Embarrassed by the ease with which she had let down her defenses, she hastily tried to compose herself with a mental reminder that Jimmy was depending on her to be a strong and steadfast adult; not one who fell apart at the drop of a hat. This was no time to give in to the temptation of emotional resonance that lingered as hauntingly as the scent of John’s sandalwood aftershave. A sense of having to hold close to herself, to not let anything distract her, had to be her mantra if she was going to get through her newly acquired yet unexpected responsibility.
“I’m okay, really,” she lied, as she clumsily withdrew from the reassuring comfort of his protective embrace. “We should get going.”
She could almost feel his thoughts as his hands reluctantly relinquished their hold on her upper arms. This is too familiar, she realized, recalling the last time she saw John all those years ago. Ironically, it had ended the same way this was starting.
Whatever this is, she thought to herself, her emotions bouncing from one extreme to the other. That it had taken all these years to bring her to this precarious juncture only made her former boyfriend’s presence that much more bittersweet.
John’s brows were now lifting a question in response to the humming sound coming from the back seat. Jimmy, oblivious to what was transpiring between them, continued to roll the window up and down, meticulously studying the mechanics of the electronic switch as he did so. To the casual observer, Kate knew that he probably looked no different from any other fidgety five-year-old. Even those who tried to coax a conversation out of him, especially older ladies, were inclined to misinterpret his apparent inattentiveness and short attention span as nothing more than childhood shyness.
“I never know what’s going on in that little head of his,” Cassy used to tell her, always punctuating her observation with a deep sigh of resignation. “It’s like he’s living on another planet or something.”
Ironically, her own death had proved no exception when it came to deciphering Jimmy’s emotions or cognitive abilities. That he had just lost the most important person in his life, Kate realized, would certainly not be concluded by anyone witnessing the distractive, seemingly random behaviors he was currently exhibiting. But Kate knew his mother’s death must have affected Jimmy deeply. As they eulogized Cassy only a few hours ago, her eyes remained on the small boy sitting quietly beside her. She could see the emptiness in his eyes. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on her part to believe that his world had somehow connected with hers, a difficult feat for any autistic child.
In a lowered voice and with her back discreetly turned toward the open door, Kate recounted how she and Lydia cautiously broached the subject with the story that his mommy had been hurt and had to go away. “The experts say you’re not supposed to use the ‘D’ word with kids,” she reflected. “But how do you know they’re not going to think they were deserted? That’s a ‘D’ word, too.”
More than anything, she explained, she had tried to convey to him through words and gestures that Cassy’s being gone had nothing to do with anything he had said or done and that they loved him and that he was the best little boy in the world. Her throat still ached from the deflating awareness that none of her earnest attempts seemed to register and that he had been more transfixed with rotating her jade bracelet over and over on her wrist than acknowledging anything she had to say. An anguished Lydia had left the room shortly thereafter, too consumed by the devastation of losing a daughter to even begin to give comfort to a child whose responses to personal tragedy weren’t “normal”. Not on the surface, anyway.
“I sat up with him that entire first night just in case he woke up and was afraid,” Kate confessed with a sad smile.
Her nephew, it turned out, had slept more soundly than either of the women beneath the same roof, quietly absorbed in a strange world of his own making that defied easy translation.
John glanced at Jimmy, then back to Kate, the warmth of his smile echoed in his voice. “I’m sure you and your mother have got plenty of love to make him feel secure until he’s old enough to understand what happened.”
Me, yes. Mom, the vote’s not in yet.
Out loud, she remarked that the symptoms of autism varied from child to child. “Even the doctors we’ve talked to – and Cassy talked to quite a few of ‘em herself – they told us it’s hard to know for sure how much gets through to him and how he processes what he sees and hears. For now, I guess we just have to take it a day at a time.”
John nodded thoughtfully as he reached out to caress her cheek with the knuckle of his forehand. “Sometimes, a day at a time is all you can do.”
Kate reflected on his last words as the Jersey landscape, an alternating mixture of shoreline, factories and blue-collar suburbia, glided past the backseat windows. She wasn’t sure how she was going to take care of Jimmy by herself and maintain her career at the magazine. Take it day by day. That’s how she thought she would be able to keep her relationship with John alive while away at Amherst.
