The Saving Graces (25 page)

   23.

   IsabeI.

   In late November, Terry came to see me. It was a short visit, only Friday to Sunday, and I had to share him a bit with his father. Gary picked him up at the airport and brought him straight to my apartment on Friday afternoon. My nerves were in knots. I'd been cleaning my three rooms and bath for days, planning meals, vacillating over what to wear. I hadn't seen Terry in nearly two years.
Father and son hid identical expressions of dismay when I opened the door. Terry embraced me stiffly, as if afraid I would break. Gary couldn't stay, had to go, good to see you, you're looking fine, Isabel, he lied. I barely glanced at him; he'd put on weight and lost some hair- that's all I noticed, It was Terry, twenty-seven years old and a man now, not a boy, that I couldn't stop touching, looking at, marveling over.
"You've gotten better-looking," I said, mixing tuna salad for a sandwich while he prowled around the kitchen, making the room seem even smaller in a way Kirby never did. He was nervous, too, I realized; he had the same apprehensions about this visit that I did. "No, it's true," I insisted when he made a face. "Your hair's darker. You've gotten taller." "Mom, I couldn't have." "You did. Your eyes look more like Gary's, too. Your father has beautiful eyes." But I could see my father's sternness in Terry's straight, narrow-lipped mouth, and that worried me. I wanted to tell him to bend more, flex more, life doesn't have to be such a struggle.
I sat across from him and watched him eat. "Didn't they feed you on the airplane?" - "Sure. What time's dinner?" We laughed as we settled into the agreeable fiction that we were still mother and son, that we knew each other intimately enough to joke and mock and hector one another at the kitchen table. But in truth, a scrupulous kind of courtesy had sprung up between Terry and me years ago. Time and distance have only nurtured it, and now we behave like cordial, respectful strangers- like the mother in the host family and the polite foreign exchange student.
But maybe we could foil it this time, break out of our pattern. If ever there were a time, certainly this would be it.
"How's school, Mom?" "Oh, it's wonderful, I love it. I've been taking a little time off just lately, but I -plan to start back in January." "Time off?" I hadn't wanted to get into this so soon. "The chemo blindsided me a little bit," I said, shrugging. "I had to miss some assignments. So I decided it was better to back off for a while than risk -bad grades." I couldn't tell him what a blow it had been when I'd realized I couldn't take my finals. School meant everything to me, and not just because it held the key to my working future. It represented normalcy, wellness. The routine of classes, the hard hours of studying, the process of going and coming, adhering to a schedule- all that had given my days shape and structure when cancer was working so hard to turn them into chaos.
"What kind of drugs have they got you on now?" Oh hell. But maybe it was better to get it all out of the way now and not have to talk about it again. My illness is like a noxious, uninvited guest, too unpleasant to ignore. But Terry always wanted to discuss strategies, protocols, percentages, and I had so many other things to say to him.
"I'm not taking anything at the moment." "What do you mean? Nothing at all?" "We're on a break." "But, Mom-" "It's all right, the doctor doesn't disapprove. I've been taking chemotherapy for the last eleven months, Terry. We thought my body could use a rest." "Yes, but He stopped protesting, suddenly diffident. Becoming my medical advisor at this late date probably struck him as out of line.
"I know it doesn't sit well with you. You're a scientist, why should it?" His specialty is enzyme molecules and substrates, but he understands the significance of a breast cancer metastasis to bone. "You'll be even sorrier to hear that I'm about ready to renounce the medical model altogether." "In favor of what, crystals?" He laughed-I laughed with him. It was better if he thought I was joking.
"I think I'll try to heal myself. You know, heal and cure aren't quite the same thing," I said,- and he smiled, thinking he was humoring me.
Kirby arrived in time for dinner, according to plan. One of my many worries was what Terry would think of him. Well-and what he would think of the fact that his very ill mother had a lover. I watched them all night like a spy. Kirby has an odd way of behaving in company as if he's alone. At first it's off-putting, then appealing. To most people. -But I fretted that Terry would find him aloof instead of self-contained, might take his reticent silences for coldness, even arrogance. I shouldn't have worried. Kirby worked his low-key spell slowly but surely, and by the end of the evening Terry even got his jokes, which are dryer than chalk dust, dryer than hot desert sand. - Sleeping arrangements were something else I'd stewed over at length. My couch is comfortable but short, and it doesn't fold out. Terry's over six feet tall.
