And so, in this way, with Larry in a hospital bed as Helen had been only a few months before, Jim felt the multitude of gifts being given to him in a manner that previously would have seemed unimaginable.
In short, he felt transported into another world, a world where all he felt was love and sorrow, and yet the love was stronger than the sorrow. It was strong, and when his girls came to visit, he felt as though the country he had been living in had shifted abruptly, and for whatever reasons—was it a gift from God?—he was now in an altogether different country, and it was a country of purity.
—
This is what Jim felt for two weeks in Larry’s apartment.
—
After two weeks of Larry being home—the physical therapist came in every day, and the occupational therapist came as well, and nurses were there around the clock—after two weeks of his son being home, Jim asked the nurse if he and Larry could have some privacy and she said, Sure, and went into the kitchen.
And Larry, who looked puzzled, watched as his father pulled the chair closer to the hospital bed. “Larry, listen to me. You really should know exactly the kind of shit I’ve been. You’re too forgiving, and so I need to tell you something, because you should know.”
A look of slight fear passed over Larry’s face.
“You know how you always thought it was Uncle Bob who killed our father by playing with the gearshift?”
Larry looked really frightened now.
Jim said, “Well, it was me. I was eight years old, and Bobby was four years old, and I remember it, and he doesn’t. But that day Dad had said to me, Okay, you can be in the front, the twins in the back. And so they were in the back of the car, and I—I was the one—who was playing with that gearshift, and as soon as the car rolled over Dad, you know what I did? I shoved Bob in the front seat of the car. I blamed it on him. I did that.”
Larry stared at him with his mouth slightly parted. “You did?” He asked this quietly.
“I did.”
Jim sat back. What had he expected? He did not expect what was about to happen.
Larry finally spoke. “That’s unbelievable. That’s a really unbelievable thing.”
Jim said, “I told Bob about fifteen years ago, and he said it fucked him up a lot. Because he had lived his whole life thinking he had done it. He said I had taken away his identity, or his fate—something like that.”
Larry said nothing.
“And your mother knew too. Bob told her.”
Larry kept staring at him. “What did she say?”
“She wasn’t happy with me at that time. She thought it just showed that I’d always been a piece of shit.” What had Jim been thinking as he told his son this?
Because Larry’s lips had lost their color now, and he finally said, “Dad, that’s evil. I’m sorry, but that’s just fucking evil. You’ve been evil your whole life. Dad, please go away now. Because I really have to think about this.” He turned his face away from Jim. “Go away. Please go away now,” he said.
*
And the despair that Jim felt after that was—literally—almost unendurable as he moved through his brownstone in Park Slope, waiting for Larry to call. And Larry did not call. When Jim called Larry, Ariel always answered and said, “He doesn’t want to talk to you, I’m sorry.”
Oh Jim. Jim.
—
He called Bob.
9
Bob walked up the steps of the office building where Katherine Caskey had her social work practice. Her office was in a large old wooden building a few blocks away from Bob’s office, it also held within it an accountant’s office and a small law practice, and then the office of Katherine Caskey.
“Hello, Bob,” Katherine said as she hugged him, and she looked the same as she always had, this is what Bob thought. A small woman who had a litheness to her, with her auburn hair and black slacks and green top. “It’s so good to see you, come in, come in.”
“How’s Elton?” Bob asked.
“Fine.” She smiled warmly at him. “You indicated this is business.”
“Personal business. Doesn’t mean I can’t ask about your husband,” Bob said.
“Honestly, Bob? I think he’s better. So: Phew.”
—
Bob sat down in the chair across from Katherine’s desk, and she sat down in a chair not far from his; she did not sit behind her desk. Her walls held framed posters: pictures of the ocean and an old house covered with rosebushes. She said, “Now tell me why you’re here.” On her desk was a begonia plant, and as Bob looked at it, a blossom fell off. He had a small, strange feeling that something he had done caused it to fall. He looked at Katherine with a quizzical look. “What?” she asked, and he nodded toward the plant. “You just lost a blossom,” he said.
“Oh, that happens all the time.” She waved a hand.
And so Bob told her once again about the accident that had killed his father, about how he had always thought he’d done it and that Jim had told him years ago that he, Jim, had done it. Bob settled back in his chair. “So my question is, just because I was four and Jim was eight, does that make his memory more real? Honestly, Katherine, we’ve never talked about this, except for Jim’s confession to me ages ago.”
Katherine sat forward with her legs crossed and asked him many questions about his memory of the accident. Bob had very few memories of it, only that he was positive that he and Susie had been in the front seat, and he also had a memory of bright sunshine. “Even now, a glaring sun causes me to feel sort of sick.”
Katherine asked Bob what Jim’s relationship with their father had been, and Bob did not have an answer for that. She spoke about a variety of studies done on memory and traumatic events, and then she said, “What does Jim think the weather was that day?”
Bob just looked at her. “No idea.”
