The Weight of Gravity (17 page)

Mel reached out and touched his arm.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make light of what you’re going through.  It must be rough ... even for a guy who’s always had the answers ...
especially
for a guy who’s always had the answers.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I had the answers.”

“Then I’m glad you’re not as smart as you’ve always thought you were.  You wouldn’t have journeyed back to Cottonwood if that were the case.  We wouldn’t have met.”

Max liked the feel of her warm hand on his skin.  “You’re good at pushing my buttons, you know?  I should be thanking you and Doris for caring as much as you do, but you two should have told me you were conspiring.”

“We weren’t conspiring against you, Max.  We wanted to help.  Doris was going to tell you.  We ran into each other at the bank the night after I took you home.  She thought I could help.”  Mel returned to her seat on the fallen trunk.  “I should have stayed out of it.”

“No, please.”  Max followed her.  “I’m flattered you care.”

“Wounded Animal Syndrome, remember?” she said, holding out her hand.  “Friends?”

“Friends.”

Large raindrops began to fall around them, breaking the mirrored surface of the water in the holding tank.  They came randomly at first, but quickly escalated into a heavy downfall.  They rushed to pack and climb into the cab of her truck.

On the drive back, Mel stopped in the construction field again and explained to him how Kristoffersen Contractors was building a low-density housing project, taking steps to protect the native vegetation and wildlife habitats.  The land
was purchased from the Winberg estate. 

"We have four other sites like this in the Tulie basin.  Property values ar
ound our communities will rise and that invariably leads to higher taxes, but that can't be helped.  The important thing is that we're not destroying the land and none of our projects are displacing the historical families who settled this valley.  We're doing it the right way, but it's hard to compete with companies that are buying the land cheap, scraping it clean and glutting every square foot with cheap construction.  Kristoffersen Contractors isn't the enemy, Max."

"Who is?"

"Ask your former girlfriend."

Chapter 21 - Erika

“Jay-Jay, how was school?” she asked, walking into the family room.

“Same stuff,” he said, not bothering to interrupt his computer game.
  He was sitting on the floor leaning against the couch.  His knees were pulled up and the waistline of his baggie shorts was nearly off his butt.  He pulled the hoodie up when he heard her voice.

             
“I got your coat out of the cleaners.”  Erika waited, but Jay seemed not to hear her.  “Ordered your yearbook pictures, too.”  Nothing. “Jay, did your father call?” She waited. “Jay?”

             
“No.  I don’t think so.”

             
“Did the phone ring in the middle of your game?”

             
“Maybe ... I don’t know ... yeah, I think so.”

             
“Jay, can we talk?”

             
“Sure, if it’s about my license.”

             
“We’ve discussed that.  Dad and I agree that you need to show us you’re responsible enough to have a license.”

             
“Good to hear you and Dad agree on something,” he whispered, still engrossed in the game.  He leaned back deeper into the hood.

             
Erika crossed the room and turned off the television.

             
“Fuck!  Why’d you do that?” he shouted throwing the hoodie back.

             
“Watch the language!”

             
“I didn’t do anything to you!”  He reached out to turn the set back on.

             
“
Leave it off!
”  Erika scared herself with the force of her command and startled Jay into sitting back on the floor pillows.  “I need a minute.  Can I get a minute of your undivided attention?”  Jay stared at her.  “Thanks.  I just want us to connect ... on something ... anything.  We haven’t talked to each other in months.  What’s that all about?  Good grief, Jay, I’m your mother.  If you’re having problems at school again ... or worse...” 

She didn’t want to go further.  There had been no signs of drugs since the emotional blowup in March.  To raise the subject now, she feared, might throw them back into the ugliest moments they’d had as a family. 
No, not going there, leave the drug problems out of it ... for now.
 

She began again.  “I think ... I think that you and I should be able to talk ... to help one another, you know.  I want to help you, if you need me.  God knows I could use your support sometimes.  You’re smart ... smarter than me and your father about a lot of things.  We learned that ... the hard way ... didn’t we?”  She forced a smile.

              “Minute’s up,” he said and turned on the television.

             
It ended in the way all their conversations -- if she could call them that -- ended these days.  She was certain the bond with her son was gone.  He’d become rebellious and arrogant, bordering on cruel, toward her.  She didn’t want to believe Jay could be as callous as his father.  He’d been a gentle, sensitive child – like her.  He’d loved classical music, sitting next to her on the piano bench for hours when she played.  He smiled a lot and painted beautiful pictures of flowers in her garden and animals he saw when they visited the zoo together.  She’d compliment his art, hang the pictures all over the house, and play his favorite songs.  Best of all, they talked – about everything.  They’d lay together, mother and son, in his tiny bed and talk about sailboats and days spent building sand castles on the beach.  And when Garner was out of town, Jay would sleep with her in the big bed.  He’d scrunch up tight against her back and she could feel his warm breath on her spine.  It was the most wonderful memory. 

Now, she stood at the end of the couch watching her beautiful child lose himself in a sick computer game that let him murder prostitutes and engage in casual sex with strangers.  What the hell kind of
game
is that, she wanted to know.  There was no classical music, no pretty pictures of gardens, and no castles in the sand.  There was, however, a lot of violence, and blood, and mayhem.

