After the End(78)

Last Christmas Dylan was five and a half, his needs so great he couldn’t stay anywhere but in his own room or at the respite center he visited three weekends a year. Pip’s parents came for three days, their car groaning with food, and with presents that had been the subject of several stressful phone calls.

“You don’t need to get him anything,” Pip kept saying, but Karen wouldn’t be dissuaded. The previous year she and Pip’s dad had helped Dylan unwrap toys he wouldn’t be able to play with, and I’d watched Karen’s face crumple as she’d realized her mistake.

They settled on mittens—poor circulation meant Dylan’s extremities were always freezing—and a lamp with streams of tiny bubbles inside. I have a sharp memory of his face when we switched on the light, the loud cry of joy, and I curl tighter into myself, the tears coming even faster.

I guess Pip’ll be with her parents today. I wonder what they’re doing, if they’re thinking about last year, like I am. I close my fist around my cell phone—I miss you so much—tap her number and watch the screen as it tries to connect. Then I think about Pip’s words to me—That wasn’t a life—and cancel the call. She probably isn’t missing him at all. Maybe she’s relieved. Happy, even. She’s got her life back.

I throw the phone onto the bed beside me, but—as though prompted by the action—it starts to ring. Pip calling. Shit shit shit shit. I watch her name flash up, and as though it doesn’t belong to me, my hand creeps out and takes the call.

For a moment I think she’s rung off and there’s no one there. But then I hear a choking noise and I realize that, four thousand miles away, Pip is crying too. I lie on my bed, the phone pressed to my ear, and listen to Pip try to catch her breath. When she speaks, it’s a whisper.

“I miss him so much it hurts.”

We cry together, the same boy in hearts either side of an ocean. The only two people in the world who know how we feel. When it’s over, and my phone lies quiet again by my side, I sleep. And when I wake up, my eyes are swollen and my nose is blocked, my heart still hurts. But I feel a little better.



* * *





Mom hits the stores for the January sales. She’s meeting Blair and her mother at Old Orchard mall.

“You should join us—it might do you good to get out.”

“Why would I want to go shopping with some woman I didn’t even want to hang out with when I was ten?”

Mom looks like she’s about to snap back, but she takes a breath and says: “I might be back by lunchtime, anyway. Linda can be awful prickly around Blair—they have a difficult relationship.”

“Not so perfect after all,” I say, half to myself. My mother looks at me sadly.

“When did you become so unpleasant, Max Adams?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I bite back. “When I lost my son and my wife in one month, maybe?” Something shrivels inside my stomach. I loathe this man I’m trapped inside, but I don’t know how else to be. I’ve lost count of how many times Mom’s tried to get me to see a doctor, a therapist, but what would be the point? They can’t change what’s happened. They can’t change who I am.

“Do you need me to pick you up anything?” Mom says as she’s leaving. “Pants? Shirts?”

I’m forty years old, out of work, and my mother’s offering to buy my clothes for me. What the fuck happened to my life?

When she’s gone, I take a shower, then I wrap a towel around my waist and fill the basin with warm water. I lather up, but stop short of bringing the razor to my cheek. Do I want to see that face? I can’t be that person again—why remind myself every time I look in the mirror? I wash off the soap. I neaten my beard but keep it full. My hair hasn’t been cut in four months, and there’s a curl in it I haven’t seen since I was a kid.

Instead of the sweatpants I’ve lived in since September, I put on proper clothes. Jeans, a shirt, socks and shoes. They feel odd and uncomfortable, and I wonder how I wore a suit and tie every day. I open my laptop.

I joined Kucher Consulting as a business analyst, straight out of college. By rights, I should have done an MBA, but Chester liked me enough to offer me a DTA—direct to associate—testing me out with more and more client contact. I was ecstatic—I had neither the money nor the inclination to go back to school for two years—and by the time I met Pip I was an associate partner.

Where does that leave me now? Experienced but underqualified, in a field full of competition with youth on their side and letters after their name.

I start with Chester.

“I’m better.” The ensuing pause isn’t promising. “I’d like to come back.”

“Thing is, Max, we had to restructure . . .”

“So restructure again. I’m good, Chester, you know I am. I’m back in Chicago, I can meet with clients on the ground, I—”

“You left us in the shit, Max. We lost PWK. Schulman walked out.”

“My son died.”

“I know.” Chester sighs. “Christ, I know. I’m sorry. But . . . I’m sorry.”

I hit up Google. I try three consultancies too small to have ever troubled Kucher. Two aren’t hiring; the third takes my details.

“Who are you with currently?”