We left Dad there with his friends as witnesses to see him through. I couldn’t bear to think of the hole that awaited him and stood, stumbling my way toward the limo that waited. Worth put me inside and climbed in beside me. I don’t think it was until I heard that limo door gently close that everything hit me. I began to shake uncontrollably and the tears came in choking waves. I could barely breathe. Worth held me against his chest, but I pushed him away. I needed air. Cold, cold air. I ordered the driver to lower the windows — all of them. I told him to drive fast, to make the frigid air encase me in its numbing maelstrom. I didn’t care if anyone else was cold. Their cold couldn’t match what I felt inside.
Why didn’t I feel this when Mother died? I continued to ask myself that question but didn’t seem to really need an answer. Perhaps it was because I already had one. When Mother died, there was no loss.
I couldn’t make myself go to the wake. I wouldn’t sit quietly at a table and receive the pity and meaningless expressions of condolences from people who weren’t truly affected. They would leave to their cozy houses, put the pot roast in the oven and turn on the Cardinals game. They would call one another on the phone and gossip about Walter Langford’s funeral — who had shown up and who had not. They would discuss what I’d worn and how I’d left before anyone, as though I was angry. Most of them, however, would talk about how the eldest LaViere boy had finally come home.
I spent the winter in mourning and for the first time in my life, really understood the term. The holidays came and went, and while I showed up at the table and smiled at the appropriate times, it was Letty who did the cooking and Marga who supervised the decorations. Lily kept her distance, not because she was avoiding me but because she was busy with the farm. Hawk and Liane spent the holidays with her dad, and while that may have been a convenient excuse to stay away from Carlos Acres, it was plausible enough that I could accept it.
I realized that I had fallen into a grieving depression. Worth saw it long before I could and tried to begin intimate chats in the living room or in his study. He encouraged me to open up and talk about how I felt. Somehow, I couldn’t separate my husband from the therapist, and it really didn’t feel right. He suggested that I talk to Deborah, but that idea felt worse. From time to time, I drove to Dad’s grave and talked to him. It was the only thing that helped.
While Worth was solicitous, there was that wall that could not be breached. I’d laid the words upon his back, the day Dad died. He carried the burden of them with a bit of martyrdom, but never laid them back on me. Professionally, he knew what I was going through and was caring enough not to add more to me. Personally, however, he’d never felt true grief. I don’t think he was capable of it. He’d insulated himself in a world where no one could reach him. It had been a survival instinct he’d honed when he was a young boy and his father had beaten him. Perhaps it came naturally to him since Hawk seemed to be the same way. I would never know. I couldn’t find my way out of the darkness long enough to gain perspective.
Even though I knew it was from Liane’s urgings, Hawk stopped by from time to time, but only when he knew that Worth wouldn’t be at home. We sat in the family room, and he talked. If there was anything redeeming about that winter, it would be that I grew closer to my first born son again. He told me of the years living in Mexico and how Bernie had valiantly tried to hide his sexual preferences from an unforgiving community. He told me Bernie had taken care of him the night he’d been attacked; sewing up his slashed skin. I grieved for Bernie that winter as well.
Hawk and I played checkers and card games, but these were simply incidental to the real reason he would come. He needed a mother’s love; to know I’d never really abandoned him, but had, for his own good, sent him to a safe place. I confessed my selfishness and my fear, how I’d put my focus on the children at home. I explained as well as I could that it hadn’t been deliberate or about him. I’d been as lost as he was. Afraid. Uncertain what to do. I asked him not to blame Mark or Marga. About them, however, he seemed indifferent.
It was Worth for whom he reserved the bulk of his resentment. He believed Worth to be the architect that lay behind the circumstances. He accused Worth of refusing to deal with him personally, foisting him off onto other doctors who pressed bottles of medications into Hawk’s hand.
“How could I know that what they were doing was wrong?” he asked me one snowy afternoon when the wind managed to wend its way between the window panes. “My father was supposed to protect me. To know more about what was good for me than I could know for myself. I trusted him. The more pills, the worse my world became. One pill caused me to be sleepy, and they’d give me another to wake me up. Then I’d feel hyper, and another pill would calm me down. It was pills, pills, and pills, Mother. I sensed I was out of control and the only way I knew to reach out for help was to behave badly. As badly as I knew how. It was the only time I had yours and Father’s complete attention.”
“Hawk, I’m so sorry,” I said for the hundredth time that day, but he only shook his head.
“Father ignored everything. Ignored the signs. He knew them. He’d been there before himself, hadn’t he?”
I swallowed and nodded, remembering the man Worth used to be. Still was, I feared.
“It was easier for him to send me away, to put me into a stranger’s responsibility than to admit his own shortcomings. If he admitted he was fallible, he no longer had any defenses against his own father. Even after his father was dead, his brother rose to take that place, and the torment began again. Mother…”
I held up a hand. “Please call me Mom.”
His eyes softened and he nodded. “Mom, the day I killed Linc, Dad wasn’t sorry. When I ran to him, he hugged me, but I knew he wasn’t hugging me because he was glad I was safe. He was hugging me because he was glad Linc was dead — and that I’d been the one to do it. He always passes the buck.”
I had to admit, although I didn’t verbally acknowledge it, that much of what Hawk said was true. I’d come close to saying the same thing many times but had held back. I knew where the line of no return lay, and I wasn’t willing to cross it. I’d come close enough to create the chasm that lay between Worth and myself since Dad’s death.
Was I being selfish to not take Hawk’s side and confront Worth? Would it do any good?
“You have to understand, Hawk,” I said as gently and dispassionately as I could. “When a parent realizes they cannot be what their child needs, sometimes the best thing they can do is to take that child to someone who can help them. I think your father thought that’s what he was doing. Perhaps he could have risen to the occasion and helped you himself. Perhaps not. It’s in the past, however. Is there any way you can forgive him… forgive me… and let go?”
“The same way good ole Dad has let go of what his father did to him?” he pointed out without empathy.
I sighed heavily. “Your point is well taken.”