Spence
Zoe stayed in New York for weeks. I returned home after ten endless days. We had both known from the time Zoe started packing that the search was futile, but we had to try. Those days ran one into the other with all the fluidness of a nightmare. One of those horror shows of the mind that’s determined to play itself out no matter how often you hope to end it by waking up.
Those first days had a bizarre routine all their own. After checking every list, every hospital and shelter, we stood with hundreds of other parents, spouses, siblings, lovers and friends behind the television journalists reporting from Ground Zero. We held up the picture of Cami and the boldly printed phone numbers. We got calls—crank calls from sick souls who claimed that the death of our daughter was somehow God’s will, as well as calls from people who wanted to be helpful but knew nothing.
But it was the day we went to Cami’s loft that I think both Zoe and I understood that our daughter was truly gone. Because of the dust—the thick gray powder that permeated everywhere—I was suddenly back in Vietnam, where there had also been dust, blinding, choking. Even our footsteps on the stairs leading to Cami’s third-floor loft were silenced as we climbed over the miniature dunes that had formed on each step. The power was out, and suddenly Zoe said, “Remember when we took the Immigrant Museum tour with the kids and the guide told us how the landlord would make the people sign the lease before they saw the apartment?”
Her voice shook and I knew she was remembering Cami’s comment that day—the comment that had made everyone, even the tour guide, laugh: “No landlord would have gotten away with that if my mom had been there. She’d have marched right up these stairs and checked out everything from the plumbing to the view before she signed anything.” She’d been ten years old.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“Fifteen minutes, folks,” a policeman called from the downstairs entrance.
Once again Zoe’s father came through for us, pulling the strings necessary to gain us access to Cami’s building just days after the attacks. No one was being allowed into the area because the authorities were still assessing structural damage to surrounding buildings, but Mike Wingfield’s firm had offices on the first two floors of the converted nine-story building that sat right on the border of the quarantined area. The top seven floors had been converted into lofts. Cami’s was on the third floor.
“She left the window open,” Zoe said as we walked across the large undivided expanse to where a bamboo shade tapped out a rhythm like a wind chime against the window leading to the fire escape. “It’s so Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Cami had told us over the phone. “All I need is my hair in a towel, a guitar and the words to ‘Moon River,’ and I’m Audrey Hepburn,” she added, giggling with the pure delight of someone who had moved into her first real home.
I stared at the window and knew that we both saw that it was not just raised—it was gone.
“She always liked fresh air,” I replied.
“Likes,” Zoe corrected, but without conviction. “She likes fresh air.” She was in the galley kitchen area, running her finger along the sink, then peering into drawers and cabinets. “She was running late,” Zoe said, more to herself than to me, “but she washed the dishes.”
“Maybe she was too excited to eat,” I suggested.
Zoe picked up a dishtowel that had been spread across the edge of the sink. Dust flew everywhere. “No, see? She left the towel to dry.”
I felt something twist inside me as I pictured my beautiful daughter blissfully going about her routine, never realizing that outside that door, on a perfect September day when she had the world before her…
Her whole life before her, I thought, and understood what those people at Ty’s funeral had meant. Cami had not lived her whole life—not by a long shot. Those people had been right. The knot inside me twisted another half hitch.
Zoe was standing in front of Cami’s desk, her fingers resting on the laptop computer we’d bought her as a celebration of her new place. Next to it was a pen—a traditional fountain pen given to her by Zoe’s father—the only writing instrument that Cami ever used. Zoe picked it up and wiped it free of dust on the side of her jeans before putting it in her pocket.
“For Dad,” she said when she saw me watching her.
I wandered into the curtained-off area where Cami had set up her bedroom. Evidence of her excitement was everywhere—piles of discarded clothing on the bed, open pots of makeup on her dressing table, a bath towel dropped on the floor. It should have been a scene filled with splashes of vivid colors—the oranges and yellows and reds our daughter preferred. Instead everything was coated in the gray ash. In fact, the entire scene was monochromatic. If Zoe and I had not been wearing color, we might have convinced ourselves we were players in a black-and-white film—one that would end and the lights would come up and—
“Folks, you’ve got to get out now.” The officer stood at the door, his eyes weary with all that he had seen and experienced in the past forty-eight hours. “You should be able to get back in after a few days.” He held a mask to his face, protection from the dust he’d been breathing in for the past forty-eight hours.
