What I Loved

  Every time I visited, I would find more characters lying out on the desk and on the floor. One afternoon in March, I picked up a two-dimensional figure that had been fashioned from wire and covered with a thin muslin fabric, which looked more like a transparent skin than a dress. The girl doll was on her knees with her arms raised upward in a beseeching gesture. When I saw the C pinned to her chest, I thought of Saint Catherine. "That's one of O's girlfriends," Bill said. "She starves herself to death." Only a minute later, I noticed two small fabric dolls locked in an embrace. I picked up the double figure and saw that the two little boys—one black-headed and one brown—had been attached at their waists and that each child had a letter M sewn to his chest. The blatant reference to Matthew and Mark unsettled me for a moment. I examined the two painted faces for distinguishing features, but the children were identical.

  "You've put the boys in it?" I said.

  Bill looked up and smiled. "A version of them," he said. "They're O's little brothers."

  I carefully lowered them back to their resting place on the glass cube in front of me. "Have you seen Mark's baby brother?"

  Bill's eyes narrowed. "Is this free association or are you divining hidden meanings in my M's?"

  "I was just wondering."

  "No—I've only seen a snapshot of a red wrinkled newborn with a big mouth."

  Although O's Journey didn't mirror Bill's life in any of its details, I began to think of the personified letters and their movements from one cube to another as Bill's fabular autobiography—a translation of sorts from the language of the outside world into the hieroglyphs of inner life. Bill told me that by the end of the work O would disappear—not die, just vanish. In the penultimate cube, he would be only half visible—a specter of himself. In the final cube, O would be gone, but in his room the viewer would see a half-finished canvas. What Bill intended to put on that canvas, I didn't know, and I don't think he knew either.

  Sometime in December of that year, there was a real disappearance. It was a small one, but mysterious nevertheless. For his eleventh birthday I had given Matt a Swiss Army knife engraved with his initials. The knife had come with a short lecture on its responsible use, and Matt had agreed to every restriction. The most important of them was that he couldn't take it to school. Matt loved that knife. He attached it to a small chain and let it hang from his belt. "I like to have it handy," he said. "It's so useful." Its utility may have been secondary to its symbolism, however. He wore that knife the way some janitors parade their keys, as an emblem of male pride. When he wasn't checking to make sure that his weapon hadn't fallen off him, it was swinging from his belt like an extra appendage. Before he went to sleep he laid it reverently on his bedside table. And then one afternoon, he couldn't find it. He and Erica and Mark and Grace ransacked the closet and drawers and searched under the bed. By the time I returned from work, Matt was in tears and Grace had ripped off the bedsheets to see if the knife had fallen into them during the night. Was he certain that he had put it on the night table? Had he seen the knife that morning? Matt thought so, but the more he thought, the more confused he became. We searched for days, but the knife didn't turn up. I told him that if he still longed for the same knife when his twelfth birthday approached, I would buy him another one.

  That year, Matt and Mark decided they wanted to go to "sleep-away" summer camp together. In late January, Bill, Violet, Erica, and I perused a fat book of camp listings. By February we had narrowed our choices and were dissecting the literature sent by seven camps. All our hermeneutic talents were brought to bear on the innocent brochures and xeroxed flyers. What was actually meant by "noncompetitive philosophy"? Did it suggest a healthy lack of a winning-is-all mentality or was it an excuse for laxness? Bill studied the photographs for clues. If their style was too glossy and artificial, he was suspicious. I dismissed two camps because their literature was studded with grammatical errors, and Erica worried about the qualifications of the counselors. In the end, a camp called Green Hill in Pennsylvania won the competition. The boys liked the picture on the cover of its catalogue—twenty boys and girls with Green Hill T-shirts beaming out at the spectator from under a canopy of leafy trees. The camp had everything we had hoped for—baseball, basketball, swimming, sailing, canoeing, and an arts program that included painting, dance, music, and theater. The decision had been made. We sent off our checks.

  In April, not long before the Columbia semester ended, Bill, Mark, Matthew, and I drove to Shea Stadium on a Friday evening for a Mets game. The home team came from behind and rallied to win the game in the ninth inning. Matt scrutinized every pitch and every play. After mumbling the statistics for each player aloud, he offered his analysis of the man's prospects at the plate. As the game progressed, he agonized, suffered, and rejoiced, depending on the fate of the Mets at the moment, and because his emotions ran so high, I found myself both exhausted and relieved when it was all over.

  It was late when I walked into Matt's room that night with a glass of water to put on his night table. Erica had already left him. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, but he didn't kiss me back. He squinted at the ceiling for a couple of moments and then said, "You know, Dad, I'm always thinking about how many people there are in the world. I was thinking about it between innings at the game, and I got this really funny feeling, you know, how everybody is thinking thoughts at the same time, billions of thoughts."

  "Yes," I said. "A flood of thoughts that we can't hear."

  "Yeah. And then I got this weird idea about how all those different people see what they see just a little different from everybody else."

  "You mean that every person has a different way of seeing the world?"

