May We Be Forgiven

that it was born dead.
    “Claire was depressed for a long time. ‘It’s hard to say goodbye to someone you never met,’ she’d say. And I didn’t know what to say. We didn’t talk about trying again, it was too painful, too traumatic.”
    “Did you like my mother?” Nate asks, pulling me back into the present.
    The waitress puts my plate down in front of me; steam rises from the potato, and the meat, like smelling salts, revives me.
    “Did you?” he asks again.
    “Yes,” I say easily.
    “Did you love her?”
    “It’s all a bit complicated,” I say.
    “Do you miss her?”
    “Enormously,” I say.
    “I like to think she died for a reason,” Nate says. “To die for love is a reason.”
    “Has anyone asked if you want to see your dad?” I ask.
    “Yes,” he says. “And no.” He pauses.
    “How often do you talk to Ashley?”
    He looks surprised. “I call her every day.”
    “Did you always?”
    “No,” he says, and then pauses again. “You grow up thinking your family is normal enough, and then, all of a sudden, something happens and it’s so not normal, and you have no idea how it got that way, and there’s really nowhere to go from here—it will never be anywhere near normal again. It’s not even like an accident when someone is killed because a tree falls on their head, it’s not like you can be mad at someone else, some stranger …” He trails off. “What ever happened to the boy?”
    “What boy?”
    “The boy who survived the car accident?”
    “He’s living with his family—an aunt, I think.”
    “We should do something for him,” Nate says.
    “Maybe we could set up a fund to make sure he has what he needs,” I suggest.
    “We could take him with us on vacation,” Nate says. “I really love amusement parks; I bet he does too.”
    “I can certainly look into it. Is that what you’d like to do, take the boy somewhere on a vacation?”
    “It’s the least we can do,” he says, and he’s right.

    W e eat. There is truly nothing better than an iceberg-lettuce wedge with blue-cheese dressing, steak, and a baked potato. I heap cold sour cream into the steaming potato jacket, reminding myself that sour cream is not on my doctor’s list of recommended foods. Fuck it. I grind salt and pepper across the top—it’s sublime.
    After dinner I take Nate back to school, slowly snaking up the driveway as part of a long line of parental vehicles returning the boys for safekeeping.
    One can imagine how and why humans, young men in particular, form special clubs, develop rituals, habits that are repeated and passed on. There is great comfort in these things, refuge in being one of many, part of a group, a pack—apart from the family.
    “Do adults ever sneak in and stay over?” I ask, longing for an intimate view of dormitory life.
    “No,” he says.
    I take my foot off the brake, and the car gently coasts up the hill. One by one, in front of the main building, the boys are welcomed back, checked in for the night. “Church begins promptly at nine a.m., coffee and continental breakfast at eight a.m.,” the Headmaster says, and I’m sent on my way.
    “Thanks for climbing the wall,” Nate says. “It was awesome.”
    As he’s closing the car door I blurt, “I love you.” The slamming door crunches my words. Nate opens the door again.
    “Sorry, did you say something?”
    “See you in the morning.”
    “Will do,” he says, slamming the door a second time.

    I head over to the bed and breakfast. It is as though I am the child and I left the grown-up—Nate—in the big house on the hill. My room at the B& B is tiny—it’s what would commonly be known as a maid’s room—and has a pleasant cedar smell. When I arrive, the lady of the house asks if I mind the resident child’s hamster remaining in my room overnight. She explains that they can relocate him if need be, but if at all possible it’s better he stay put. “He gets confused if we move the cage. I think he has Alzheimer’s, although I’m not sure what the symptoms are in a hamster.”
    I look at the hamster, the hamster looks at me. I don’t think he has Alzheimer’s—he seems far too “conscious.” I turn away and undress, an alien among the white faux–Queen Anne furniture decorated with Hello Kitty stickers. Who is this Hello Kitty? From what I gather, she’s no Janis Joplin or Grace Slick. I pick up the small pile of rough towels off the bed, throw one over my shoulder, and go down the hall to