I saw the trail of footprints that Zoe and I had left. I studied the little puffs of fine ash that followed Zoe’s steps as she moved more quickly around the space, her eyes searching for signs, evidence, that our daughter was alive. And then I spotted the small carved elephant I had given Cami the day after she’d broken the news to Zoe and me that she was pretty sure she was a Republican. She’d been fourteen years old.
“Mom, Dad,” she’d said, nervously edging into our room late one night. Zoe had been reading while I watched the news.
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked, immediately putting her book down and half getting out of bed. “Are you sick?”
“No.” Cami’s adolescent voice shook and she appeared to be miserable. “Look,” she said, rushing her words, “there’s no way to do this but to jump right out with it. We’re having a mock election at school tomorrow and I’m voting for Mr. Reagan, okay?”
Zoe glanced at me, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly. I faced Cami.
“You’re sure about this?” I asked, mustering all the sincerity I could in the face of our daughter’s obvious distress at delivering this news.
She nodded. “Not only that, but you might as well get ready for it. I’ve been studying the differences between conservative and liberal ideas and philosophies, and frankly, I have to think that the conservatives have a better chance of getting things right—at least for my generation.”
“Okay,” Zoe said.
“Yeah, well, you say, okay, but—”
“Your mother and I have always taught you and the boys to consider both sides,” I interrupted. “You’ve apparently done that. You’ve reached a decision based on knowledge and serious consideration of the facts and we respect that,” I told her.
“Mom?”
Zoe nodded, her face composed. “Even if we don’t agree, Cami. We can agree to disagree, okay?”
Cami searched our faces, obviously waiting for the catch. “Okay,” she said as she turned to go. “Besides,” she said, “it might not be forever—I vote for the person, not the party.” And with a smile on her face she marched out of the room.
It had been Zoe’s idea to get the elephant. “You have to find some token that will prove to her this is okay,” she insisted after we had both smothered our laughter at what we had thought Cami might say, and how obviously relieved we were that it was a matter of politics.
The next day I’d brought the elephant home and earned for myself Zoe’s approving smile and Cami’s delight.
Now I picked up the small carved figure, my fingers closing tightly around its middle. I shut my eyes and saw the images of the towers on fire, heard my daughter’s frightened voice on the phone, replayed the collapse of the buildings, so unreal on the small television screen in our bright, sunny kitchen as the phone line went dead. I jumped as I felt Zoe’s fingers on my shoulder.
“We have to go,” she said, her voice hoarse—a combination of emotion and the fine powdery dust we’d been breathing in since entering the area.
I nodded and showed her the elephant. She folded my fingers around it and took my arm as we followed the police officer back down the stairs and out into the devastation that had been our daughter’s neighborhood.
I stayed the rest of the week and then told Zoe it was time to go home.
“I can’t,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “Not yet.”
“Zoe, she’s gone.” I managed to get the words out around the huge rock that seemed to have become a permanent fixture in my throat.
“You go,” she said, and there was no accusation in her tone. “I just need to…Maybe I can…do something.”
So I made the long drive home and Zoe stayed. She spent her days—days that more often than not stretched well into the night—at Ground Zero. She handed out water and food to the rescuers, she answered phones and consoled others who like us could not yet get their brains around the idea that on a glorious fall morning their child, spouse, loved one had left the house and simply vanished.
“I think we can do more,” Zoe told me one night, her voice weak with the exhaustion of too much emotional pain and too little sleep. “Spence, I was thinking. This is post-traumatic stress—maybe not battlefield stress, although an argument could certainly be made for that—but these people need help. There are counselors, of course, but you’re the expert in this. You wrote the book, for heaven’s sake.”
In fact, I had written several books and articles, all for the cause of raising funds to keep the work of the counseling center on track. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“Could you send out a team to do in-service work with the counselors they have? This isn’t the usual grief process—it’s so much more.”
