Family Blessings (2 page)

Well, not me," he said. I love being a cop. It feels good to be out there helping people." Maybe you'll all feel better if you dwell on that. Greg Reston was a happy man." Wender let some seconds tick away before adding, "I'll be here all day long if any of you need to talk .

. . or pray . . . or reminisce. I think we'd all feel a little better if we said a prayer right now."

Throughout the prayer Christopher lost touch with the chaplain's words.

He was thinking of Greg's family, especially his mother, and the shock that lay ahead for her. She was a widow with two other children-Janice, twenty-three, and Joey, fourteen--but Greg had been the oldest, the one she'd relied on most since the death of her husband nine years ago. "A strong woman," Greg had called her countless times, "the strongest woman I know . . . and the best." In all his life Christopher Lallek had never heard anyone praise a mother the way Greg Reston had praised his. The relationship between them had been one of mutual respect, admiration and love, the kind that brought a hollow lump of envy to Christopher's stomach as he'd heard about it over the past couple of years since Greg had joined the force. Greg and his mother could talk about anything--sports, money, sex, philosophy, even the occasional hurt feelings that crop up in the best-balanced families. Whatever it was, those two had discussed it, and afterward Chris would hear about it from Greg. He knew more about Mrs. Reston than many people knew about their own mothers, and because of it he had acquired a vicarious admiration and respect for her such as he'd never had for his own parents.

The prayer ended. Feet shuffled. Somebody blew his nose. Chris drew a deep, shaky sigh and said to Wender, "Greg and I are . . .

were roommates. I'd like to tell his family."

The chaplain squeezed his arm and said, "All right, but are you sure you're okay yourself" "I'll make it."

Wender dropped his hand and nodded solemnly.

Outside, the sun was still radiant. It hurt his burning eyes. He covered them with his dark glasses and got into his car, scarcely noticing the hot upholstery beneath his bare legs. He started the engine then forgot to put the car in gear. He's not really dead. He's going to pull in beside me and come over here and lean his hands against the car door and say, "See you out at the lake."

Only he wouldn't.

Never again.

Christopher had no awareness of passing time, only of a lump of sorrow so overwhelming it controlled every atom of his being.

Sluggishly he put the car in gear and pulled out onto the street, functioning within a haze of emotions that removed him from the mundane process of operating an automobile. He searched for Greg's face as he'd last seen it, struggling to recall the absolute final glimpse he'd had of his friend. Greg had been going out the apartment door--that was it--dressed for the beach with a red bill cap on his head, an apple in one hand and his keys in the other. He'd anchored the apple between his teeth while opening the door, then had taken a bite and said with his mouth full, "See you in an hour or so."

A bill cap instead of a helmet.

Swimming trunks instead of jeans.

A T-shirt instead of a leather jacket.

Not even any socks inside his dirty white Nikes.

Chris knew only too well what happened to the victims of motorcycle accidents who failed to wear proper gear.

Skulls crushed . . .

Bones laid bare by the hot blacktop . . .

Skin burned . . .

Sometimes their shoes were never found.

A car horn shook Christopher back to the present. The world swam beyond his tears. He'd been driving at ten miles an hour in a thirty-mile zone and had just gone through a stop sign without slowing.

Hell, he was in no condition to be operating a vehicle.

He'd be the next one to kill somebody if he didn't look out.

He dried his eyes on his shirt shoulders and speeded up to thirty, trying to push the horrifying images from his mind. He had to get his emotions pulled together before he reached Mrs. Reston's house.

The thought of her brought a billow of dread. A mother--God almighty, how do you tell a mother a thing like this? Especially a mother who's lost a child before?

She had lost her secondborn to SIDS--Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when Greg had been so young he'd scarcely remembered it. But she'd talked about that time with Greg, after he'd gotten older.

It had been her philosophy that Greg had admired so and set out to duplicate. She'd held that nothing was as important as the happiness of her marriage and her family, and to let either be undermined by extended grief would have been unpardonable. She'd had a responsibility to be a happy mother and wife for her husband and surviving son, and she'd done so by immediately trying to get pregnant again. The result had been Greg's younger sister, Janice, two years his junior. Nine years later Joey had been born.

