“When did this happen?” Paula says as she scrolls through her son’s photographs on the laptop.
“What?” he asks.
Jarred by his question, she realizes she spoke her thoughts again. Lately, they’re tricky to confine. In the pause that stretches, strains, she hurries to sort, to shape words to share with him. She moves her phone closer, as if proximity will make the task easier.
Her son says with a laugh, “Have you been snorting something, Mom?”
“Very funny.”
“I think you’ve been alone too much lately.”
She leans toward the phone, voice thin, and says, “You’re probably right.”
Even though it’s almost noon, Paula hasn’t been up long. The warmth of the sheets and the deep bow of the mattress kept her in bed. She dozed in and out while concentrating on the soft linen and the welcome weight of Jim’s arm draped across her belly.
Last night, she opened her windows for the first time in a year, such anniversaries not celebrated. She’d shut the outside out. No sounds. No smells. No sights. Not even the changing light. Windows, doors, and blinds stayed closed.
As she started to slip into sleep, the great-horned owls called to her through the window screen, one and then the other—airy short, short, and then long single notes pulsed. A simple run.
She listened until the drone of cars from 51st Avenue could be heard, and past, through the field of scraggly grass and crumbling milkweed, to the shrill call of a killdeer. Softened by air and matter, the cry rippled until its echo belonged to a different space.
Jim rolled to his side, exhale trailing and bed dipping. By morning, pressed against his back, she absorbed each of his breaths and shifts with a joy so large she hurt.
Now, at the dining room table, the bed made, and the day started, she says to Travis, “I was just surprised by how you look like a man.”
“That was the look I was going after.”
Paula smiles and says, “Ha. Ha.” He’s quick to joke, good news ushering in a good mood. “You know darn well what I mean. A lot has happened, and you really have changed. I don’t know how to say it. You’re more angular.”
Neither speaks. This gap between them and their words is where their loss rests. Sometimes it looms.
“So, what’s the verdict?” he asks.
Even though there’s levity in his voice, she doesn’t allow herself to get comfortable. She says, “Your glasses keep the focus on your eyes.”
“Is that your way of saying you like the ones with glasses? Or is that a bad thing?” He laughs. Paula likes the sound.
After his laughter falls, she can hear him sip his coffee. Some details about her son stay steady. Travis likes his brew. He gets his “Blend of the Week” delivered to his doorstep.
“Do I look like an asshole?” he pushes.
She hesitates before answering. Is this safe territory? “It makes you look professional, not like a jerk.”
He snorts, “We both know that’d be short-lived, especially if the topic of God or ghosts come up. I’m a hard-ass.”
Heat grips her face. One of the newest rules of engagement—certain topics are forbidden. Hard-lining, he calls it, in order to stay on sturdy ground. Necessary. Is this the closest she’ll get to an apology, a recognition of his brutality the last time they talked?
She imagines him at the Ikea desk he’s had since high school, surface cluttered and dusty, half a country away, and in a house she’s never seen except as a tilting backdrop to their talks—an empty alcove, a doorframe, and the flash of his wedding photograph. The same portrait nests in a small frame on Paula’s bed-stand, a postage stamp of its double, the brilliant green of new leaves, the ragged burst of yellow, and the centerpiece--bride stunning in white folds and groom crisp in dark, pressed seams.
Travis moves. Paula hears rustling and crackling. She shuts her eyes, the muted light buoying bones, flesh, and the spaces in-between. Embrace the whole, she’s learned from survivors, and all of the emotions coming with it. But for a long while, she’s seen her reflection with unwavering distrust and dislike, her body the enemy.
He says, “Emily likes the ones without glasses, but I’m squinting.”
“Your wife knows more about this kind of thing.” Wife. Strange to say. Her son’s married, and now his life in Massachusetts and his language of theoretical mathematics have drawn him away from the desert and his childhood home. At times, she feels like the tethers of memories and history are frayed, threadbare, and that she’s in danger of losing him. “Trust her.” Paula opens her eyes. Through the kitchen window, she sees Travis and Jim’s butterfly garden, the last blast of color and tangled leaves.
Jim’s hands lightly squeeze. He’s kept her company off and on all week, even as she stooped to switch the laundry to the dryer, sorted her mail, or busied herself with the mundane. Jim. Her Jim.
