The World Played Chess (84)

To remind him, three young women stopped by the room to walk to the orientation with Beau. My son wasn’t rushing us, but he was moving on. Beau needed to get away, and I understood why. He needed a fresh start, a place where he wouldn’t be reminded of what had happened, of death. He needed a place far enough away that he couldn’t be called home to every family function or crisis. Life had punched Beau in the face, as it had punched William Goodman and Todd Pearson. He was recovering in his own way.

It was part of growing up. It was part of realizing you don’t know a damn thing about the world, that at times, you weren’t even playing the same game.

I had said goodbye the night before we left Burlingame, as Beau and I reclined on the leather sofa in the family room watching a Seinfeld rerun. Elizabeth had gone to bed to read, and Mary Beth was out with her cousin. I had wanted to say something from my heart, but I struggled to find the right words. Then I thought of William’s journal, which I had not yet finished, though I neared the end. The entries provided perspective, as William’s stories had provided me with perspective before I, too, went off to college.

“You’re a good man,” I said, lowering the volume on another George Costanza tirade. “You’ve become a good man. I’m proud of who you’ve become.”

Beau put down a bowl of ice cream, sensing—or perhaps dreading—this father-son moment. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I’ve already been to college, and I have no desire to go back. I can’t live in your dorm room. You’ll have to figure out things on your own, just as I did. You’ll have to determine who you are, the man you’re going to be. You’ll have to decide if your word stands for something or rings hollow. You’ll have to decide if you will treat women with dignity and respect, whether you’re the guy who gets drunk at every party and does something stupid he wakes to regret.”

Beau nodded and with solemnity said, “Which were you?” He chuckled nervously, then added, “I won’t be that guy, Dad.”

I was rushing, trying to beat my tears. I thought of a conversation I had with William in 1979. “You’ll have to decide if you’ll have a relationship with God, and what that relationship will be. I hope you do.”

I was going to tell him the rest of his life is both a long time and the blink of an eye, but Beau knew that also, from harsh experience. Instead, I said, “What you choose to do with your life is now up to you. Find your passion. Then find a way to make a living at it. Do so, and you’ll never work a day in your life. Most of all, remember that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but only a moment to destroy it.”

I paused again, to press back tears.

“And always, always remember, Beau, that you are loved.”

“I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

I do not recall my father saying those three words to me, though I know he loved me. Words were just not his way. I saw his love when he dropped us at school each morning and then drove to the pharmacy to work those long hours, in the way he watched our grammar school basketball games after mass, then hurried home to work on the cars so my older siblings could drive to school. He had given his life to us. A father at twenty-one. Six kids by the time he turned thirty.

But man, I had always wanted to hear those three words from him.

I wanted my son to hear them from me.

“I love you, too,” I said.

In the dorm room, Elizabeth and Mary Beth gathered and flattened the empty cardboard boxes. Mary Beth looked as distraught and uncertain as Elizabeth, though for an entirely different reason. She no doubt contemplated that she would be the lone child at home and would be living life under a parental microscope. Outside, cars lined the dorm’s circular drive. Young men and women dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops walked the sidewalk wearing expensive sunglasses and broad smiles. Camp college was underway, four years ripe with potential and possibilities. We carried the cartons that had held my son’s life to the car, and I slid them into the back while my wife said her goodbye.

Elizabeth wore sunglasses, but they did not hide the tears that ran down her cheeks. She had her arms around Beau’s neck, stretched onto her toes, whispering in his ear. Her baby boy was a man.

And he was leaving home. Leaving her.

I remained stoic, for my son’s sake. When at last Beau had hurried off, we got into the car. Elizabeth sat in the back seat, willingly giving the front seat to Mary Beth. In the rearview mirror I watched her stare out the window as Los Angeles slipped away, and we drove through long stretches of brown nothingness, silent.

I held it together, mostly. Grief would come over me like a rogue wave. My stomach muscles gripped, and I emitted forced, choked sobs.

“Dad. Are you all right?” Mary Beth asked when the first wave struck, thinking perhaps I was having a heart attack.

Unable to speak, I nodded and waited for the wave to roll over me.

Elizabeth did not ask if I was okay. She knew the pain, and she knew, better than anyone, that the only salve was time.

As I drove those many miles home, I ruminated on the months before my son’s departure for college, and I thought also of the summer months before I went to college. Though the circumstances had certainly been different, the waves that hit Beau his senior year of high school had provided him a radical and harsh new perspective on life and death, just like the waves that had hit me.