Justin sat down, but no one reached for pizza. Finally Al did, pulling a piece out of the pie and lifting it to his mouth. “First, we eat,” he said. “Then we talk.” No one moved. “Come on, boys.”
“I’m not that hungry,” Justin said. And once he said that, his younger brothers nearly sat on their hands.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d try to choke down a piece, just to be polite. Justin, take a piece of pizza so your brothers don’t feel so uncomfortable.”
Still, it took him a long moment. Then when he finally lifted a piece and took a bite, his brothers followed suit. And within ten minutes one of the pizzas was nearly gone. Al hid his smile. Not hungry? That would make sense after their mother was taken to the hospital. But it wasn’t the truth; they were growing boys.
He watched them with appreciation. Good-looking crowd, all of whom could use a decent haircut. Brown hair, brown eyes, straight teeth. Danny was getting a peachy, fuzzy stubble. Kevin wore glasses. Justin was thin, but then he was also tall. Maybe he’d recently shot up a few inches, growing into those big feet.
Danny sat back first, hands on his stomach. Kevin was next, but he pushed in one more piece first. There were only three pieces left when these boys without much appetite were full. “Get cleaned up while I talk to Justin,” Al said. “Then I’ll take you over to the hospital to see your mother, make sure she’s settled in all right.”
Danny and Kevin got up from the table but Justin said, “You have to go back to work.”
“Don’t worry about it. Eric’s fine. And we’re not going to rush this. Tell me something, Justin—where’s your dad?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “We don’t know. We don’t care.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“You thinking we can just call him up and he’s going to make this right? Listen, he left because he couldn’t stand sickness. It changed his life too much, he said.”
He couldn’t have said that, Al thought. “And when was that?”
“Over five years ago.”
“He left you here?”
Justin shook his head. “We moved here. My mother needed a flat house with handicap stuff. We’ve been here almost three years.”
“I thought you were from around here....”
“Elmore, way smaller than this, if you can wrap your brain around that. We were in a two-story. That wasn’t working.”
“Okay, back in Elmore, were there friends? Family—even distant family? Neighbors you’ve known awhile? Anyone we could reach out to now?”
“Look,” Justin said impatiently. “When people get sick, people are nice, all right? But they don’t want to have to be nice and help out forever. It gets old. My mom needs a lot. I mean a lot! Twenty-four-seven. And two teenage boys...they need stuff, too. They don’t need as much and I can take care of what they need, but no one’s gonna take ’em on. And they need me and I’m not gonna be around because no foster family takes a legal adult in, gives him free room and board. Are you getting this?”
“Settle down,” Al said. “Everyone gets it—your situation sucks. But your mom needs more help than three teenage boys can supply. And you boys need a life, too. So—you’re not that much trouble? Know what that tells me? This is your father’s responsibility. He doesn’t even have to do anything—just be the responsible party. Pay the rent, maybe. We just have to track him down....”
“He doesn’t want to be tracked down! I don’t want him around, but do you think my mom was gonna let that go? She had me look around, see if I could find him. I couldn’t, all right? What I need is to get to eighteen before my mom gives up. Then I can take over. We’ll be fine.”
Al held his tongue. It was on his mind to say That ship has sailed. If he understood Dr. Grant, no one in this family had any quality of life—not the poor woman who was hanging on when every day of her life from now on was going to be beyond difficult, not the three boys who had spent the last half-dozen years struggling to take care of her and themselves. “Maybe, if we don’t panic, a solution will come to mind,” he said. “For right now, let’s go see your mom, make sure she’s in good hands. I’ll drive you. Bring you home.”
“I can take us over....”“Let me do this, Justin. Concentrate on your family. I won’t interfere or crowd into the hospital room with you. I’ll just be the driver.”
“You’re supposed to go back to—”
“I’ll call Eric. He said I should take as much time as I want. He also said he’d be glad to help if he can. I know you hate to ask for help, but try to remember it was offered.”
* * *
Justin told Al about his mother’s disease and he was amazingly articulate. She might live a few more years, might not. She’d been diagnosed a long time ago, when Justin was still little. Sometimes she fell and couldn’t get herself up and he’d come home from school and find she’d been lying on the floor for hours. Or their dad would come home and find her in some trouble and it would get him all crazy because he couldn’t stay home from work. But Justin and his brothers had a routine now—Justin was there for her days and when his brothers came home, he went to work. A nurse came at least four days a week to help her with bathing and such and when the nurse was there, Justin could go out, just for a break or for errands.
Al waited in the hospital parking lot while the three boys went upstairs to check on their mother. He was curious about what was happening with her, but the boys needed some space right now. Eric wasn’t the only one who saw himself in Justin. So did Al. In fact, Al hadn’t been that much older than Justin when his life had come apart and everything had changed.
