The Weight of Him(27)

She shrugged. “The last time we met was in town, shortly before Christmas. Michael was coming from his guitar lesson and seemed fine. We didn’t really say all that much. We’d only ever gone on a few dates together and we’d parted friends, but it was a little awkward, you know? We said hi and ’bye, really. I’m sorry.”

The awful ache inside him wouldn’t let up. “Have you heard what others are saying? What their theories are?”

She hitched her shoulders and looked at the ground. “There’s always going to be talk.”

“So what’s the talk?” he asked.

“It’s really not my place to say. It’s all just gossip anyway.”

He stepped closer and gripped her elbow. “Please, I’ve already heard about the gambling and Romanian Mafia nonsense. Is there anything else? Anything at all? It would really help.”

“I think sometimes he felt stuck, you know?”

“No,” he said, his right eye twitching. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t think he was so sure anymore about the farm and going to college, not to study agriculture anyway.”

“What?” Billy heard the thin pitch of his voice. “But why didn’t he say something?”

“I don’t know. I’m just guessing. Everyone’s just guessing.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about it?”

“No, not really. I mean, sometimes he’d say he was fed up, all right, so tied to the farm and everything. There was this one evening, a few of us were hanging out, having a laugh, and Michael was annoyed he had to leave to do the milking. Once, too, he said something about preferring to play his guitar on the streets of Dublin rather than go to college there, but he never made it seem as if any of it was that big a deal.”

Billy’s fingers pressed the bones in her elbow. “Is there anything else? Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

“Like I said, I’m only guessing. I’m sorry, I need to go.”

He watched her disappear around the corner. Sarah, everyone, they were all only stabbing at answers. He wouldn’t tell a word of this to anyone. If Tricia, any of the family, even suspected Michael hadn’t wanted to take over the farm, they would turn it into Billy’s fault, say Michael was following his lead. Monkey see, monkey do. That claw tightened around his heart. Was it possible Michael hadn’t wanted the farm, either? If that was true, wouldn’t Michael have told him? The boy should have known that Billy, of all people, would have understood.

Billy pushed back the realization that Michael would have felt under ever greater pressure to take over the farm and keep it in the Brennan name because Billy hadn’t. That chill stole over Billy’s chest, as if his lungs were laid open to the stinging air.

*

One evening in December, just weeks before Michael’s death, Billy sat parked outside St. Anthony’s Hospital beyond town, waiting for Michael to finish up a mini-concert he and a few of his fellow music students were performing for the staff and patients, to bring some Christmas cheer. It wasn’t long after five o’clock, but night had already fallen.

While Billy watched for Michael in the dark, he munched on a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps. He had a stash of treats forever in the car, sweet and salty snacks that whetted, then killed, his longing. And so it went, day after day, year after year, whetting and killing and whetting.

The crisps finished, he enjoyed the linger of salt and vinegar in his mouth, wondering what Tricia had made for the dinner. A Thursday, it would likely be a stew. He hoped for lamb. Across the car park, youngsters burst through the hospital’s glass doors, their voices high and animated. They scattered in various directions, some headed to the street, others to the various lines of parked cars.

Billy spotted Michael. He’d know the boy’s walk anywhere. Michael was chatting with some girl. She was petite and ropy, with a bright yellow scarf around her neck. They hugged briefly, and she headed to the bicycle rack. Michael continued toward the dark rows of vehicles.

Almost at the Corolla, Michael called out uncertainly, “Dad?”

Billy turned on the headlights and cracked open his window. “Yeah, right here.”

As soon as Michael sat in the passenger seat, Billy started teasing him. “So who’s the girl?”

Michael shook his head, embarrassed. “No one.”

“I don’t think it’s the guitar you’re interested in at all,” Billy joked.

“No, it is, it is.” Michael had been playing guitar for over a year by then and was putting as much time and hard work into it as he was the farming and the football, maybe even more. The boy chattered on, saying his guitar teacher, a graduate of some fancy music school in Boston, had pulled him aside during the intermission. “He reckons I’m a natural. Said I should take voice lessons as well as the guitar. He thinks I could really be someone.”

Billy scoffed. “And how much would all that cost? He sounds like a bit of a cowboy, if you ask me, is only after more money.”

Michael turned up the radio volume. Billy let him sulk. Kids nowadays thought they knew everything. Billy quickly tired of the silence between them, though. He liked their chats. “Well, how was the concert?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah, good.”

“Give us a bit more than that, can’t you?” Billy said, cajoling.