Mrs. Fletcher(4)
Not that it was Eve’s fault. Ted was the guilty party, the selfish bastard who’d abandoned a perfectly good family to start over with a woman he’d met through the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist (he’d falsely claimed his marital status was “Separated,” a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one). Eve had been blindsided by his betrayal and devastated by his refusal to get counseling or make even a token effort to save the marriage. He just pronounced it dead and buried, unilaterally declaring the past two decades of his life to be a regrettable mistake and vowing to do better on his next try.
I have a second chance, he’d told her, his voice quivering with emotion. Do you see how precious that is?
What about me? she’d replied. What about your son? Aren’t we precious, too?
I’m a jerk, he explained. You both deserve better.
The whole world acknowledged her status as an innocent victim—even Ted agreed!—but Eve still felt complicit in the breakup. The marriage had been floundering for a long time before Ted found his way to Craigslist, and she hadn’t done a thing to make it better, hadn’t even admitted there was a problem. Through her own passivity, she had enabled the disaster, letting her husband drift away and her family fall apart. She’d failed as a wife, and therefore as a mother, and Brendan was the one who’d paid the price.
The damage he’d suffered was subtle and hard to pinpoint. Other people marveled at what an impressive young man he was and how well he’d weathered the divorce. Eve was delighted by the praise—it meant everything to her—and she even believed it, up to a point. Her son did possess a number of good qualities. He was handsome and popular, a gifted athlete who never lacked for female attention. He’d done well in school, good enough to be admitted to Fordham and Connecticut College, though he’d ultimately settled on Berkshire State University, partly because it was more affordable, but mainly, as he cheerfully informed anyone who asked, because BSU was a party school and he liked to party. That was how he presented himself to the world—as a big, friendly, fun-loving bro, a dude you’d totally want on your team or in your frat—and the world seemed happy to take him at his word.
To Eve, though, he was still the bewildered boy who couldn’t understand why his father had left and why they couldn’t just make him come home. For the first couple of months after Ted moved out, Brendan had slept with a picture of his dad under his pillow, and more than once she’d found him wide awake in the middle of the night, talking to the photo with tears streaming down his face. He’d toughened up over time—his muscles turned wiry and his eyes got hard and the picture disappeared—but something had gone out of him in the process, all the boyish softness and vulnerability that had touched her so deeply. He just wasn’t as nice a person as he used to be—not nearly as sweet or as kind or as lovable—and she couldn’t forgive herself for letting that happen, for not knowing how to protect him, or how to fix what was broken.
*
They hit a traffic jam on the edge of campus, a festive convoy of incoming freshmen and their families. Inching toward the Longfellow Residential Area, they were cheered along the way by clusters of upperclassmen in matching red T-shirts who were apparently being paid to greet the newcomers. Some of them were dancing and others were holding up handmade signs that said, Welcome Home! and First Years Rock! However mercenary its origins, their enthusiasm was so infectious that Eve couldn’t help grinning and waving back.
“What are you doing?” Brendan muttered, still grumpy from his nap.
“Just being friendly,” she said. “If that’s all right with you.”
“Whatever.” He slumped lower in his seat. “Knock yourself out.”
Brendan had been assigned to Einstein Hall, one of the infamous high-rise dorms that made Longfellow look like a public housing project. Eve had heard alarming things about the party culture in this part of campus, but the vibe seemed reassuringly wholesome as they pulled into the unloading area and were swarmed by a crew of cheerful and efficient student movers. Within minutes, the movers had emptied the van, transferring all of Brendan’s possessions into a big orange bin on wheels. Eve stood by and watched, happy to be spared another round of sweaty labor. A scruffy kid whose T-shirt identified him as Crew Leader shut the hatch and gave her a businesslike nod.
“Okay, Mom. We’ll take this fine young man up to his room now.”
“Great.” Eve locked the van with the remote key. “Let’s go.”
The crew leader shook his head. Despite the ninety-degree heat, he was wearing a knitted winter cap with earflaps, the material so sweat-stiffened that the flaps curled out like Pippi Longstocking’s pigtails. “Not you, Mom. You need to move your vehicle to the Visitors Lot.”
This didn’t seem right to Eve. She’d seen lots of other mothers heading into the dorm with their kids. An Indian lady in a lime-green sari was accompanying her daughter at that very moment. But even as Eve began to point this out, she realized that the other mothers must have had husbands who were taking care of the parking. Everyone seemed to agree that this was the proper division of labor—the men parked the cars while the women stayed with their kids. Eve softened her voice, pleading for clemency.
“I’ll just be a few minutes. I need to help him unpack.”
“That’s great, Mom.” An edge of impatience had entered the crew leader’s voice. “But first you have to move the vehicle. There’s a lot of people waiting.”