When Horses Had Wings (22 page)

THIRTY

T
he telephone on my nightstand rang once. I strained to read the alarm clock’s fiery digits. Six-eighty, it looked like. No, that couldn’t be right. More like five-thirty. Only five and a half hours since I’d reassured Sean and tumbled into bed, three hours since I’d actually fallen asleep and dreamed about Kenny.

A partial second ring. I grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” I whispered, my voice croupy, heart thumping. On the other end, someone’s shallow breathing. Though she’d not yet spoken, I knew the caller was Neta Sue. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, sense it through the heaviness of the receiver. Between her gasps, I recognized her. In the few seconds we sat suspended in time, propelled toward tragic discourse, words lost their importance. The connection had been made, and already I understood.

She whimpered, making the kinds of sounds produced only by grievous loss, the high-pitched mournful tones caused by a mother torn from her a child, the desperate cry I knew all too well. “He’s gone. My boy’s gone forever. Please,” she said, suddenly sounding stronger, “tell Sean his daddy loved him very much. Will you?”

Despite his many shortcomings, Kenny had always loved Sean. I couldn’t deny that and never would. It was me he hadn’t cared for like he should have. I pressed my teeth into my bottom lip. “Yes, of course I will,” I said, confident I should be registering something more than shock. But I had no idea what I should feel.

Neta Sue had despised me for more than a decade. Did I owe her anything now? Forget my obligations, if ever I’d had any to her. At bare minimum, shouldn’t I be the least bit melancholy? My ex-husband, my son’s father, had died—vanished for good. Yet I felt strangely narcotic. Possibly, I considered, I’d become desensitized to pain.

Neta Sue sniffed. “I’ll call you later, once I’ve made the funeral arrangements.” She paused. “Do you want me to tell Sean?”

Neta Sue couldn’t quit vying for my role in Sean’s life. When it came to acting like Sean’s parent, I figured she’d been standing in for me long enough. “No, I’ll do it. But I’m going to wait until he wakes up on his own.” That was the least I could give him, a morning of uninterrupted sleep. Soon enough he’d receive the news that would catapult him into premature adulthood.

“Do whatever you think’s best,” Neta Sue said. “He’s
your
son.” She spoke with such detachment that, for a second, I almost forgot who she was.

Though I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there, searching for the right words to say to Sean when he woke up. Failing to find acceptable language, I mentally replayed my conversation with Neta Sue. If I analyzed her remarks long enough, maybe I could decode her message. “He’s your son,” I whispered. She’d placed the emphasis on “your.” It took a while for me to realize she hadn’t meant that to be sarcastic. She’d actually been raising a battle-worn flag of surrender, though she’d been so badly shell-shocked that she hadn’t identified her true opponent. It hadn’t been me waiting for her submission.

Neta Sue had been right about one thing; Sean was
my
child, mine and Kenny’s. Only now it looked like he would be fatherless. Where was the victory in such heartbreak? From this day forward, Sean would have no one to send a card to on Father’s Day, no dad to experience his birthday smiles or holiday joys, no one to share his love for licorice, racecars, and cop shows. How could a mother fill such voids? Who would have the tough talks with Sean, the ones about sexuality—not that Kenny was any expert in that department? Who would endure the emergency room visits, stitch removals, and bone relocations resulting from Sean’s favorite sport, football? And who would be there later, to compare body scars and wound stories? I’d always expected to be Sean’s mother, but I hadn’t counted on being his daddy, too. The prospect of that, the sheer impossibility of such, demanded my recognition.

~

Sean folded in on himself like an imploding skyscraper. First, he appeared stoic and upright, then virtually invisible. He clutched at an opaque plastic bag with both fists and fixed his eyes on his high-top sneakers. Kenny had purchased those shoes, I presumed. I knew I hadn’t. Neta Sue couldn’t have been responsible, because she detested anything that didn’t fasten with Velcro.