  "No, Dad, I mean really and truly. I mean that because we were sitting where we were sitting tonight, we saw a game that was a little different from those guys with the beer next to us. It was the same game, but I could've noticed something those guys didn't. And then I thought, if I was sitting over there, I'd see something else. And not just the game. I mean they saw me and I saw them, but I didn't see myself and they didn't see themselves. Do you get what I mean?"

  "I know just what you mean. I've thought about it a lot, Matt. The place where I am is missing from my view. It's like that for everybody. We don't see ourselves in the picture, do we? It's a kind of hole."

  "And when I put that together with people thinking their zillions of thoughts—right now they're out there thinking and thinking—I get this floaty feeling." He paused. "On the way home in the car when we were all quiet, I thought about how everybody's thoughts keep changing. The thoughts that people were having during the game turned into new thoughts when we were in the car. That was then, but this is now, but then that now is gone, and there's a new now. Right now, I'm saying right now, but it's over before I've finished saying it."

  "In a way," I said to him, "that now you're talking about hardly exists. We feel it, but it's impossible to measure. The past is always eating up the present." I stroked his hair and paused. "I think I've always loved paintings for that reason. Somebody makes a canvas in time, but after it's made, a painting stays in the present. Does that make sense to you?"

  "Yes," he said. "Definitely. I like things to last for a long, long time." Matthew looked up at me. Then he took a breath. "I've made up my mind, Dad. I'm going to be an artist. When I was little I thought I would try for the Major Leagues. I'll always play ball, but that's not going to be my job. No, I'm going to have a studio right here in the neighborhood and an apartment close by, so I can visit you and Mom whenever I want." He closed his eyes. "Sometimes I think I'll make great big paintings, and other times I think I'll make pretty small ones. I don't know which yet."

  "You have time to decide," I said. Matt turned onto his stomach and gripped the covers. I leaned down and kissed his forehead.

  When I left Matthew's room that night, I stopped in the hallway and leaned against the wall for a couple of minutes. I was proud of my son. Like a rush of air in my lungs, th
e feeling grew, and then I wondered if my pride wasn't a form of reflected vanity. Matthew's thoughts echoed mine, and that night when I listened to him, I heard myself, and yet as I stood there I knew that I also admired a quality in Matthew that I didn't have. At eleven, he was bolder and more certain than I had ever been. When I told Erica about our talk, she said, "We're lucky. We're lucky to have him. He's the best boy on earth." And after that hyperbolic declaration, she rolled over and fell asleep.

  On June twenty-seventh, the six of us crowded into a rented minivan and drove to Pennsylvania. Bill and I carried two leaden duffel bags into a cabin Matt and Mark were going to share with seven other boys and greeted their counselors, Jim and Jason. The pair reminded me of an adolescent version of Laurel and Hardy—one thin, the other rotund— both grinning broadly. We briefly met the camp director, a hairy man with a pumping handshake and a hoarse voice. We strolled around the grounds and admired the mess hall, the lake, the tennis courts, and the theater. We lingered over our good-byes. Matt threw himself into my arms and hugged me. Only at night did I get such affectionate treatment anymore, but he had clearly made an exception for that farewell. I felt his ribs through his T-shirt as he pressed himself against me, and I looked down into his face. "I love you, Dad," he said in a low voice. I answered him as I always did. "And I love you, Matt. I love you." I watched him embrace Erica, and I noticed that he found it a little hard to withdraw from his mother. Erica removed his Mets cap and stroked his hair away from his forehead.

  "Matty," she said. "I'll embarrass you with a letter every day."

  "That's not embarrassing, Mom," he said. He held her tightly and pressed his cheek into her collarbone. Then he lifted his chin and smiled. "This is embarrassing."

  Erica and Violet prolonged our departure with futile reminders that Matt and Mark brush their teeth, wash themselves, and get enough sleep. When we reached the car, I turned around to look at the boys. They were standing on the wide mowed lawn beside the camp's main building. A large oak tree spread its branches over them, and behind them the afternoon sun shone on the lake, its light catching the ruffle of waves on the water's surface. Bill was driving the first leg of the trip home, and after I had taken my seat beside Violet in the back, I turned again to watch the two figures recede as the van moved down the long driveway toward the road. Matthew had raised his hand to wave at us. From that distance, he looked like a very small boy wearing clothes that were too big for him. I noticed how thin his legs were under his wide shorts and the narrow line of his neck above his billowing T-shirt. He was still holding his cap in his hand, and I saw a tuft of his hair blow up and away from his face in the wind.

  TWO

  EIGHT DAYS LATER MATT DIED. ON JULY FIFTH AT ABOUT THREE o'clock in the afternoon, he went canoeing on the Delaware River with three counselors and six other boys. His canoe hit a rock and capsized. Matt was hurled out, hit his head on another boulder, and was knocked unconscious. He drowned in the shallow water before anybody could get to him. For months, Erica and I went over the sequence of events, looking for the guilty party. At first we blamed Matt's counselor Jason, who had been in the stern, because it was all a matter of inches. Had Jason steered two or three inches to the right, there wouldn't have been an accident. An inch to the left, the collision would have occurred, but Matt wouldn't have hit the rock in the water. We also blamed a boy named Rusty. A few seconds before the crash, he had raised himself up and out of his seat in the middle of the canoe and wiggled his buttocks at Jason. In those seconds, the counselor lost sight of the shallow rapids in front of him. Inches and seconds. When Jim and a boy named Cyrus pulled Matthew out of the river, they didn't know that he was dead. Jim performed mouth-to-mouth, blowing air in and out of Matt's still body.

