Andrew Hobbs

ENGL4100.001

John Tait

March 8, 2004

STILL

I held on. The Honda swerved and spun, the steering stiff in my grip, unresponsive to my efforts to stay on the road. Seconds passed interminable, the hands of time clinging to each moment. I stomped the breaks and everything lurched into clear focus. My heart pounded as I laid my head on the steering wheel, feeling the tug of the seatbelt across my chest. I breathed in the cold heavy air pushed from the vent. I turned off the ignition and listened to the tick of the engine fill the darkness around me. The headlights bleached a clear path in the night, lighting up the encroaching trees through the settling dust of the country road.

Cold and quiet, the car started on the second try. I looked at the visors overhead, the question in my mind the same. Bryan Adams blared from the radio; Summer of 69 and crying to myself, I wished it were so; wished that Five and Dimes still existed, that summers did last forever, and that I could be young and restless all over again. In the dark street I watched as a cat scurried across, its eyes afire.

"How are you, Johnny?" I looked at him, sunken into that old dilapidated easy chair, its faux leather cracked and split, revealing tufts of stringy cottony fibers.. He leaned forward, spitting a long pungent string of tobacco juice into a brass spittoon at his feet. He coughed, quietly first then louder. He waved towards the other chair, the one Jessica had purchased against his wishes, to sit and wait until the coughing passed. An uncomfortable second or so stretched as his face shaded to red, his coughing harder, his face a grimacing mask. Then he quit. "Have you been to a doctor?"

He ignored the question. "Something to drink?" He pulled himself forward and then up from the chair, his clothes draping him like drop cloth over old forgotten furniture. "I got soda, or if you want something stronger, I got that too."

"I'll have what you're having."

He nodded and disappeared into his dark little home, his slippers whispering as he went. Light glowed from the window as he enter the kitchen and as his shadow crossed in front of the window, the light from the refrigerator made his silhouette translucent. . I listened to his slippers slide across the old wooden floor, shuffling quieter and then louder again. He held two bottles of Coke; the green glass glistened with condensation.

"It’s not too cold. 'Frigerator's not workin' too well. I had someone out last week to look at it, but..." he shrugged his shoulders, the care insignificant.

He turned and put the head of one of the bottles to the windowsill and gave it a quick jerk. The metal lid flipped away and rattled the porch.

He offered it to me as he opened the other. "So?" He took a drink. "What's it you want?"

I smiled, direct and to the point.

"Come on out with it. I ain't getting any younger."

His mortality shined in his eyes and he nodded knowingly. "How's the boy doin?

He doin' okay in school?"

The psychologist had told us that if it did affect him in any way, it would probably show up in his schoolwork first. He had gone through a list of possible reactions, the steps of denial and grief, acting out or withdrawing, anger, depression; the list had been incessant and grappling with the ramifications of our loss, I doubted my own coping skills. After the initial shock, I thought it ended, that our pain, so great and would diminish. Not thought, hoped.

"You talk to him about it?"

I could only sit there, drawing my fingers along the words on the bottle, through the condensation, listening to the silence of the night around us.I shook my head and took a drink; happy I had something to do.

"You know, just ‘cause he’s a child, doesn't mean he can't talk about it. He's feeling what you're feeling. What we're all feeling. Mayhaps even more. Was his mother after all. This here’s something the two of you will have to talk about. The sooner the better." He pulled himself forward, gripping my shoulder for support, but I wondered if it was for me or for him. "You gone to see her yet?"

I could only look down at the bottle in my hands, studying it as if the answers to my loss could be glimpsed in that green glass. He clapped me on the shoulder and nodded. "You go on and see her. Talk to her. She'll straighten things out better'n I can."

I watched him as he smiled, his eyes aglow in the soft light off the kitchen window. I reached for his hand and gripped it. He bobbed his head, his eyes glistening. "Go on now.

It's past my bedtime. Gotta get my beauty sleep, ya know." He primped at his gray wispy hair and we laughed together because it was easier than the alternative.

The cemetery was quiet, except for a soft breeze conversing with leaves in the trees. Outside the cemetery, a few cars whispered along the freeway like sandpaper across soft wood and in the distance a train whistle blew further and further away in the night. The horizon hinted at dawn as I looked at my watch wondering how long I'd been standing in this one spot, doing nothing but staring up the hill. With a sigh I stepped forward, pulling my jacket closer around me, my hands deep in my pockets.

The grave still looked fresh, the mound of earth settling, and the grass greener in the pre-dawn dark. I knelt and look at the headstone.

"I went to see your father today. He won't go to the doctor. I guess I see where your stubbornness came from." I smiled and in my mind's eyes she smiled too, mischievously, with light in her eyes. I had fallen in love with that smile, with those eyes, so deep and searching and sitting here, I couldn't understand how I would live the rest of my days without her. I ached for Billy. "Billy is doing fine." My voice faltered. I felt like I was trying to put her at ease. "I think. I haven't talked to him yet." I shook my head and closed my eyes, the words an improbable effort. "I don't know what to say to him. It’d be easier if you came back to us. To me." It's funny how I hear her voice. "I know. You're not coming back." I looked down at my hands and laughed. "Who's going to shade my eyes when I drive into the sun? I guess I'll have to get those visors fixed." I laughed again and I could hear her laughing with me, visions of her struggling with the Lumina’s defective sun visor and then giving up and raising her hand to deflect the sunlight from my eyes. Later she would just reach into her purse and hand out a pair dark Ray-bans to each of us.

Every little thought was one more loss.

"I guess I should get going." I heard my voice, a whisper, something lost in the wind, not my own.

Pulling into the driveway, the false dawn lingered below the horizon still. The kitchen light shone through the window and spread a bright swatch across the yard. I grabbed the paper from out of the bushes on my way in.