How sensible to offer him Kirby's room upstairs, a whole apartment to himself~ while Kirby slept where he always does: with me. - - How sensible-but I couldn't manage it, it would have violated a principle that's as old-fashioned as it is deep-rooted, a code I won't defend and don't even particularly approve of~ yet I'm stuck with it. Call it a product of my upbringing. And don't think I'm blind to the charge of hypocrisy in this. In self-defense, I could say that that was part of my upbringing, too. In any event, Terry slept on the couch and Kirby slept upstairs in his own bed.
On Saturday Terry and I went for a ride in Kirby's car. He wanted to see the old neighborhood, the high school, his favorite hangouts. "The Hot Shoppe is gone?" He couldn't believe it. "Where's People's? Where's the Bank of Bethesda? When did everything get so swanky?" A long time ago, I could have told him. He'd been away for almost ten years, but his clearest memories were much older. "No wonder you moved out, Mom. You'd have to be stinking rich to live here now." He pointed out landmarks to me. "That's where you taught me to drive"-the parking lot of the Catholic -church on East-West Highway. "Dad tried it one time, One time only. Remember?" "Vividly. He came home looking like a zombie. I thought he was having a coronary." "How come you were so calm?" - "Drugs. Rudy used to give me Quaaludes." "Really?" "No." I laughed. "Anyway, you were a good driver." "Dad didn't think so. There's the Domsetts' house. Do they still live there?" "I don't know, I guess so." "I used to mow their lawn. I'd always try to collect from her, not him, because she tipped better. Remember when I used to run away from home? You'd pack Fig Newtons for me." "You wanted them in a bandanna tied to a stick- you'd seen that in a comic book." "You said it was okay to run away as long as I didn't cross any streets. You'd kiss me good-bye, and I'd walk around and around the block till I got tired, and then I'd come home:' He told me a new, horrifying story about getting drunk on prom night and drag racing with his friend Kevin on Old Georgetown -Road. "I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that," I said. He told me about Sharon Waxman, a girl in his high school home room who committed suicide last year. He asked me if I'd liked being a stay-at-home mom. - I looked at him curiously. He looked like a man, not a boy, maneuvering Kirby's old sedan through the Saturday traffic with care and competence. "Yes, I liked it," I said. "Usually. Did you think it was old-fashioned of me not to have a job?" "No," he said, sounding surprised. - "Anyway, you were always doing something. It's not like you were eating bonbons and watching the soaps. You made the home," he said seriously. "You were the home maker." I felt ridiculously flattered. - - "I guess you weren't -that fulfilled; though. Going back to school for your master's now.- I guess you wish you'd done that sooner." This was a new kind of conversation we were having. It happens to most of us eventually, the moment when our parents become real people, with motives and hopes as authentic as our own-but I couldn't help ruing the fact that it was the nature of my situation that had accelerated this adult revelation in Terry. "Yes, in some ways," I answered him truthfully. "It would've been nice to feel more independent. Less reliant on your father. As I'm sure he would agree." The unspoken subject of Gary hung between us. If Terry had asked me about the divorce then, I would -have told him anything he wanted to know, But it had to start with him. When it-didn't, the moment passed, and I wasn't sorry. - In the afternoon, Terry visited with his father, then played basketball with old friends from high school. They went to a bar afterward, and he came home late for dinner in high spirits.
"You haven't said a word about Susan," I mentioned over coffee in the living room.
"Nothing to talk about." He lifted his arms over his -head, stretching sore muscles. "We've broken up." "Oh, Terry, no." "It's okay, Mom. It was mutual." Mutual, maybe, but obviously it wasn't okay. I still knew all my son's diversionary tactics, the body stretches, the fake yawn, the casual-looking avoidance of my eyes. - - "What happened? If I may ask." "Nothing happened, it just wasn't working out. We had different expectations." "What were hers?" I asked.
"Oh, the usual. You know, marriage, children." "Aha. Do you still love her?" "I don't know, Mom, I guess." He looked surprised by my audacious question. How forthright I am these days. It saves a lot of time, and time doesn't tick past for me in the same rhythm it used to. "It's complicated," he said. "We're still friends." I waited, but that was all he wanted to say. And somewhere along the way in the last ten years, I've lost the right to pry. But I didn't care for that cynical note in his voice when he said, "Oh, the usual." Most parents feel guilty for every inch their children fall short of perfection, and I'm no exception. Terry's disinterest in the conventional family ("marriage, children") was a failing I feared he could lay directly at my door, mine and Gary's. The subject I'd ducked in the car this afternoon hovered again. But Terry yawned, lay down on the floor, and promptly fell asleep. - - I woke him at ten o'clock and helped him make his bed on the sofa. I kissed him good night in a muted panic, and lay awake while the clock marked off the hours of our dwindling time together. I can't bear to acknowledge the most likely result of my situation to the people I love. It's too hurtful; I don't have the courage or the will to- inflict such pain. But on- Terry's last day, with so much left unsaid between us, I couldn't avoid it any longer.