  They flagged down a car on the road, and the driver, a Mr. Hodenfield, sped across the border to the nearest hospital, in Callicoon, New York— Grover M. Hermann Community Hospital. Jim never stopped breathing into Matt. He pressed on his chest and blew air into him over and over, but at the hospital Matthew was pronounced dead. It is a strange word, "pronounced." He had died already, but in the emergency room, they spoke the words and it was over. The pronouncement made it real.

  Erica took the telephone call late that afternoon. I was standing only a few feet away from her in the kitchen. I saw her face change, watched her clutch the counter, and heard her gasp the word "No." It was a hot day, but we hadn't turned on the air conditioners. I was sweating. Looking at her, I began to sweat more. Erica scribbled words on a pad. Her hand shook. She gulped for air as she listened to the voice. I knew that the call was about Matthew. Erica had repeated the word "accident," then written down the name of the hospital. I was ready to leave. Adrenaline surged through my body. I ran for my wallet and the car keys. When I returned to the living room with the keys in my hand, Erica said, "Leo, that man on the telephone. That man said that Matthew is dead." I stopped breathing, shut my eyes, and said to myself what Erica had said aloud. I said no. Nausea welled up into my mouth. My knees buckled, and I grabbed the table to steady myself. I heard the keys jangle as my hand hit the wooden surface. Then I sat down. Erica had gripped the other side of the table. I looked at her white knuckles, then up at her contorted face. "We have to go to him," she said.

  I drove. The white and yellow lines on the black road in front of me held my complete attention. I concentrated on the lines and watched them disappear under the wheels. The sun glared through the windshield, and I squinted now and then through my sunglasses. Beside me sat a woman I hardly recognized—pale, motionless, and dumb. I know that Erica and I saw him in the hospital and that he looked thin. His legs were brown from the sun, but his face had changed color. His lips were blue and his cheeks gray. He was Matthew and he wasn't Matthew. Erica and I walked down hallways and spoke to the medical examiner and we made arrangements in the hushed atmosphere of deference that surrounds people who have just stepped into grief, but the fact was that the world didn't seem to be the world anymore, and when I think back on that week, on the funeral and the cemetery and the people who came, there is a shallowness to all of it, as though my vision had changed and everything I saw had been robbed of its thickness.

  I suppose that the loss of depth came from disbelief. Knowing the truth isn't enough. My whole being refuted Matt's death, and I was always expecting him to walk through the door. I heard him moving around in his room and coming up the stairs. Once I heard him say "Dad." The sound of his voice was as distinct as if he had been a foot away from me. Belief would come very slowly, and it would come sparingly, in moments that bored holes into the curious stage set that had replaced the world around me. Two days after the funeral, I was wandering around the apartment and heard noises from Matthew's room. When I looked through the door, I saw Erica lying in Matt's bed. She had curled up under his sheets and was rocking back and forth as she clutched his pillow and bit into it I walked over to her and sat down at the edge of the bed. She continued to rock. The pillow case was wet with ragged spots of saliva and tears. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she wrenched her torso toward the wall and began to scream. Her howls rose up from deep inside her throat—hoarse and guttural. "I want my baby! Get away! I want my baby!" I withdrew my hand. She punched the wall and beat the bed. She sobbed and bellowed out the words over and over. Her cries seemed to gouge my lungs, and I stopped breathing each time they came. As I sat there and listened to Erica, I felt afraid, not of her grief but of my own. I let her noises tear and scrape through me. Yes, I said to myself. This is true. These sounds are real. I looked at the floor and imagined myself lying on it. To stop, I thought, just to stop. I felt dry. That was the problem. I was dry as an old bone—and I envied Erica her flailing and her shouting. I couldn't find it in me, and I let her do it instead. She ended up with her head in my lap, and I looked down at her squashed face with its red nose and swollen eyes. I put four fingers on her cheek and let them run to her chin. "Matthew," I said to her. Then I said it again. "Matthew."

>   Erica looked up at me. Her lips were trembling. "Leo," she said. "How are we going to live?"

  The days were long. I must have had thoughts but I don't remember them. Mostly I sat. I didn't read or cry or rock or move. I sat in the chair where I often sit now, and I looked out the window. I watched the traffic and the pedestrians with their shopping bags. I studied the yellow cabs, the tourists dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and then after I had been sitting for hours, I would go into Matt's room and touch his things. I never picked up anything. I let my fingers move over his rock collection. I touched his T-shirts in his drawer. I laid my hands on his backpack, still stuffed with dirty clothes from camp. I felt his unmade bed. We didn't make the bed all summer, and we didn't move a single object in his room. By the time morning came, Erica had often made her way to Matthew's bed. Sometimes she remembered climbing into it in the middle of the night. Other times she didn't.