“Sure, but, Zoe, that’s only half the job. The people directing this thing have to want our help.”
“Dad talked to the mayor’s office this afternoon. Have you got a pencil?”
I reached for my day planner and a pen. “Shoot.”
Zoe recited a name and number, along with the path for getting past any gatekeepers who might be screening calls. “They’ll be waiting to hear from you,” she instructed.
“Okay. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t forget the time difference—you can reach them an hour sooner, you know.”
“Got it.” We both went quiet. “When are you planning to head home?”
She hesitated. “Soon,” she said softly.
“Well, that’s a step up from ‘I don’t know,’ so I’ll see it as a good sign,” I said. “Are you eating and getting at least a couple hours of sleep?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Spence, I have to do this. I mean, in a strange way, it’s helping.”
“I know.” And I did. The fact that Zoe was developing ways we might offer concrete help was a good sign. That she had gone into what Cami had always referred to as her “battle mode” meant that Zoe was fighting her way through this thing and we would—eventually—be all right.
Our holidays were understandably nonexistent that year. Zoe returned the second week in November and slept for most of the first two days. Mom and our daughter-in-law, Sandra, took charge of Thanksgiving. And even though no one in the family was much in the mood for giving thanks, we gathered at the farm and made every attempt to remind ourselves that we had many blessings.
Ever since her return from New York Zoe had been unusually quiet. Because she had spearheaded the plan to get a team from the rehab center out to New York and involved in coaching counselors, I had expected something different. Like her usual whirlwind of activity as she set in motion half a dozen projects to provide more assistance and support to survivors or families.
Instead, within a couple of days of her homecoming, she had gone back to her volunteer work at the gardens. I knew that she spent long hours working on the new Thai garden. I knew she often stayed after everyone else had left, alone in the now-completed pavilion, sitting cross-legged under the red-and-gold lacquered arches, staring out at the calm waters of the reflecting pool, her scarf wrapped tight around her neck against the prewinter chill of November. For Zoe this Thai shelter had become a place of meditation and in some strange way a connection to Cami.
Trying hard to create some environment of normalcy, I left the house every morning for either the center or my lectures at the medical college. At home we discussed our day, carefully skirting anything that would naturally lead to talking about Cami, then settled in with work or reading for the evening. Occasionally, we would agree to meet friends for dinner at one of the local restaurants that had opened after Cami moved to New York—one that held no memories of her.
On the weekends we rigidly stuck to our traditions. Early on Saturday morning we drove downtown to the huge farmer’s market on the Capitol Square, where Todd and Dad had a booth selling pumpkins and Mom’s dried-flower arrangements. We followed that with a late lunch on the terrace of the Union and a walk on the lake path. It was almost as if we both clung to this structure, these ties to the familiar. On Sundays we traded sections of the New York Times as we picked at the oversized cinnamon breakfast rolls we’d bought at the market.
We broke with tradition in one way only. We did not attend church. As thousands of Americans filled the pews of churches and synagogues and mosques, Zoe and I spent most Sunday mornings working on the house, telling ourselves that with the promise of a hard winter and the amount of time we’d been away, we really must attend to these repairs and chores.
That gut-wrenching twisting of my insides that had started that day we went to Cami’s loft and stayed with me for weeks afterward had begun to ease. Then, on Thanksgiving, we gathered at the farm around the dining room table that had occupied the same space for three generations. Mom had set the table without using the extra table leaf, so we were sitting shoulder to shoulder. I understood that she hoped this sensation of a jam-packed table would take our minds off the gaping hole in our lives that had been Cami’s place. My stomach knotted.
“Spencer, would you lead us in grace?” Dad said.
My head shot up. Every eye around the table was locked on me, but I saw only Zoe. Her face was the mirror of everything I was feeling. Her eyes sunken and without expression, her skin pale, and when had she gotten so thin? She coughed, studying the decorative pattern of Mom’s best china.