I sat on the mattress next to Sean, one arm looped firmly around his shoulders. If only I, like one of those storybook godmothers, could dispel his misery he might again let me inside his private world. Was there a password somewhere? And if so, had I earned the right to access?

Sean stared at the sack that contained his father’s belongings, the items Dr. Lassiter had so graciously given to him when Neta Sue wasn’t around. “These rightfully belong to you, son,” he’d said. And then he’d pressed the package’s drawstrings deep into Sean’s open palm.

I placed my right hand on Sean’s left. “Do you want to open the bag? Would you like to hold your daddy’s things?” I moved to stand, but he leaned his weary head on my nearest shoulder and exhaled.

“If you’ll stay here with me,” Sean moaned.

I gave him a hug.

Sean widened the opening gathers. Inserting first a forefinger and then an entire hand into the bag, he eased Kenny’s work shirt from its wrinkled confinement. The garment’s sleeves displayed Kenny’s trademark perspiration stains. Like most of Kenny’s clothing, the uniform smelled musty, a cross between mildew and potting soil. I glimpsed the chest insignia and remembered the last time I’d read the word “Ken” and wondered who he was. Though, when it came right down to it, without our labels, neither of us could have identified our true selves.

Sean traced the emblem with his fingers. He swallowed hard, allowing his tears to turn Kenny’s shirt polka dot. What could I do to make him feel better? As his mother, wasn’t I supposed to know?

Why couldn’t it have been me? Why hadn’t God taken Sean’s mother, the person he saw the least, instead of his father, the one he loved most? Clearly, between the two of us, I’d been the expendable one. Almost everyone agreed. ‘As useless as a sixth toe,’ as Neta Sue liked to say. Besides, I had evil thoughts and a freakish lack of conscience. I was the one in need of punishment. Hadn’t I once plotted to blow Kenny’s brains out? And now, potentially because I’d dwelled on such thoughts, his Maker had followed through on something similar.

I shuffled to Sean’s dresser and grabbed a few tissues. Before I could hand them to him, he buried his face in Kenny’s shirt and wept. From the hollow of his being rose a deep throaty cry that sounded more man-like than anything I’d have expected from a thirteen-year-old. His wails sliced through me.

“Oh, honey, I know. I know,” I said. “I know it hurts. I know it does.” I felt my own sorrow spiraling up from parts of me I didn’t know existed, causing me to choke. “Let it out. It’s okay. Let it all out.”

Mourning our separate losses together, we clung to each other.

Sean dropped the shirt into his lap and latched onto me. “Why, Mom? Why? Why did this have to happen?”

I’d been asking myself the same question. Of the few reasons that had come to mind, Sean wasn’t yet old enough to comprehend any of them.

I was struck by the absurdity of our lives, Kenny’s and mine, by the degree of wasted energies, money, and time we’d both spent fighting over...what? Our own basic needs? Our child? And to what end? This one. Ridiculous. Stupid, stupid losses.

Sean stiffened. Pulling away, he looked peculiarly angry. “They better not have taken his wallet!”

“Who?” I asked, stupefied.

He looked at me as though I should know. “Those
hospital
people.”

I lifted the package that had fallen to the floor. “Oh, hon...they wouldn’t take his billfold. It’s probably in here, right inside this bag, with his other things.” Rummaging through the contents, my hands emerged with the leather wallet. “Here it is. See?”

Sean rubbed his freckled face on his sweatshirt and squinted. He snatched the billfold from me and opened it. “I wonder how much money’s in it. I’ll bet they took his money,” he said, splitting the seam. He stared inside. “I knew it! They
did
.”

I peered into the gaping wallet and counted four George Washingtons—exactly what I would have expected. Nothing about that man had changed. “I doubt that seriously. The whole time I was married to your daddy, he never carried more than a few dollars on him at any time.”

“Hmm.” Sean ignored my comment and continued inspecting the billfold compartments, as though somewhere inside one of them he might find the clues to a critical mystery. But I knew the answers he sought wouldn’t be located that easily. The explanations he needed were too large for a wallet to hold.

