Desperate (3 page)

M
y circle of friends had grown smaller since the accident. According to my therapist, this wasn’t uncommon. I kept in touch with my closest friends from college, but they didn’t know what to say. Postgraduation we talked about dating and careers. Then it was marriage and kids. But one missed traffic light later and they didn’t know what they could or couldn’t say. If it weren’t for Facebook, I doubted we’d have any regular contact at all.

I saw my parents on occasion. Probably should see them more considering I’m their only child. They were still married—forty years, bless them—and living a quiet life in a small town just outside of Providence, Rhode Island. Dad had a tough go of it, having worked his whole life for RIDOT only to spend the last twenty years on disability. Money was tight for them, so I funneled some of my rental income to them to help pay the bills. My work buds were solid, but let’s be honest: after spending the week together doing battle in the trenches, I wasn’t up for much after-hours hanging.

So basically I had friends I saw on occasion, but for the most part they existed on the periphery of my life. Anna had become my safe harbor. She needed me and I needed her, and yes, I realized we had a codependency thing happening. Anna, too, felt alienated from her circle of happy friends with healthy children. If that was what made us initially compatible, so be it. For the moment, at least, I didn’t need friends to keep me grounded. I needed Anna.

And Brad.

I drove my red Dodge Charger, a sporty little compact sedan, along the leafy and quaint streets of Bedford, Massachusetts. Brad didn’t know I was headed his way. If I had called in advance, he might have ducked out. Yeah, we were that close.

The view through my car window showed people doing what people did on Saturday afternoons. They were mowing their lawns, pulling up weeds, laying down mulch, or watching their kids play. The sound of children laughing tore at my heart and made me ache for Max in a way I could only describe as suffocating. It hit me like a massive wave, dragging me to the depths of my sorrow, my ocean’s sandy bottom, violently tossing me about. Still, I drove on. Living with a chronic condition made me adept at managing the pain.

Brad’s cargo van was parked out front of his colonial-style house. The sides of the white van displayed black lettering that read L
OMBARDI
P
LUMBING,
the words positioned next to a colorful graphic of a strong hand gripping a durable, rust-colored wrench. Brad’s twin daughters were away at college, and I didn’t see Janice’s Corolla in the driveway, which meant Brad was probably home and alone. Good.

I strode up the front walk, past the ceramic garden gnomes hiding in Brad’s well-tended and richly colored flower garden. With each step my heart beat faster with anticipation. I rang the doorbell and listened to the pleasant chimes. Brad was smiling until he saw who rang his doorbell.

“No,” he said to me.

“Hey, Brad,” I replied.

I slipped into the house without being invited. I knew to leave my shoes in the mudroom so as to not mark up the new pinewood floor in the kitchen.

“I’m still saying no,” Brad said, following me inside. He was dressed in his Saturday casual outfit: untucked navy polo shirt and dungarees.

“I brought food,” I said, not turning around. I held up a bag so Brad could see the Ken’s NY Deli logo. He would know a roast beef sandwich was inside. I got two sandwiches on my drive over, having anticipated the need to soften Brad up a bit.

“The answer is still no,” Brad said to my back.

I headed straight for the kitchen without needing to be guided, but I stopped at the doorway into the living room.

“Did you guys get a new couch?” I asked, not remembering the white sofa with blue piping from my last visit.

“Same couch, I just reupholstered it,” Brad said.

“Well, it looks great,” I said, marveling at Brad’s handiwork from afar. In addition to his talents as a master plumber, Brad could grow a colorful garden, cook gourmet meals, build furniture, and evidently reupholster it. But Brad had another talent, a special talent, and that was what had brought me here.

Judging by appearances, Brad looked every bit the guy who could make an upper-middle-class living with his hands. He wasn’t a giant of a man, five eight with a stretch (I had four inches on him), but he was slender at the waist and well muscled up top, more fit than most college wrestlers. He sported a full head of jet black hair, deeply set dark eyes, and a pronounced nose that called attention to his Mediterranean heritage. Brad’s most distinguishing characteristic, a bushy black mustache, evoked constant comparisons to Freddie Mercury, the late front man of the rock band Queen.