“I’ll do it,” Todd said, and clasped hands with Sandra to his left and Zoe to his right. He waited until the chain of joined hands had made its way around the circle of the table, then bowed his head. “Dear God, thank You for this food that we are blessed to receive. Thank You for the strength You have given each of us to guide us through these terrible times. Help us to find our way from wandering in this wilderness of our pain back into the light of grace and goodness. Amen.”
Taylor cleared his throat and released my hand to pull a bandana handkerchief from his back pocket. Mom left the table, murmuring something about forgetting to fill the gravy bowl, and Sandra followed her. Dad reached over and placed his callused stubby fingers over Zoe’s long slim ones as he looked at Todd and said, “Beautifully done, Todd.” Then he cleared his throat loudly and stood. “Now, let’s see what kind of damage we can do to this turkey.”
Gradually, conversation settled into a more or less normal pattern. “Pass the salt.” “Sandra, did you change the recipe on these baked apples?” “How about some more stuffing, Taylor?”
Zoe and I remained silent, smiling and nodding on occasion but not really contributing to the conversation. We were like two outsiders, who understood that this place and these people were safe and kind but who were still cautious about trusting that any of this could last.
“Save room for dessert,” Mom urged as Dad went back for third helpings on the sweet potatoes. “Zoe made her wonderful pies—pecan, pumpkin and mincemeat.”
Taylor chuckled and glanced across the table at Todd, who also started to smile.
“What?” Zoe said, her voice more normal than it had been in weeks. “What’s so funny?”
Now Todd and Taylor were both laughing in earnest. Finally, Taylor gained control of himself and said between snorts of laughter, “It’s just that when we were little and you made the mincemeat pie?”
Zoe’s lips twitched. Everyone leaned forward, eager to hear the story—perhaps more eager than was really warranted because it promised to lift the mood.
“Well, you know, the name—minced meat—it sounded suspicious so Todd and I figured we’d better check this out.”
Now everyone was smiling, anticipating the punch line as Todd took up the story. “So we decided to ask Cami….”
Every smile froze as Taylor and Todd exchanged panicked glances and everyone realized it was the first time our daughter had been mentioned that day. The room went absolutely still.
“And she told you that I used the innards of the chickens, cows and pigs that Grandma Marie saved for me from the farm,” Zoe said quietly. Then she smiled at our sons. “She told you that I mashed them up in the food processor—blood, guts and all—then tried to cover it all up by adding a couple of apples, some raisins and brown sugar.”
There was a long silence, as if we’d all stopped breathing for a moment. Then Zoe chuckled. “It was her favorite pie, and since I really only made it once a year, she was determined the two of you would not have a bite if she could help it.” Then she looked around the table, her eyes alive with her usual enthusiasm for a good story. “Of course, that doesn’t hold a candle to the time Cami…”
And we were off, sharing stories, educating our new daughter-in-law to the shenanigans her oh-so-serious young husband and his brother had often pulled on their elder sister. Zoe nudged me, pointing to the way Sandra kept one hand on her stomach during all of this.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said as she polished off the last bite of her pie, her appetite seemingly restored after weeks of barely touching her food. “Or am I reading this all wrong?” She glanced toward Sandra’s protective hand.
Sandra blushed scarlet and so did Todd.
“Well, well, well,” Taylor said, and let out a low whistle. “You guys are preggers, right? The Toddster is about to be a dad?”
“Just a few months,” Sandra protested, and everyone burst out laughing.
When the women began discussing names and then moved on to the more graphic issues related to having a baby, I stood up. “Gentlemen, I believe we have a touch football game to play,” I announced.
Zoe laughed. “Yes, right after you men clear the table and get the dishwasher loaded and running. Marie and I will set up the boundaries for the game. Sandra, you should sit this year’s game out—how about keeping score?” She went to the door, then looked back and said, “Oh, yes, guys. In light of Sandra’s ‘condition,’ we need an extra player. We choose Taylor.”
“No way,” Todd protested. “The guy was All-State and—”
“Now, Todd, it’s only fair,” Sandra said quietly, and I couldn’t help smiling as our son went silent. “Come on, I’ll help you men with the dishes.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed Todd’s cheek and I knew the boy was a goner.
