1
NINETEEN YEARS LATER
The garbage pickers came on Friday evenings in Wilton. At twilight they emerged from shadows, silently trolling the streets in rusting pickups, dented vans, and sagging station wagons, searching for remnants of other people’s lives.
The pickers, mostly stoic Mexican men, worked quickly and with purpose. They loaded the backs of their trucks and wagons up high, tying down the things they had chosen with ropes, chains. The chipped barstool, the old mattress, the stained rug—this was all precious cargo to them.
I stood in the driveway and watched a white truck without hubcaps slow then stop in front of our house. A man with a backward baseball cap and a bright orange T-shirt stepped out and sheepishly nodded at me as he circled the large tricycle I had placed by the curb. It was Ethan’s old bike.
I watched the man study it. He appeared confused, the knot of his brow tight.
“It’s for adults,” I called out. “You can take it. There’s something wrong with the handlebars, but you can probably fix them.”
He seemed hesitant, staring at the bike, his hands in his pockets.
“It’s not heavy. You want help?”
He finally glanced up at me, smiled, and then bent down, and in one quick move he lifted the bike into the back of his truck, positioning it next to a green filing cabinet. He nodded in my direction again, climbed back inside the truck, and drove off, his red taillights fading quickly in the growing dark.
* * *
I finished packing the van a few minutes later, wedging one last large box with a sleeping bag, the teddy bears, and the photo album into the back. Hoping to maximize every inch, I had started the process with a solid plan, arranging each box and bag like it was a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. But after an hour I abandoned this methodical approach and began randomly cramming things in. It was getting late, and we had to get going.
With the final box in place, I assessed the van, our home for the next two weeks. A 2013 silver Honda Odyssey. Sat seven. Less than twenty thousand miles on it. Brand-new Michelins. Fully loaded, or almost fully loaded, because it didn’t have GPS. The van was Mary’s, and she didn’t think we needed it because she said we never went anywhere. And she was right—we never went anywhere. Until now, of course. I stepped close and rested my hand on the hood and decided to give the van a pep talk. We needed to be on the same page here, work together. I whispered, “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, buddy. A lot of time. We’re depending on you. Time to see what you’re made of. This is your moment. Make everyone back in Japan proud.”
This completed, I turned to Ethan. He had been shooting baskets in the driveway for close to an hour, oblivious to my efforts, the significance of the trip, the moment—of everything.
I took a moment and watched my son: skinny white legs, even skinnier white arms, Illinois cap hiding an explosion of black curly hair, his mouth half open in concentration and wonder as he continued to sink shot after shot. He was good at this, amazing even, a savant. Considering the doctors said he would never walk, might not even sit up, it was more than amazing, really; it was a miracle, a nice-size bone God had decided to toss us after all.
After banking another midrange jumper, I intercepted the ball.
“Shoot!” he said.
“No more shooting.”
“Illini!”
“No, we’re not playing Illini tonight.”
“Illini!”
“We can’t.”
“Shoot!”
He made a move for the ball, but I held it up high, away from him. Ethan was short, no more than five-six, and I was close to a foot taller. “We have to go now. It’s time to leave, dude-man. Long drive.”
After a few halfhearted jumps, he gave up on the ball. “Where? Mom. Be?”
“She’s with Karen.”
“Where? Mindy. Be?”
“Mindy’s not here. She’s going to be with Karen and Mom. We’ll see them all at Karen’s wedding in a few days. Now get in, come on. Open the door, and get in. We have a long drive. Chicago to South Carolina. A lot of driving.”
“Where? Karen. Be?”
“Come on, buddy. If you don’t get in, you’ll have to sit in the back.”
“Where. Stinky Bear?”
“He’s in the van.”
“Doing?”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Where? Red Bear?”
“Red Bear is with Stinky Bear. They’re together in a box. They’re very comfortable. It’s a nice box.”
“Where? Grandpa Bear?”
“All in the box. The same box. They’re all waiting for us. All of them. They want to get going. They want to get to South Carolina. They can’t wait.”
“Where? Mom?”