Was it purely a defensive mechanism on his part, she wondered, to keep either of them from clumsily sliding into an abyss of “what-if’” fairy tales that had no bearing on the here and now? Or was it just that his life, like countless others she knew who never left their hometown borders, had simply become a palette comprised of neutral colors and, accordingly, detached emotions? That the mere touch of his hand on the side of her face had sent a warming shiver through her entire body made the latter speculation a disturbing one, especially since her mother had cautioned her fourteen years ago against falling for someone whose ambitions weren’t comparable to hers.
“You can do a lot better than a Neal,” she could still hear Lydia disdainfully mutter. “Boys like that never make anything of themselves.” She caught herself half-wondering whether her beloved father, if he had lived, would have felt the same way and contested Lydia’s prejudicial views, especially since he himself had come from a similar blue-collar background.
Uneasiness spiced with modest irritation at this particular reminiscence managed to underscore Kate’s half of the conversation after they had both gotten back into the cab to continue the trip to the airport. In deference to her distress about Cassy and the ambiguity surrounding how much Jimmy was absorbing of their dialogue, John was doing his level best to keep the chatter focused on bringing her up to date about local happenings on the shore, some of which by his own admission was already at least a couple of years old in their newsworthiness.
There was Cliff Harwood, for instance, the local publisher who fancied his weekly gazette a serious challenger to the likes of The New York Times. Did she hear about Eddie, the town barber who had taken a third bride young enough to be his granddaughter? Well, she was already talking divorce, or so he had heard the last time he dropped into Carboni’s for a haircut. Or what about that quaint little diner on the corner of Main that served the best cheeseburgers with steak fries, the one the two of them used to hang out at after school? He tossed the question over his shoulder of whether Kate still remembered it.
“Ruth’s?” she asked.
Two summers ago, John sadly reported, Ruth’s had accidentally burned to the ground and there were no plans to rebuild. Its namesake, Ruth Miller, claimed that she no longer had the energy to run a diner after her hip replacement, but still bakes for some local eateries. “Can’t blame her, I guess,” John candidly opined. “She’s got to be older than dirt by now. Oh hey, and you remember that guy from Chem who was always—“
What about you? she felt like blurting out. Why are you telling me about all these people who don’t even matter?
Her spontaneity was tempered only by the dismal possibility that maybe she didn’t want to hear the answer. The answer, perhaps, that he was happily married to one of her rivals, that they had four perfect and well-mannered children, and that driving a cab was only a hobby he dabbled in just to occasionally freak people out.
“So, uh, how long have you been driving a cab?” she casually inquired when, for lack of further material on his part or perhaps her lack of encouragement for him to continue, his discourse unexpectedly slowed to a pause.
He shrugged. “If you count Wednesday, I’d say about thirty-three hours.”
In response to her puzzled look, he explained that a friend of his had just become the proud father of a newborn and was stressing out about his schedule. “So, I told him I’d take a few shifts for him so he can spend some time with his wife and baby girl. I used to drive for Shore Cab awhile back and still have my license.’”
“What do you do the rest of the time?” she asked.
“Trees.”
“Huh?”
“Trees? You know, those tall things with branches and leaves.” He pointed with great exaggeration toward the side of the road. “Wow! There’s one now! Who’d have thought.”
“You are such a smart ass,” she retorted with a smirk. If there was one thing that the years hadn’t toyed with, besides, of course, his looks, it was his sense of humor.
“I save them,” he continued.
“From what?”
“Mostly from their owners. You’d be amazed at how many stupid things people do just because they don’t know any better.”
Doesn’t just apply to trees, Kate thought, momentarily saddened by all the lost opportunities that were the pattern of her sister’s short life. Cassy should have known that foregoing a college education in order to “search” for herself was a mistake. Hadn’t everybody tried to tell her so? She should also have at least suspected that going all hot and heavy with a loser like Luke wouldn’t end well.
John had now changed the subject and was asking about her writing. “I heard it’s for a magazine or something?”
A secretive smile softened her lips. So, they have been talking about me, she thought, wondering who it might have been. Wondering, too, how often he asked around or if it was just thrust on him out of habit, like a refill of coffee.
“It’s all about Las Vegas,” she explained. “Glamour stuff, shopping, shows, that kind of thing.” She didn’t realize until it came out of her mouth just how fluffy and superficial it sounded. In hasty postscript, she added that sometimes she even interviewed politicos like the mayor and city council members. “Never a dull moment.”