Then at age thirty-six, Greg's mother had been widowed, losing a husband she'd loved immensely. He had died of a brain aneurysm after lingering for three days in a hospital bed. But Mrs. Reston had shown the same grit as before. Left with three children who needed her, no career, and a measly $25,000 in life insurance, she had refused to curl up with grief and self-pity. Instead, she'd consulted a vocational counselor, taken some business courses, spent a year in a trade school, bought herself a florist shop and established a firm foundation for supporting her children for as long as need be.

Strong? The woman was the Rock of Gibraltar. But even rocks can crack under intense pressure.

Driving to her house through the noon heat on this tragic late June day, Christopher Lallek wondered how to break the news that she'd lost another child. There simply was no good way.

Her house wasn't far from the station, just two miles or so.

After spending most of the drive oblivious to his surroundings, Christopher became startlingly alert as he turned onto Benton Street.

It was a shaded avenue that followed a bend of the Mississippi River, with older, well-maintained houses on both sides. Hers was several blocks off Ferry Street, facing southwest, across the street from the river. It was a nice old rambler, white with black shutters and a beige brick planter full of red geraniums flanking the front step. The maples in the yard were mature and as perfectly round as lollipops, as if they'd had professional pruning their entire lives. Around their trunks pink and white petunias bloomed inside circles of brick. The grass was neatly mowed but drying near the curb where an oscillating sprinkler fanned desultorily back and forth. It threw water across Christopher's windshield and his left elbow as he pulled into the driveway and stopped before an oversized detached garage. The garage door was up. One stall was empty, the other held her car, a five-year-old blue Pontiac sedan with some rust surrounding a bumper sticker that said FLOWERS MAKE LIFE LOVELIER.

Chris turned off his engine and sat awhile, staring into the garage at the testimony of her life: rakes and hoes, a garden cart, a bag of charcoal, her dead husband's workbench with tools still hanging above it, an old yellow bicycle hanging from the rafters, probably Greg's.

A new swell of grief struck and he pinched the bridge of his nose while an invisible winch seemed to tighten around his chest. He felt as if he'd swallowed a tennis ball.

Damn you, Greg Why didnt you wear a helmet?

He sat awhile, crying, dimly registering the thought that Mrs. Reston shouldn't leave her garage door open this way, anybody could walk right in and steal anything in sight. Greg used to scold her for it but she'd laughingly reply, "I've known every person on this block for twenty years and nobody locks their garages. Besides, who'd steal anything from me? Who'd want that junk out there? If they need it that badly, let them come in and take it."

But Christopher was a police officer who knew the dangers of leaving doors unlocked, just as Greg had.

Who would warn her to lock up from now on? Who would remind her to have the oil changed in her car? To replace her furnace filter? Who would fix her hoses?

Christopher dried his eyes, put his sunglasses back on, drew a fortifying breath and opened his car door.

Outside, the heat from the blacktop driveway beat up through the soles of his blue rubber thongs. It struck him suddenly what he was wearing--a man shouldn't bring news like this dressed in beach clothes.

He closed up three shirt buttons and was rounding the hood of his car when he encountered the garden hose lying coiled on the driveway waiting for Greg to replace its end.

Everything inside him mounded up volcanically again.

Oh hell, would every reminder of Greg bring this awful affliction?

Sometimes the force of it seemed as if it would send his ribs flying in two directions like a pair of gates bursting open. His life would be a series of reminders from now on, would every one bring this terrible desolation and urge to cry?

He stepped around the coiled hose and continued toward the front door.

It was open.

He stood awhile, looking through the screen, summoning courage.

Inside, from some distant room, a radio softly played an old Neil Diamond song. The front hall led straight to the rear of the house, where a kitchen table stood before an open sliding glass door. A sheer drapery was being sucked and blown against the screen. Beyond it he could see a deck and a big backyard, shaded by trees, where he was supposed to come with Greg for a Fourth of July picnic. He made out the silhouettes of other things: a bouquet on the table, a sweater hanging on the back of a chair, a soda can and purse atop a stack of books, as if she was getting ready to go someplace.

