A Short Story

By Stephen Leon

Freddy giggled in his car seat as his older brother sang over the song on the radio with silly made-up lyrics. Acting on your butt behavior, turn your back on butt-crack nature, everybody wants to rule the poop.

“Ryan! You’re 12 years old! Stop acting like a 5-year-old!” Freddy, who was 5, laughed even harder as his father tried in vain to get Ryan to stop.

Peter Morgan’s rusting, dirty-gray Honda minivan, which he had bought used after Freddy was born to accommodate the needs of a growing family, rumbled up I-91 as the late-afternoon sun began to set on a cool but not quite wintry Friday in early December.

To Freddy’s delight, Ryan continued his scatalogical rewrite of the Tears for Fears song.

Help me make the most of peeing and of pooping—

“Ryan! Shut up! NOW!”

Both boys were laughing so hard that Ryan could no longer sing. Just to make sure, Peter leaned to his right and pushed the “off” button so hard with his right thumb that it bent backward painfully.

“Son of a bitch!” Peter exclaimed. The boys clearly did not feel his pain, still laughing uproariously.

“OK, that’s it. If you both don’t shut up for the rest of the trip . . .”

Peter paused to consider which of the possible threats in his arsenal might actually produce the desired results. If he warned them that he would turn the car around and go back home to West Hartford, it would upset Freddy, who was excited to see his mother. But it might actually please Ryan, who wasn’t looking forward to spending the weekend with Claire and, especially, her new boyfriend.

The boys’ laughter finally died down to the occasional spasmic chuckle as they caught their breath.

“OK, it’s another 15 minutes till we get off the highway in Northampton. There’s a convenient store near the exit. You can both get a snack there, but first you have to play the Quiet Game for the rest of the trip. If one of you makes a noise, you lose your snack. If you both make noise, you both lose your snack. Deal?”

A pause, then, “Deal.” “OK.” Their father had not previously mentioned that he might buy them a snack before dropping them off with Mom, so this new reward was worth shutting up for. And it was only 15 minutes.

“I’ll count down to when the game starts, and when we pull off the exit ramp, I’ll let you know it’s over. Ready?”

Ryan took three more deep breaths to chase the chuckles away. Freddy was already thinking about whether he wanted chips or candy. “Yup.”

“Five, four, three . . .”

After several minutes of total silence in the car, Peter turned the radio back on, switching to the news on NPR. When the weather report came on, Peter listened with some interest. Ginny was picking him up early Saturday morning to drive to Boston for a day and a half; they had booked a hotel room in Copley Square. Peter had a brief flashback to similar romantic getaways with Claire, when they were younger and more optimistic about their future together, and the clouds had not yet massed over their relationship.

The weather report for their early December weekend in Boston was fine: sunny, unseasonably warm. There was a winter storm brewing in the Rockies; it would cross the plains during the early part of the week and might make the East Coast a couple of days after that, but no sooner.

*  *  *

Looking back, Peter couldn’t pinpoint when it happened. When Claire and Ryan simply stopped talking to each other. The early years of his childhood seemed ordinary enough. An early walker, he didn’t talk until a few months into his second year, though he clearly understood a hundred or more words. In his bath he could pick out the blue turtle or the pink elephant without hesitation. When he did start to talk, he kept his words to a minimum, just enough to make his point. One morning when he was not quite a year and a half, Peter was delighted to see his little toddler pointing to the TV and asking to watch the movie “Babe” simply by repeating the words “sheep” and “pig.”

As he grew, his parents were pleased to see that he liked all of the things they hoped he would: day trips, nature walks, picnics in the park, visits to the children’s museum, and summer vacations at the ocean. In his early years at school, he made friends easily—which is to say, friends came to him. He was quietly popular without ever trying. He never got into fights at school, but his friends did—over him. Peter was surprised to get a call one day from his teacher to see her after school about a fight he had been in. He signed Ryan out, told him to go have fun on the playground, and went to the teacher’s classroom.

It turned out that Ryan hadn’t been in a fight at all. “I don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Bingham said. “If he plays with Lucas and ignores Devon, Devon starts a fight with Lucas. If he plays with Devon and ignores Lucas, Lucas starts a fight with Devon.”

It struck Peter that this was somehow not his or Ryan’s problem.

At around age 5, Ryan began singling out his father for companionship and conversation. They would sit on the porch together after dinner, and Ryan would say things like, “Talk to me about animals,” or “Talk to me about baseball.” Peter would do as he was asked, and Ryan would sit, happily, quietly, listening.

