Chapter 45
DEB
I’M UP TO MY NECK in pecans. April took the kids out and Billy is tootling around in cargo shorts, his bare chest boasting a layer of gray fur, a spot on his abdomen shaved smooth where the laparoscope went in.
There’s a soft knock at the front door, and we frown at each other. It’s early. The coffee is still hot in the Breville. Billy goes to get a shirt, and I go to the door.
“Well, there’s a sight for sore eyes,” I say. “How’s my favorite kid this morning?”
Leo bends to hug me. Mothers learn to read hugs like we learn to read cries—need, anger, pain, or fear. This one has it all, and I usher Leo inside.
“Pleasant surprise.” Billy offers his son-in-law a mug of steaming coffee.
“Thanks.” He looks between us. “I was hoping to talk to Deb, if that’s okay?”
“Of course.” Billy dries a dish, and I put the eggs back in the fridge. The wedding pies will wait. Billy gives Leo a squeeze on the shoulder and says he has some work to get done in the garage. He reassures me: “No lifting, of course. Just cleaning my bike.”
I frown. Even before his surgery, he was cleaning his bike more than actually riding it. I make a mental note to look into getting a stationary bike after his abdomen heals.
As Billy heads to the garage, I rinse my hands and smile up at Leo. “Would you like a little bite to eat?”
Leo smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sure, thanks.”
I whip up omelets, fruit salad, and toast. I look him over and decide to add bacon.
It will do him good. By the time it’s all served, Leo has told me about Rico and Ana.
This is a wonder of cooking: people talk because you’re not staring at them.
Chopping and measuring take just enough focus that the kitchen becomes a safe place to spill the beans.
I set two plates on the table and triple-check the stove, a Pavlovian habit since the fire. Then I sit down and spread a napkin across my lap, trying to process the information that the selfless, silver-toothed manager we met in Waco was Leo’s dad. And that Leo was meant to have a sister.
He spears a slice of banana with his fork. “I know you lost your parents too…”
We both look down at our honey-slathered fruit.
I sigh. “Yes.” My grief has been private, and I rarely talk about my parents. When the kids were young, Billy’s parents were “the grandparents.” He and the kids thought so rarely of my parents that they didn’t bring them up. Conversely, I thought so frequently of them that I didn’t bring them up.
I think now of Ana having a son to raise and a stillbirth by age twenty. I think back to hiding in April’s room when she was a baby, feeling like I couldn’t go on.
Ana. I didn’t even know her name. I, of all people, should have thought to ask.
Leo mindlessly breaks his bacon into bits. “I should have done something.”
It takes me a minute, and then I frown and lower my fork. “Leonardo.” I have never called him this. I’m summoning Ana, not to replace her but to imagine what she might say if she were here with him now.
I lay my hand on his. “You were a child.”
He stares at his bacon crumbles.
“Look at me.” I say it slow and clear: “None of this was your fault.”
He tucks his chin into his shoulder, breathing hard, and my own words boomerang back to me. I can see my gaunt father and my desperate attempts to heal him. None of this was your fault. How obvious the truth becomes when it’s applied to someone else.
I butter a piece of toast and add, “From where I sit, it doesn’t look like your dad’s fault either.
” I think about Leo’s parents and mine, and I say, “You can respond to death with death, or with life. We know how our parents responded, bless them.” I pass the butter dish and square my jaw firmly.
“But not us,” I instruct. “We have to welcome grief without letting it pull us under.” I pause.
“And you have to remember that you are not alone.”
Pained, he says, “It’s just so unfair that she was.”
His broad chest rises and falls, and I imagine him as a boy wanting to take care of her. I will not diminish his loss by searching a black cloud for a silver lining. So I only say, “You’re right. It’s so unfair.”
We sit at this table, two blips on the timeline. Together, we lay our losses bare and call grief what it is. Together, we finish our meal.
As we are loading the dishwasher, Billy comes back in and slips his shoes off. “How are you two?”
I pass Leo a pan to dry, smiling small at him. “We’re here.” A triumph.
When Leo eventually goes to the front door to leave, Billy looks around, patting his pockets. “Wait, where are those thingamajigs?” He walks away, leaving Leo and me to shrug at each other. Leo thanks me for talking, and I thank him back. There is something sacred on both sides of shared pain.
Billy returns with sticky notes, pulls one from the pad, and hands it to Leo. You’re always welcome here. The word always is underlined. Billy winks. “So you don’t forget.”
Strangely, Billy has seemed more perceptive lately, as though so much else is falling away that he’s left with the real-time, observable feelings of the person in front of him, even if he isn’t always certain who that person is.
He knows Leo though, and the sticky note is perfect.
When April told the family about the divorce, she told us mutual decision; she told us amicable; she told us co-parents; and she told us friends.
But the look on Leo’s face broke my heart that night, because I knew he thought the same thing would happen with us that happened with his parents and aunt and uncle: a trickle of a departure that is never dignified with an actual goodbye.
We can’t replace his parents, but we are here for him and will continue to be. And we watch him tuck Billy’s note into the pocket of his corduroys, giving it a tender little pat.