The Weight of Him(87)

Several times, he stumbled and almost fell on the stony gray ground. Ever since Michael’s death, the earth beneath him had felt unsteady, as though at any moment it would give way and break open. How strange now to feel the actual dirt and stones slip out from underneath him, and for the real sensations to be much less worse than the instability he’d imagined. Rain fell, sprinkles at first, and then heavy on his head and shoulders, wetting and relentless. Go ahead, he told the heavens, do your worst. See if I care.

Breathless, soaked, his shoes and trousers bottoms covered in muck, he arrived at the top of the trail. Over the edge of the cliff, the sea churned white and magnificent. This high up, the air tasted different—saltier, fishier. He looked around and trained his flashlight on the path back down the trail, confirming he was alone. He tipped up his face to the black, starless sky and opened his mouth, not having tasted rain since he was a boy. He drank until his neck ached.

He dropped onto the wet, cold ground and allowed his buttocks to sink into the muck. The damp and chill seeped down to his bones, ushering in a mild and welcome numbness. His stiff hand moved to his trousers pocket and removed the two pieces of the soldier. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over its face. He pictured Michael standing in their backyard, the boy’s right hand on the original red clothesline, making it dip in the middle, and his other hand on his hip. He was smiling, his left eye closed to the glare of the January sun. Ah, no, Dad, he said. I didn’t do it, I changed my mind. I’m still here.

Billy slapped his knees together fast and hard, bone against bone. He remembered the night he’d arrived at the AA meeting and how badly he’d needed to get inside the locked doors of that church. He felt the strong need to knock hard on some door right now and to be let in, but he didn’t know where or what. He looked up at the night sky, robbed of its stud of light. He wanted to tear the heavens open and take Michael back. “It can’t be undone,” he chanted over and over, rocking his upper body back and forth.

He roared. Roared till the scorch inside his throat and chest made the sting of his bloodied knuckles feel like nothing. Roared till he’d nothing left.

Breathless, spent, he struggled back to standing, his feet slipping about in the muck and the pain pulsing in the sides of his knees. He pushed himself to the farthest edge of the cliff and lowered the flashlight to the ground. In life, Michael would not have been able to stand here next to him on the cliff’s edge. It would be nice to think the boy’s spirit was standing alongside him now.

The sea beckoned. The curlews whistled. Billy talked in his head to Michael, telling him about the swimming pool and his lessons with Vor. He tried to tell Michael exactly how it felt to swim, suspended inside the beautiful blue. There was an enigma he couldn’t articulate to the marvel of being held up, something beyond the mechanics of arms and legs and lungs. There was so much he couldn’t explain, so much he hadn’t said and done. “I’m sorry.”

The sea roared, white and midnight-blue. The beam from his flashlight created a shimmering golden bridge that stopped midway across the sky. Inviting and glorious and terrifying. The wind slapped at his back, pushing. He understood how easily a person could go. Felt how sorry you could feel. He looked down at the broken toy in his hand, hesitating. He could no longer think of it as a tiny Michael, or think of six tiny Brennans reunited. He raised his arm, choking out a sob, and fired the two wooden pieces into the sea.

The waves raged white and powerful, their might strangely calming, working on Billy the way they did on the edges of stones. He saw Denis on the side of the road earlier, the pain contorting his face. The anorexic woman on the street a while back also returned, her body jerking in that strange way, as though she were trying to get out of herself. When he felt able, he dialed Denis’s number. Denis answered on the first ring. “They don’t leave us,” Billy said with a gasp. “They’re leaving themselves.”

He heard only the clicks and swallows of Denis’s throat. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Then, after a pause, “You’re not out in this rain, are you?”

“I’m headed home now,” Billy said.

“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“No, thanks, I’m grand,” Billy said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He walked back down the trail, the flashlight’s yellow-white beam leading the way, his steps slow but sure, familiar now with the slippery earth.

*

At home, two long arms of headlights swept through the bedroom, signaling Tricia’s return. Moments later, two car doors closed in quick succession and Anna and Ivor’s voices carried up. Billy had barely been able to stand the wait until they came home. Fresh from the shower, he hurried into clean tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Forgetting for a moment, he almost reached for his sodden trousers on the floor, to retrieve the soldier now snapped in two and lost at sea. He moved downstairs, the sting still in the broken skin of his knuckles, in his throat and chest.

He found only Anna and Ivor in the kitchen. “Where’s your mother?” Before they could answer, Tricia appeared at the back door. “There you are,” he said, relieved.

She looked at him funny. “I was just closing the garage door.”

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. He must have left the door open earlier, when he’d rushed out, and hadn’t noticed on his way back in.