I took a deep breath and gently took him by the hand and led him over to the van. “Do not pinch me, do you hear me, do not pinch me! Hands. To. Self. Get in now. That’s it. Okay, now buckle up. Good, okay, good.” I leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head. Then I shut the door and walked slowly over to the driver’s side, taking my time, soaking in the last few seconds of sweet, sweet silence. It wasn’t until I was already behind the wheel, had already buckled my seat belt, had already adjusted the rearview mirror, had already turned the key, that I thought to ask him, way, way, way too late, if he had gone to the bathroom.
“Went.”
I looked at him. He looked away. “Are you sure?”
“Pee-pee.”
“You’re not sure.”
“Pee-pee.”
“You have to go now?”
“Yes! No! Yes! Pee-pee. Pee-pee. Bad.”
I closed my eyes and turned the van off.
* * *
Though he was quite capable of going pee-pee on his own, I was on a schedule, so I led him back inside the house and to the bathroom, pulled down his pants, and pointed at the middle of the toilet bowl.
“Okay, go.”
“Where? Stinky Bear?”
“Just go, Ethan, just go.”
“Where? Stinky Bear?”
“We’re not doing this now, no Stinky Bear. Go.”
“Where?”
“I told you, he’s in the van, okay?”
“What. Doing?”
“He’s waiting for us. Everyone is waiting for us in Charleston, South Carolina. That’s a long way. We’re going to drive there. Isn’t that fun? Isn’t that crazy? Mom thinks I’m crazy for doing this. I’m starting to think I’m crazy for doing this, and we haven’t even pulled out of the driveway. Isn’t that crazy? Yes, sir, it sure is. Yes, sir.”
Ethan looked at me, penis in hand. Then, after an eternity, after I silently counted to thirty backward, after I heard the clock on the kitchen wall tick, after I heard a distant honk of a car on the street, after I started to feel terribly sorry for myself, he forced out a few casual drops of pee-pee.
When he was done, he looked at me without apology.
“All. Done,” he said.
“What do you mean, all done? That’s all you got? That’s it?”
“Yes. Ma’am!”
“You have no more pee-pee in you. None?”
“Yes. Ma’am!”
“So, you didn’t really have to go after all, did you? This whole thing was a waste of time after all.” Every so often, for reasons I no longer understood, I would try to make a point with Ethan.
“Yes. Ma’am!”
We looked at each other. “Pull your pants up,” I said.
“Why? Mad?”
“I’m not mad. Just pull your pants up.”
Back outside, I paused in the driveway and glanced up at the moon, now rising full behind the Bakers’ house, across the street. Ethan stopped to admire it too, his mouth once again open in wonder. I took his hand, and we stood together. For years I had dreamed about taking a trip like this, a long, open-ended journey, and here I was.
“A. Lot. Of. Moon.”
I didn’t say anything. I just held on to my son’s hand and kept looking up at the moon, blurry in the purple-and-pink summer sky, and wondered if I would remember this moment forever and fearing I would.
* * *
I was a man with an Overall Plan and the first step in this Plan, Phase I, was to drive to Champaign, Illinois, about two hours south, and spend the night. The next day, we would kill time at my alma mater, the University of Illinois, doing God knows what, before moving on to other, slightly vaguer, phases. Though I would quickly abandon this night-driving strategy, I originally thought traveling with Ethan while he slept would be easier.
It would make more sense, of course, to fly, but planes were not an option. Our few attempts with Ethan in the friendly skies had been so traumatic, so disruptive, that I was sure the FAA had us on the No-Fly list. We were driving or we weren’t going to Karen’s wedding.
I backed out of the driveway and drove slowly with the windows down so Ethan could see Wilton, Illinois, his home, our home, one last time. Wilton was a fine Chicago suburb, delicately torn from the pages of some glossy House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Big Homes for Rich People publication: aspirational, affluent, it had lots of long brick driveways filled with lots of German-engineered cars. I had married into Wilton some thirty years prior and had had, thanks in part to my high-school teacher’s salary and South Side of Chicago upbringing, a somewhat uneasy and self-conscious relationship with it from the start. But I had lived there a long time and so had Ethan. It was home.
I turned the corner. “Say good-bye, Ethan.”
“Bye! Idiot!”
“You need to stop saying that.”
“Okay. Idiot!”
I raised the window, uttered my first official sigh of the trip, and wondered if I should stop for coffee. I was very tired.
