Finding Jake (26 page)

Everything I needed to find him on one piece of paper. Unfortunately it came too late. Much as I did.

DAY SIX

The line of people outside the church wraps around the block. Rachel, Laney, and I sit in the front pew. Occasionally, someone close to us kneels and offers their condolences. Laney sobs until Rachel finally takes her into a small room in the vestry that the priest offered to us in case anyone needed to get away. I sit there, my head bowed, listening to the soft music rolling out of the organ up on the balcony.

The viewing lasts for hours. Laney does not come back out. Time has lost its meaning, for as soon as one ceremony ends, the next seems to start. We are at the funeral now. People are talking about Jake. I am sure people feel like I should be up there, speaking, but I can’t. The words are inside me but I do not want to share them. I am afraid to open that door because a raging storm lurks just behind.

I am okay, stable even, until after the funeral. People come back to our house. I don’t want them to, but they do. I know Rachel feels the same because she sends Laney to be with her folks at their condominium. I try to talk to some of my closer relatives and friends,
but what is there to say? They speak about Jake, about his bravery. I take that in. It does help, I guess. But then I see her.

I am sitting down in the kitchen, my legs feeling weak, when the front door opens. A woman takes a tentative step into the house. I recognize her immediately and bound to my feet.

“What are you doing here?” I say loud enough for over a dozen people to hear.

Mary Moore freezes. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

Rage fills me. This woman who stood in my yard, condemning my son, even wishing my daughter dead, dares to come into my house now that he’s a
hero
.

“Get out,” I say.

A room filled with more people than it can comfortably hold grows more still than it ever has been before. I feel the eyes on me, boring into me, but I can only look at Mary Moore. My jaw clenches and my hand trembles. I want to run, to lash out, and to collapse all at once.

Fingernails bite into my forearm. A harsh tug twirls me around to face Rachel. Her face is red, her eyes are afire.

“What is wrong with you?!”

“She . . .”

“NO!” Rachel breaks down crying. “No. You can’t do this!”

I look around and see the eyes now. They are full of shock.

“What?” I ask Rachel, maybe everyone.

“Go upstairs,” my wife whispers. “Get hold of yourself.”

I sit on the edge of our bed. It takes only a moment for me to realize what I have just done. My emotions thunder and crash. It would be a lie to say I felt totally wrong. So many people vilified Jake. Now, they all come to our house and say how great he was. Where were they yesterday, the day before?

Another part of me realizes I just called out the mother of one of the victims. What kind of monster would do something like that? It is beyond contempt. And I wish I could turn back the clock and take it all back.

Eventually, sooner than it should have, the noise downstairs lessens as people trickle out the door. Rachel opens the door to our bedroom and stands at the threshold.

“I’m taking Laney and going to my parents’ house for a while.”

This is not a request or an idea, it is a fact. She is telling me she is taking my daughter away.

“You are not,” I say.

“I am. And you need to get some help.”

“What?”

“You need to talk to someone, someone who can convince you that none of this is your fault.”

I feel my body trembling. “I never said that.”

She laughs, a bitter sound that I’ve never heard before. “Really, Simon. I remember what you were like about the stupid little stuff. You used to tell me you ruined the kids because you wouldn’t go to a playdate, for Christ’s sake. I know you, Simon. I know that you think you caused all this. Even worse, I know that you feel like you questioned our son, that you maybe, for a second, thought he did this. And I . . . I know you . . . think that if you found him . . .”

“Shut up,” I snap.

She does not move. She does not back down. “I know you, Simon.” The tears return. “I just don’t have the strength to help you right now.”

Rachel turns and walks away from me. I am alone in our house, a bitter irony considering how often I wished I could be over the years.

DAY TWENTY-SOMETHING

One day, I’ve lost count at this point, I rise from the couch. My muscles are cramped, rigid, and my mind lacks an anchor. It floats on the undercurrent like a ghost ship through the ocean mist. I find myself getting dressed, lacing up my running shoes, and stepping through my front door.

