar,” “sweetpea,” roll off the tongue like Italian. There are some people who, out of proximity and instinct, know they’ve got another soul to count on.
Flowers underscore our parting. The sweet olive is all but dormant so, like a dutiful understudy, the slightly overdone, nightblooming jasmine steps in. The stray brother cats loll in the front yard—the brave one slipping under the wrought iron fence watching us under the sodium lights at the curb where I wait for my ride.
I think about taking him with me. Every time I look back at the stray cats I think of taking him and them, with one front seat and no carriers for wild domestic animals. In thirty seconds I make up my mind: I run through all of the scenarios—unwarranted jailtime, unwarranted death.
There is everything to say and no time to say it, so we speak every word silently, and the embrace substitutes for what every other bone, muscle, and organ is helpless to communicate. I ask him to please go home. Safely. Without incident. Now. But to go home to his home safely and without incident is to ask a drug addict to go home via the dealer on the corner who’s open for business. His home is not without incident; I fear that, in his mother’s Section Eight state of mind, he might not make it. I take mental snapshots of my house and neighborhood, stray cats, trees, the stillness. His face. Everyone left hours before. I feel like I’ve overslept.
“Go home, baby. Please. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” We look at each other a long time. I want to say it but I don’t want to worry him.
Then, as if a director cued the red truck, my ride appears. And August pries us apart.
***
One year ago tonight, he was eight and a half years old. We’ve spoken once since then and I wonder how he’s navigating Texas when all he told me in February was how much he missed home.
The other three boys who went to private school I can’t reach at all, no matter how many times I drive by their house. The girl across the park is gone—mom sold the house before Mardi Gras—and I don’t remember her name so I doubt that I’ll ever find her again. She had a hell of an arm; we liked playing football. The last time I saw her we got good and sweaty playing ball, then had the nerve to eat at the Night Out Against Crime picnic with caked on dirt and flushed faces.
One year anniversaries are hard whether it’s a tough first year at marriage or 365 days after death. What is it about a year, about marking time? On the one year anniversary of leaving, and closing in on the one year anniversary of the flood disaster, it doesn’t appear that places fare too much better than we do.