Only Child(58)

I heard a sound next to me. It was Mimi crying. She was staring at the TV, and her whole face looked crumpled up with wrinkles.

“How are you and your family coping with your loss? You and your husband? And I know you have another son, Zach, who is six,” the woman Jennifer said. My face started to feel hot when she said my name.

“I think all you can do is try to take it one day at a time,” Mommy said, and she moved forward in the big chair and held on to the tissue with both of her hands. “Because…you have to, you’ve got no choice but to.” More tears were running down her face, but she didn’t use the tissue to wipe them off. She just let them drip down.

“I mean, every morning you think, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can make it through this day, but then you do somehow because you have another child who needs you. And you do it again the next day and the next. Every day that passes is one day more that I haven’t held my son, that I haven’t seen my son, that I haven’t seen his beautiful face and his smile. The gap between when I was last with him and now keeps getting bigger, and I can’t stop it from happening. I want to pause time, stay as close to him as I can. Because this…this…” Mommy made a pause and her hands in her lap were shaking a lot. “This is the closest I’m ever going to be to my son again. I can’t bear waking up in the morning and feeling that the gap has gotten even bigger. That my son has slipped away from me even further.”

Mommy picked up her tissue and blew her nose. “My life without my son is an impossible life to live, but I have to live it and keep living it every day.” Mommy’s last words came out like big choking sounds, and the woman Jennifer leaned over from her big brown chair and she gave another tissue to Mommy, and then she petted Mommy’s hand.

Mimi made an “Oh” sound and covered her face with her hands.

The TV switched to a picture of Mommy, but farther away, and she wasn’t crying anymore, weird, like you blinked and she just stopped.

The woman Jennifer said, “Mrs. Taylor, you and a few of the other victims’ families have come together and you are beginning to come forward to voice your anger about this tragic event that you believe might have been avoidable. Could you tell me more about that?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Mommy said. “I…we…don’t believe that we can move on without…if the people we think are responsible are not being held accountable.” Mommy talked fast, and I watched her hands mushing the tissue like it was a ball of Play-Doh.

“When you say ‘the people we think are responsible,’ you mean…,” Jennifer said.

“The shooter’s family. His parents,” Mommy said. Now she said the thing about Charlie and his wife, and she said it on the TV. Everyone was going to hear it, and probably even Charlie was seeing it on his TV right now.

“So you feel that Charles Ranalez’s parents should be held accountable for what their son did? Do you think they are partially to blame?” Jennifer asked.

“Oh, I think they’re more than partially to blame,” Mommy said. Her voice sounded loud all of a sudden. Mimi closed her eyes and let out her breath long and slow. I felt like I wanted to close my eyes, too. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t like how Mommy was talking, and I kind of wanted to stop watching.

“Their son had been ill for years and years. And it appears there were all kinds of warning signs that he was on the path to…to something bad. Yet as far as we know there was no medical supervision or intervention in the past several years. Someone doesn’t just snap like that out of nowhere. This was a long time coming. And my son…my son might still be here if…if things had been dealt with differently.”

Mimi stood up and pointed the remote at the TV and turned the volume all the way down. “OK, Zach, I think that’s enough,” she said.

I was still looking at the TV, and I saw Mommy talking for a little while longer, and the woman Jennifer said something a couple more times, and then the picture went back to the man and the woman Jennifer and the other woman on the couch. They were all talking, I could tell by their lips moving, and they shook their heads a lot, yes and no.

“Let’s get you some breakfast, sweetie, OK?” Mimi said, and she turned off the TV. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her make me eggs. The whole time I had a hurting feeling in my belly, a bad feeling, and then I realized it was an embarrassed feeling. But it wasn’t embarrassed about me. It was embarrassed about Mommy.





[ 34 ]


    Sympathy


THE DOOR OPENED and I knew it was going to be Daddy. When I peeked through the handsome shirts and jackets, I saw a hand swinging a bag of cookies through the crack in the door. Then the bag started talking to me: “Hello, I wanted to see if you might be interested in eating me, young man.” It was really Daddy making a funny high voice, and I answered in a funny voice, “Yes, I would be very interested in eating you, thank you!” I leaned forward and snatched the bag out of Daddy’s hand.

The closet door opened all the way and Daddy smiled at me and asked, “In the mood for sharing? Cookies and space?” and I told him yes, so he came crawling in.

“Next time you have to bring your own sleeping bag or like a blanket or something. This one is too small for two people,” I told Daddy.