Page 50 of The Perfect Son
Oh, Tessie. I thought you were getting better.
So did I. So did Jamie. I saw the disappointment on his face this morning when he walked into our bedroom already dressed for school and found me still in bed. It was awful, Mark. You should have seen the look in his eyes as he turned and left without a word. He despises me, my own son.
He loves you, Tessie. We both do.
Why would you? What is there to love?
I feel like I’m being pulled to the ground, weighed down by a hundred dumbbells. It’s an effort to breathe in and out, to blink, to think. I don’t even have the energy to cry.
What happened, baby?
Nothing. Nothing happened. The weekend ended. Monday came back around. Our eighth Monday without you. Day after day and it’s the same hurt right in the center of my chest, the same fight to carry on. No end. No way out.
But not today. I can’t fight today.
“Imagine you’re the beach,” Shelley said when I called her this morning, after forcing myself out of bed to take Jamie to school. “And your grief is the sea. Sometimes the tide will be high and it’ll be all you see and all you feel. Other times the tide will be out and your grief, that pain, will feel further away. Not gone, but distant.”
It was a good analogy but I phoned her for actual help, not a supportive chat. Plus I promised Jamie I would invite Shelley for tea.
“Can you come over later?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, and I could feel her smile all the way down the phone. “I have a few clients I’m meeting this afternoon. I’ll swing by about five thirty. How about I bring a takeout? Anything you want.”
“That would be great actually. Thank you.”
We agreed on KFC. Jamie’s favorite.
“KFC it is.” Shelley laughed before hanging up.
—
The KFC family bucket had lost its heat by the time Shelley arrived. The chips were halfway between cardboard and soggy; the southern-fried chicken slimy with grease. Even Jamie didn’t show his usual enthusiasm for his favorite fast food. He barely said more than a few words during dinner, and went to bed without any fuss.
Later when Jamie was asleep, Shelley and I slouched on the sofa and watchedBridget Jones’s Babywith the rest of a mint Viennetta I dug out from the freezer balanced on a tray between us.
“Finally, someone who’ll watch this film with me,” Shelley says with a grin, licking green ice cream from the back of her spoon. “Tim won’t go near anything the least bit chick flick.”
I’m reminded then that Shelley is married. She has a job; she has friends too, I bet. Yet she’s spending the evening with me. I guess I haven’t thought about Shelley at all except for her visits to me. “How long have you been married?” I ask.
“Fifteen years. We had Dylan and were just at that point of talking about having another baby when he got sick. We decided to wait until we got the all clear from cancer before trying, but it never happened.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Tim wanted to have another baby a few years ago, but I couldn’t do it. The oncologist thought that the type of cancer Dylan had was linked to his genetics, and I couldn’t go through it all again. Here—” Shelley reaches behind her neck and unclips her necklace. She fiddles with the clasp of the locket for a moment before it opens and she holds it out to me.
The photo inside is small and wrinkled at the edges from being pushed inside the case, but the image of Dylan is crystal clear. He is young in the photo—three, I guess. His blond hair is wet and sticking up as if he’s just out of the bath or a swimming pool. He has Shelley’s smile, I think, staring at the two rows of baby teeth. There’s a gauntness to his face, hollow cheeks that should be chubby, but it’s his eyes I find myself staring at. They are light blue, like the early morning sky in summer, like Jamie’s. The thought lurches in my head. Dylan looks just like Jamie did at that age.
“This was just before the chemo when he lost all of his hair,” Shelley whispers. “He was perfect in every way.”
I nod but can’t find the words.
“He’d be eight this summer.”
Just like Jamie, I think again.
“It’s funny, but I miss being a mother almost as much as I miss Dylan. Having someone to care for and love unconditionally. I’m not sure I’d call it a biological clock, but there is definitely something inside of me urging me to be a mother again. I want to adopt,” Shelley continues. “It’s not like there aren’t kids out there in need of a decent home, you know?”
Shelley sighs and I can feel the hurt radiating like heat from her body. “Tim thought it would feel like we were trying to replace Dylan. He didn’t think he could love a child that wasn’t his. So we did neither. I have my job and my work with the charity, and Tim has his company and his golf club membership. We muddle along. Sometimes I wonder why we’re still together, whether it would be easier to just run away and start again. I worry we’re holding each other back from moving on with our lives. Sometimes I can spend entire days fantasizing about what Dylan would look like now, what kind of boy he would be, what fun we’d have had together. Other times I fantasize about adopting a child and moving far, far away.”