My socks glided across the new kitchen flooring as if it were covered with ice. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the bank of windows overlooking a lush, green backyard. Surrounding me were gleaming stainless steel appliances and sunny artwork of fruits and vegetables. I set the bag of sandwiches down on the kitchen island, running my hands along the expensive, greenish colored granite surface. As Brad would tell you, plumbing was a recession-proof business.

It was a habit of mine to check the fridge whenever I came to visit, which was usually once a month. I’d come more often but figured Brad would get a restraining order at some point. Brad didn’t use Facebook, so I followed what was happening with the twins by checking the new photos Janice had on the fridge. Apparently, Janice hadn’t tired of the digital photo printer I bought her for Christmas last year. The girls looked to be doing fine. Sports, friends, travel, all the things Max would never experience. Splayed open on the kitchen table was the book about flower gardening that Brad must have been reading before my intrusion.

“How are the mums?” I asked, absently flipping through the pages of his flower book.

“They’re the word,” Brad said. He retrieved two place settings from the cupboard and set out two glasses of water for us to drink. I soon joined Brad at the kitchen island and watched as he dove into his sandwich.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, chewing a mouthful of food and savoring the bite.

“I don’t have an appetite,” I said.

“Why’d you buy yourself a sandwich?”

“I didn’t want you to eat alone,” I said.

Brad looked at me curiously, and then broke into a smile that arched his mustache like a caterpillar’s stretch. Almost immediately, though, that smile dimmed.

“I thought we talked about this,” Brad said. “I thought we agreed we were going to take a break for a while. It’s not in your best interest.”

“Something’s come up,” I said. “A big something. Anna and I might be adopting a baby. No, scratch that, we
are
adopting a baby.”

Brad’s expression brightened. “Hey, that’s wonderful news,” he said.

“I need to tell Max,” I said. “I need . . . I don’t know . . . I need to know that he’s all right with what I’m doing. I need to have his blessing, Brad. Please. I can’t move forward without knowing.”

Brad looked me hard in the eyes. The sandwich, I realized, was probably overkill. He never needed much prodding to help me out. Brad set aside his food and used a napkin to clear a dab of mustard from his mustache.

“Did you bring anything for me to use?”

From my back pocket I removed a picture of Karen and Max, well worn as a beloved LP. In the background of the photo stood one of the most recognizable landmarks in New England—the famous Motif Number 1, located on Bradley Wharf in the harbor town of Rockport, Massachusetts. Karen’s straw-colored hair was lit angelically by the sunset. Max, Red Sox cap slightly askew, gap-toothed, stood smiling in front of his mother. Karen’s arms were draped over Max’s slender shoulders. My son wasn’t acting silly, as he tended to do whenever a camera was involved. He looked like a little boy who loved his mommy, loved being by the ocean, loved the sunset, and loved his life.

Brad took the picture over to the kitchen table. I sat down across from him.

“Give me your hands,” he said.

G
ive me your hands.

Brad had made this same request of me on the day we first met. I’d heard about Brad from a woman in the neighborhood who told me all about his special ability. He didn’t charge for his services, nor did he shy away from discussing it if anybody asked. What he did, and did very well, was plumbing. The other thing was just a part of him, like an arm or a leg.

I was a natural-born skeptic when it came to Bigfoot and UFOs, but I believed in a loving God and had faith that death was not the final chapter. After learning about Brad’s unique ability, I decided the upstairs unit would benefit from a new toilet. I started sobbing while Brad did the installation and had to come clean about my ulterior motives.

We’d been friends ever since.

Brad took my hands and closed his eyes. The picture of Max and Karen rested beneath our interlocked fingers. His grip tightened, and he jerked his hands back as though he’d suffered a slight electric shock.

“I’m picking up a game. Is there a game? Something about a game,” Brad said, his vocal inflection calm as someone reporting facts and not communing with the spirit world.

“Is that Max? Is it Max asking?”

“It’s definitely Max,” Brad said, his eyes still closed. “He keeps asking about a game. Something about a game.”

My throat closed as an ache of longing rose up within me. This feeling constricted my chest, making every breath futile. My heart seemed to stop beating as if acknowledging this primal urge to be with Max, wherever he was. Speaking to Max through Brad was a drug of a different sort. It made me feel high and low at the same instant. As soon as our conversation ended, I’d want more. It was never enough. It never satisfied. There was no closure, only longing, aching, and a deep yearning to hold him again. I knew the agony these sessions caused me, but after each one I still wanted more, just one more hit.