The last few days had been an exhausting and emotional blur. I should have been focusing on my daughter’s wedding in Charleston, should have been thinking about Karen, my oldest, but as always, my every move, my every thought was dominated by Ethan. The good-byes, the trips to his favorite places—Mariano’s, Panera, Rafferty’s Pub, Aurelio’s Pizza, Denning Park. One more swing ride, one more Sprite from Chuck at the bar, one more piece of cheese from Denetha at the deli, one more bike ride around Wilton. One last day in Ethan’s World.
There were details to confirm, phone calls to make—to the Jefferson Davis Inn, Ocean View, to all the hotels we would be staying at along the way. And then there was the packing. What to take, what to ship, what to toss, what to store? A thousand things to do, a million imagined and anticipated scenarios.
The constant activity did serve one positive purpose, however: it had kept me from thinking.
But all that was over. Alone now, without the shield of my to-do list, the Doubt and Guilt returned. In an effort to cope, I reverted to survival mode: keep driving; get to Champaign; get to the hotel. In other words, do what I’ve always done when it comes to Ethan: just take the next step, just get through the day.
The Doubt and Guilt pressed their advantage, though, pummeling me. Desperate, I tried to cover up, play rope-a-dope, let the Doubt and Guilt have their way until they punched themselves out. To be sure, I could have counterpunched, defended myself, argued my case (“This is the best option”), but instead I just drove on. The moon was in front of me now, silvery and pale, and as we headed south, I envied its solitude.
* * *
During a distant, optimistic phase of my life, when I still had hope that things would turn out okay or at least close to okay, when I still believed that I would lead a semblance of a normal life, travel, go interesting places, see interesting things, I signed up for a credit card that rewarded me with Marriott points. The more I spent, the more free nights I would get at a Marriott hotel. A simple and common promotion but one that ultimately proved to have little value for me since we, specifically I, never went anywhere. Consequently, for years, the card served as a cruel and ironic reminder of my landlocked status. Every time I pulled it out at an uninteresting place (Target, Walmart, Hot ’n’ Fast Pizza) and saw the Marriott logo, my heart broke a little. Rather than exchange all my points for TVs or computers or a treadmill, I continued to hoard them with the obstinate hope that one day I would cash in. Apparently, that day had come.
Our very first Marriott was a Courtyard just outside of Champaign. Getting Ethan into a room late at night was, as with most everything involving him, a tricky proposition. I had called earlier and in a hushed voice explained that before checking in, I needed to go straight to the room because I had a sleeping infant with me. I had decided to use the word infant instead of child or even baby, believing it had more impact. I had given this considerable thought.
Sure enough, a clerk was patiently waiting for us in front of room 117 at ten thirty, the appointed time. She was a tall blonde and still sorority-perky despite the hour. I was fully anticipating her confused and concerned look when she saw me in the hallway with nineteen-year-old Ethan and not the swaddling newborn she had been expecting.
I offered no explanation. “Hello.”
“Oh. Hi.” She took a few steps back.
“Dark. Outside,” Ethan mumbled. He was essentially sleepwalking.
The girl rebounded, her Delta Gamma instincts kicking in. “Sure is!” she said. Her eyes were resolutely big and bright, and it was apparent that she was trying to act normal, something people felt compelled to do when first confronted with Ethan.
“It sure is,” I said.
She stared at us, her big smile growing.
“The key,” I finally said.
“Oh. Right, I’m so sorry.” She handed it to me. “We only had a room with a king left. I’m sorry.”
“That’s fine.” I gave her my credit card and said I would pick it up in the morning.
“Have a good night!” she said.
“You have a great one.”
I opened the door and led Ethan to the bed where I took off his shoes and clothes and asked him if he had to go pee-pee.
“Went.”
I thought he might be interested in the hotel room, but his face was already in the pillow.
“You sure?” I asked. “You want to see the bathroom? It’s different. Different bathroom, whole new toilet, probably whole new flushing mechanism.”
He closed his eyes. “Leave. Now.” This was his heartfelt way of saying good night. Like his mother, he could be very direct.