Deeper in the house a faucet ran, then stopped. A female voice sang a line along with Neil Diamond, then disappeared as if around a bedroom doorway off to his right.

He stood in the shade of a small entry roof with a wall jutting to his right and the strong-smelling geraniums poking up out of the planter at his left.

The button for the doorbell was black, mounted in a pitted brass casing.

In his entire life Christopher Lallek had never dreaded doing anything as much as ringing that doorbell.

He knocked instead--somehow a knock seemed gentler--knocked and waited with the tennis ball still filling his throat.

Lee Reston shut off the water, polished the faucet, hung up the towel and gave her head a little shake, watching in the bathroom mirror as her plain brown hair fell into its customary place.

Sometimes she thought about letting it grow, doing something different with it, but she'd never felt comfortable with fuss.

Her hair parted where it would and hung in a short, simple Julie Andrews cut, a blow-and-go hairdo that suited her just fine and seemed to go well with the childish freckles that plagued her whenever summer came.

She gave a yank on the knot holding her wraparound denim skirt at the waist, glanced at her plain white blouse and twirled both of her tiny gold stud earrings in her ears the way she'd been instructed when she'd had them pierced many years ago.

Singing a line from "Cracklin' Rosie," she shut off the bathroom light and zipped around the corner into her bedroom, took a shot of hand lotion from a dispenser on her dresser and was rubbing it in when she heard a knock on the front door.

"Coming!" she yelled, glancing at her wristwatch. Five to twelve already and she was due at the shop at noon. Ah, well, her sister Sylvia was there handling things. She and Sylvia didn't watch clocks on one another.

She cut through the living room on her way to the front door wondering if she'd have to buy a new rubber hose. That darned Greg had promised three times already that he'd come over and fix it, but no luck yet.

Rounding the living room archway into the front hall she was surprised to find her son's apartment mate on the step.

"Christopher!" she greeted, smiling, opening the screen door.

"What are you doing here? I thought you and Greg were going to the lake. Come on in."

"Hello, Mrs. Reston."

"He's not here, if you're looking for him. He promised he'd come over today to put a new end on my hose, but he never showed up.

He still might though. You can wait for him if you want."

He stepped inside, wearing bathing trunks and a wild orange-and green Hawaiian-print shirt, his hairy legs bare, his feet in rubber thongs.

As she looked up she saw her distorted reflection in his mirrored sunglasses, which were looped from ear to ear by a hot-pink string.

She stood before him, still working the flowery-smelling lotion into her hands, impatient to be off to work.

"I understand you can join us for the Fourth. That's great. We're going to try injecting a turkey with garlic juice and doing it on the grill. Then if we can stand one another's breath for the rest of the day we'll play some volleyball and bocce. How does that sound?"

He didn't answer. In very slow motion he removed his sunglasses and lowered them gently to the limits of the hot-pink string. She could see immediately he'd been crying.

"Christopher, what is it?" She took a step toward him.

He swallowed once and his Adam's apple drifted down like an ice cube dropped into a drink.

"Mrs. Reston . .."

She knew things about this young man that he didn't know she knew, about his pitiable childhood and the parents who'd treated him as if he were a mistake they never should have made.

"Christopher . .." She touched his arm, prepared to let Sylvia work alone a little longer. "You need to talk?"

He cleared his throat, caught both her hands and gripped them hard.

They were still sleek from lotion and smelled like honeysuckle.

"Mrs. Reston, I have some terrible news." He'd decided the best way to say it was straight out, avoiding any prolonged limbo.

"There's been a very bad accident. Greg is dead."

Her face changed neither shape nor line. Her eyes either. "Greg?" she repeated in a perfectly normal voice, as if the message he'd delivered was too bizarre to be believable.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

For the longest time she didn't move, only stood before him while the shock waves rippled in and changed her life. Finally she covered her mouth with both hands and stared at Christopher while tears made her rust-colored eyes gleam like polished copper.