The birds are quieting. Morning thickens with heat as it plods toward afternoon. The doves and thrashers slip behind curtains of leaves, and the pigeons press into shallow pockets of shade. The quail, however, a group of brave young males, march along the top of her cinder-block fence in search of food, or water, or females, or shelter . . . in search.
Paula tries to imagine Travis close.
“Emily wants it to be my decision,” he tells her.
“You’ve accomplished so much.” She wonders if he can hear the smile in her voice. “This is a big deal.”
Usually they talk on Saturday mornings, at least lately. Each time she dials his number she hopes Travis won’t answer. She’s not sure she can take the tension and exhaustion of not saying. He always answers, though. And after, she’s glad no matter how rag-tag or rough their talk.
She aims for steady ground, focusing on the honor, the accomplishment, a young lecturer publishing his theories in a national journal.
Walls waver. A twisting nausea sweeps over her, and she says, “All of the photographs are good. You can’t go wrong.” But the words don’t keep her out of the furrows. Her eyes burn. And then she reminds herself it’s better to follow the path, open her arms to the loss. To cry. Yesterday. A year ago yesterday.
No second chances.
Far off, through the crackle of the phone reception, she hears the ting of strings. She’s certain her son’s guitar is nested in his lap, left arm draped over it, loose and intimate. The gesture reminds Paula of older couples sitting next to one another on benches and in booths at restaurants. Without the contact, they’re lost.
Travis is right about the squint, she thinks, trying to gently press away her discomfort.
A smirk of the eyes is present in all of the pictures without glasses. The expression confuses her. He’s her son, after all, but if he were a stranger, his seemingly cocky, superior appraisal of the world would unsettle her. Underneath, though, the slight backward tilt of his head and the veiled face let her know he’s nervous, uncomfortable in front of the camera.
“The glasses, then,” he says, and his chair grinds as he moves. It’s decided.
Paula says, “I wish we could celebrate together.“
“If you plan on being around. We’ll see.” His sudden harsh tone shakes her.
They’re teetering. A single jerk in the wrong direction, an overcorrection will send them plummeting. It wearies and worries her. They’re fragile. Tenuous.
“Of course I plan on it,” she says, body tight. His jab circles a forbidden topic, the biggest. Her shoulders ache. Paula leaves her laptop and walks, phone in hand, to the sliding glass door and closes it. The morning’s heating up, and the breeze quieting. Even though it’s October, the triple digits cling to the days.
Silently, she repeats the words from one of her videos, “Accept your body and thoughts. Don’t block.”
“When life returns to normal,” she adds, “I’m coming out to see your world, your new life, and to meet Emily.”
Her legs are stiff as she walks back to the table. Sometimes she feels the battle inside, the ache when every cell is working. Not working, she corrects herself, not battling, guiding.
The photograph on the screen captures a non-distinct moment in her son’s life, anchorless against a grainy blue backdrop. She says, “I try to picture what it’s like there.” Whenever Paula asks for a virtual tour, Travis tells her the house is too messy. “The usual,” he jokes. “I’m lucky Emily’s sloppier than I am.”
During Zoom calls, sometimes the laptop travels with Travis, and behind him are jagging sweeps of his apartment—formica kitchen counters, a red frying pan, a scrabble game on a coffee table, an unmade bed with clothes piled on top, but, mostly, she sees swatches of linoleum floor or stretches of ceiling.
One time, Paula was lucky, though, to see her daughter-in-law. Travis was at his desk when Emily moved past him, tucking her long brown hair into the collar of her jacket. She gave him a sweet smile when she said good-bye from the front door.
Paula and Emily spoke once briefly since they’re strangers and have only her son in common so far. And the pandemic. Emily seems soft to Paula in all the ways Travis is hard.
Emily told her brightly that she couldn’t wait for normalcy, to meet Paula and for Paula to meet her family, large and overwhelming and full of drama. “Just exactly what your son hates, drama, but he loves my sisters. He won’t admit it, though. You know him,” she said. They’ll fly her out, yes, fly, Emily almost sang, “If you can believe that day will come.” They’ll put her up in a nice hotel near the house.
“The numbers have to be down by the New Year,” Paula tells Travis.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” His tone is matter-of-fact. “Especially since people are tired of it. They’re being stupid now.”
