Cassidy had placed her fair share of phone calls to my cell, as well, offering words of encouragement. Her concern was legit, but I also suspected she was making sure I hadn’t chickened out.
While I was forced to deal with this bullshit, she was on her way to Maine to get our son. I should’ve been there with her. I should’ve been in Stonington, grabbing my little man up to toss him into the air and making myself sick on Abby’s cookies instead of playing the Grim Reaper for two wayward souls. I wasn’t even sure there was a God, but if he existed, I had to think he wasn’t going to be very happy with those two.
An elevator ride and a couple of turns later, I was stepping through the threshold to Clarice Matthews’s room. There were no vases of flowers—withered or alive—with cards wishing a speedy recovery on the designated shelves, no friends or relatives pacing outside the door wringing their hands and anxiously awaiting word from the staff. There was nothing. Because my parents had nothing and nobody. There was only me.
Moments after my arrival, a tall, lanky man dressed in tan khakis and a blue button-up with a long white lab coat over it came into the room. The blue stitching on the pen pocket gave him a label, much like what a mother would stitch into her son’s underwear. Not that my own mother had ever done any such thing.
“My name is Dr. Steven Kirschner, Mrs. Matthews’s attending physician,” he said, tucking a clipboard under his arm to offer his hand. “And you are?”
I shook his hand. “Shaw Matthews. Her son.”
“Ah.” He undocked the clipboard, clasping the edge of the thing with both hands and holding it with his arms stretched down his center, rocking back and then forward on his heels. “We weren’t sure whether you’d come.”
“Neither was I,” I answered honestly. “Tell me what I need to know. And don’t bother with all the medical jargon I’m not going to understand.”
He inhaled and exhaled a long breath as if preparing to say a mouthful. “She suffered blunt force trauma to her chest, causing irreparable damage to her heart and collapsing both lungs. There’s also a lot of swelling on the brain. Given her age, medical history, and other injuries sustained during the accident, it’s a miracle she survived at all.”
Yep, a mouthful. “So she’s basically dead. Is that what you’re telling me?”
I couldn’t tell if Dr. Kirschner was disturbed or relieved that I wasn’t tiptoeing around the bottom line. “What I’m telling you is that the only thing keeping her alive is the machine. We need your permission before we can end her suffering.”
“She’s suffering?” That caused something of a pang inside me. Though there was no love lost between my parents and me, I wouldn’t wish suffering on any human being.
The doctor shifted on his feet again, no doubt struggling to find the right words to ease what he thought would be a loving son’s emotional distress. “Perhaps that was the wrong choice of words. She can’t exactly suffer if she isn’t feeling anything at all. There is no chance of recovery. Leaving her on the machine is doing nothing but prolonging the inevitable.”
“Is that the paperwork?” I asked with a nod toward his clipboard.
“Yes,” he said with a grim nod. “But we can wait until—”
I grabbed it out of his hand, took the pen clipped to his pocket, and signed the damn thing on the dotted line. Handing it back to him, I didn’t look him in the eye. I was sure he was confused as to why it had been so easy for me, but he didn’t know me any better than the woman whose last, artificial breath I’d just signed away.
The doctor tucked the clipboard back under his arm. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Matthews. I’ll give you some time to say your goodbyes.” And then he was gone, leaving me alone in a cold room with essentially the corpse of a woman who’d barely even acknowledged my existence.
Clarice Matthews. The woman who had birthed me. My mother. So why did I feel nothing at all as I looked down at her nearly lifeless body?
Her eyes were shut and there was a patch of gauze at her temple, no doubt covering the stitches from her head wound. Her normally gaunt cheeks were swollen and bruised, and her bleached-blond hair—dark mixed with gray at the roots—obviously hadn’t been dyed in a while. There were nicotine stains between the index and middle fingers of her left hand, and what part of her natural nail that showed through the pink chipped polish was a dingy yellow. She’d still been smoking. A mask was over her mouth with a tube attached to it that ran over her chest, off the bed, and connected to what I assumed was a respirator. If her lifeless appearance hadn’t proven the doctor’s fatal prognosis, the steady beep, beep, beep of the machines and the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as oxygen was pumped into her lungs did.
Taking a seat in the chair placed by her bedside, I rested my arms on the bed rails and just looked at her. Perhaps I was searching for the words I was supposed to say to her that would set me free or give me closure or whatever. Either way, I hadn’t a clue where to start. God, I was glad Abe would never have to go through this.
Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out my wallet and opened it to retrieve the photo of Abe and Cassidy from between the plastic sleeve. “I had a little boy. His name is Abraham. Abe,” I told her, tracing the outline of his chubby cheek. “Did you hear me? I said I’m a father. A real father, unlike Jerry.”
I paused, suddenly realizing what Cassidy had been trying to tell me all along, what Dr. Sparling had just pointed out in our last session. There was more to my likeness to Jerry than just looks. “Well, maybe I don’t spend as much time with Abe as I should, but I’m going to change that. Because he’s the most precious thing to me on this earth.”
I studied the picture, the tiny teeth that made his smile, the freckles that dotted his nose like his mother’s, the haphazard way that red cape hung from his shoulders.