Zoe
Perhaps it was the safety-in-numbers factor that made Thanksgiving bearable—even memorable. Certainly the news that Todd and Sandra were expecting our first grandchild helped distract us from Cami’s absence. Cami’s death. Cami’s murder.
“How do you feel about being called Grandma?” Spence asked as we drove home after the touch football game and a second feast of turkey sandwiches, wild rice soup and the last of the pie.
I made a face. “Like I’m a hundred and five. How about ‘Grammy’? Isn’t that more youthful?”
“Too much like you won a music award—and sweetheart, we all know you can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
I laughed. “Oh, sure, farm boy. Well, how do you feel about Grandpa?”
Spence laughed. “Like I’m a hundred and five,” he agreed. “Can you see Todd as a father?”
“He’s a baby himself—they both are. Thank heavens they have Marie around to guide them.”
“And you—they have you,” Spence said as he reached over and took my hand.
“They have us and each other and two sets of great-grandparents, who are going to spoil that baby rotten,” I said, intertwining my fingers with his. “They’ll do just fine.”
Later that night, after I’d put away the food Marie had insisted we bring home and Taylor had gone out to meet some of his friends who were also home visiting, I wandered through the house. I walked into the living room, where I rearranged throw cushions on the furniture, then into the dining room, where I redid the centerpiece of silk flowers on the table. In between I started a load of laundry and went through the pantry, making a shopping list.
“Hey,” Spence said as I stood in front of the open refrigerator, surveying the contents, a pen and notepad in one hand. “Need some help?”
“What would you think about our taking a cruise over the holidays—you know, leave maybe the day after Christmas for ten days or so?”
Spence watched at me for a long moment, then shut the refrigerator door. He placed his hands on my shoulders. When I refused to meet his eyes, he tilted my chin up with one finger. “I’d say that it won’t help to run away,” he said. “We’ll get through it, Zoe, just like we got through today.”
“I know, but today everybody was here, and Christmas…Well, Taylor’s already said he’s going to stay in California—I mean, you can’t blame him. With Todd and Sandra going to see her mom and stepfather in Minnesota and Marie and Hal spending Christmas with your brothers and their families in Colorado—”
He hugged me and kissed the top of my head. “It’s a day, Zoe—just like any other day, except it has all this stuff attached to it. We don’t have to play just because the world tells us we should. We can sleep in and spend the day reading or watching old movies or taking a walk in the—”
“You know better than that.” My words were muffled against his sweater.
We stood there, rocking slightly for a while. “We could go to New York and spend the holidays with your folks,” he said. “See a couple of shows. Go to the museums.”
It was a good solution, I realized. Mom and Dad were almost as devastated as we were over Cami’s death. They had been so close to her—much closer than they were to either of the boys—and losing her must have brought Ty’s death back to haunt them. “We’d be there with Cami,” I added.
Spence rested his chin on my head. “We’re always close to Cami,” he said. “We don’t have to go to New York for that.”
“Yeah, I know.” I rested my head against his chest for another moment. “Thanks, Spence.”
Spence
The holidays had at least been a distraction. Neither Zoe nor I was the type to resent the happiness of others. We attended a couple of small gatherings with friends, then headed for New York. The thing about New York is how easy it is to be alone there—alone with your thoughts and memories. A lone in the midst of thousands of people—who are also alone. Zoe and I enjoyed long walks in Central Park, deliberately reliving the good times—the night we’d walked there after Ty’s funeral, our wedding day. We attended a concert at Carnegie Hall with her parents and saw the exhibits at the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art.
On New Year’s Eve morning we set out for a walk. Before we knew it, we’d walked all the way from Mike and Kay’s apartment building across from the park down Fifth Avenue and over to Broadway then on through the theater and garment districts. We stopped for lunch at a bistro in the East Village just past Washington Park.
The closer we’d walked to Lower Manhattan, the tighter Zoe’s features had grown. She resembled a person using every bit of energy she possessed just to hold herself together. “Should we get a cab and head back?” I asked as we finished our espresso.
“No. let’s go on. We’ve gotten this far.”
