Page 60 of Ellie Hayes and the Himbos
“I’ve been very productive, thank you. Those are the ones I’d like to use out front,” I say, indicating the pile he’s flipping through, then tap the papers beside it. “And I’ve compiled some newspaper clippings and articles, but let me know if there’s anything I missed that you’d like up. Or”—I point to the nudes—“anything you’d rather we not include.”
“Thank you for that. What’s—” He plucks a stray photo from the table. It’s of a family of four standing on a beach, smiling as the sun sets behind them. The outfits speak of a mother with specific aspirations. “Was this in with the others?”
I nod, watching for his reaction. “It was stuck to the side of one of the bins.”
Ian lets out a little laugh. “The Hammonds do Hawaii,” he explains, but it’s obvious. Grant can’t be more than twelve in the photo, but he already has the bright smile I know so well, his hair sun-bleached, nose and cheeks the faint pink of almost-sunburnt. Ian also looks like himself; not as broad as he is now, but filling out that flowered shirt in a way no Trader Joe’s employee ever has.
However, when Helen found the photo, it was the seniormost Hammond who had us fanning ourselves. Talk aboutimpact. Their dad is like a window to future Ian, the laugh lines around his eyes a hint of Man Mountain to come. He’s not as brawny as his son, but they’re matched for height. I’ve never been drawn to facial hair, but the familiar smile peeking out from beneath the mustache makes a compelling case for broadening my horizons.
“Did this end up on a Christmas card?” I ask.
“It was our last one,” he says, the words carrying a note of surprise. “How’d you know?”
I can’t help smiling. “Did your mom pick your shirts?”
“Yeah?”
“They’re complimentary enough that nothing clashes, but aren’t so coordinated that you look like servers at a tiki bar. Classic vacation-mom move.”
“She did that every family trip.” His voice is distant with recall. “The last night, we’d go out to dinner somewhere kind of fancy. She’d tell us, ‘Wear something nice,’ and when we griped, she’d throw shirts at us and we’d put on whatever it was.”
I grin.Stealthy.Exactly how I’d go about it. It makes me feel a distant camaraderie with this woman I’ve never met. I return to the photo, and my smile fades. A woman I neverwillmeet. I search for signs of her sickness. She’s as tan as the rest of the family, with shoulder-length brown hair streaked with sunshine. She’s on the slimmer side, but I wouldn’t suspect that she was harboring a fatal illness. “You said it was your last Christmas card?”
“She was gone the following spring.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never lost anyone close. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Or how it still hurts.”
“Those first few months are a blur. We kept moving, literally. Always in action, finding things to do. That’s Dad’s default, ‘go, go, go,’ and structuring everything to the point that he can’t even stop to think. Or—” His eye twitches slightly; a subtle wince that screams for me to wrap myself around him. “Hurt.The day after we lost her, he was packing up her closet.”
His voice thins with pain, and it’s like that moment makingmeatballs with Grant all over again. I want to offer some kind of creature comfort, but I don’t know what would be appropriate. So I just listen.
“I hated him for it. But even then, I saw it for what it was. He needed a project. He handled all the funeral arrangements, wrote the obituary, called the people she’d wanted to eulogize her, showed us what book passages she wanted read—”
“Book passages?”
“Some quotes she liked. Poems. My reading compared loss to a break that doesn’t heal properly, and learning to dance with the limp.” He frowns, but the expression is more thoughtful than discontent. “I hadn’t thought about that in years. It’s… accurate.”
I look pointedly toward his right knee. There’s a faint red mark left from Tuesday’s abrasion, blurring the white, barely there scar from his old injury. “You’d know in more ways than most.”
“I… do.” He half smiles. “I hadn’t made that connection. My knee thing wasn’t until way later, but…” He shakes his head, gaze going inward. I wait, selfishly cheered that I’ve contributed.
“Goddamn Christmas cards,” he says. “She was really good about those. Always did the ‘year in review’ letter, too.Grant lost four teeth in two months, and Ian had a pregnancy scare with his college girlfriend. Not grandparents yet, but there’s always next year!”
Ian shakes his head as I choke on my laughter. “She heldnothingback. It was mortifying. At the time,” he adds. “Now they’re kind of nice to look at. She kept track of everything. Everythingimportant. Dad was the organized one, kept the day-to-day moving. Mom never got us anywhere on time, and dinner was always incredible and overengineered and way later than anyone would have preferred, but it’s like she couldn’t help herself from doingone extra thing, just to make it perfect. We never asked for it, but she lived for that stuff.”
I smile and look up at Ian, but his eyes are distant again, his jaw tight.
“The first time she got sick, it was a total upheaval. Grant was four, and between him and her doctor appointments, I had to do a lot on my own. And I wassucha dick about it.”
He pulls off his hat, raking his fingers through his hair. His stress behavior. I wonder if he knows he does it. “When she relapsed, she and Dad didn’t tell us until it was clear that she wouldn’t make it.” He tugs the cap back on.
“Did it progress quickly? Not that you got to know.”
“It was fast. She chose not to do chemo. It wouldn’t have given her much more time, and I get why she didn’t want to spend what little she had left feeling like shit. Not that it kept me from being mad at her for not fighting,” he grumbles. “I was hurt that she didn’t tell us. Grant and I, we had no idea how bad it was. He was still just a kid. But I…” Another micro-wince, and this time, I can’t help it. I place a hand on his, where it rests on the table.
He rubs his thumb along my pinky, absently. “I know she didn’t want me to lose any time worrying about something I couldn’t control, but if I’d known, I would have made it a priority to get more time with her. She shouldn’t have taken that choice from me, I guess.” His shoulders rise and fall as he shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
I nod. Her reason for keeping her sickness quiet resonates with me, but I can see Ian’s side of it, the unkindness of her denying him and Grant the chance to come to terms with it. Theywould have felt helpless in the face of it—anyone would—but they deserved to know.
