Beneath the Weight of Sadness (3 page)

That’s the part that I truly can’t bear: my Truman lying in the mud without me to hold him, to press my face and cheek against his soft blond hair, to smell his Truman smell. How could I have been robbed? What God would’ve done this? I used to believe that God was magnanimous, that he was kind. Now I know him for who he is. Now I know that he waits for me to go outside so that he can blow a great breeze when I am not drinking my wine and I will be carried away, never to return to the possibility.

There is possibility in everything
, I used to tell Truman.
It doesn’t matter. It does not matter. You are Truman Engroff. You have the whole world waiting for you, and I and your father know what and who you are, what magic you carry in that great brain of yours.

And so I wait and avoid his door and the outside unless I have tanked myself up with wine. Who used to say that?
He got tanked up!
I don’t recall, but that’s what I do until my arms and legs begin to weigh me down. And then I go outside and listen. I wait. I know I must wait.

Ethan

The day of Truman’s death

My dear sweet boy. I couldn’t ask anyone else to identify him. I had to. I knew I did. Truman would have wanted it that way. He was a brave young man. I often thought of him in contrast to his great-grandfather, my grandfather, a one-star general. My son matched up to him by every measure. I remember the day he called me into his room. He was thirteen.

“Dad, I need to talk to you.”

I was rummaging in the refrigerator for a snack. Amy is a fantastic cook, but we never eat until after eight. She says it’s uncivilized to eat at six in the evening like most Americans do. I looked out from the door of the refrigerator and I could see on his face that something was wrong. With Truman I was used to something being wrong. He has always been a complex kid and he’s always in some turmoil, although it is usually mild turmoil. Teachers who don’t like him, Carly and him arguing, his aggravation at not being driven to school like his friends were, his anger at me or his mother for some infraction. I could tell this was something different. Maybe it was the sag of his shoulders or that his black eyes didn’t look so black, or maybe it was just the fear I saw as he stared back at me.

“What’s up, Tru?”

“Not here. In my room.”

I closed the refrigerator door and followed him, watching him as we walked up the stairs: a perfect concave between his shoulder blades, a perfect curve at the bottom of his spine, a perfect Truman butt. My Truman has a great body. He’s tall and lanky, but also incredibly strong and athletic. On the soccer field he was always the fastest kid. He was just never aggressive enough, though I didn’t dare say anything. He took everything as if it were a criticism, even when it was meant as constructive feedback.

He twisted as he flopped onto his bed, facing me. I sat down on an overstuffed coach he’d persuaded his mother to buy for his room. I knew he was experimenting with cigarettes and I felt confident he was going to tell me he was smoking. He always came to me about subjects that required discussion of lifestyle. Truman knew that his mother would always need me to negotiate the terms of whatever was a new addition to his interests. Amy had found matches in his room and had
come to me, alarmed. I reminded her of the period we’d tried smoking, how young we’d been. Truman would not become addicted to cigarettes, I knew. He was too cognizant of his body and the damage cigarettes would do to it, smoker’s cough, compromising his endurance. Truman was not flippant or indifferent about so many things other teenagers found irrelevant to their own lives.

He looked at me, then he put his hands to his face and began to cry.

“What, Truman?” I asked.

I wanted to go to him but I didn’t. Truman didn’t always like to be touched. He hardly ever cried even when he was a kid, so I was alarmed by the sudden show of emotion.

He shook his head, still hiding his face.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong, Truman. Whatever it is, we can fix it.”

He shook his head again.

I got up and went to the bed and sat down beside him, put my arm around his shoulder. We didn’t speak, but his body was trembling under my touch.

“Truman, you have to tell me,” I finally said.

I knew it wasn’t grades. We had been over that with him so many times. I had a feeling it was something that would scare the hell out of me, but I had no idea what that something was.

“What do you think about me, Dad?”

I laughed and pulled him closer to me. I felt slight relief at the question. His shoulders were becoming broad, and I could feel his developing strength.

“You know how I feel about you, Tru. You are one of my favorite people I’ve ever known, plus the fact that you are my son and I love you.”

I had told him this many times before, and he had always accepted it as part of our relationship. It was true. In my forty-eight years there was no one I’d enjoyed more.

“What if I told you something that would change that?”

“Nothing would ever change that, Tru. Nothing.”

He took a deep breath and let out a sigh. I could feel him tremble.

“Try me,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. I wondered what it could be. Drugs? A girl pregnant? I couldn’t imagine.

Finally he took his hands from his face and turned to me, face streaked with tears.

“I’m pretty sure I’m gay, Dad.”

He watched me intently as his shoulders slumped, my arm still around them.

“Why do you say that, Tru?”

I had never anticipated this moment. I needed to gain control of what was going on in my head so that it would match what I said to him. I’d thought so often of Truman taking my name for his future children, thought of all of us tossing the ball around, having dinners in celebration of our Engroff destiny. I had always wanted things different from the way I’d been raised.

“It’s not like it’s a revelation, Dad. I’ve been feeling it since I was a kid.”

This, from a thirteen-year-old boy.

“But what about all the girls…”

“That’s why I know,” he interrupted. “I’ve been around all these girls—Carly the most—and even though I love her and I like being around other girls, I’m not attracted to them.”

He began to cry again. I stroked his hair.

“When I was your age, Tru, I was in love with my best friend. Guys go through a stage where they only want to be around the guy they have a close friendship with. It’s only natural.”

He nodded his head. “It’s not like that, Dad. I think about weird things with guys.”