John nodded. “It’s nice you got your dream,” he said. “I remember how important writing was to you.”
He seemed pensive, not disturbed or angry. Is he baiting me, testing me to see if I’m going to say that maybe I was wrong? He had brought her yet again to a haunting but familiar place. Like a hidden current, the memories came crowding back to rob her of an answer. It was an overcast day on the Boardwalk, the smell of impending rain in the air.
She recalled insisting to him that it really wasn’t that far away, even though every map in print indicated the contrary. She knew that for all intents and purposes, the prestigious Amherst was in a galaxy far removed from the monotony of Avalon Bay. She had told him that maybe they could get together on her school break, or even meet somewhere halfway. But, even all those years ago, they both knew it wouldn’t work out that way.
“So how’s he doing?” John interrupted her contemplation.
“Huh?”
“Jimmy,” he said. “Is he doing okay back there?”
She glanced over and was surprised to see that, unbeknownst to either of them, he contentedly had fallen asleep. Was he bored by the ramblings about the Jersey Shore? Or was he just – why couldn’t she get the word “content” out of her head? It certainly wasn’t a word she typically associated with autistic children. From her limited research on the condition, she had learned that being moved around from one strange setting into another often fostered agitation. Then again, she remembered, Cassy had been somewhat of a nomad and was constantly uprooting him as a result of job changes, new romances or dwindling resources. Maybe staying in one place for too long had resulted in exactly the opposite effect on him.
“Sleeping like a baby,” she reported.
She raised her eyes to find John watching her in the rear-view mirror, his voice pleasantly soft and infinitely compassionate.
“Then we shouldn’t wake him,” he said. “He’s got a big adventure ahead of him.”
They continued the rest of the drive in awkward silence.
“I’d help you take these inside,” John offered as he unloaded their bags from the trunk, “but with the cab ‘n’ all…”
A strident police whistle a few cars back at the curb was reminding drivers that anyone lingering in the loading zone was subject to citation.
“It’s okay, we can manage,” she assured him. She fumbled inside her purse for her wallet. “What’s the damage?”
He made a dismissing gesture. “On the house.”
“No, really, I can’t.“
“Hey, it’s the least I can do for an old—” He bit back the word but Kate already knew what he was going to say.
“It was great seeing you, too,” she said, turning her attention to a yawning Jimmy, lest he sees too much in her telling eyes. “Can you say goodbye to John, honey?”
The yawn immediately dissolved into a stony pout.
“He was nice enough to bring us to the airport,” Kate said, hoping that if she gave him a tummy tickle she could at least coax a giggle out of him. Jimmy stubbornly focused his attention on the ground.
“Maybe next time,” John suggested when her efforts proved fruitless.
They stood facing each other for a moment. Do I hug him? Do I shake his hand? Do I just wave and say, “See yah?”
“Well, uh, have a safe trip,” he said and impulsively stepped forward.
“Parade!” Jimmy suddenly squealed, causing John to take a step back.
“Why’s he pointing at my shoes?” John asked.
“It’s his word du jour,” she explained with a blush of embarrassment. “Things just, I don’t know, he can go for two entire days without saying anything at all and then he goes and starts saying the same word over and over.”
This one, she went on, seemed to have stuck in his head from when he was three. “Cassy and a friend camped out with him to watch the Macy’s Day Parade a few years back.” It had, of course, drawn no shortage of censure from Lydia who thought it was irresponsible to expose a toddler to a cold night of sleeping on the sidewalk just to watch floats and marching bands. “Whenever he sees shoes he likes, I guess it reminds him of all those feet marching by.”
John’s smile was disarmingly generous. “Then I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Taxi!” a male voice bellowed in preface to a red-faced, portly man with multiple bags angrily shlepping his way toward the open trunk of the cab.
Goodbyes, whatever form they might have taken, were swiftly preempted.
“We’d better go. Take care, John,” said Kate, happy for the escape but, at the same time, she yearned for resolution from her past. Resolution or atonement, she asked herself as she scurried from the cab, not wanting to look back.
“Goodbye, Kate,” was all she heard, the words resonating in her ears, bringing her back to that warm summer night. How long would it be before she saw him again, she wondered. If ever?