Ryan was not yet unaffectionate with his mother, but he sometimes just didn’t seem that interested in her. And she was beginning to notice.

* * *

When Peter first met Claire in a popular downtown Hartford nightclub, she seemed shy and insecure and under the protective wing of her more outgoing roomate. Linda was large and loud and forward, and as soon as she saw Peter, she made a beeline for the tall, blue-eyed man in his early 30s with shoulder-length black hair that made him look like a rock star. She cornered him for small talk.

While Peter was enduring Linda’s exasperating diatribes about her job, unreliable men and Hartford’s lousy nightlife, he began to notice her companion. Claire’s pale complexion and habit of looking down into her vodka tonic (as if there were something more interesting going on in there than in the club) at first masked her petite good looks. The closer he looked, the more he liked what he saw: a cute, well-proportioned figure, blunt-cut blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, and a shy smile that brought dimples to her slightly freckeld cheeks.

When Linda, desperate to keep Peter’s attention, offered to buy him a drink, he said yes, on one condition: that she would introduce him to her friend.

To Linda’s dismay, Peter and Claire talked for the rest of the evening. They did not go home together; Linda made sure to pack Claire into her car and drive her back to their apartment, carefully locking the doors behind her as if Peter might somehow sneak in and whisk Claire away.

But they exchanged numbers and made a dinner date, then another. Linda made sure Claire no longer felt welcome in their apartment, once even dragging her across the rug because she had violated Linda’s side of ther living room to watch TV. Claire moved into a studio apartment for a few months, then moved in with Peter.

They quickly learned their shared interests: cooking, indie movies, alternative rock (it was years before Claire revealed a taste for country, inherited from her parents), and history: Claire had finished only two years of community college, but was more well-read than most graduates; Peter was working on his history doctorate. And in the blush of their new romance, they sometimes spent long Saturday afternoons in bed together before finally getting dressed and thinking about things like groceries, dinner, or whether any good bands were playing in the local clubs. They felt warm and content in each other’s company.

After a year they began planning the wedding. Around the same time Peter notcied something about Claire that hadn’t registered before: She seemed to have a blue streak that was becoming more and more apparent. When they were sharing a meal or talking about a subject of mutual interest, she seemed engaged and affectionate with him, and their sex was abundant and playful. But every now and then, he noticed, her face would seem to cloud over, her expression go blank. At first he would ask her what was wrong, and she would snap back, “Nothing.” So he learned not to ask.

In time it got worse. What Peter thought at first were bouts of depression began lasting longer, sometimes hours or even a full day, and she took to withdrawing into the spare room with a book. The episodes were accompanied by silence, and sometimes lasted until she went to bed. There was no sex, not even cuddling, on those nights. Then in the morning she was back to normal.

Pregnancy seemed to make her happier, but she still had occasional blank spells. He felt closer to her than he had in a while, so one day he dared to ask if she might consider seeing someone about her depression. To his relief, she did not seem angry at the question.

“I’m not depressed,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Okay,” he said. “So . . . what happens when you suddenly go silent and look all melancholy? What are you feeling?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing at all.”

Claire gave birth to a boy, and their lives were consumed with new realities. Peter got hired as a non-tenured history professor, so he had an income, but they still lived frugally in the modest house they had purchased. Then Claire found a job as a receptionist, but the cost of day care and diapers almost seemed to negate the new income. When she and Peter fought about money, she would retreat into her emotional blankness, and he once again stopped asking her about it.

Raising a boy made things right for a while. They both enjoyed playing with him and reading to him and packing him into the car seat for adventures. But as he got older and seemed to prefer Peter’s company to Claire’s, she began taking it out on him.

Although Claire had seemed shy and unsure of herself as a young woman, a hard and stoic edge had begun to reveal itself. Among other things, she did not let slights and insults go by without consequence, as Peter gradually learned over the early years of their marriage. And apparently she had passed that gene on to her son intact. She and Ryan would begin to disagree over something of seemingly little importance, but the fight would quickly escalate into shouts, whereupon he would abruptly turn away from her, head for his bedroom, and slam the door shut.

Peter at first assumed that one or the other would eventually try to apologize and make nice, or at least reestablish the relationship with a silent hug after a few hours, or perhaps the next day. Instead they both stubbornly persisted in the cold war until a few days had gone by and they could begin exchanging small talk (“turkey or ham sandwich?”) without giving up any ground on the old argument.

On his sixth birthday, Ryan infuriated Claire by declining an offer to take him to a movie. He didn’t think much of it, but she was devastated by the rejection. Her only child, barely school age, was so indifferent to her that he wouldn’t even let her take him to the theater.

