He hesitated, thinking maybe she wanted, needed, exactly the opposite.
Her hand pressed her chest. “Jesus, when I think back. I was hell-bent on getting married, couldn’t wait to get away from my family and start over.” She gave a small, harsh laugh, like glass cracking. “I had this crazy idea that everything would have to go better the second time around, that I’d never be that unlucky to wind up in another broken family, especially not with you. You never said it, but I knew you wanted the same things I did, another family, another chance.” She rubbed at her nose and eyes. “And you made me believe we would have that together. You lost all that weight and said I’d filled the empty feeling, said you were a changed man. But it didn’t last. We didn’t last. And now Michael is gone and I’m right back where I started, stuck with a wreck of a family.”
His throat felt glutted, full of words he wanted to say, but couldn’t. She thought their family was a wreck. Thought she was stuck. As he walked out the back door, she spoke again. “Just so you know, I’ll always be asking myself, too, what I should have done better.”
He continued out to the garage and into his other world, where he could right everything that needed fixing. Could let out the wail gathering in his chest.
Twenty-two
When Billy entered the bedroom, Tricia whirled around. “Jesus, you scared me. For a second there I thought…” With so much weight lost, seventy-nine pounds and counting, his and Michael’s resemblance was now striking.
“Sorry.” He felt oddly like a trespasser, still not back in their room, still pulled to Michael’s bed every night. A big part of him was waiting for Tricia to invite him back, unsure if she wanted him there.
“I wish we weren’t doing this today,” she said, moving to the wardrobe mirror and pulling her brittle hair into a bun.
He spoke to her gaunt face in the glass. “I tried, but there was no talking him out of it. I even said he could have his party at the pool and invite a few friends, but he wouldn’t give in.” Billy wondered if Ivor remembered Michael had celebrated his tenth birthday at Dublin Zoo and that’s why he was so insistent.
In a couple of months, on November 19, they would have to endure what would have been Michael’s eighteenth birthday. Already, the boy was gone eight months. It didn’t seem possible. Time had warped and sometimes it seemed they had lost him just yesterday. Other times it seemed so long ago. They’d already survived the first day without him, the first week, first month, and the first football championship final, but they had yet to endure his first birthday with him gone, the first Christmas and New Year’s, and his first anniversary. Everyone said things would get easier with time, especially after they’d survived all the firsts, but that brought up another kind of pain.
“Maybe it won’t be as bad as we think,” Tricia said. She crossed the room, lifted her handbag off the bed, and walked out, leaving Billy alone.
*
The afternoon was overcast, but at least the rain was holding off. Tricia had traveled up to Dublin with Billy’s mother, while he had driven the three children. Billy’s mother never failed to join them for the children’s birthdays, which was more than his father or Lisa ever did. He had to give her that much. The two women stood at the zoo’s entrance, amid the colorful mill of people and the convoy of baby strollers all rushing inside. Tricia and his mother searched the crowd of oncomers, looking impatient. They had obviously made better time on the road and had found easier parking than Billy.
Anna called out and raced toward her mother and grandmother. Billy reached the women, flanked by John and Ivor. He’d managed to avoid his mother ever since his profile was published, and she looked his shrinking body up and down, unable to hide her surprise. His hand flew to his stomach, realizing it didn’t hurt the way it normally would after a long drive. He fit so much better in the car, in everything, now. Yet he had almost missed the hard press of the steering wheel during the journey, a constant for years.