Universal Harvester(15)
“Good kid, I mean,” he said, clearing his throat, taking a drink of water. Jeremy hadn’t been a boy for many years. “He’s always been a good kid.”
“He is lucky to have a good dad,” Shauna Kinzer said very deliberately, reaching across the table and putting her hand on his. The warmth soaked into his skin, rain on cracked earth.
They ordered dessert: two hot fudge brownies; sharing just one would have felt awkward. Out in front of the restaurant they said their good nights and then drove off in separate cars.
*
Ken Wahl, M.S.W., M.F.C.C.: 15 years experience in central Iowa. Individual and couples counseling. Specializing in grief, loss, and transition—it had been the least flowery ad in the Des Moines Yellow Pages back in 1995; it was important to Steve that the people he chose to share his private troubles with weren’t the type to try to convince him to cry out loud, and that they lived at least one county away.
Ken Wahl saw Steve Heldt clearly; over the years he’d known lots of men who didn’t want to make spectacles of themselves, whose need to retain their composure often surpassed their desire to be healed. “Did you ever think about keeping a journal?” he’d asked casually during their second meeting, and Steve had said no, he’d never been much on writing: but Wahl had reached into a big drawer in his desk and pulled out a composition book.
“You might try to write a little in it every day,” he said. “Just to see if it helps. You don’t have to show it to anybody, not even me, unless you feel like it—we can do that, but we don’t have to. It’s not for reading. Some people just find it comforting to write all this stuff down.”
You or I, finding ourselves in Steve Heldt’s shoes, might fill this book with intricate reckonings of our grief, trying to empty ourselves of its burden. But Steve only ever finished a few entries, which he meant to share with Wahl, but never did. The first few pages were simple sleep diaries: Two hours, 11:00–1:00; awake, watched TV until 5:00, fell asleep on couch. He’d ventured a little inward later, remembering all the times he thought of Linda during a given day: at work, while driving, before bed. At lunch with a client, having to swallow it all down. And then, suddenly: this.
Some accounts of Steve Heldt’s journal omit this entry, while other versions of his story make no mention of any diary at all. I place full credence in both the journal and its disputed, penultimate entry, which feels true, like a purge. A years-long gap followed in its wake: this, too, makes sense to me. Steve began journaling with a view toward completing an unpleasant task, and when he thought the job was done, he stopped.
I wonder if I can really tell you what it was like to lose Linda, how heavy the blow was to me. She was the mother of my only son; that’s not even what I really mean, when I hear it out loud like this, because he’s not my son, he’s our son. In February 1978 I drove her to Mary Greeley during a snowstorm in the middle of the night, because the contractions were coming too fast for us to wait any longer; she was sailing through early labor really fast, and we were young and scared, and I didn’t know what would happen, but I tried to stay strong, because I thought that was what she needed, and I always try to stay level-headed in choppy waters: that’s what I’m good at, it’s one of the things people know me by. Good old Steve, never flies off the handle. But I couldn’t stop my mind from scaring up all these worst-case scenarios, things I was afraid of: complications, terrifying grisly scenes. In my daily life, at work, at home, I don’t dwell on possible bad outcomes. What’s the point? If anything worries me I swat away the worry like a bug, but on the drive to the hospital it was like waves of worry crashing inside me. I focused on the road and told Linda just to keep breathing, that it wouldn’t be long.
That was the night our son was born! Men cry all the time now, it seems like, over any old thing, but it wasn’t like that then, and anyway, I’m not ashamed to admit I cried. Our son was so beautiful. He was perfect. A round little baby boy. Linda was tired afterward, so tired, and she and Jeremy both slept almost constantly for the next three days, and again I started worrying: that something might be wrong, that it wasn’t normal for him to sleep so much, that we ought to call the doctor. But she comforted me, and she said in that quiet, whispery voice: Steve, it’s OK. That’s what she was like. Even in her own exhaustion she helped me stay the course. All this is normal, she told me, that little baby so sweet, sound asleep on her chest and the house so quiet, and then as the ship steadied itself we began to grow into the family we became, a happy family for sixteen whole years. His first day of school. Christmases. Summer vacations. You don’t think about how you really have your whole life planned out until a part of it goes missing suddenly one day. You’ll panic then. I don’t care who you are. But for Jeremy’s sake and to make Linda proud I kept myself sane, and we got through it.
I’ll always miss Linda and I know Jeremy does, too, but he almost never talks about her, and I don’t know what I should do. I can’t tell if he needs help, if there’s something special a father’s supposed to do for his son when they’re in a situation like ours. I’m a guy who works on projects with blueprints, but I’m on my own here. It feels dark a lot of the time; I thought it would clear up, and it’s eased a little, but it’s still dark. So I watch what’s left of my life like a security guard on the night shift, checking the locks when I know I don’t need to, pacing the perimeter of someplace nobody’s going to break into, except that you never know. Something could happen. So you keep watch. They don’t pay security guards just because they’re a few bodies short on the payroll.