No crowd surrounds my house. I might be alone. Yet I break into a sprint, my eyes locked on each step my shoes make, seemingly of their own accord. They retrace steps from weeks before as if they align with a glowing path toward some end of which I am still unaware.

Halfway to the Martin-Klein house, my pace slows, for I realize that is my destination. I still cannot look around. I cannot understand why I am going, but now I know where. For a second, I consider turning back, but I do not. Instead, I press forward, speeding up. My breath, ragged and made painful by the cold air, seems the only thing fighting for my survival.

I do not slow as I leave the pavement and cross through the
Martin-Kleins’ lawn. From a distance, I see a break in the dead undergrowth. With a leap, I am once again in the forest.

I do not go all the way. Instead, I stand near the pond, staring at the shadowy outline of the fort. A chilled breeze cuts through the skeletal trees, pressing its cold touch against my cheeks. My breath fogs, rising up before my line of sight, giving movement to the otherwise desolate scene.

First, one step. Then a second. Tentatively, I approach the scene of Jake’s death. When I reach the spot, time ceases to exist. The sun sets behind a line of sentinel pines and long shadows creep across the forest floor.

How do I leave? How do I get up and walk away? Jake will be alone, even though I know he is no longer here. I cannot let that happen. Instead I stay by his side. I sit at the ending. And all I can think about is the beginning.

The alarm sounded at 5:50
AM
on February 12, 1997. I still remember the song that played, TLC’s
Waterfalls
.

I reached across Rachel, feeling the swell of her belly under my elbow as I gently press the snooze button. A slight pressure moved across my skin, or maybe I imagined it. The night before, I watched as his little foot pushed out and across her tummy (at least it looked like a foot). I watched for some time after the movement stopped, hoping to see it again. Rachel said he quieted down but I waited a little while longer, just to be sure. Then I turned our light out and went to sleep, the last time I would do that as just a man. The next day, I would be a father.

“Sweetie, it’s time,” I whispered.

Rachel stirred, making that noise she’d made since I met her, a
soft purrlike grumble, as if to say,
I love you but let me sleep
. I smiled, hugging her (and my son).

“We can’t be late,” I said.

I’m not sure why I thought we couldn’t be late. Five hours later found us sitting in a maternity room, anxious and bored at the same time. The induction began on time, right about eight
AM
and soon after the doctor broke my wife’s water. I will not go into details on that one. Suffice it to say I will remember but will probably not bring it up at any parties.

As we played another sluggish hand of cards, my mind returned to a familiar thought: one I had on my wedding day; while I was sitting at my college graduation; during my first Holy Communion; and many other moments in my life. I expected some kind of grandiose display of amazingness in these pinnacle slices of time. Instead, during each one, I marveled at the utter triviality of the scenario.

“The baby’s heart rate is dropping,” the doctor said. “We have to consider a C-section.”

Rachel’s eyes opened wide. She had endured over twelve hours of induced labor. Before that fateful day, she confided in me that a C-section scared her to death. She had wanted more than anything to give birth naturally (not no-drug natural, just the old-fashioned way). Amazingly, she had never been under the knife in her entire life.

The machine buzzed and beeped at the same time, startling me. My son’s beats per minute dropped to sixty-five.

“Oh God,” I said.

No one heard me, or at least no one reacted. The doctor spoke softly to Rachel but I could not listen. Instead, I just stared at the monitor, willing that number to go up. I hate to admit this, because it will sound odd, but I did this other thing, too. I probably will not explain it correctly, but I reached inside. In my mind, it was like
pulling out a piece of my soul that I thrust free and offered to the tiny life inside my wife’s body. I tried to give my unborn son a slice of my own life. I felt the tug from my core as I held my breath, offering him everything. The number dipped even lower.

The doctor turned to a nurse.

“Prep delivery room four.”

The nurse hustled out and the doctor leaned in toward Rachel once again. “We have to move you over to an operating room now. Your baby’s heart rate has dropped too low. Everything will be fine, but we will start prepping you for a section. Okay?”

