Are You Sitting Down? (43 page)

I
waited
there for a minute or two like an eaves-dropping parent, listening for their voices from downstairs to rise through a vent in the ceiling.
I thought about getting down on my knees and putting my ear against the floor to try to li
s
ten, but it seemed silly.
And it was silly for me to think their mu
f
fled conversation was intentional so that I couldn’t hear it.
I hes
i
tated for a few minutes, unsure if I should go downstairs or not.

I stood at the door to the bedroom with my hand on the knob, rehearsing a conversation in my head which I knew would never take place.
Too much time had passed for me to change my mind and
still
blame Travis for taking Justin away from me.
No matter how many questions I had about the last ten years of Justin’s life away from this home, the answers wouldn’t bring him back.
No matter how Travis might answer, I knew his words would not appease me.

I opened the door slowly, expecting it to creak on its hinges.
It didn’t.
I slid into the hallway up against the wall like some sort of
burglar or spy
.
Cocking my head to one side, I strained to hear their voice
s
rising up the stairs.
I could only make out an occasional word or two, nothing that signified they were tal
k
ing about Justin.
I stuck my hand into my pocket and felt the medal’s box and the piece of receipt paper.
I had almost forgo
t
ten them there tucked into the warm folds of my housecoat.
I took them out and opened the small box.
I took out the medal
and
the
cotton
it lay on
and placed the receipt in the bottom of the box.
I covered it with the cotton and laid the medal back inside.
Closing the lid, I slipped the box back into my pocket and then descended the stairs.

Manny said he thought I was asleep
.
It was a lie I’d e
x
pect from him.
Travis could have been here for several hours and Manny would have kept him all to himself if he could.
D
y
ing to flirt with him and unable to keep his hands to himself, he’d practically drool over Travis.
He’d keep calm just because of who Travis was, but inside his head he’d be committing u
n
thinkable acts.
Travis would leave and Manny would rush to the bathroom to lock the door and abuse himself.

Travis stood up to hug me.
It was a distant hug with a light pat on the back, not the presumable warm bear hug he’d give
n
his Mom when greeting her at the door.
I was not going to be the first to bring up Justin, despite us really having nothing else to talk about.
It was Travis who mentioned him first though when he said he was going to visit Justin’s grave tomorrow.
I knew he would ask us to come along, and I wouldn’t go with him anyway.
Neither of us would be able to say the things out loud we’d want to say to
Justin
if we were standing there alone.

At the top of the stairs, I had decided to give the medal to Travis
.
I didn’t want it to seem like a last minute Christmas gift I pulled out of a closet or drawer, so I started talking about Ju
s
tin’s first recital.
I liked watching Travis squirm when he’d didn’t know the name of the song Justin played.
The Winter Waltz.
I made Justin play it for me from time to time all the way through high school, and especially during the holidays.
I doubted he ever mentioned it to Travis because I had made him play it for me so much.
It was still nice to have a memory of Justin without Travis in it.

There were many
.
A
fter all, Justin didn’t meet Travis until after high school and after two years at the community co
l
lege.
But, since he’d been gone from our lives long before his death, those memories had grown harder to find.
Letting go of one more of them was not as hard as I thought it would be.
I took the box out of my coat pocket and handed it to Travis.

He opened the lid and admired the medal in front of us.
The look in his eyes was of sincere appreciation.
I meant it when I told him Justin would have wanted him to have it.
Manny fid
g
eted next to me like a jealous kid brother who had wanted the shiny coin instead.
I realized this was the closest I’d sat next to Manny in years.
I wanted to get up and move to the chair across from him, but kept my seat on the sofa to avoid emba
r
rassing him in front of our guest.

Justin put the medal back in its box, not lifting the co
t
ton to find the receipt.
I knew he wouldn’t throw the box away, so I decided not to tell him about it.
Some day, sooner or later, he’d find it and I knew
it
would be a pleasant surprise for him.
He’d wonder if I had put it there.
Or maybe he’d think I never knew the r
eceipt was there at all.
He
would
remove
the piece of p
a
per and
unfold
it, and his mind would race with an array of memories from that night
with Justin
at the coffee shop.