She withdrew into the spare room for an entire weekend, emerging only to use the bathroom and occasionally get a drink or a yogurt from the fridge. Peter and Ryan ate meals and played cards and watched TV and kicked the soccer ball around together. He enjoyed the weekend, except for the chill he felt every time Claire emerged, her face so pale and blank it looked as though her soul had escaped her body to take a vacation somewhere else.

Peter came home from the university Monday evening to find a lovely candlelight dinner waiting for him. Claire poured him a glass of wine and told him Ryan had been very happy when she told him he could have McDonald’s takeout for supper. He was in his room playing with his Gameboy. They ate and talked pleasantly. They finished a bottle of wine and opened another. About halfway through that bottle, Claire stood up and began unbuttoning her blouse.

She had made a decision, and she knew that the time was right to act.

Nine months and seven days later, Freddy was born. He was a cute, cherub-cheeked baby, and he soon grew into a delightful child who smiled and laughed at almost everything, and adored his older brother. By age 4 he was asking intelligent questions and enjoying the company of his parents and brother equally. Claire made sure they spent a lot of time together, strolling him through the neighborhood frequently, playing with him in the park, taking him to children’s movies.

Claire would sometimes lay on her back on the floor and hold Freddy on top of her, lifting him up in the air and swinging him gently around until she decided to drop him back on her stomach, which would cause him to giggle. Then she would give him a kiss on one of his big round cheeks, and he would smile and wait for the inevitable:

“You’re not ticklish are you?” Freddy would start gigging even before she started tickling his sides and stomach, which sent him into uncontrollable spasms of laughter.

Watching this, Peter hoped their intimacy would somehow make Claire more fulfilled and complete.

But the darkness that had been looming for years seemed to settle on the household for good. Her relationship with Ryan never recovered. And as she spent more and more nights going to sleep on the futon with Freddy, she and Peter became more distant. It first it was just awkward, as if they really didn’t know each other and were desperately searching for things to talk about. Somewhere along the line it turned mean, petty, resentful. Dinner almost always ended with an argument. Freddy would sometimes cry, but he usually waited it out, knowing he’d have Mommy to himself soon. Ryan would retreat to his room and lock the door. Peter just sat in his chair and drank wine. If Ryan came back out, they talked. If not, he just stared at the wall and thought.

*  *  *

Claire had moved out of their West Hartford home in August to move in with Mitch in Northampton. Claustrophobic in their drafty, poorly-kept-up three-bedroom house with a man she no longer loved, she had begun spending occasional overnights with her sister Pamela in Hadley, across the Connecticut River from Northampton.

One weekend she left on Friday and didn’t come home until early Sunday evening. She seemed lighter on her feet than usual as she swept floors and made lunches for the kids, singing country songs as she skipped this way and that through the house.

On Tuesday of that week she told Peter she had fallen in love. She began spending three or four nights a week with Mitch, and then gave up being a member of the Morgan household for good. She kept her job as a receptionist in a West Hartford medical practice, commuting to work in her Subaru Outback and driving Freddy, but not Ryan, to school.

Peter left it up to Claire to file for divorce; for some reason this detail didn’t seem as urgent to her as getting out of the house.

At 51, feeling old and beaten down from years of misery with Claire, Peter did not expect to jump right back into the dating pool, though even Claire had encouraged him by insisting he was as handsome as ever. Soon after Claire left for good, when she had the kids for the weekend and he was out to dinner with a colleague from the University of Hartford history department, he noticed a married female friend of his at the bar. Her son Conor played soccer with Ryan; she was a few years younger than Peter. Tall, with sparkling blue eyes, graceful curves and long, silky brown hair, Amanda was one of the few soccer moms who had caught his eye over the years. But she was married—even if Peter was now technically available—and their kids were pals. He didn’t know why she was out by herself, but he would not go there.

Amanda wasn’t out by herself after all: Another woman in her late 40s returned from the ladies’ room and joined her at the bar. She was around the same height, with short dark hair; her features, while not unattractive, were plainer than Amanda’s. She wore a loose cashmere sweater that concealed her figure, at least the top half of it. But when she sat down at her barstool and crossed her long, slender, stockinged legs, Peter took a long look, then looked away, and a few seconds later, before he realized what he was doing, looked back again.

At least one of the women noticed, because now they were smiling and laughing with each other, shooting sideways glances at Peter.