“He’s into Superman and Batman and all those other superheroes. Most grandparents would know that about their grandchild, but you didn’t even know he existed. Care to guess who his favorite hero is?” Of course I didn’t get a response, didn’t expect one. “Me. He thinks I can do anything. You thought I could do nothing.”
I turned the picture toward Clarice’s unresponsive face. “See this woman here?” I asked, pointing to Cassidy’s image. “She’s his mother. Her name is Cassidy, and she’s the one who insisted I come here. I wasn’t going to, you know, but she always somehow manages to get me to do things I don’t want to do. She’s strong that way. Strong enough to keep my ass in line, that’s for sure. You’ve gotta respect a woman like that, right?”
Still no response. Not even an eye twitch.
“Yeah, well, you damn well better. She’s a far better mother to our son than you ever were to me. She’s amazing. And she loves me, though I don’t really deserve her. You know, she was the first person in my entire life to ever love me. You were supposed to be that person. Did you ever? When the doctor pulled me from your womb and laid me in your arms, did you love me then? Because I know when Abe was born…God, I thought my heart was going to explode because no way in hell was my chest big enough to contain the kind of love I felt when I first saw that kid. Still today, I think I should probably be wearing some med-alert bracelet or whatever, just in case. Did you look down at me the same way?”
No response.
“Did you ever feel anything at all for me?”
Still nothing but silence. This woman who’d given birth to me would never respond to my questions. But she didn’t need to because I already knew the answers. No, to all of the above.
I sat upright and returned the picture to my wallet before putting it back into my pocket. “You missed out,” I told her. “I’m a good man and a great father, despite your absence in my life. Hell, maybe even because of it. And I will never be anything like you and Jerry. Not for one second will I take for granted the gift I’ve been given in Cassidy and Abe. Not like you did. Not ever again.”
I stood, looking down at her weary face. “So goodbye, Mom. May God ha
ve more mercy on your soul than you had on your only child’s.”
I said nothing to the staff when I left, didn’t even spare them a glance, though I could feel their stares on my back. My feet still felt heavy as I traversed my way through the labyrinth of halls, and I wasn’t entirely sure that added heaviness wasn’t causing an exceeding of the weight limit for the elevator when I rode it down to the first floor in silence.
The limousine pulled into the pickup zone when I reached the doors. Good. The driver would definitely earn a tip for not making me have to wait. So I didn’t make him wait either. Waving off his offer to get the door for me, I jumped inside and slammed the thing shut. “Get me out of here,” I told him.
“Where to, sir?” he asked, pulling away from the curb.
Home would’ve been ideal. Back to my real family. But that couldn’t happen just yet, so I had some time to kill. “I want to go shopping,” I told the driver.
—
The phone call from the hospital came just a short while after I’d gotten back inside my room. Clarice had passed, peacefully. Roger that. So then I spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening making the arrangements for a quick double burial—because apparently, that was my responsibility, too—which would take place the next day. All the sooner for me to get the hell out of this shithole and back where I belonged.
I’d also hired a company to do something about all the crap my folks had hoarded in their humble abode because I was sure their slumlord would want to rent out the decrepit space as soon as possible. The moving company could keep it, auction it off, give it away—I didn’t care so long as I didn’t have to deal with it. There certainly weren’t any cherished memories among the shit.
Nightfall came, and after scarfing down some room service, I scoured away the scum of the day, texted Cassidy an update, and then crashed, hard-core, before I even got a response from her.
A knock on my door the next morning was what woke me. I sat up, bleary-eyed, and stumbled toward the damn thing to go off on whatever cleaning person had ignored the Do Not Disturb sign I’d left hanging on the knob. But when I opened it, I was startled into the bright-eyed-bushy-tailed zone.
“Su’pwise!” my little man yelled from his mommy’s hip with a huge smile and the excited clapping of splayed hands. A chubby ball of excitement launched into my arms to hug my neck tight.
Half asleep, I managed to catch it, hugging my son back to make up for all the ones I’d missed while he was away. “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?”
Abe giggled at my shocked expression, saying, “Your hair wooks funny, Daddy!”
I was sure it did, seeing as how I’d fallen asleep with it wet, though I normally wore it in a messy style anyway. Still, I smoothed it.
Cassidy popped up on her tiptoes and kissed me. “Sorry we woke you,” she said, breezing past me and into the room. Had I been more awake, I would’ve taken the carry-on she was lugging over her shoulder.
“No, it’s okay,” I told her, croaky voice and all, as I shut us in and shuffled across the floor with my little boy in tow. “What are you doing here?” Abe was doing his best to wiggle out of my arms, so I sat him on his feet.
Before he could go tearing off into the other room of the suite, his mother grabbed him by the back of his shirt. “Hey, where do you think you’re going, mister?”
“To pway,” he said, like that should’ve been obvious.
“Mmm-hmm. More like going to find something to get into. Here.” Sitting on the sofa, she reached into the bag and pulled out a couple of superheroes. “Take your dolls with you.”
I hated it when she called them dolls. Boys didn’t play with dolls; they played with action figures. Dolls, action figures, didn’t matter. Abe still snatched them up and took off running.