He’d grown up on the farm, had a girlfriend through high school—she was also a farm kid. Her name was Carol and that’s when he was called Mick, short for Michel. They got married at nineteen and lived on his family farm—that was their destiny. They were going to be a farm family and have a slew of kids. Carol could handle all the business and Al could manage the farm. He’d been doing it since he was a kid. Carol got pregnant and had a baby boy—Ethan. And when Ethan was only three months old, he didn’t wake up. Classic crib death—no explanation and no reason to expect it to happen again.
But Al and Carol were completely devastated. Ripped apart. Al felt like he didn’t take a deep breath for a year. His mother was shattered, his father was in so much pain he barely spoke. Carol’s family, which was larger, was in agony as well and they embraced Carol as best they could. She had a lot of support from them through the worst of it.
But Al checked out. He ran.
He was so far from being able to cope, he just made an excuse to get away from the scene of the worst tragedy of his young life. He took a job driving a big rig, a semi, and managed to be gone at least four days a week. He didn’t have any trouble explaining it was a good job, hard to get, and the money would come in handy. While he was gone, Carol had her family to prop her up and she could express her grief to them. Al just wanted to be alone, to lick his wounds, to take an emotional journey to get back to where he was functional. He’d never again be a young man with hope.
Carol asked him to stop, to come home and work the farm alongside his father, but he was helpless. When he looked into her pretty eyes he felt like he’d failed her in every possible way imaginable. First of all, she’d carried him all through high school, helping him with his school work, tests, everything. She was the only reason he had graduated. Al could barely read. It was another dozen years before he heard the word dyslexia and realized he must be dyslexic, something no one even talked about when he was ten or fifteen years old. Second, she was the only way he could have a farming business. He could manage math in his head pretty well and he had the instincts of a great farmer, but he was hell with reports, articles, printed information, forms. He had spent a lifetime memorizing. You only had to tell him something once; he couldn’t afford to forget anything because he couldn’t look it up. Third, all she ever wanted was a family and he’d given her one only to watch as that precious child had died. Then he watched her collapse as she buried their son. She had been so fragile and he wasn’t strong enough to hold her up. He felt so overwhelmed, he didn’t know what to do.
After a couple of years his agony settled into a dull ache that left him numb and uncommunicative but feeling as though he could breathe again. He said to Carol, “Good news. I’m quitting the trucking company and coming home to work the farm.”
And she said, “That’s great, Mick. But you’re too late to come home to me.”
She did the only thing she could do—she cut her losses. She said, “I’ll always love you but I can’t depend on you. When everything falls apart and goes to hell, I’ll be alone and you’ll be somewhere else. If you want to suffer alone, I can’t change that about you. But I can’t do that.”
He argued that for a while—she wasn’t alone. She had a big family—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings.
But her husband, the father of her child, had run out on her.
Carol had done the right thing, he eventually realized. She remarried, had a couple of kids who were healthy and strong and went to college. They were in touch regularly; Carol’s husband tolerated that and was even friendly because good old Mick was no threat. He’d learned to make a good life for himself, solitary though he was. He made sure he was easygoing, generous, a good friend when a friend was needed. But he didn’t get attached because damn, when that went south it hurt like hell. There’d been a woman or two along the way who would’ve liked to settle down, make a family, but he wasn’t up to it. He’d lost his nerve way back.
He wasn’t sure anyone realized he was handicapped, that he couldn’t really read much, if at all. He thought maybe the people who were closest to him over the years thought he just wasn’t too bright, which didn’t really upset him.
He spent a lot of time saying things like, “Can you read this? I forgot my glasses.” Or, “Why don’t you order the two best things on the menu and we’ll share.” And now that he was fifty-six it was easy: “Do you think that print could be any smaller?”
There was help out there. He knew that. The problem was that even knowing you have a condition that prevented you from reading, sometimes from learning, it didn’t keep you from feeling like an idiot.
Here he stood. In a hospital parking lot at dusk. Three young boys upstairs visiting a mother who was on borrowed time. Even if she didn’t pass away, she was pretty much done raising her sons—they were on their own. They had no one but each other.
Al had wanted sons. If things were different, he could help out here. He liked Eric’s station, liked the town, liked Ray Anne, liked the boys—but who would elect him as a foster parent? He couldn’t help with homework, couldn’t even read their book reports. Hell, he’d probably struggle with reading report cards!
There was a bench outside the hospital’s front door. He sat down and got out his cell phone. He called his ex-wife. She sounded happy to get a call from him. “Mick! How are you?”
“Fine. Good. How are you?”
“All is good,” she said. “Tony is better. His kidney function is improved and his doctor is happy. Bless that man, he hates not being able to work right now, but that’s just a man thing. I’m working and everyone in the family is healthy. Where are you?”
“Oregon,” he said. “Eric sold his business in Eugene and opened up a new one on the coast. It’s a small town, small station, very friendly. How are your kids?”