The next two hours were a blur of surprises. Peter’s knowing companion excused himself after dinner and urged Peter to stay and “get lucky.” Amanda motioned for Peter to join them. His breath quickened involuntarily when Amanda told him she was getting a divorce. “When’s yours going to be final?” she asked him playfully. Everyone knew.

Dennis, the bowtied, white-haired bartender, opened another bottle of red wine without being asked. Amanda told Peter that Ginny had been divorced for eight years and knew the ropes; she would lean on her for advice. Peter’s mind raced as he considered whether it would be weird to date his 12-year-old son’s friend’s mother. He had even been Conor’s soccer coach. What if he woke up some Saturday morning in Amanda’s bed and Conor was already up watching cartoons and eating Frosted Flakes?

“Down boy, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Peter thought. What he didn’t realize was that he was focusing on the wrong woman.

When Amanda excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, Ginny seemed shy as she looked at Peter and then looked away at her wine glass. He asked her standard make-conversation questions: Where was she from? Where did she work? Originally from Virginia, she had recently taken a job in Hartford at the same web design and marketing firm where Amanda worked. “And you?” she asked. “Starving history professor,” he said, immediately wishing he hadn’t used the word “starving.” Their exchanges were halting and awkward because they didn’t know where to begin, but Peter found himself oddly at ease with her in spite of it.

When Amanda came back, she whispered something to Ginny, upon which they traded places and Ginny headed back to the ladies’ room. “Peter, I’m so glad you’re here,” Amanda said, looking him straight in the eyes, and then leaning in closer. “She has been miserable for a long time. Her marriage was awful. And she doesn’t date much because most of the available men are awful.” Amanda went on to say that Ginny had almost remarried once but didn’t because her then-preteens hated the guy. “They’re in college now.”

Amanda then put her mouth so close to Peter’s ear that he could feel her hot breath, which made him even more conflicted about the evening’s strange twists. “She hasn’t had sex in three years. She might take you to bed tonight.”

“Wait a minute,” Peter protested. “I didn’t come here to hook—“

Ginny was back. Soon they found common ground—movies and music and Malcolm Gladwell essays, and funny stories about how people reacted when they suddenly found out you weren’t with your spouse any more—and the conversation flowed. She smiled and laughed as they talked, and her intelligence made her seem prettier than he had previously thought. At times he could have sworn she was deliberately brushing one of those long gorgeous legs against his.

Amanda put the wine on her credit card and got up to leave, giving Peter one more hard stare for good measure.

He and Ginny lingered a while longer over the last of the wine, and then she invited him up to her nearby apartment for one more glass. She poured him one, but he never finished it.

***

At 5, Freddy didn’t understand why his mother couldn’t stay with him at home any more, but he proved very adaptable and seemed to make the most of the two worlds he lived in. He loved his brother and his father and preferred to be home in West Hartford, but he also loved his mother, and she went out of her way to make sure he and Ryan had a nice cozy bedroom in Mitch’s house with plenty of games and DVDs to occupy them.

Both boys enjoyed walking around in downtown Northampton, with its interesting shops and colorful mix of college students and professors, artists and musicians, and expatriates from New York and Boston who always seemed to be opening up eccentric new businesses. And the ethnic restaurants—especially the funky little place that Freddy said made the “best burritos in the world.”

Ryan didn’t really like the house, but was OK with it as long as he was left by himself or with just Freddy. The biggest difference was that Freddy had warmed up to Mitch, who worked in a record store by day and occasionally had club gigs at night with two different local bands. Freddy sat rapt on the musty living-room couch while Mitch showed off what he could play on his Fender Telecaster.

Ryan wanted nothing to do with Mitch and made a point of breaking his silence with Claire only when Mitch was not in the house. When he came home, Ryan retreated to the bedroom. If he had to sit with all of them at the dinner table he said nothing, and rolled his eyes when Mitch talked about his friends in Portland, Oregon, who had a band that might get a record deal—and might need a new guitarist. Ryan had overheard him talking to Claire about moving to Portland; she didn’t seem too enthusiastic, and instructed him not to talk about it in front of the boys.

Friday night passed without incident. They went out for pizza at a drafty old Italian joint a few blocks from downtown that was favored by locals who snubbed the pricier restaurants on Main Street. As soon as they got back to the house, Ryan retreated to the bedroom and urged Freddy to come with him. They put in a movie and watched it sitting up on the same twin bed, then fell asleep together in the middle of it.