She cringes at the word “stupid.” It comes too easily to him lately. He used it to describe her, his mother—stupid and ignorant. Paula tries to shove their last conversation into the past, more than a week, fainter and fainter until the words become mere mumbles. I learned, she tells herself. I learned. She’d made the mistake—mistake?—of sharing with him that his father visits her, that he brings her joy. At first, Travis didn’t say anything. Paula asked, “Are you still there?” Then his anger flashed, white-hot, as he told her he had no room in his life for ignorance and stupidity. Ghosts are for the weak and the afraid. He went on, a near rant. She wanted to interrupt him, to say “spirit,” not “ghost.” It made a difference to her.
Where did this come from? She wanted to ask him. Before she could, he told her, “If you say another word about Dad visiting, this conversation is done, and I’ll never speak to you again.” Who was he? A son so harsh, so cold? “You don’t mean that,” she said, voice hoarse. He answered, “Try me.”
“Stupidity everywhere.” Travis continues, “And you’re compromised. You don’t want to get this virus. It’s bad. We’re starting a second wave.”
Paula takes a deep breath. “I know. Okay.”
“Emily sees it first-hand every day.”
“All right.” She’s tired and wants to change the conversation. “When will the article be out?”
“January.”
“I want copies.”
“That’s sweet, but no one will be interested. It’s like a different language.” Travis adds, “And do me a favor, Mom. Don’t tell your sister or my cousins about it.”
“Your aunt cares. She loves to hear news about you.”
“She’ll post it on Facebook right next to Michael’s dog or Tom’s award-winning bass. And I’m sure she’ll thank God for all the work I’ve done.”
“Why do you sound so angry?” She can hear her heart in her ears. The pounding.
With a clipped and impatient tone, he says, “You’re confusing apathy for anger.”
“Fine, I won’t tell her.”
“Good. I don’t need her prayers.”
The nausea is back, and the room lurches. Even though she’s sitting, her body’s in motion. She can’t catch up with it. Her ribcage squeezes, and her heartbeat is large and loud. It swallows the house. It swallows her. There’s a lot to say, but there’s no room. She doesn’t know how to string the words together.
At last, Paula says, “The whole lot of them GONE.” She snaps her fingers and imagines her sister and nephews poof into air. “That’s what you want? Right?”
“Absolutely.”
Her son, the theoretical mathematician, is afraid, she tries to convince herself, terrified, as if his work doesn’t require leaps of faith, instinct for the implausible to be plausible.
“So you’ve scheduled your surgery?” he asks.
Her face is hot. Jim’s fingers span her shoulder blades, the pressure a near nudge.
Travis says quickly, “I figured as much.”
His voice drops.
She can hear his chair shift.
California burns. Paula sees the flames in her mind. The orange sky choked San Francisco, smothered the sunlight. Eureka, too. Too many fires. Too much smoke. George Floyd died and dies again. The officer’s knee presses. Again. Again. She can’t un-see what she’s seen. Protestors gather, thousands, shoulder against shoulder. Covid patients touch loved ones through glass. Numbers soar. The dead are tallied. Again. Again. Tents are hospitals, trucks morgues.
Forecasters say a hurricane will make landfall in Louisiana today.
Too much. Hard.
No fires here. Near. Coming closer. And she’s alone in her little house, her street quiet.
A year and one day ago Jim smiled at her through the kitchen window, forehead pink from heat and a long weed in his hand, dirt clutching its roots. The Butterfly Garden. Then he was gone.
The sun has been too much. Through the sliding glass door, she watched pumpkins and squash collapse, darken to black, and sink into soil. Leaves and flowers on trees curled, dropped, and scurried in the wind. Fruit stopped, hardened, and turned dark umber.
“Travis--” she pauses, the hum of the telephone filling the space between them.
Paula listens.
“Are you there?”
It’s okay, she tells herself. The line connecting them is strong. She focuses on the invisible but constant thread.
It’s okay.
She waits.
She’s not going anywhere.
Laura White Gray's work has appeared in North American Review, Los Angeles Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Whiskey Island Magazine, Berkeley Fiction, Black Warrior Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Northwest Review, Pennsylvania English, Event, Confrontation, Kaleidoscope, Calyx, Xavier Review, Potomac Review, Southern California Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Prize and the Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
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