Billy was sitting at the breakfast table his hands wrapped around a steaming cup. On the stove, steam rose from a small pot and the aroma of Swiss Miss hot cocoa permeated the room. On the counter, lay an unopened bag of Stay Puft marshmallows. On the table in front of him was an old wooden picture frame. I knew what the picture was; the three of us sitting in the log ride at Six Flags, me in the front, my hair dripping wet and plastered to my skull, Billy in the middle his head peering up over my shoulder, his arms around my waste and Jessica at the back her arms wrapped around Billy, but one hand straying to my shoulder. Our eyes were wild with excitement, our faces; masks of joy, our laughter in that moment, mine a bellow still ringing in my ears, Billy’s; eyes squinted closed and laughing quietly, and Jessica’s; with her brilliant smile, were captured for all time. It was less than a month ago.

Billy looked up at me. His blond hair hung in his face and he looked like he was 10 years old and not the sixteen year old that he was, with his whole life ahead of him, ten but peering past those blond locks from his grandfather’s eyes.

"I had a dream about her.” He rubbed his face hard, as if trying to displace the images from his mind, his fingers combing through his hair. “She was singing in the kitchen like she always did when she made breakfast. Trying to wake us up.” He smiled and my heart broke. “I came in to see her. But . . . but she wasn't here." His voice grew softer, his eyes shining and deep, the questions I couldn't answer so prevalent within them. He gripped the picture frame as if he wanted to throw it across the room. "It's like she still here. But I can't find her anymore." He rocked back and forth, his cup forgotten, his eyes red and wet.

I sat down next to him and pull him to me. "I know.” I whispered. “Sssshhhh. I know." I could only rock back and forth as I listened to him sob into my chest. All the words I wanted to say; how it was going to be all right, how she was better now and happy, anything that I wanted to say sounded hollow and cheap, and the words would have been empty.

I knew his dream and had had it myself, waking with a start, my heart hammering at the possibility that the cancer had been the dream and that she was downstairs; the kitchen smelling of waffles and maple syrup and melted butter and crispy fried bacon, that the coffee maker gurgled while she warmed hot chocolate on the stove for Billy, a bag of tiny white marshmallows on the counter at the ready.

The kitchen was a blur to me, two images, one, of that yesterday fixed in my mind and this morning’s, filled with our bleak loss. My struggle to support my son was not near as great as the struggle to stay and keep from running from the room, wishing I had someone to run to who could rock me back and forth and let me cry in their arms.

She was dying before we knew. It was that same day, the day we drove to Six Flags, sunglasses in place, the windows rolled down, the wind through our hair like in a million songs of summer. It would be the best day of our lives. So close to the day I saw her and knew I loved her, to the day we married, to the day Billy was born, all nine pounds of him. But this day, we each knew; an unconscious understanding that I could see in their eyes and feel in my own.

On our way back home, she told me. And maybe that was what made it such a special day, such a perfect day, because how could anything so dreadfully painful, make what came before it not shine so gloriously in my mind.

Billy was asleep in the backseat. He wore the giant foam hand that declared him to be number one. He won it in the ring toss; a game I was certain was fixed since it cost me close to ten dollars to win. Jessica sat next to me. She held my hand, her thumb absently caressing the length of my index finger. And she was looking at me. She was always beautiful to me, always making my heart stop when I saw her. And I hated to say she was most beautiful that night, but she was. She looked over her shoulder at Billy and then back at me and in that moment something inside of me knew. Then her smile faltered as she struggled with the words she had to say.

"I went to the doctor yesterday." Her eyes glistened which scared me and I felt the car slow as I reacted to her words. "It was only supposed to be a check-up. I've been tired." Her grip tightened in my hand and she shook her head almost imperceptibly. "Everything looked good." Her words were coming slower and softer. I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure Billy was still asleep and caught the headlights of a car far back in the distance. Loneliness overpowered me. "Dr Barnard called this morning before we left." She shook her head again. "I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t tell you." She was suddenly wracked with quiet sobs and she pulled her hand from mine and wrapped her arms about herself, as if holding the pain inside of her and away from me. I pulled the car over, hearing the gravel under the wheels grind against the asphalt. I drew her into my arms in an embrace, which ached with all the love I could foster. She felt fragile. The car that passed was just a blur of red lights. We sat there in the dark, alone, along that freeway, her whispering the details, me holding on for dear life, and my son, blessedly asleep, oblivious to the sudden end.

I looked over at the picture, the still life in it vivid. I could hear the screams of glee again as I splashed water back at them while we bobbed in the calm part of the ride.

It had taken three short weeks before the cancer took her from us. Three weeks filled with her determination and strength to make certain we would carry on when she was gone. Those three weeks had gone too fast, in a blur, out of my control, sending me spiraling on a path I could not see.

I felt her with me, as if my arms around Billy were overlapped with her arms about us both. She was gone, but she was with us still, ever present in our dreams and in those waking moments when the world was not the distraction of living, day to day without her, where every moment, every memory was a sudden stop, bringing the truth of our loss and pain into clear focus.

With a final strong hug, I grabbed Billy’s backpack from his feet. “Let’s get you to school.” He smiled and nodded. I hefted the backpack to my shoulders, feeling the books dig into my back and the shoulder strap slip from my shoulder.

The sun had risen bright. Every dewy surface had a silver patina. The Honda was afire with it. I put the backpack in the backseat, and we climbed into the car. I reached, automatically, for the glove compartment, grabbing the two pair of Ray Bans. I handed a pair to Billy. He slipped them on, quietly looking out the passenger window. I donned mine and looked ahead, down the street and into a sun, burning bright, but not so bright that I could not see what lay ahead.