In the morning, Ryan woke up to the sound of Freddy giggling in the living room. When he opened the bedroom door to find out what was going on, the first thing he saw was Mitch, on his knees, leaning over Freddy and stabbing his fingers all over the boy’s stomach and sides. You sure you’re not ticklish?” Mitch asked. Freddy was laughing too hard to answer; it was impossible to tell if he was enjoying it or not. Claire, sitting on the couch, was laughing too. “You’re sure you’re not ticklish?”

The sight of this filled Ryan with nausea. “Get off of him, you creep,” he said.

The whole room suddenly went quiet. Mitch straightened up.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re a creep and a child molester. Get off of him.”

Mitch, angry, looked at Claire for guidance. He wasn’t tickling Freddy any more, but he was still hovering over him with his knees pinned to his thighs.

“Ryan,” Claire snapped. “You don’t have to be so—”

Ryan wasn’t listening; he was welling up with rage. And before she could finish her sentence, Ryan darted at Mitch, lowered his head, and rammed it into his chest. The impact caught Mitch off balance and sent him tumbling onto his back.

“You little bastard,” he said, and before he knew it he had kicked Ryan in the stomach.

The blow really hurt, and made Ryan even angrier. “You fucking asshole,” he gasped. The Telecaster was only a few feet away in its stand; Ryan grabbed it by the neck and swung the body toward Mitch’s head. He swung hard, and Mitch was barely able to put his hands up to block it. Claire screamed.

The guitar did not break.

Mitch’s hands saved his head, but now both front wrists were throbbing in pain. Claire began to sob. She stood up, walked over to Ryan and looked at him, her body heaving as she sobbed. Their eyes locked in a momentary, burning stalemate. Then she smacked him across the face, cutting his lip on his teeth and giving him what would become a black eye. Then she fell back on the couch, still crying. Mitch was still on the floor, grimacing and rubbing his wrists. Freddy ran to Ryan and clucthed him around the waist.

Ryan gazed around the room and spied Claire’s cell phone on an end table. He kissed Freddy on the head and then disengaged, walked slowly over to the table, saw that her face was buried in her hands, snatched the phone and hurried into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

In the passenger seat of Ginny’s car, Peter wondered why Claire was calling him.

“Dad, you have to come pick me up now.”

“What?”

“They attacked me. My mouth is bleeding and my stomach hurts and my eye hurts. I hate them. You have to come and get me right now. I hate them. I can’t look at them a minute longer.”

Ginny and Peter had left West Hartford for Boston but hadn’t gotten far yet. Ryan had already packed his backpack.

“OK, we’ll be there as fast as we can. We’re about 45 minutes away.”

Ginny looked frightened. “What happened?” she asked.

Peter repeated what Ryan had told him.

“Oh my god, that’s terrible,” she said. “Was he crying?

“He doesn’t cry,” he replied.

“OK, tell me what exit to take.”

In Northampton, Ryan emerged quietly from the bedroom. Mitch was not in the living room; the bathroom door was closed and there was water running. On the couch, Claire and Freddy had their arms around each other, eyes closed, crying. He slipped out of the house unnoticed and walked to the end of the street to wait.

In Ginny’s car, Peter said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to ruin our weekend.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “This is more important. And you’re not the one who ruined it.”

Ginny was angry but didn’t show it. Anyway, she wasn’t angry at Peter, or Ryan. She was angry at Claire. And she couldn’t understand a mother who could abandon her children and not even show love to one of them.

She also wondered how much emotional damage Claire had done to this beautiful, sad little boy who could not cry.

***

The sight of Ryan’s fat lip and swelling eye infuriated Peter. “Who hit you like that?” he demanded.

“It was Mom, not the asshole,” he said.

“OK, tell me exactly what happened.” Ryan described the confrontation honestly, in blow-by-blow detail.

“So you started the actual fight,” Peter said.

“No, asshole started it. He was molesting Freddy.”

“He was tickling him, right?” Peter asked.

“Whatever. It was creepy.”

Peter looked at Ginny. Mitch had kicked Ryan in the stomach, but not until after Ryan had attacked him. If Mitch had bruised his face, he would have pressed charges. But not against Claire. He wondered if Ginny felt otherwise.

Peter knew there was no point in all of them going to Boston and salvaging the hotel reservation, which he had considered. Ryan needed to be home, not walking around a city where people would stare at him and wonder who was responsible for the bruises. Besides, Ryan had warmed up to Ginny only slightly more than he had warmed up to Mitch. He preferred to spend time with his father only.

“We’ll get some ice at the convenient store,” Peter said.

He didn’t know what to say to Claire. He wanted to call her and scream at her. But he had taught himself restraint. He prided himself on avoiding angry, emotional outbursts until he gave himself enough time to clear his head.

