Replacement Child (30 page)

It turned out that this was our last adventure together. The excitement of the jump soon wore off, and we were grounded once again. The gap between us widened, and I began to feel a disturbingly familiar emptiness.

“L
OVE DOESN
’
T LAST
,” I remembered my mother saying one day as we drove to my guitar lesson.

I didn’t press her for her meaning, but I had seen a new weariness in her eyes lately. The halfhearted smiles at my father’s jokes.

She was always the one to initiate a kiss good-bye, a hug hello to him. Now I saw none of that. It was seldom—never—that I saw him reach out to her. Now, it seemed that his coolness had finally worn away the fabric of their marriage.

Like the night when they were going out to a party. My mother had on a new green silk dress, sleeveless, with a slit up the right side showing off her gorgeous legs.

“Al, how do I look?”

“Fine.” Not looking.

“You’re not even looking at me.”

“Okay, I’m looking. You look fine.”

Even in their last days together, my mother would reach up from her wheelchair to my father and demand, “Okay, I really need a hug!” He would smile and oblige, but it was never his idea. I saw her spirit wither from his neglect, though she always loved him. He was her rock of fortitude. Affable, honest, funny, and dedicated to his family. But leaning over to kiss his wife or offer an unsolicited hug was like taking a trip to the moon.

I’d heard my father tell my mother that he didn’t compliment me because it would go to my head. Maybe it was to level the playing field with Linda. All his energy in that regard went to building up Linda’s self-esteem. I didn’t need that kind of attention.

I now know that his detachment from me stemmed from losing Donna. He never really recovered from the loss, and somehow he couldn’t forgive me for being here when she was not.

It’s true that we marry our mothers and fathers in some sense, and although Steven was as different from my father as hot pastrami from shepherd’s pie, his emotional distance drew me to him like a long-lost relative. And it ultimately destroyed us.

Soon, in our marriage that lasted nearly seven years, the same boy who wouldn’t let me leave the bed in that borrowed apartment cooled toward me. I would reach for him, and he would pull away. He barely touched me even when pressed against me in our small bed. In the end, I left—determined to dodge the bullet that killed my mother’s passion.

2006

J
USTIN AND
I are on our way to Paris. His eighteenth birthday seemed the perfect time to take the trip I’ve promised him for years. I made the arrangements for this trip before remembering it would be my mother’s one-year
yahrzeit
, and I wouldn’t be home to light her memorial candle, let it burn the full twenty-four hours, hear her name called, or say the Kaddish at Temple.

He’s taken three years of French now, and he plans to practice the language on our trip. I’m sure he’ll run circles around me in that department. I think we are both looking forward to this trip for just the two of us. His life has gotten busy with friends, and we don’t spend the time together that we used to.

When he was little and I was struggling to pay the rent, Friday was our special night. After work, I’d pick him up from day care and take him to a local pizza place that had games and rides for kids. It was the one treat that I could afford. It was literally the cost of a $5 small pizza and a few dollars for games. Those nights were good for both of us. I loved not going back to our tiny apartment like every other night of the week, and instead seeing my little boy laugh while we played air hockey together.

Now, I stop dead still in the busy corridor, realizing that we’re leaving from the same Newark airport that Captain Reid tried to reach on January 22, 1952.

“Mom, come on, we’ll miss our plane,” Justin says as he pulls on my arm.

His low voice startles me. Until yesterday, his hair was down to his shoulders in some kind of nonconformist solidarity, but now he has a head full of brown curls that let me see his wonderful blue eyes. The haircut was a break with his younger self—one step closer to re-creating himself for his future.

On April 5, the anniversary of my mother’s death, although I am far from home, I find a place that feels right to me to light a candle. We enter Notre Dame, and I feel a quiet awe. Whispered prayers echo in the cavernous cathedral, bouncing off the ancient pillars, swirling against the stained glass in a prayer-soup. It doesn’t matter that our religion doesn’t match. It’s the spirit here that I know my mother would understand.

I make my way to a long table of candles. I note the suggested donation and take out some coins to put in the box. Justin is walking ahead of me, but when he sees me take a candle, he comes to stand beside me. I close my eyes, light the candle, and whisper, “I miss you, Mom.”

L
AST NIGHT
,
THE
dream was so real that I woke empty and tired. It was my mother. There so fully I could smell her perfume: the powdery scent of lilacs. I could touch her hair: thin, fragile. I could feel her lightest kiss on my cheek.

She was holding on. Needing to let go.

I sensed her being pulled, nearly dragged away. She grasped at the edges of me. Through her eyes I saw a blue, swirling vortex. Sucking at her, ripping her from me, then—gone.

1953

M
Y FATHER THUMBED
through his wallet while he waited in the small examining room. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and he had almost finished counting the number of floor tiles when Dr. Berger appeared. Clutching a chart in his left hand, the doctor shook my father’s hand with his right. They had known each other for many years now, through the birth of two children—the death of one.

