Love & Darts

everything, it was like a pattern. I’d say, “Maybe I should just go down and make him a real meal.” Only after my suggestion did the man I married ever say, “No. No. You get some sleep, dear.”

  No one knew. Jason didn’t look much different than his brother. But. Oh God. What I wouldn’t do to have those three weeks of my life back. Dan forgave me, let me come home, and that was it. We moved on with our lives. Did everything we could for both our sons.

  But Dan operated from this frightening sense of honor about the whole thing. So those nights when Jason came home drunk, when I was about to get up and go down to him, maybe even sit with him long enough to tell the whole story, my husband always did what he thought was the right thing. Dealt with it for me, you know? So he’d pat me and go downstairs. Exactly the same way every time. “No. No. You get some sleep, dear.” And then two taps like I might have been a Labrador.

  And that was it. Dan kicked off the covers, muttered, swore a bit to me, and went downstairs. He always started in on him the same way. “Damn it, Jason. Your mother is trying to sleep. What the hell do you think you're doing actin’ a fool in my house? Are you drunk?”

  Now even if me and my husband had a routine upstairs Jason had two different responses. He’d either laugh hysterically and go right on bumpin’ into things, or he’d fly into an uncontrollable rage. Personally, I liked the rage better. They got everything out in the open. Sure they fought like hell. I half-thought they’d like to kill each other some of those nights. But they got exhausted quick and usually stormed off to bed within the hour.

  If Jason laughed right in his father’s face, though, those nights took a lot longer. Instead of screaming fits I heard taunting, jeering, and lectures. I never went down, but I could just see my Dan standing in the middle of our kitchen with his hands on his hips and his spindly little-old-man legs running down into those disreputable slippers, seething mad at the insolence, professing his infinite knowledge to the drunk cook. All the while I could hear Jason disrespecting his father, darting all around in the cabinets and the pantry looking for different things to throw into his late-night snack. Once they went on that way for more than three hours.

  In the morning I’d clean up an incredible mess. There'd be the skillet with eggs, tomatoes, cheese, even chocolate chips cooked up and stuck to my Teflon.

  Sometimes, instead of saying anything to my husband in our bedroom, I’d try to get to my son first. I’d get up and make a motion to go down before Dan so I could talk to Jason alone, make a little peace, maybe sedate him some. But I never made it farther than the landing. I guess it was a father-son time. Really those nights were about the only time those two were ever in the same room together. Jason avoided his father. Dan just seemed oblivious to his older son a lot of the time. He gets along better with Daniel. I try not to notice. Dan tries not to have it be true.

  I wish I wouldn’t have been so apprehensive those nights. I could have marched down the stairs like Cleopatra and told them both to go straight to hell or at least suggest they see some kind of psychologist. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't know how to help. Guess it was the guilt, the shame. And just not believing that three weeks in a life matters much at all. If it would have been anyone else’s kid, I would have had all the answers. You can see it better. Know what might help. But I acted like an idiot with my own son. I flashed him sappy smiles or reached out to touch him as he jerked away. I don't know. I used to think he favored me. But I don’t know now. Maybe in some ways he didn't respect me as much as he did his father. That’s probably why I never told him. He would have hated me, judged me, judged himself.

  But he should have known his story. And there were times, dark times, lonely times, boring times in my life when just looking at my son gave me so much joy. Because he was a reminder of those three amazing weeks. He had the same shape head as his real father. And sometimes when I’d sit in my chair next to Dan, watching the news or a movie in the evening with the kids, I’d just look at the shape of Jason’s head and be transported to a place that made me smile. I couldn’t live without Dan. But that child was a true blessing to me his whole life.

  Still. I don’t know if he respected anything. I guess he liked that job delivering milk and ice cream. He knew every one of the restaurant, convenience store, and gas station owners and managers in a forty-mile radius. Liked his boss. Liked training the new guys. Ran two routes a day when someone was out sick or if one of the guys’ wives was having a baby.

