Every Other Weekend(64)
“Dad, would you—”
“Sarah,” Dad said and my gaze shot to him to see the phone to his ear. “No, we’re fine. We just thought—I thought we’d visit Greg with you this afternoon. Would that be all right? You’re sure? Okay, we’ll leave right now. Should take us about forty-five minutes. Thanks, Sarah.” He stood up and, without looking at Jeremy or me, said, “Get your coats.”
* * *
Dad tried to start a few conversations while we drove, but I didn’t give him a lot to work with. And for once it wasn’t because I was trying to make a point. Jeremy at least recognized that, so after the first time he caught my eye in the rearview mirror, he didn’t give me crap about it.
Greg had always been the family mediator. He could still do it without even having to be in the car.
This was the first time that we were going to visit Greg via separate vehicles, as separate families. I wondered if anyone else felt as ashamed by that fact as I did, like we were letting him down. Not that it mattered or that Greg would even know, but I almost suggested we pick up Mom so that we could at least arrive together.
Thoughts of my older brother swirled in my head like the snow parting around the car. I looked at each with the same sense of wonder. I hadn’t always been able to do that, think about Greg and not hurt down to the marrow of my bones. Talking about him with Jolene had helped, but I still felt the twinge of pain when a memory caught me unaware, like getting the air knocked out of me. I liked to keep those memories near me now that I’d discovered I could.
On the days that we visited, it was harder to hold on to the happy memories. Not because of Greg himself, but because my family pooled our collective sorrow, and it overwhelmed us as we sank under not just our own sadness but each other’s, too.
I noticed Dad’s shoulders tense before I saw the sign or felt the car turn into the parking lot. We kept silent as we piled out and hunkered deeper into our coats. Mom was already there. She withdrew a gloved hand from her pocket and held it up in greeting. We were too far away for me to see whose face she was staring at, but Dad’s gaze was locked on her.
She kissed both Jeremy and me on our cheeks with lips cold enough to make me jump, then she took the hand Dad offered her, and we walked through the arched wrought iron gate of Montgomery Cemetery.
Greg’s headstone was indistinguishable from those around it, but all of us picked out the well-worn path to it without hesitation. Mom was first to approach and bend down to remove twigs and leaves that stabbed through the freshly fallen snow. The bouquet of flowers resting against the headstone was barely withered, but Mom knelt and replaced them with the fresh ones she’d brought. After she removed one glove, her fingers drifted over the engraved letters.
Dad moved to kneel next to her, and she leaned into him. As they spoke to Greg, murmurs reached Jeremy and me, but not the words themselves.
Long minutes passed. Mom cried. At one point Dad took her hand in his and said something to her. She shook her head and tried to pull her hand away while Dad spoke again. I could tell he was asking her something, pleading with her by the look on his face, but she went still until he released her hand. When she finally turned back to Dad, she cupped his face with her hand but said nothing.
Eventually, she looked over her shoulder to beckon Jeremy and me to join them.
* * *
Dad and I walked ahead as we left the cemetery, Mom, with her arm around Jeremy, following several paces behind. I kept casting looks back at them until Dad stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“She’s fine. Jeremy’s with her.”
I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d determined not to for Greg’s sake, but the words came out before I could stop them. “What did you say to her?” Somehow I knew he hadn’t been asking to come back home.
Dad didn’t answer me for several steps. “I love her” was what he finally said. “Despite what you think, I want our family to be together again, but it can’t be like it was before. We have to let go, and your mom isn’t ready to do that yet.”
No, she wasn’t. She clung to Greg more tightly every day.
Letting go didn’t mean forgetting. Angry as I was at Dad, I couldn’t pretend he was saying that. He meant the rest. She had to stop living as though Greg would come home again at any moment. She spoke about him like he was gone, but that wasn’t how she lived, and because of that, none us had been able to fully let go either.
That didn’t mean I agreed with Dad moving out. If anything, I thought that had made her cling even tighter than before. It certainly hadn’t helped her let go.
We needed to be together to do that.
“We should all be with her tonight,” I said. “All of us.”
Instead of tightening his jaw or increasing his pace like I expected, he said, “I know.”
Those words revealed more about his leaving than anything he’d said since the night Mom had helped him pack.
A biting wind stole the breath I needed to respond, and I’d slowed enough by then that Mom and Jeremy were walking abreast with us. None of it made sense to me. Not the way Mom took Dad’s hand again, or the way he tilted his head to rest on hers when more tears spilled onto her cheeks. How could he not see that she needed him so that they could let go together?
When we reached Mom’s car, Dad confounded me yet again when he opened the back door and told Jeremy and me to go home with her, even though it was his weekend.