“Okay, I’ll leave now.” But I didn’t leave. I sat on the edge of the bed, smoothed his black, rumpled hair with my hand, and studied him. Despite his age, he still looked like the child he would always be. Upturned nose, smooth skin, large dark eyes that took in a world he didn’t always understand. Watching him fall asleep, I saw no hint of the demons—the frustration, the anxiety, the fears—that constantly plagued him. Today had been a good day, a strangely calm day. He did not do well with change and transitions, so I had expected the worst. He had surprised me though. Tomorrow might be entirely different—tomorrow could easily be the worst day of our lives—but with Ethan, today, now, that moment, was all that mattered. I bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“Thanks for being a good guy today.”
“Leave. Now.”
“Right.”
I stood and stretched my back before unpacking my laptop and ever-present bottle of Jim Beam. I poured myself a small snort, pulled out my brand-new, old-school Rand McNally road atlas, and sat down to review our route.
Rather than proceed straight south through Illinois, I had decided to head due east and spend the next night in Indianapolis before turning south toward Louisville. I was looking forward to that particular stop. Kyle Baker, a neighbor of ours, played college basketball there, and Ethan (and secretly I) worshipped him. Other than possibly the wedding, seeing him and Kyle together again was going to be the highlight of the trip.
I pondered the route awhile longer, worried that Indianapolis wasn’t far enough, but decided to proceed anyway. We had time. I next went online to confirm our reservations at the Marriotts in Indianapolis and Louisville, then poured myself a second drink.
My planned late-night driving strategy was certainly going to put a crimp in my two-drinks-a-day bourbon prescription. Life with Ethan had made alcohol a necessity, a medication I carefully rationed. Two drinks, I coped; three drinks, I was drunk. And I didn’t want to become a drunk.
I sipped on number two slowly, and found my way to the girls’ Facebook pages, stopping at Karen’s first. There was not much new there. Just a comment about being seven days away from the Big Day. No new photos, no new comments from her. This wasn’t entirely surprising, considering she was getting married in a week and things were no doubt, hectic. I studied a photo of her and Roger taken last year somewhere in Spain or Austria or Greece, someplace that offered the perfect photo op. Both thin, athletic, smiling, confident. Karen, her blond hair pulled back, looked especially happy, her pretty face fully revealed to the camera. Like her mother, she was a quiet and guarded person, but in this photo at least, she seemed to be stepping out from behind something. I had had my doubts about Roger—I feared him a phony—but if she was happy, then I supposed I was happy.
I next checked out Mindy’s page, always a source of entertainment. Sure enough, it did not disappoint. There were new photos of her in various costumes, and a link to a video from the last show of the season. She had once again performed a parody commercial for an adult diaper for busy executives who didn’t have time to go to the bathroom. The product, Power Pads, would inflate in the middle of a meeting. Though I’d seen this bit before, I never tired of watching it.
The scene opened with Mindy in a dark, conservative, business suit, arguing a case before a packed courtroom. When the judge, guest star Will Ferrell, suggested taking a recess, Mindy waved his request away.
“I don’t need a recess, Your Honor! I’m ready to go!” Then she closed her eyes, and her pants inflated to a ridiculous size while a voice-over said, Time is money, so don’t piss it away! Power Pads, for the on-the-go who-have-to-go—but have no time. The sketch closed with Will Ferrell’s pants ballooning as he yelled, “Let’s all go!” to the camera.
I watched the sketch one more time, laughed quietly, then clicked on another link: Extreme Makeover: Home (Crystal Meth Lab) Edition. This bit featured Mindy as a hyperactive, type-A guru making over a home-based crystal meth lab. “Working from home is always a challenge!” Mindy, hands on hips, explained to a fat trailer trash couple and an ominous-looking Hispanic man with dark sunglasses, “This is more than a meth lab; this is your home! And we’re going to make it your castle!”
I swallowed another laugh and shook my head. There she was, Mindy, our little pixie, who didn’t actually speak until she was almost four years old, who didn’t actually have any nonimaginary friends other than Karen until she was six—on the Internet, on TV every Saturday night, in magazines, on websites, closer to famous than almost famous. How this all happened, how she went from math club president to this and how I felt about it, I wasn’t sure, but there she was, my little buddy.
I stared at my daughter’s face for a moment, remembered how she would make me howl with impersonations of her teachers, her mother, me, even Ethan, then turned off my laptop, and reluctantly returned to the road atlas. I had some more work to do.