Kirby and I were to drive -him to the airport. I sat on the edge of the couch while Terry crammed dirty clothes into his canvas duffle. He knelt on the floor in his faded Jeans, the sleeves of his yellow sweater pushed up to the elbows. Unthinkingly, I reached out and brushed the hair back from his forehead. He grinned at me and went back to his work, but in that second, with his head cocked, eyes merry, he looked so much like himself as a baby and then a boy-the Terry I remember best-my heart twisted. - "I wish you had a brother or a sister, Terry. Sometimes," I added dryly, "I wish I did, too." "What do you mean? You've got Aunt Patty." "As I say." "Oh," he said, grinning. "Yeah, I guess you two aren't that close." "No, we're not, There's the age difference, of course, but that's not all. I wasn't close to my parents, either. Our house was so cold. Strict. Because of my father, mostly, but my mother was a very closed-up person, too. I never wanted that for my own family. One reason I married your father was because of his passion." Terry looked up, interested. "He's an emotional man. Especially when we were younger. Lots of fire and warmth." "I guess," he said uncertainly, thinking it over.
"But things didn't work out the way they were supposed to. I blamed everything on Gary when we separated, but it wasn't all his fault. Not by any means." I leaned toward him, intent on getting this right. "If we drove you away, Terry, it was the last thing I wanted. Nothing was ever your fault-do you know that? You were the best thing in my life, I'm sorry if! didn't show you how mitch I loved you. I did love you. I do. As much as I've ever loved anyone, as much as I can. It feels like a lot- it takes up my whole heart. But if it doesn't feel that way to you, I'm so sorry." I hadn't seen my son cry since he was twelve. He put his head in my lap to hide his face. His shoulders shook; I could feel his tears through the knees of my jeans. "Oh, it's all right," I told him, stroking his hair, stealing a kiss. I hoped he wasn't ashamed. "It's good to cry, I've found out. Definitely not something to be avoided at all costs. It shows you feel something, that's all." I brushed Terry's tears away and smiled at him. It was easier to talk now, as easy as talking to my little boy.
"I've never told you what broke up your father and me. You haven't really told me what separated you and Susan, The details don't matter, But, Terry, be sure you have good reasons. Not having perfect happiness-that might not be good enough. Do you love her? Life is so short. It looks endless when you're twenty-seven, I know, but..." I hated to preach, but I'd waited too long and now I had things to tell him.
"Never throw love away, never neglect it. Never assume you'll find better love somewhere else. Take it wherever you're lucky enough to find it, and always try to return it in kind." l pressed my lips to his forehead. "Don't take so much for granted," I whispered. "That's my final bit of wisdom, and it's the most important." Kirby, as I've said before, has wonderful timing. He chose that moment to give one knock at the front door and walk in, Terry didn't start guiltily or turn away in embarrassment; he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and blotted his face, blew his nose manfully.
"Ready?" Kirby asked with suitable blandness. "It's just about time to go." We stood up. Terry shrugged into his jacket, hefted his duffel onto his strong shoulder. "You know," I said, "I've decided not to go with you two after all. I think I'll just say good-bye here." Terry looked stricken, but he didn't argue. "I'll call you when I get home tonight," he promised, holding me tight. "And I'll come back, Mom, as soon as I can. Or you could come see me-how would that be? Maybe for Christmas." "That's an idea," I said, entering into the conspiracy gladly. "Take care of yourself in the meantime." "You, too. You take good care of her, Kirby." "I will ." "I love you," I whispered, kissing his damp cheek.
"I love you. I love you, Mom," He couldn't break the thread.
I swallowed hard and gave a little sniff that pulled my tears back inside. "Better hurry, you don't want to miss your plane." "I'll call you," he said again, following Kirby to the elevator. It came almost immediately. "And I'll write more often! I will, Mom." I smiled and blew kisses until the doors closed.