We both knew the destination without actually speaking the words. We were on a pilgrimage to Ground Zero. “Zoe?”
She looked at me across the small wrought-iron café table. I took her hand. “You don’t have to do this.”
She nodded and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking she had agreed to abandon the quest, but she said, “Yes, I do. If you don’t want to, I understand. I’ll be okay, really. Go ahead. I’ll be along later.” She patted my hand and put on her jacket.
“She’s not there,” I reminded her.
“But she was—she was.” She wrapped the knockoff of the designer cashmere shawl I’d bought her on a street corner somewhere around 42nd Street around her shoulders.
I stood and laid out enough to cover the bill, plus a generous tip. We nodded to the waiter as we left. Outside I took Zoe’s hand in mine as we headed south.
The void where the buildings of the World Trade Center had been was as good a parallel to our lives without Cami as I could have imagined. The area was barricaded by a thick chain-link fence and cleanup of the site had been stopped for the holiday.
“This way,” Zoe said as she worked her way along the fence, seeking something. She found it in the form of a small opening and squeezed through.
“Zoe, it’s dangerous—the ground might still be unstable and—”
She was gone, making her way down into the pit, working her way over rubble, pausing now and then to glance around and choose her path. I saw what she was trying to find. The north tower—or what had been the north tower. I tried to force the opening wider so I could follow, but it was useless. I was too big and all I could do was stand and watch.
Finally she stopped, and I saw her kneel and remove something from her pocket. Then I saw her scoop up a handful of the rubble and dust and place it in the container.
“Hey!” a policeman yelled at Zoe as he made his way around the perimeter at a trot. “Lady, you can’t be there,” he shouted, and as he reached the place I was standing, he shook his head and stopped to catch his breath. “Crazy woman. She could get herself killed,” he muttered between heaves of breath visible in the cold winter air.
“She’s my wife,” I said. “Our daughter…” My voice cracked and the policeman’s features turned to mush, his own eyes filling with tears.
“My son—a firefighter—rookie,” he said.
We stood side by side as Zoe slowly made her way back, her hands jammed in her pockets as she picked her way over the ruins.
“North or south?” the policeman asked.
“North,” I replied. “Coming down the stairs.”
“Yeah. Benny was on his way up.” Silence and then, “Maybe they saw each other—you know, passed on the way.”
“Maybe so.”
Zoe glanced up and saw the man waiting with me, and her expression changed to defiance as she lifted her chin and strode up the final ridge.
“Zoe, this is Officer—”
“McCoy,” he supplied as he helped her through the hole in the fence. “Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he added.
Zoe was confused. She’d been prepared for a reprimand. Then she focused on the policeman and their eyes met and she rose on her toes and hugged him. “And yours—partners, friends?”
“Both. And my son,” McCoy said. He was making no attempt to hide his tears now. “But he died a hero,” he responded with the pride of a man who clings to anything that provides a reason for his loss.
Zoe patted his back as she looked at me over the man’s shoulder and I saw her mouth tighten. “I’m sure he was a wonderful young man,” she whispered as she gently broke away.
McCoy cleared his throat and got control of himself. Readjusting his hat, he nodded. “You get what you came for?”
Zoe smiled slightly as she removed a small box from her pocket. It was a box of birch bark, which Cami had made for her one summer while at camp.
“Just don’t be going down there again, okay?” McCoy sniffed as he waited for Zoe’s solemn assurance that she had no need to ever go there again and walked away.
“Dad?”
As was common for me these days, I had been lost in memories when I saw Todd standing in the doorway of my office at the counseling center. Todd rarely visited Madison during the week, so I knew something was up. From the expression on his of his face, it wasn’t something I was going to like hearing.
“Sandra okay?” I asked, indicating a chair across from my desk and closing the door behind him.
Yeah. He sat forward, with his hands dangling between his knees. He glanced around the office. “You’ve made some changes.”
“Mom,” I said, and we both smiled. “Yours, not mine,” I amended quickly. “Zoe seems intent on redecorating the world one room at a time since we got back from New York.”