Travis would imagine Justin had put the receipt there in its safe place.
I found solace in knowing that although Travis would never suspect I put the receipt there for him, it would be me who was ultimately r
e
sponsible for his fond reminiscence, just as I had felt when I found Justin’s awards in the basement.

Perhaps he’d place the receipt in a frame or in a me
m
ory album, or maybe he’d put it back in the box under the medal and tuck it away in a special place.
Travis might not ever r
e
move the complete contents at all to find the receipt.

It didn’t matter.

That minuscule piece of paper, which had obviously been important to Justin
for some reason
, was now with Travis
.
And as I told him when I gave it to him, Justin would have wanted him to have it.

It was my gift now to the both of them.

Lorraine
 

A holiday, especially Christmas, makes it easier to fo
r
get about the problems in life from the day before.
We celebrate the birth of Christ, and yet we also celebrate the birth of our family traditions.
A smoked ham, a pecan pie, a strand of co
l
or
ed
lights on the outside of the house,
stockings on the mantel, greeting cards adorning the doorway, or a tree for each of the kids’ rooms are all things we hold close.
They are all physical things, but unlike people, they are the things that have been there year after year.
They help us to remember.

Having all of my kids here was most important of all.
It rarely happens, at any time of the year much less during the holidays.
To think this year could have been the best year of all
was
just selfish of me.
There has always been a broken toy, tears to dry, fights to break up, or in-laws to visit instead.
Then, Frank left us and I never thought another Christmas could feel complete without him.
I wondered if things might have been any different had I already told the kids about the cancer.

Ellen called and told me her and Mark
ha
d made amends
.
Who could ask for a better gift for her and her family than that? They came and got Robbie and Rachel a few hours after she had left.
Santa had already come to their house, so the kids were anxious to get home.
I was almost jealous that Ellen got to spend the night with her family tonight.

Sebastian kissed me good-bye on the cheek, eager to go back to his apartment or wherever young
men
go after visiting with their family on Christmas.
Martin and Marline eventually retired to their home up the street with the kids.
Calvin said his good-bye and wished me a Merry Christmas, thanking me and apologizing for the evening.
I told him no apology was nece
s
sary.

I expected Clare to leave too, but she and Jake stayed.
I was glad because I wasn’t ready to be all alone again.
We sat down
on
the floor beneath the amber glow of the lights on the tree and entertained Jake with his new toys.
He soon grew tired and was ready for bed.
Clare took him upstairs and decided to turn in too.

I tidied the kitchen, storing away the leftovers and ta
k
ing out the trash.
A mother can never relax until the kitchen is clean.
Ma
rcus
greeted me at the back porch, hoping for a plate
of scraps.
I didn’t want to disappoint twice in one evening, so I fixed him a plate.

“Merry Christmas, Kitty,” I said as I stroked the back of his neck.

He purred loudly, devouring the bits of ham on the plate in front of him.

Back inside, I retrieved a large black plastic bag from under the kitchen sink and took it into the living room.
I filled it with the torn paper and ribbon from the opened gifts.
Like a hobo digging through a dumpster, I salvaged gift bags and bows from the paper which I could store away and use again next year.
I found a sparkly gold gift bag which had been used again and again for at least three or four years,
nearly
another trad
i
tion of my own that no one else was aware of.
It was now torn down one side.
I hesitated, but placed it in the bag with the other trash anyway.
Everyone had offered to help clean up b
e
fore they left, but I urged them to just leave it.
By now
I was quite accustomed to picking up the pieces of the holiday at the end of the night.