Sean moved to the photo section, unsnapped the outer cover, and hollered, “Look!”

If I have to witness that photo of Neta Sue one more time, I’m going to toss my lunch. Just glance, smile, and try to say something nice.

I braced my better instincts against a concrete wall of contempt and directed my attention to Sean’s discovery.

“It’s the only one in here,” Sean said. “Probably the only one he had.”

I gulped. “Omigod.” Through filmy plastic layers I’d seen many years before, my own eyes laughed back at me. Somewhere between then and now, I realized, Kenny had replaced his mother’s photo with mine.

Was it possible that he’d actually loved me in his own warped way? Had I been the high point in Kenny’s seemingly otherwise meaningless life? All that time, I’d thought he’d hated me. Confronted with new evidence, I could no longer be sure. Why would a man carry around the likeness of an ex-wife he despised? Given Kenny’s distorted views, could he have been simply doing the best he knew how? And had his final thoughts included me even as I’d stood outside his hospital doorway paralyzed by fear?

My heart ached from all the false judgments, disappointing failures, and lingering hurts we’d caused each other. Our innocence had been stolen from us long before we’d realized its value. If we’d only lived our lives differently, maybe Kenny would still be here.

I pressed my thumbs against the translucent overlay and stared closely at the photo of Sean and me. The image had been snapped on the porch steps in front of our old duplex. I’d been seated on the stoop, hugging Sean by his hips. Sean’s tiny fingers were interlocked, his hands high in front of his forehead to shield out the sun. My face was turned toward Sean’s, my mouth wide with laughter. It had been then, as it was now, a painfully bright day.

~

You can’t predict much about February weather, or for that matter, a funeral. Someone’s going to get buried. Maybe it’ll rain. That’s about it. Anything else can happen.

The funeral director met us inside the foyer. “Good afternoon,” he said, first shaking hands with Sean and then me. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he uttered, as if he hadn’t repeated that line too many times for it to hold any meaning. His voice was measured and breathy, in a way that might put some people at ease.

I wasn’t one of them.

The funeral attendant wore the hairstyle of a televangelist and smelled of cheap aftershave and disinfectant. I didn’t want to touch him. And Sean didn’t either. We were both in a pretty bad mood, seeing as how, for good reasons, neither of us wanted to be there.

Earlier that morning, Sean and I had fought. He’d been generally mad about everything: the unexpected sunshine, the missing grave monument—something he didn’t understand takes time to produce—and the navy suit his dad had been dressed in, an outfit Kenny had never worn in his life, not even on his wedding day.

“Whose idea was it to put that
stu-pid
red-striped tie around his neck?” Sean asked. “My dad
hated
those things. He said only men who wanna be pulled around by the necks wear shi…crap like that.”

The boy’s emotions were in a tangled mess, and mine weren’t a great deal better. Besides watching my son go through the most difficult day of his life, I was heading into a hostile environment—one that included a dead body—alone. I say “alone” because Sean didn’t really count. He was an insider, so to speak, a member of the Murphy family, a clan from which I’d been divorced for more than seven years.

My kinfolk would be conspicuously absent at the services. Momma couldn’t get off work, she’d said. But I knew it was more like she couldn’t afford to miss a day’s pay, and that was all right. She probably couldn’t have handled seeing her grandson cry or her former son-in-law lying there inside that copper-handled casket. Besides, if Momma had come, Ricky would have shown up, too, possibly with greasy fingernails and stringy hair. And that would have given Neta Sue another chance to make sour remarks about my family. All things considered, Momma’s absence was for the best.

Daddy had offered to fly in from California, but I’d asked him to stay put. That had been before I’d known Momma wasn’t going to attend the funeral. I’d figured I would have enough on my hands without dealing with Momma and Daddy seeing each other for the first time since their divorce. There was a limit to how much stress a person can manage in a single day. That definitely would have exceeded mine. Despite the forecast, you might say I was flying a single-seated aircraft straight into a thunderhead. Turbulence was to be expected.