11:15 a.m.
Pasadena, California ~ Sunday, August 17, 2014
I answered the phone without checking the Caller ID. Without even uttering a word. But, nevertheless, a word came back to me.
“Mom?”
Charlie’s voice. It was Charlie. Oh, thank God.
I got as far as “Are you okay—” before my tongue froze and my tears started falling.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Is everything all right at home?”
I wasn’t able to answer him because I was crying—weeping uncontrollably, really—from the exhaustion and the relief and the letting go of those endless nightmares, which had terrified me over the past forty-eight hours. They needed to be washed away but, still, I tried to stop the deluge, or at least control it a little. That didn’t work.
My laidback younger son sounded uncharacteristically worried when he continued. “Look, I—I, um, just got your messages. And everybody’s. There were, like, fifty of them.”
I blindly grabbed for a tissue from the Kleenex box on the counter, finally snagging one and swiping at my eyes. “Where—where have you been?”
“In the Southern Sierras with Tim,” he informed me, as if this should’ve been the most obvious answer to anyone. “He’s doing a triathlon in three weeks and needed to get in a couple days of high-altitude training. He asked me on Thursday if I wanted to come along for some running and hiking in the mountains. I said I would if I could...and we did. We biked and camped a little, too. Nothing unusual but, you know, the cell reception out there is sucky.”
Two solid days of hell because of sucky cell reception. Great.
“But you didn’t show up for work on Friday,” I replied. “And there was some meeting with the ‘plastics people.’ Gloria called here and said—”
“Gloria’s a fucking office snoop, Mom. I mean, I’m sorry for swearing but she sticks her nose into everybody’s business. God, that woman drives me nuts,” he ranted. “She acts like she’s the boss half the time. The only reason the managers let her get away with it is because they’d all be dead if she bitched about them to the VP. He’s her cousin.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “She shouldn’t have been pestering you, though. Martin knew I’d be gone all day Friday. He said he wanted to be the one to run the Benson presentation anyway. And, since he’s one of my supervisors and the team leader, it wasn’t like I was gonna argue with him. We talked about it on Thursday after work. Eddie, a new trainer from LifeFit, and I were having a beer at O’Shaughnessy’s, and Martin joined us for a while. He was supposed to tell Gloria and our boss, Christine, that I wouldn’t be there.”
Charlie had written Drinks w/E @5:30 on his calendar for that night. “E” must have been Eddie. One of at least a dozen personal trainers my athletic son knew. Yeah, okay. Apparently not a killer then.
I remembered something else. “Martin was sick on Friday. His wife called in for him. She had to take him to the ER early that morning. Some kind of severe bronchial thing that he had.”
Gloria had briefly mentioned Martin’s illness in a couple of conversations that first day. She’d made it sound as though she’d all but interrogated every member of the staff about Charlie’s whereabouts, but she’d overlooked Martin. Or, more likely, Martin’s wife was trying to give her husband a much-needed break from the office busybody and had refused to let Gloria bother him.
“Oh,” Charlie said. “That explains it. I didn’t think he’d flake out on me for no reason. And he was coughing at the bar. Didn’t think it was that bad, though.”
Poor Martin would’ve had to have been hacking up at least a lung or two before my son would have considered his condition to be “bad.”
I blew my nose and leaned against the counter. It was about the only thing holding me upright after a weekend of no sleep and a level of anxiety that should, by all rights, put me on high doses of prescription blood-pressure medication.
There would be a list of people to call back that day, starting with my husband, whose flight may have already touched down, my oldest son and his wife and the very helpful Officer Rogers. I wasn’t in as much of a rush to call Gloria—but I would.
My mind returned to the only important thing I needed to know. “So, you’re okay, then? You’re really fine?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I kinda twisted my ankle when I fell off my mountain bike. That’s why we’re home early. We were gonna stay out there until late this afternoon, but I got a little scraped up. Would’ve been nice to hang out for a while longer, but Tim thought maybe we should get back and—”
“Tim was right,” I interrupted. “Good thinking on his part to drive home. I’m glad you guys were able to go out and have some fun in the mountains and that everything’s all right.”
“Everything’s cool, Mom. Don’t worry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m twenty-eight, you know. You don’t need to worry about me so much.”
I don’t need to worry about him... Seriously? Kids are so damn clueless.
But I remembered my private bargain with God and recited it again to myself in the silence of my relieved soul.
I’d gotten Charlie back. He was safe. I didn’t need to solve any mysteries that day or even know all of the details. I was just immensely grateful for his return. Parenthood had a way of making us stronger than we could ever imagine and, yet, infinitely more vulnerable.
Maybe, in the eyes of the world (and, most notably, in the eyes of my son), I was just another overprotective mom who, quote, “wouldn’t let her children grow up,” unquote. But I knew the truth about myself. That even though it had all turned out all right this time, I could never be one of those people who said, “Really bad things like that couldn’t ever happen in my family.”
Because, once upon a time, it had happened in mine.
Made me think of my mother again—and that special favor she’d asked me once.
“Well, Charlie, I wasn’t the only one who was worried. I hope you know your father’s going to ground you for a year. Maybe two.” I was trying to make a joke. Anything to keep from completely breaking down again.
“What? I’m almost thirty, and I have my own apartment,” he said. I could hear the mock horror, the feigned indignation in his voice. And the slight smile. Sweet boy. He was also trying to keep things light. To keep me from crying.
I caught the sound of a taxi in the driveway. The slam of a car door. Then the welcoming click of the front lock. My husband was home. Thank heaven I could give him good news.
“I don’t care how old you are,” I countered, as my husband rushed through the kitchen and raced to my side, grave worry etching deep lines onto his face. I leaned against him and squeezed—hard. “He’s okay,” I murmured.
Then, to Charlie, “We’ll put you under house—or, I guess, apartment arrest. And if you ever leave town again without telling one of us, I will strangle you with my bare hands. You don’t have to call us here if you don’t want to. Email is fine. Or a Facebook message. Anything like that will work.”
There was a pause. “Hey, I’m sorry, Mom. Really. I had no idea you’d freak out like that. I’ll let you know next time. I promise.” Then, after a beat, “Uh, speaking of Facebook, did you actually send messages to my friends?”
For the first time in forty-eight hours, I laughed.