Todd did not smile. In fact, he looked worse. “I got called up—my Guard unit,” he said, his face averted and the words muffled so that I prayed I was hearing them wrong.
“Your unit?” I repeated dumbly. “To where?” I mentally ran through the news stories that had flashed across the TV screen that morning. There was a blizzard in the Rockies—in Vail. Taylor had been skiing there and had phoned to reassure us that he was safely back in what he called “smoggy California.”
“Afghanistan.”
I shut my eyes, squeezed them to rid them of the other images I’d seen on the morning news. Images of bombed-out military vehicles and people screaming in anguish and panic as they ran through the streets of Kabul.
Todd raised his face to mine. “How in the world am I gonna tell Mom?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll tell her together,” I said.
Todd let out a shuddering sigh. “She’s gonna freak,” he muttered.
“Yeah. Probably so,” I agreed. “When do you go?”
“Two weeks.”
“Have you told Sandra?”
He nodded and then released another of those heartbreaking sighs. “The baby…” He swallowed hard. “I won’t be here.”
“Your mother and I will be here—and Grandma Marie and Poppa…” I stopped. It wasn’t the same and I knew it. I reached for my coat. “Let’s go tell your mom.”
As soon as Zoe saw us, her face turned to stone.
“Look who I found wandering around campus begging for a free meal,” I called out as Todd and I stopped in the laundry room to remove coats and wet boots.
“Is it the baby?” she asked, rushing forward to take Todd’s scarf and spread it over the washing machine to dry.
“No, Mom. Sandra and the baby are fine—just fine,” Todd said as he hugged her and then moved past her into the kitchen. “How about I make us some grilled-cheese sandwiches?” he said as he stood in front of the open door of the refrigerator.
Zoe glanced at me, her eyes full of questions.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, following Todd’s lead. “Hand me that carton of tomato-basil soup—I think there’s enough for three.”
Zoe leaned against the doorway between the laundry room and kitchen and watched us prepare the lunch. I could see that she wasn’t fooled but that she had decided to allow us to get to the point in our own way. “As long as no one’s on fire or not breathing,” she used to tell the kids, “it can wait.” Todd and I were clearly testing that theory big-time.
“All right,” she said when the three of us were at the table and Todd and I were making a production of blowing on the hot soup and moaning over the perfection of the sandwiches. “Enough. Tell me.”
Todd put down his spoon and cleared his throat. “You’re not gonna like it, Mom, but there’s nothing to be done. There’s…”
“Todd’s National Guard unit has been called up. He leaves for Afghanistan in two weeks,” I said, and everything in the room went still. The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound. I don’t think any one of us was even breathing.
Slowly Zoe got up from her chair and took her dishes to the sink. She’d barely touched her food. I heard her scrape the dishes and run the disposal. There was a pause, during which Todd and I stared at each other, wondering what to say. Then we heard the shattering of the dishes as Zoe systematically destroyed her plate, bowl and glass against the sides of the stainless-steel basin. “It’s enough,” she murmured with each thrust of her arm. “Enough. No more. You cannot have another child of mine. Send your own if you must, but you cannot have mine.”
Todd stood up. “Mom?”
Having finished demolishing the crockery, Zoe remained at the sink, her fingers gripping its edge as her lips continued to move. Todd and I both knew this wasn’t some rant at God. This was her stating the facts for the powers that be—those people in Washington deciding who would go and who would stay.
Todd put his arms around her and turned her into his embrace. I stood by as our son—well over six feet—a giant of a man in so many ways—tried to comfort the diminutive woman who had given him life. “I have to go,” he was saying, then his voice was muffled as he put his face next to her ear. I heard duty and responsibility and saw Zoe’s shoulders stiffen under the gentle barrage of his logic.
When Zoe raised her face to his, she had visibly aged. Her mouth and eyes were lined with exhaustion and something else that at first I couldn’t name. I only knew it wasn’t an expression I had ever seen on Zoe’s beautiful features until now. And then, as she placed her palm against Todd’s cheek, I understood. The expression was surrender. Zoe had no fight left and nothing in my life had ever frightened me quite as much as that realization.