             
“Screw it!” She walked out of the room.

              “Erika, it’s Max, please don’t hang up.”

             
“What do you want, Max?”

             
“I’m hoping we can meet … spend a little time … just to talk.  I don’t like the way things ended the other day.” 

She hesitated.  Max had taken a risk calling her at home.  Garner certainly wouldn't approve. 
Say 'goodbye' and hang up. 

“I received some good advice from a friend today and I’m not so lost anymore … like I told you at the bookstore.  But I have to see you ... to reconnect on some level.  I’ve come a long way.”

             
Just hang up!
  His timing was perfect.  For the moment, she’d written off Garner, Darrell and Jay.  What would be the harm in talking to an old friend, someone who’d been a large part of her life once, a long time ago? 

“Okay, Max.  Meet me at the bookstore in twenty minutes.” 
Damn it.  You should have just hung up the phone.

              They sat at a high top table in the coffee shop.  She wore a leather coat over smart slacks and pumpkin-colored blouse.  She was suddenly self-conscious about her jewelry -- she wore a lot.  He was wearing the same wrinkled sport jacket.  Both ordered lattes.  She ordered decaf brevé, no foam.  Their respective coffees set in front of them, untouched, for several moments.

             
“Thank you,” he began, reaching for his cup.

             
“For what?”

             
“Meeting me.  I was thinking after our conversation the other day that you hated me.”

             
“What reason would I have to hate you, Max?”

             
“Maybe for walking out twenty-four years ago.”

             
“Good, god, Max.  That is so far in the past.” 
You don’t believe it!

             
“Yes, but I wouldn’t blame you if you still had hard feelings.”

             
“Well, I don’t.”
Yes, you do.
  She sipped her coffee. “I was just surprised ... to see you.  It was unexpected.” 
That’s bullshit!  Haven’t had you out of my mind for days, not knowing what I’d do or say when we saw each other.

             
“I understand.”

             
“You caught me at a bad time, maybe.  It hasn’t been easy, lately.”

             
“What hasn’t been easy?”

             
“Anything.  Garner is ... Garner.  I’ve also made some bad choices since last winter.  And then there’s Jay.”

             
“Your son?”

             
“Jay’s at an age when ... well, everything is hard for him right now.  But he’ll grow out of it, right?”  She adjusted her jacket, pulling it from under her so it wasn’t so tight on her shoulders.  “And you?  What about you, Max?” 
Good, good, change the focus.

             
“Like I told you, it’s been a difficult year for me, too.  Hell, it’s been a difficult
two
years.  My writing is stalled, that’s the worse part.  Can’t seem to sit still at the computer long enough to get anything done and my agent’s on my ass about it.

             
“Why did you come back to Cottonwood?” 
Please don’t say it was me
, she thought.

             
“As much as I hated this place twenty years ago, I couldn’t deny that my passion for writing began in Cottonwood.  You ... us, that fueled it.  I left here convinced I could write without you in my life, and it worked fine ... for a while ... for years.  Things moved quickly when my writing career took off.  I was so busy for so long, with new stories and movies and book-signing tours.  When I began to lose the desire to write ... when I began to feel like my life was tumbling into a pile of manure ... well, I thought about Cottonwood.  I thought about you.”

             
Shit, don’t tell me that, Max.  Please don’t tell me you miss me.  I waited an eternity for you to realize you made a mistake and come back to Cottonwood … back to me.  But I gave you up a long time ago ... a lifetime ago.  Don’t come back now and force me to face feelings that took me years to bury. 
“I thought about you too, Max.”

             
“You have?”

             
“I did for a while ... after you left, but not for quite some time, to be honest.  I gave up ... I stopped ... hoping.”  She looked away.  “It doesn’t matter now.”

             
“But it does,” he insisted.

             
“Why?  You can’t spend most of your life living one way and suddenly change gears and put your faith in something that doesn’t exist ... hasn’t existed for an eternity.  People don’t change overnight.”

             
She saw him squirm nervously and tear at the lip of his coffee cup. For only a moment she glimpsed the strange, disheveled boy in the back of the classroom who had so much passion that it isolated him from the rest of the world and eventually stole her virgin heart.

             
“We were very young then, life was less complicated,” she said.  “We leaned on each other.  That was something.  Hopes, dreams ... we shared a lot ... too much, maybe.  But that was a long ago, and nothing’s going to happen now to take us back to that time.  You left, I stayed.  You lived your life and I lived mine.  We can’t just make all that go away now.”

             
Max’s shoulders slumped and he buried his hands in his lap.  He turned to face the tall windows near the serving counter.  “You’re right.  I don’t know what I’m thinking ... coming back here ... insisting that we meet again.  I don’t know what I thought would happen.”

             
They watched patrons come and go, browsing the racks and ordering coffee.  Children with parents, lovers and friends, they saw it all.  Too soon for both of them, they’d finished their coffee.

             
“Reeki, would you like to go for a drive?”