He also needed to make sure she knew Ryan was with him. He took a deep breath, took his cell phone out of his coat pocket, and turned to face Ryan in the backseat. He snapped a photo of his face and texted it to Claire, adding just one word.

“Seriously?”

***

The phone call from Mitch’s friend in Portland could not have been timed more perfectly. Any other day, Claire likely would have said no. On this day, she wanted to escape as badly as he did.

And they agreed it could be a trial run. A couple of weeks to see if it might work out. Rent was paid and they could leave the house alone until they decided. They both had a little money, and Claire had vacation and personal time to use. Calling in for Monday was abrupt, but she had been there a while, was a good employee, and was well enough liked to get away with it.

They had to plan quickly. Mitch wanted a couple of days to rehearse the songs before the Saturday gig opening for an up-and-coming indie band. They could spend a night or two with a good friend of his in Chicago, and get a motel for one more night between there and Portland.

“What about Freddy?” Mitch asked.

“He’s coming with us,” she replied without hesitation.

“Don’t you have to tell Peter?”

“I’ll tell him at some point.”

Mitch called his friend in Chicago. “No problem, there’s a spare room waiting for you, you can stay as long as you like.”

They decided to leave that afternoon and take turns driving to make it to Chicago sometime Sunday. Then they would rest for two nights and hit the road again early Tuesday morning. Claire told Freddy they were going on an adventure, that he would see some of the tallest buildings he had ever seen, and that he would love the Lincoln Park Zoo.

That sounded like fun to him.

And it was fun. On Monday morning, Claire and Freddy rode the El downtown and went to the top of the Sears Tower. Then she strolled him up Michigan Avenue. In the afternoon they went to the zoo. He was awed by the big cats and amused by the monkeys. He couldn’t get enough of watching the seals swim underwater. He loved when the meerkats stood up on their hind legs.

At around 4 her cell phone rang. It was Peter. “I haven’t heard from you at all. Did you bring Freddy to school today? Are you picking him up at after-school?”

“We’re in Chicago, she said,” turning away from Freddy so he wouldn’t hear. “We’re going to Portland for a couple of weeks.

“You’re what?”

“You heard me. Mitch has a gig on Saturday. We’re getting away from it all for a couple of weeks. Freddy will be fine.”

“He’s supposed to be in school,” Peter snapped.

“He’ll be fine.” At that, she turned her phone off.

“Why will I be fine?” Freddy asked. “And what day is it? When am I going home?”

“Soon,” she said.

Suddenly he missed Ryan, but he didn’t say anything.

The next morning Claire woke early and did laundry and packed her and Freddy’s things back into the Subaru. Then she got the others up. Mitch’s friend was just leaving for work, and they thanked him. Soon they were all in the Subaru, driving west toward Iowa. Claire sat in the backseat with Freddy, reading and playing games until he nodded off to sleep.

An hour later he woke up and asked if they would be home soon.

“We’re not going home quite yet,” Claire said?

“Where are we going?”

“Oregon. We’re having another adventure. We’ll be home in a couple of weeks.”

Suddenly Freddy was confised and scared.

“Aren’t I supposed to be in school?” he asked nervously.

“You’ll be fine.”

Claire reached out to hug him and saw that his body was starting to shake.

“You’ll be fine,” she repeated. “We’ll have fun.”

“I . . . want . . . Ryan,” he wailed in between the involuntary heaves of his chest.

Finally, Freddy began to sob uncontrollably. He loved his mother, but even her presence in the car failed to reassure him that he was safe. Something was wrong. They were driving far, far away from the life he knew, and he couldn’t understand why. He missed his brother playing games with him, making him laugh, and hugging him on the bed before he went to sleep. He missed his father too. In his agitated state, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he forgot all about his parents’ terrible fights and just wished they could all spend Christmas together in their home in West Hartford. The four of them. No Mitch.

Somewhere near the western border of Iowa, the boy’s sobs finally began to subside. Soon the only sound was the low, steady rumble of the Subaru’s tires as they rolled over mile after mile of I-80, and the occasional momentary roar of a tractor-trailer passing them. Freddy’s head tipped to the side, resting on the soft cloth wall of his car seat, his eyelids closed. They crossed the Missouri River into Nebraska. The December sunset flared wild oranges and reds between the thickening clouds.

Mitch and Claire had not talked since her failed attempt to reassure Freddy, and now she, too, was asleep. It was almost as if they were playing the Quiet Game.

Mitch yawned. He thought about turning the radio back on, and what kind of stations he might pick up out here on the plains. Probably not alternative rock. Nighttime settled in as the sky grew darker with clouds.