  I fell into a habit of doing things for him that I remembered he liked when he was little. Stupid, I know. I baked cookies and left him little notes on the kitchen table like I used to. I hope it comforted him a bit. He was having such a rough time in those years. With cancer patients—my mother died of cancer—at least you can dope them up on painkillers. You know they’re suffering and there’s something you can do for them. But there is so little you can do for someone like my Jason. It was just as chronic. I remember thinking that I was glad he drank because maybe it would numb some of that pain in his little lover-shaped head. I never said that to Dan. It's absurd to even think drinking’s the answer. Most people would call me crazy. I think I was right, though.

  But then I was just holding him there in the street. I knew I should have told him everything, should have defended my son to Dan, to the world.

  I never could.

  I remember how I heard the screech and how the transformer popped right before the electricity went out. Dan was on a business trip. I ran through the garden in my robe. I remember it felt like I was wearing a bedsheet. The cotton was too crisp and wouldn't move fast enough.

  The car was smashed in on the passenger’s side and the pole he hit had fallen. Electric lines hung slack and one was broken. Its two limp sinister ends swung slowly. I couldn't find him at first. Had to be careful of those live wires. I looked in the car, but he wasn't there. Usually Victoria’s security light floods three acres. But Jason hit whatever pole controlled that. I knew she’d make a call so I just kept running, looking everywhere.

  There was a moon. It was that slack moon that always makes me uneasy, wishing for the beauty of phases that are more or less full. But thank God for the light of that slumped thing in the sky or I never would have found him.

  He was thrown across the road. Almost into a ditch on the other side. He was so blue-white in that light. It made him look dead the minute I saw him. It was odd. You imagine a body just lying nice and flat, but he was all crumpled up. His right arm stuck straight out, falling down the slope of the new spring grass. His left arm must have broken because it just sank where something should have been bone. His left foot was on the road, but his right foot was way up under his chest.

  His beautiful face got crushed half-slack just like that sorry moon. His head was twisted, his neck obviously broken, his mouth open with the top row of teeth sunk into the gravel and mud on the shoulder of the road. His tongue was hanging down in it. God. I sat there with his head in my lap for maybe fifteen minutes. Probably shorter than that, really. It was pitch black except for the moon and the stars.

  Those so-called sweet birdies chuck their young out of the nest and if they can't fly—oh well. Can those parents possibly know? Do they have an instinct about when their chick is ready to fly? We didn’t. Not really. We just figured by the time he was as old as he was he should be able to hack it.

  Oh I knew everything for a moment. Everything about teaching responsibility and self-respect and obligation and fear. Sitting in that gravel, trying to lift his whole weight onto my lap, unable, and then with his crushed skull in my hands, like I could fix it, maybe, but no, as soon as he wasn’t so vividly alive, I had answers. I gave myself pompous advice, came up with solutions about what to do with truth and lies. Dan goes to church a lot now I've noticed, but it doesn't help me much.

  TANDEM

  Going back in time and forward too, they drove across the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone and lost an hour. A carol recording played too
loudly into the landscape at a Christmas tree farm in 2006. It was almost dark. The scent of hot spiced cider and gingerbread cookies came down from the barn where two matronly Midwesterners sat on folding chairs selling wreaths and centerpieces.

  In the parking lot the Watsons’ dog Squally ran ahead into the rows of evergreen trees, rummaging with her snout, discovering everything she could about the farm’s firs and pines as the temperature continued to drop. A frozen crust of what hadn’t melted during the warm part of the week covered rutted rows. Dan stopped at the edge of the lane and leaned against a post. “Damn.” One boot sole was separating from the leather.

  Marie moved on with her head bent down into the wind, following Squally’s caprices. She had told him not to wear the boots. She stopped again and folded her arms across her chest. Her red turtleneck sweater and down vest weren’t quite warm enough. She should have worn another layer. “Come on, honey.” And she really wished she had a hat.

  “But the boots. What about Dad’s boots?” Catching up to her, whistling sharply for Squally to come back and stay closer, Dan fished through the pockets of his canvas coat and found an old black stocking hat. He handed