“It’s probably the Red Sox game,” I said, swallowing a sob.

Brad nodded. “That’s it. It’s the Red Sox. He wants you to watch a game.”

I couldn’t do that, and I wouldn’t lie to my son, or the spirit of my son, or whatever I was communing with through Brad. I could never see another Sox game again.

“He says it wasn’t your fault. He wants you to stop blaming yourself,” Brad said.

Brad had connected me to my son’s spirit seven times, four of them occurring only after I begged. He saw how these sessions tore me apart. Max would always say—through Brad—that it wasn’t my fault, but he’d never given any specifics. It was a story I’d never shared with Brad. Some things were just too painful to relive.

“I’m getting something about a ticket, or a stub of a ticket. Is there a ticket?”

“A Red Sox ticket,” I managed to say.

“He wants you to tear it up. He doesn’t want you to have the reminder.”

I got the ticket from a friend at work—great seats on the third-base line.
If I hadn’t gone to that game . . .

“Now I’m getting something about a car trip,” Brad said, his voice staying even. “You drove. Somebody drove. You didn’t need to drive. Something about his mother driving. Something about driving.”

This was true. Karen had volunteered to drive Max, but only after throwing a medium-sized tirade about making seven-year-olds travel so far to play a game that only vaguely resembled soccer. I had offered to give my Sox tickets away, but Karen insisted I go. My last words to Karen weren’t “I love you.” I was so worried she’d blow up at Holly, our volunteer league coordinator, that I said, “Promise me you won’t get confrontational.” Death and regret were unfortunate companions.

“He’s saying it was an accident, just an accident. I’m getting the word
accident
.”

True as well, but Max was just a boy when he died. He didn’t understand that Karen drove the speed limit and I never did. There was no way I would have been at that intersection when a Honda Accord, driven by a drunk driver, ran a red light at a high rate of speed. The impact crushed the side of Karen’s sedan as if it were made out of aluminum foil. Max died at the scene. Karen was in a medically induced coma and died a week later. In my sessions with Brad, I’d only been able to communicate with Max, never Karen. As Brad explained, when a loved one died in a coma they might still be asleep, unable to send a message.

“He wants you to watch the Red Sox again,” Brad said. “He says he remembers watching games with you.”

I was feeling a longing of a different sort. I wanted the pill bottle stashed inside the glove compartment of my car, the one Anna didn’t know about. It was filled with Adderall, a medication used to treat ADHD, which I didn’t actually have. Thankfully, shrinks were more than happy to prescribe a solution for their diagnosis, so if you knew how to fake it, you could get it. The pills had become ice for my pain. They focused my thoughts to the point where I could sometimes feel a blip of euphoria, a little hint that happiness could be mine once again. Technically, this made me a drug addict, but not a hard-core one. My crime was taking meds I didn’t need to dull a pain I didn’t want.

“Is he okay?” I asked Brad. “Is my boy all right?”

I squinted my eyes shut, but those hot tears managed to squeeze out anyway.

“I’m getting the word
happy
, that he’s happy, that he wants you to be happy. I’m just getting the word
happy
.”

“Should I adopt a baby? Should I become a dad again? Would Max feel like I’m forgetting him?”

Tears carved a snaky path down my cheeks. God, I missed my boy so much. His smell. The silky feel of his hair. The toys. His box of rocks we vowed to categorize. The squeals of joy when he saw me. “Daaaaaddyy.” Our rockets. Our life.

Brad got quiet.

“I’m sorry, Gage, but I’m not getting anything now.”

I gazed up at the ceiling, pushing the tears back into my eyes and wishing that I could look beyond the physical world into Max’s realm.

“Thank you, Brad,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I guess you’ll have to make this decision on your own, buddy.”

I’d already made the decision to double my daily dose of Adderall.

“There’s something else, Gage,” Brad said in a somber and concerned tone.

“Yeah?”

“I’m picking up on something else, a dark energy, something I haven’t ever sensed before.”

“Is it near Max? Is it threatening him?”

Brad shook his head.

“No, no, I’m not explaining myself. This energy, this darkness, it felt terrestrial.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it’s earthbound. It’s here in our world, not his. And Gage—whatever this energy is, it’s something very dark, a blackness I’ve never felt before. And it’s surrounding you.”