A small, dark-haired man with a kind, round face, Dr. Berger was a family doctor that still made house calls. His black bag held both lollipops and penicillin. He would take an IOU or a chicken dinner when you couldn’t pay.

When he had first seen Linda after the accident, he broke down and cried.

“It’s good to see you, Al. You look well—what can I do for you?”

“It’s not me. I’m worried to death about Florence. She doesn’t want to go out or even get dressed unless it’s to do something for Linda. Even now, after all this time. She cries all the time and sleeps whenever she can.”

“You know, Al, women take these things differently than we do. I know you—you just keep busy working, right?” Dr. Berger slid the chart under his arm, reached into his jacket pocket for a prescription pad, and scribbled a name and number.

“Call this doctor—Dr. Horowitz. He’s a friend, and a
lantzman
. Make an appointment for you and Florence to go together. He’s a psychiatrist—he may be able to help.”

“A psychiatrist? But she’s not crazy, Doc—just not herself. You really think we need a head shrinker—and both of us?”

“I think it may help, Al,” Dr. Berger answered.

My father took the note and agreed to give it a try.

“D
R
. B
ERGER SUGGESTED
we go see this Dr. Horowitz,” he told my mother after dinner that night.

“Why, who is he—what for?” She didn’t turn around from washing the dishes in the sink.

My father was grateful she had her back to him. “I told him how you are—staying in bed, not wanting to go out, crying all the time. He’s worried about you. Dr. Horowitz is a psychiatrist. I think we should try it, Flurry.”

My mother agreed to go and was inwardly thankful. She put up a good front for Linda, especially when she needed her, but she would collapse in private and had no energy for anything else. My mother felt that if it weren’t for Linda’s care, she would have no reason to keep living. It was taking a toll on her, and sooner or later it would affect Linda. If she wasn’t strong for her, Linda could never get through what lay ahead—of that she felt sure. My father kept the family on an even keel, but my
mother felt she was the only one with the fortitude to be there for Linda when she was scared, when she was hurting, when she needed encouragement to get up and walk after surgery. That motivation gave her a reason to tend to herself and to agree to see Dr. Horowitz.

The next week, my parents went to see Dr. Horowitz after my father got out of work. His office was a second-floor walk-up in a red brick office building on East Jersey Street. It was a cozy room with three overstuffed blue cloth chairs and a well-worn brown leather sofa. A small table held some magazines and a box of tissues. The doctor had his oak desk in the corner of the room.

“Sit anywhere you like,” Dr. Horowitz offered, extending his hand to greet my parents. He was tall and lanky with black graying hair and a five o’clock shadow beginning to hallow his cheeks.

“What brings you here today?”

My father explained about the crash, losing Donna, Linda’s injuries.

“We’re really here because I’m worried about Florence. But, ya know, Doc, maybe it just takes time—maybe Florence will get back to herself in a little while, if she wants to.”

At that, my mother put her head down, clasped her hands in her lap, and let out a heavy sigh.

“What is it, Florence?” Dr. Horowitz asked.

“It’s just that Al expects me to get back to normal. And normal is gone. Donna is gone, Linda is so hurt—I won’t get back to myself. The person he wants me to be again is gone. There is a part of me that will never come back.”

Anger discharged between them, quick as a shot, silent as a glance.

Dr. Horowitz let them take a moment, then offered, “Al, I don’t think it’s a matter of wanting or not wanting. It isn’t something Florence can just decide to get over. It’s not unusual for her to feel that she’s lost a piece of herself.”

“I was there too, ya know, Doc. Donna was my daughter, too,” my father muttered.

“I never said I was the only one suffering through this,” my mother said. “I just think we are different people, and I am not bouncing back as quickly as Al wants me to.”

“Everyone grieves a little differently, and it’s important to respect that,” Dr. Horowitz said.

“I just don’t know how you can do such normal things again, jumping right back into the life you had before everything changed,” my mother said to my father.

“What would you have me do? I can’t just sit around thinking about things and making it worse.”

“It’s probably Al’s way of coping. His way to keep maintaining the family—to keep providing,” Dr. Horowitz interjected.

“This is the only way I know to keep going. Otherwise I will just fold into myself—like you have decided to do!” My father’s jaw clenched firmly, and a serious scowl overtook his face.

My mother’s eyes softened, and she reached for his hand. My father saw the path of his wife’s tears through her makeup, running down her neck, pooling in a dark stain on her white collar.

“I think I do understand,” he said quietly, seeing her pain.

“I’m not going to mince words,” Dr. Horowitz continued. “Many couples have a very rough time after losing a child, and many get divorced. I don’t want that to happen here. They blame themselves, or worse, they may blame each other.

“Have you two thought of having another child? Many couples that have lost children find that having another helps them heal.”