About an hour into Nebraska, Mitch pulled into a rest stop, waked Claire, and asked her if she would drive for a while. They had planned on paying for just one motel between Chicago and Portland, and Mitch wanted to make it at least partway across Wyoming before stopping.

Now Mitch was asleep and snoring in the passenger seat. Freddy continued to sleep quietly. Somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, rain began to fall, at first an intermittent sprinkle, then a steady drizzle. Claire turned the radio on and quickly found a country station.

Both hands back on the wheel, Claire gazed impassively at the road ahead. If she felt any sadness or remorse over the series of decisions that had led her to leave her husband and now one of her young sons, she didn’t show it. Mitch didn’t know her well enough yet to understand her bouts of emotional blankness. Like Peter at first, he would think she was feeling melancholy; but as she had explained to her husband, she wasn’t feeling anything at all. It was why Peter had taken to calling her “the ice princess,” even when they were still sort of getting along.

If Peter had been there watching her gaze at the soft Nebraska rain falling on the windshield, he might have joked that her cold stare could turn it to ice.

Soon it began to fall harder, smacking against the glass like a hail of pebbles.

At first Claire thought the wipers weren’t working properly. The rain began to streak and form clumps on the windshield as the wipers tried to push it aside. Suddenly she realized that the rain was freezing on contact. It was freezing on the highway too; a shot of adrenalin rushed through her as she felt the Subaru’s tires lose their grip on the road. She pumped the breaks a couple of times and had some luck slowing the car down while steering it out of the small skids that were threatening to pull it into a spin. She might have succeeded in guiding them safely onto the shoulder with a few more pumps of the brake, but there was no time. The tracter-trailer that had once seemed a good distance behind them was not slowing down, and now the approaching headlights looked like huge sunbeams in the rear-view mirror.

The impact sent the Subaru hurtling off the highway and into the ravine below. It rolled over twice and came to rest on its roof. When the rescue crew arrived 20 minutes later, there was no sound from inside the car.

*  *  *

Ryan hugged his father and said “Love you, Dad,” as he usually did before going to bed. They hugged a little longer than usual, as Peter fought to hold back more tears. Ryan didn’t cry—like his mother, he seldom cried over emotional matters, saving the tears for the times he simply didn’t get his way—but he missed Freddy. And it upset him that his brother didn’t have him there to hug him until he fell asleep.

Once Ryan had gone to sleep, Peter sat down on the couch and tried to watch TV. He poured a glass of wine, filling it almost to the top because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to sleep. An hour later, in bed, he cried softly for an hour, wondering where Freddy was and if he missed his home.

Because Claire had already changed her license and registration to her maiden name, and her cell phone was not recovered, and there was no one at the small house they had left behind in Northampton, the news was slow to reach even her sister, who was married and had a different last name. Local police tracked down Mitch’s mother first, but she knew little about Claire and had no information to provide them. Early that evening, they were able to locate Pamela, who, distraught over the news, couldn’t find Peter’s cell phone number but knew the home address by heart.

On the second morning after the accident, just after Ryan had left the house to catch his bus to school, Peter’s doorbell rang. It was two West Hartford police officers.

They asked if Claire Hansen was his wife. He nodded. They told him that Claire and and a man named Mitchell Levering had been killed in an accident Tuesday evening in freezing rain on a highway in Nebraska. Peter’s heart began to thump so loudly he felt like it might explode.

But there was good news. A small boy had survived the crash. Was he your son? He was unconscious when they found him but he appeared to be largely unscathed; he was tightly buckled into the car seat and apparently had suffered no trauma, even though they had landed upside-down. They were holding him for observation in a Lincoln hospital, awaiting word from next of kin.

Peter stood in front of the officers and tried to make sense of what they were saying. His face was frozen in shock. His heart was still beating wildly. Claire was dead. His brain struggled to process that fact. Claire was dead—but Freddy had survived.

Freddy was alive.

One of the officers handed Peter a piece of paper with contact numbers for the hospital and the Nebraska State Police.

“We are very sorry for your loss,” the other one said. “And thankful that your son survived. Apparently it was a miracle.”

Peter thanked them and closed the door. Seated at his kitchen table, he let the tears come. He had never cried so much in his life. There were tears of joy that Freddy was alive, and tears of sadness at the thought of him lying alone in a hospital far from home, with no family to comfort him. He and Ryan would fly out there as soon as he could book a flight.

