The Weight of Him(2)

“You just missed your mother,” Tricia said.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Fine, she was just checking in.”

A fresh bouquet of lilies sprang from a vase on the table, their smell sickly familiar. The flowers looked beautiful, but seemed tainted, like black age spots in the glass of an antique mirror. That was the way with so much now—tarnished, loaded. Birdsong that sounded like a child screeching. The creak of a door like groaning. Overhead power lines that could string you up.

He read the sympathy card, from Tricia’s aunt in New York. “That was very nice of her.”

“Yes, God bless her.” Ever since they’d lost Michael, in addition to coffee, cigarettes, and sleeping tablets, Tricia had also taken hard to Catholicism. “Although,” she continued, still skinning the potato, “I almost wish the cards and flowers, the people, would all stop coming through the door now. It seems endless.”

He understood, but the alternative didn’t appeal, either—people forgetting, and the everydayness of life without Michael taking hold. He opened the fridge door, despite still feeling full, and scanned the shelves. Every time he entered the house he walked straight to the fridge and looked inside, and every time he felt this strange disappointment, as though expecting to find something else.

As Tricia stripped the last potato bare, her shoulder blade moved faster beneath her T-shirt, bringing to mind a calcified wing. He watched the hypnotic movement, tempted to touch her, but he knew she wouldn’t want that. His touch no longer comforted her the way it had in those first few days after Michael. The last time he’d reached for her, she’d flinched and pulled away.

“Did you want a hand?” he asked.

“No, thanks, I’m almost done.”

The clothesline beyond the window tugged. Billy refused to look. Michael, at all of seventeen, had left the house in the dark of night, cut down the previous clothesline, and walked to the band of trees behind the football pitch. Billy pictured the rope on the ground, trailing Michael like a snake.

Up and down Tricia’s shoulder blade sliced. She had lost so much weight in five weeks. Her straw-colored hair was brittle now, too. A glassy look in her eyes. She added the naked potatoes to the saucepan and walked to the back door with her cigarettes and lighter. She had given up the killers for eight years, but the day they lost Michael, she had gone back on them worse than ever.

*

In the living room, John, Anna, and Ivor sat together on the couch, still in their school uniforms, their eyes locked on Dine About Town, that cooking show the whole family liked. Only now they weren’t whole. Billy’s attention jumped to the red floral rug in front of the fireplace. They’d waked Michael there in his mahogany coffin with its shiny gold handles and crucifixes. Michael’s walnut guitar still leaned against the wall in the corner, just as the boy had left it. The fast food pushed against Billy’s stomach, bloating, hurting. He thought about bursting wide open and how good that would feel.

“Did you want a cup of tea, Dad?” Anna asked.

“No, thanks, love. I’ll get myself a cup after the dinner.” He smiled, hoping to ease the worry on her little face. At twelve years old, Anna cut a miniature of her mother in old photographs—thin, pale, and short, with bright yellow-blond hair, almond-shaped eyes, and plump lips.

He suddenly wanted the children up and out, doing. “It’s such a fine evening, how about we all go for a drive before dinner?”

“No thanks,” John said, deadpan. At fifteen, he was now the eldest. He bore his brother’s likeness, at least physically, and stood tall, lean, and broad. The defiance in his wild dark curls and penetrating blue eyes was all his, though, Michael a gentler and more agreeable young man.

“We’re watching this,” Ivor said, his eyes never leaving the TV. He sounded younger than nine, his words thick when he spoke, as though every tooth he’d ever lost sat in a pile on his tongue.

“I’ll go, Dad,” Anna said, trying to please him.

“Ah, no,” he said, not letting his disappointment show. “If this is what you’d all prefer to do.” He remained with them, telling himself it didn’t matter what they did as long as they were together.

*

The door to the boys’ bedroom stood ajar. Billy shuffled past Michael’s empty bed and opened the wardrobe, its hinges creaking. He ran his hands over the shoulders of Michael’s shirts, and down the empty arms. He pressed Michael’s favorite gray sweatshirt to his face, breathing deep. With each passing day, Michael’s earthy, almost spicy scent was fading.

Billy recovered and moved into his room. He was looking forward to a long, hot shower and washing away as much as he could. After he stripped, he dropped onto the side of his bed to remove his socks, his stomach heavy on the pale, hairy slab of his thighs. He clapped his hands to the sides of his huge belly and jiggled it. He tried to lift its mound off his lap. He slapped and squeezed its rolls. Grabbed hunks of himself in his hands and twisted the fistfuls of fat till he hurt. It felt good. It felt awful.

He pushed himself in front of the full-length wardrobe mirror. His reflection appeared pale and sickly, older than forty-seven. His eyes looked bruised, too, as if he’d taken punches. The man of himself was hidden behind the droop of his purple, stretch-marked belly. Thanks to the press of the steering wheel, a permanent purple bruise also marked his middle, like a supersized sneer. His breasts hung larger than Tricia’s. He raised his arms out from his sides, their sagging flesh quivering like two blue-veined jellyfish. He turned away from the mirror and rushed into his clothes.