He looked at me to see my reaction. I just nodded.

“I always thought the feelings would go away, but they haven’t. They’ve gotten more intense.”

“I don’t care,” I finally said.

I didn’t feel generous making that statement. I could tell now that Truman had been agonizing over this for a long time and I didn’t want him to feel pain from my reaction, whatever that was. But I knew I truly didn’t care that he was gay. He was my son and that was all that mattered. I wondered why I wasn’t feeling more of something else: hurt, alarm, anger, shock. We were quiet for a long time, just sitting there in his room, the only sound our breathing. Finally I said, “I have a deal, Tru.”

“What?” he said.

“How about if we just keep this between the two of us? We can talk about it whenever you like and we’ll see how you feel now that you’ve told me. Now that you alone don’t have to feel the burden of your…of these feelings.”

He shook his head and smiled his Truman smile.

“Do you want to see someone? A therapist or someone you would feel safe talking to?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll talk to you if it’s okay.”

I leaned in and kissed him on the lips. A few tears ran down my cheeks, and he wiped them away.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry it’s this way.”

“No,” I said. “No. It isn’t that. I’m just happy you came to me, Tru. I’m happy you trusted me enough to tell me.”

“I knew I would tell you. Mom wouldn’t understand or she’d worry too much or she’d try and convert me somehow.”

I laughed out loud. “If it’s alright with you, we’ll keep your mother in the dark for a while. We’ll see how you feel about all this and then, if nothing changes, we’ll tell her.”

“No, Dad. I’ll tell her when I think the time is right.”

“I know you will, Tru.” I took his face in my hands. “You are a remarkable boy. I don’t know if you’ll ever know how much I love you.”

“I do, Dad. I do know.”

I got up from his bed and walked to the door. I turned and he was lying on his back on the bed, his legs crossed.

“You don’t worry about anything anymore,” I said. “Whatever you feel is right. I know that about you. I’ve always known that about you. You’re my son and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“I know,” he said and then I closed the door softly behind me.

A sheet was thrown over him except for his head and neck. I didn’t have to get close to know it was my Truman. I could tell by the hair, the same hair I’d tousled so many times in his short lifetime. The outline of his chest and stomach, his strong thighs, his big feet, size thirteen, outlined beneath the sheet. Amy said we could never keep him in shoes. I had to look away when I saw what had been done to his face. I won’t describe it. I can’t bear to even think about it. I get up in the middle of the night because sometimes that moment is looming above me in the darkness of the room. I slip out of bed and go down to the kitchen for some whiskey.

There was a patrolman with me and, beyond the metal gurney my son lay on, there was a tall man wearing a greenish smock that almost matched his thinning gray hair. He neither smiled nor looked toward me. I remember that. He was probably impatient to get down to his work of butchering my son even more, cutting him open in order to find out how Truman had died. But I already knew how he had died. Someone who should not be on this earth murdered him. That’s all that needed to be known. I had the urge to ask the man in the smock if he had children. I wanted to tell him that what he was about to do he was doing to a boy whose parents loved him. A boy who thought thoughts he couldn’t possibly imagine. But I was too shaken, too weak to speak.

When I turned, the patrolman gently took my elbow and guided me to the steel door. When we got on the other side he said, “I’m sorry, sir. I really am sorry.”

He didn’t have to ask if that was Truman Engroff. I knew that he knew that already. His voice was soft, not like you would expect from a cop. The words so tender in contrast to what I knew and had just seen that it made me stop and weep. It could have been hours or only a few minutes. However long it was, the patrolman never moved and never released his hand from my elbow. When I was through, he led me up a set of stairs and into a brightly lit foyer and then outside. We stood there for a moment and I had to remember if this was the way I’d entered the building. I remember that the sun was still bright but closer to the edge of the horizon.

The two of us were there in that position for a long time.

Finally the patrolman said, “Detective Parachuk has the case, sir.” He hesitated, still standing next to me, then spoke again in the same soft voice. “The town of Persia has handed the investigation over to the state police. They already know they are not equipped to handle the…magnitude of this. Even so, Detective Parachuk will be the lead investigator. Everyone will have to answer to him.”

I knew from elections that Parachuk was the chief of the Persia Police Department.

I think I looked at him for the first time then. He was a handsome young boy, probably only five or six years older than Truman. He looked back at me but he had the decency not to smile or even appear sad. He just met my own look.

“He’s a good detective. You couldn’t have asked for a better one.”

Anger flared in me.

“I didn’t expect to ask at all.”

“He asked me to tell you that he will want to see you and your wife very soon. He needs to ask you some questions.”

“When?”

“Within the next few hours. He wants to find whoever did this. He will need your help to do that.”

“That’s my Truman in there. He isn’t coming home tonight. He isn’t coming home tomorrow.”

I felt tears stream down my face again and, again, to his credit, he didn’t move, didn’t try to console, didn’t look away or seem embarrassed. He just watched. I wondered if he too had suffered tragedy.

“How old are you?” I was finally able to ask.

“Twenty-five, sir.”

“My Truman is seventeen. He’ll be eighteen in September.”

“Yes.”

I looked at him carefully. “I need to get home to my wife.”

“Do you want me to drive you?”

“I don’t know how else I would get there,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “You drove here, sir. I believe that’s your car over there.” He pointed to my black Lexus in the first row of a sparse parking lot.

“Yes,” I said.

I fished in my pocket for my keys and finally pulled them out. My hands were trembling.