Satisfied with the living room, I carried the trash bag full of paper outside.
Ma
rcus
’s plate was empty so I picked it up and slid it into the dishwasher
when I came back inside.
Ma
rcus
ran under my feet to come inside too.
He didn’t usually like to come inside much, but I guess he had had enough of the snow
.
I sat down to
rest my feet and
admire the tree
.
It
looked so bare without any gifts under it.
It was like coming home and finding a piece of furniture someone ha
s
moved
across the room
.
Your mind refuses to settle on the changes that ha
ve
been made.

With
the cat
on my lap, I guess I had dozed off for a bit.
I was dreaming of Travis.
He was in his car and headed back to
Memphis
.
I could see him as if I was a passenger sitting next to him, but he didn’t know I was there.
He looked like he was crying. I called out to him, but he couldn’t hear me.
I was not really there.

Suddenly, a
small knock at the door woke me
from the dream
.
I checked my watch and it was just
thirty
minutes b
e
fore
midnight
.
I stood up to go to the door, picking up Ma
rcus
from my lap and putting him in the chair behind me.
I checked the peep hole to see who could possibly be at the door this late.
It was Travis.
I quickly unlocked the door and opened it for him as if he was a long lost relative who’d come home at last.

“Sorry, couldn’t find my key,” he said with a shrug.

“It’s okay.
Want to come in?”
I asked.

“I thought maybe you’d want to go looking at Chris
t
mas lights
,” he said in a stutter.

“Now?
It’s late.
Do you think people will still have their lights on?”

“Yours are on.”

“Only because I fell asleep and forgot to turn them off.”

“Well, if we don’t see any, we’ll just keep driving around the block and going by your house.”

“Let me get my coat.”

Travis stayed at the door like
some
polite
delivery pe
r
son who was just dropping something off
,
even
the
smile
on his face
seemed a bit
unnatural
.
I
thought
he
might
still
be
mad at me, but when I returned to the door with my coat on he offered me his arm.
I took it and let him lead me outside and down the steps of the porch.
He opened the passenger’s door to his car for me and closed it once I was in.
It was still warm inside from his drive back from wherever he’d gone.
I watched him walk around and get in behind the wheel.
He looked at me and smiled. I raised my eyebrows and smiled back, still unsure of his true intentions.
He started the car and turned down the r
a
dio.

“I guess I owe you an apology, don’t I?”

“I think I owe you one too,” I said.

“No, it was all my fault.
I blew up at Calvin for no re
a
son at all.”

“Well, it was my fault for not telling you about Calvin before today.”

“I would have liked to have known you were seeing som
e
one.
Everyone else knew, didn’t they?”

“Yes, everyone knew
,” I said after some hesitation.

“Why didn’t you tell him about me?”
Travis asked.

“I guess I forgot.”

“Forgot?”

“Well, I didn’t forget, and I didn’t intentionally forget to tell Calvin about you, Travis.
It’s just one of those things I felt didn’t matter.
I didn’t feel the need to explain to him the pe
r
sonal lives of all my children before inviting him over.”

It broke my heart to hear Travis ask if I was ashamed of him.
He starred blankly across the steering wheel as if waiting for something or someone to appear in the distance, when act
u
ally both of
us
were just facing the
back
of my car
parked in front of him
as we sat there in the driveway
.
Yet, I knew his mind was looking at something else.
I wasn’t ashamed of him.
I wasn’t ashamed of any of my children.
I had yet to explain most of my own faults
to
Calvin in the little time I had know
n
him much less those of my kids, but I knew Travis wouldn’t understand that.

“I’m not ashamed of you Travis.
I’m proud of you b
e
cause of who you are.
Not just
that
.
That’s just a part of you that doesn’t make me feel any different about you as a person.”

“It just seems like you were hiding it, even hiding him from me,” he said.

“I barely know Calvin.
Do you think he sat down the first day we met and told me all about his
life
?
Your sexuality shouldn’t be an instigator on who I choose to see, just like Jake, or your brother’s drug use, or what happened to Ellen shouldn’t be either. Those things are all just a part of life.
And as far as hiding Calvin from you, that’s not why I hadn’t told you about him.
Your opinion means the most to me, so I wanted him to be a surprise
I guess
.”