And there were tears for Claire. Tears of sorrow for their doomed relationship, for her inability to connect emotionally with her oldest son, for her increasingly desperate attempts to change her life for the better. Though he knew in his heart that they were not destined to stay together, he found himself thinking about a vacation at the Cape, years ago, when they had almost seemed happy, and wondering if he could have loved her a little better, listened a little more closely to what she was trying to tell him she needed, and tried a little harder to bring to life the empty part of her soul that could feel nothing.

His mind snapped back to the present as he realized how much there was to do. It was Thursday. He called the history department office said he was leaving town for a family emergency and to cancel his classes through midweek. He got out his laptop and began searching flights and hotels. He spoke with the Nebraska State Police, who also asked him to make arrangements to identify Claire’s body, and then the hospital. As long as Peter had proper identification and Freddy’s birth certificate, they could discharge him into his care as early as Friday.

The late-afternoon flight meant Peter had to get Ryan out of school early. He told the attendance officer it was a family emergency; when Ryan arrived at the office from class, Peter said simply that they were going to pick up Freddy. “I’ll tell you more later,” he said. “Pack a suitcase for a couple of nights.

In the car on the way to Bradley Airport, Ryan asked, “Where are we going?”

“Nebraska.”

“Nebraska?”

“Freddy’s in Nebraska. We’re going to pick him up.”

“Is he with Mom?”

“I’ll tell you more when we get out of the car, okay?”

Peter found a space in long-term parking and they wheeled their bags to the airport entrance. Peter stopped and turned to Ryan. “Give me a hug.”

Ryan knew something was up. He put his arms around his father and waited nervously.

Peter told him what he knew about the accident. Freezing rain. Struck from behind by a tractor-trailer. Rolled over twice and landed on the roof. Peter was crying now and his voice shook as he spoke. “Mom and her boyfriend were killed.”

Ryan, who had stood silently with his arms around his father’s waist while he listened to the news, suddenly pulled away. He looked at Peter quizzically, though his expression betrayed no emotion.

“Is Freddy hurt?”

“Amazingly, no. The car seat saved him”

“Where is he?”

“In the hospital. They’re letting him out tomorrow.”

“Is he all alone?”

Peter wasn’t sure how to answer. He wondered if Ryan was feeling the same thing he was: a mixture of sadness, anxiety, and frustration that there was nothing they could do to get to the hospital faster.

“There are nurses on the hall 24-7.”

“Is he . . . How long has he been alone in the hospital?”

“Since they airlifted him Tuesday night.”

“Can we see him tonight?”

“I think so. We’ll see.”

They went through security and took seats near the gate. Peter gazed blankly at the departure board and wondered what Ryan was thinking. He hadn’t said a word about his mother. All those years of silence between them, and now she would be silent forever. He had no way of knowing if Ryan felt anything, even now. He turned to look at him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You miss Freddy?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t wait to see him.”

“Me too.”

Peter could always tell when Ryan was glad to be with his father. He thought of all the times he was about to get up from dinner, and Ryan wanted to sit and talk a little longer. And the mornings when he missed his bus so Peter would have to take him to school and they could spend a little more time together.

And although they often fought, like all brothers do, Peter knew Ryan and Freddy shared a tenderness that was pure brotherly love. Freddy needed his brother’s comfort, and Ryan was happy to provide it.

He just couldn’t tell if Ryan felt anything for his mother. Even now, with her gone. And he wondered if he would ever know.

Peter snapped out of his reverie as the attendant annouced their flight was boarding. As her voice filled the waiting area, he also realized that Ryan had said something.

“What?”

He turned to look at Ryan, who was looking straight ahead. His eyes appeared glazed; his lips were parted in what almost looked like a half-smile. He spoke up softly.

“Freddy will be home for Christmas.”

“Yes,” Peter smiled. “Freddy will be home for Christmas.”

Suddenly, Ryan burst into tears. Tears unlike anything Peter had ever seen before. Ryan clutched his father and buried his face in his sweater. He began sobbing in rhythmic bursts as he took deep breaths before letting out each new wail. Finally he pulled away and tried to quiet himself down as he rubbed his eyes. Peter brushed the damp front of his sweater with his hand.

“Sorry Dad.”

“It’s okay.”

Ryan’s body still shuddered as he tried to stop crying. The attendant called out their section of the plane for boarding.

“We have to get up and get on the plane now,” Peter said.

“I know. Just give me a minute,” Ryan said, wiping his eyes again.

Were the tears for Freddy? For his mother? For everything?

“It’s okay to cry,” Peter said.

“I know.”

Copyright @ 2020 Stephen Leon