“Cass, what are you doing here?” I asked again. Cozying up next to her on the couch, I seriously contemplated putting my head in her lap to fall back to sleep.
She drew her head back. “What kind of question is that? Your parents just died. Where else would I be?”
“I told you that you didn’t have to come.”
“I know you did, but Abe and I took a vote, and we won, so here we are,” she said with a quick shrug and victorious smile.
I gave her a scornful look. “You should’ve spent more time with your family. I can handle this on my own.”
She turned my head to face her, running her elegant fingers through my messy locks. “Shaw, you are our family, and families stick together through the good times and the bad. What you endure, so shall we. Because of that, because we have each other, we’ll all be stronger as a unit and as individuals. You don’t have to be on your own anymore. And you won’t be…ever again.”
I fucking loved my woman.
“Now,” she said, shoving me toward the other end of the sofa and pushing up her sleeves. “What do you want me to do?”
Face planted against the sofa’s arm, I groaned and then mumbled, “Nothing. It’s all been handled.”
“All of it?”
I nodded, my nose scrunching against the couch. “All of it. They’ll be buried this afternoon, and then I’m off the hook.”
“Funeral service?” she asked.
“No need.”
“Graveside service?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
With a disgruntled huff, I sat up. “I’m positive, sweetness.”
“Okay. Well then, what are you going to wear to the cemetery?”
“Sweetness, no burial service,” I said, emphasizing each syllable since she clearly hadn’t heard me the first time.
She wasn’t amused. “And that’s fine, but we’re still going to the grave site to make sure they’ve been laid to rest properly, Shaw. So stop your whining and get dressed.”
Fine. I knew there was no use arguing with her. The woman was as persistent as a kid with a small bladder after guzzling a Super Gulp on a road trip. What I didn’t tell her was that I had to be there anyway to sign the paperwork for the cemetery.
—
Golden Pond Cemetery wasn’t anything special. In fact, there wasn’t even a pond. But it was cheap and clean, and the business manager was easy to deal with. And they were fast. I’d sent Cassidy and Abe to grab some lunch while I got the paperwork done, and by the time they’d gotten back, Jerry and Clarice were already in the ground.
I’d insisted upon Cassidy and Abe waiting at the car as I went over to the plots to lay the flowers my tenacious woman had picked up while they were out. Abe didn’t need to see the whole grave thing, and he was too young for me to explain who these people were in the first place. Perhaps I’d tell him when he got older and started asking questions. I didn’t know what I’d say about them, but I still had some time to figure that out.
Jerry and Clarice were buried next to each other, pinned to each other’s side in death as they had been in life. Placing the white lilies on their grave markers, I picked up a handful of dirt left over from the dig and tossed it on top of each mound. Of course it was wet, thanks to the burst of rain that had made a brief appearance, so now I was muddy. And that’s when it occurred to me: though there was soil beneath my fingernails, my hands were clean.
I’d given them a better home in death than they’d given me in life. They didn’t deserve it, but Cassidy was right: I wasn’t anything like them. My conscience was clear and I’d paid respect where respect hadn’t been earned. Suddenly, I felt weightless and everything became clearer, like a film of muck had been cleaned from my eyes. I supposed this was what closure felt like.
Relief. And a huge gasp of breath as the weight that had been pulling me under released its hold and I broke the surface of the water. The threat of drowning I’d been feeling despite the strides Cassidy and I had made was now gone.
There was nothing further left to say or do. So I turned my back on Jerry and Clarice Matthews and simply walked away.
Cassidy was sta
nding next to Abe, who was sitting on the hood of the car. I couldn’t take my eyes off them as I watched them play. Cassidy had this glow about her, something angelic that I supposed every mother should have. A glow that Clarice never did. And Abe was happy. Truly happy. He would never feel like a burden. He would never feel like he was on his own. And he would never doubt what it feels like to love and be loved.
A grin I couldn’t help tugged at the corner of my mouth when Cassidy tickled our son’s ribs and I heard him laugh from somewhere deep inside his belly. Closer and closer they got, faster than they should have. It was then that I felt the first clue that my breaths were coming quick and hard, my arms and legs pumping, the horizon before me jumping up and down with a jarring motion. I couldn’t take my eyes off my family to verify what I already knew: I was running. I’d walked away from my past to run toward my future.
I slowed by the time I reached the car, coming to a stop before them and smiling even though Cassidy looked somber, as you’d expect one to be for another who’d just left his parents’ grave site. She picked up our son and settled him on her hip. “Hey. Are you okay?”
I kissed Abe on the forehead with a loud smack. “Yep! I just had a thought,” I told her.
“Uh-oh,” she said, wary.
But that didn’t stop me from forging ahead, wagging a finger at her as I said, “I think it’s time you made an honest man out of me.”
She hiked Abe up farther on her hip with a confused chortle. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you getting the milk for free for long enough. It’s time you bought the cow.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Yeah? You need me to be clearer?” I leaned in, whispering into her ear so that Abe couldn’t hear me. “You…fucking my brains out without any sort of commitment. It’s gotta stop. If you like it, then you better put a ring on it.”