Rachel nodded. The doctor left the room and I hugged my wife. I could feel her sobs against my chest.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Those words tore my heart out. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. The doctors will make sure Jake’s okay. And I’m here for you. I promise.”

Rachel did not say anything else. Two orderlies (possibly the same two we’d seen that morning) appeared in the doorway. Cautiously, they wheeled Rachel and her bed out of the room and down the hall. A nurse approached me as I watched my wife being taken away.

“Mr. Connolly, you can come with me. We need you to get scrubbed before you can go back with her.”

There are moments in life when you are faced with an impossible decision; a choice must be made when you no longer live for yourself. Mine occurred at the single biggest moment of my life up until that day, the instant my son came into this world. Some details of that moment are my wife’s alone and I would not share them. What I recall was sitting on a stool at the head of my wife’s hospital bed. The nurses erected a screen just below Rachel’s chest, blocking the operation from our view, more Rachel’s than mine. I had been operated on in my life, but never awake like she was. I could not fathom what it must have been like for her.

I did my best to support her. I held her hand as her body shuddered, sometimes from her nerves, other times from the manhandling of the operation being performed on her abdomen.

“They’re pulling me,” she moaned, her voice thick from the epidural.

“It’s okay.” I spoke softly to her. “Everything will be okay.”

The nurses and doctors spoke confidently while they worked. I missed most of what they said but it sounded as if everything was proceeding as planned. I tried to find the monitor on my son’s heart but couldn’t. Maybe that was for the best.

“It hurts,” Rachel said.

“She says it hurts,” I told the nurse.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Tears rolled down my wife’s face as she stared up at the ceiling. The droplets melted into the coarse fabric pillowcase, leaving a slowly expanding dampness. I wiped one away and she flinched as if my touch hurt.

“It’s okay,” I said again. I could not find any other words.

“He’s coming,” the doctor said. “Do you want to see?”

I stirred, a morbid curiosity piqued by her suggestion, but Rachel grabbed my hand. I looked down and she glared up.

“Don’t look at me,” she ordered through a clenched jaw.

I sat back down, nodding gravely. Neither the nurses nor the doctors took any notice. They continued their work.

When Jake finally joined us, I did not notice the exact instant. Or maybe I will never remember it. The span from Rachel telling me to stay with her and when a nurse placed Jake on a small metal table vanished or never existed. Who knows? All I can remember is turning my head and seeing him. His eyes locked on to mine. I know every expert or know-it-all would say that it was impossible, that babies cannot see more than light and dark at that point, or whatever. I know the truth. Our eyes met. He looked at me. Tears welled in my eyes and I blinked them away, needing to see my son, for him to see that I looked at him as well.

That look—it changed the world. Jake called out to me without making a sound. His tiny head tilted to the side, his red lips set in a straight line. He absorbed my everything, taking it in and holding so tight that I knew I’d never get it back. I disappeared that day, vanished and reborn as something entirely new. Not a stand-alone presence but part of a matrix of shared existence. At the time, I did not put a word to it, but later I would. The word, one I thought I understood before, but my prior comprehension fell woefully short, was
love
.

“Do you want to hold him?” the nurse asked.

I stood, my body feeling airy, almost ethereal, as if Jake might pass right through me. My arms reached out and the nurse, having already cleaned him up a bit, swaddled my son so quickly that I barely noticed and handed that little dream to me. I felt his tiny weight pressing down on my forearms and knew he was real, that he would always be real, no matter what. My son looked up at me, his expression so untouched, so new, that I could not stop crying. I bent and kissed his forehead, my dry lips warmed by his skin.

I do not know how long I held him. I lost track of everything but Jake until a nurse touched my shoulder.

“Let’s give Mom a turn,” she said.

My eyes widened a bit. I turned, slowly, and looked at Rachel. What I saw was a moment I could never undo. She stared at Jake, her eyes still so full of fear. Though the realization was never expressed as words, it swallowed us that day. This little infant, so small and frail, you would think him the vulnerable one. The truth is that the real vulnerability opened inside us. No longer did we live as ourselves. We lived for him.