Driving two, maybe three hours a day seemed about the best we could manage. In addition to Indianapolis and Louisville, our schedule included stops in Knoxville, and then Asheville, North Carolina. Once I reached Asheville, I planned to make a final and frantic Sherman-esque march to the sea and Charleston. Factoring weather delays, traffic, Ethan meltdowns, my increasingly active bladder, and possibly, hopefully, stops at local attractions, I figured on arriving in Charleston by Thursday—Friday, at the absolute latest.
The second half of the trip, the drive up north, wasn’t nearly as well planned out. I studied the map, traced a route, and then put the atlas away. I couldn’t bring myself to think that far ahead. Just take the next step.
I brushed my teeth and gave myself a long-overdue once-over in the bathroom mirror. Still tall, still thin. My blue eyes, I noted, were now a dull, indiscriminate rainy-day color. Was my nose always this big? And my hair, the gray was spreading like a contagion. I was, at fifty-seven, an old man getting older. A line from some required reading book (Gatsby? Fitzgerald?) came to mind: How did you go bankrupt? Two ways: gradually, then suddenly. The same could be said about growing old. I stared at myself, took serious stock: John Nichols, ex-basketball player, ex-author, ex-philanderer, ex-husband, ex-high-school English teacher.
“A. Lot. Of. Exes,” I said, and shut the light off.
Returning to the room, I found an appropriate space at the foot of the bed and lined my feet up for my free throws. I did this sometimes. Sometimes this helped. (Note: in my prime, high school, when I could run a five-minute mile, party half the night and still make it through a three-hour practice, then come home and play two hours more in the driveway, I was an excellent free-throw shooter. I couldn’t play defense much, couldn’t jump, had trouble fighting through picks, but I could shoot, as my teammates used to say, and as my still high-school record of forty-three straight free throws could attest, “like a motherfucker.” I attributed this less to form and ability—though both were pretty good—than to an otherworldly focus that allowed me to shut out the noise, my thoughts, my past, present, and future, the universe, when I stood at that line. My coach at Marist High, Coach Leahy, amazed and confused by my one-trick-pony act, once asked what I thought about when I shot, and I gave him a pure and truthful answer: nothing.)
So I squared my shoulders, aligned my feet, bounced the imaginary ball exactly three times, stared at the imaginary basket hanging over the door of the bathroom, and waited for my mind to empty, the nothingness to come. I then shot, and when I did, I saw the arc of the ball, saw it rotate, saw it sail through the air, saw the bottom of the net sweetly flick as if an angel had just breathed on it.
I made ten straight, and while this helped muffle the drumbeats in my head, I was still too wired for sleep, so I searched for other diversions. Other than my bourbon, I had brought only two with me: a CD—Exile on Main St., by the Rolling Stones—and a book, a dog-eared paperback, Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon. I couldn’t envision a circumstance that would allow me to play the CD, since Ethan hated all music except for Christmas carols, which we listened to the brink of madness year-round, but the book, I thought, would be a good companion. I pulled it out and slid into bed next to my man.
Blue Highways is a memoir of a middle-aged man’s solitary and somewhat desperate trip through the back roads of America. Over the course of his journey, he stops in offbeat towns and meets offbeat people while searching for internal change after a failed marriage. I had read it a number of times, and it fueled a desire in me to do the same thing: to travel, to see, to listen, to write, to rebuild.
For more than nineteen years, my life with Ethan had kept me from taking such a trip, but now here I was, making the most of things and my Marriott points. I opened the book and, for a while, disappeared into faraway back roads.
* * *
I had one of my Ethan-is-talking-normal dreams that night. I had had these dreams often when he was younger, but over time they had grown rare. Occasionally, however, they still came upon me during times of inner turbulence, so it was no surprise that I would have one now.
Once again we were back at our home in Wilton, sitting on the deck, having breakfast. As always it was warm and sunny, but off in the distance I heard the first faint peals of thunder. When Ethan heard the thunder, he looked up from his bowl of cereal and spoke in the clear, sweet voice that existed only when I slept: “Where are we going, Dad? Where are we going?”
I woke immediately after hearing his voice, those words, that question, and lay still, pretending I was okay, convincing myself I was fine. But when I heard the sound of the Doubt and Guilt rounding the bend, picking up steam, I got up, made my way over to the foot of the bed, and searched for the free-throw line.
Copyright © 2015 by Jim Kokoris
