He swallowed but kept silent, looking over my shoulder. I put my hands on his cheeks. He jerked his head away.
“Not my face…”
“Okay.” I moved my hands to his shoulders, pressing hard. “You are worthy of love. And you were worthy of her love. And the fact that she could not give it to you was her failing, not yours.”
William licked his lips, and after a long stretch of seconds, his dark eyes finally met mine. I wanted to take him in my arms, hold him, kiss him, comfort him, but I had no idea if that was what he really needed from me right now. I needed to, but his needs in this moment were far more important.
His head fell forward slightly and his forehead touched mine. I could feel his warm breath float over my face as we stood there, silent. When I looked at his eyes again, they were closed, his long dark lashes lying calmly against his cheeks.
“You know what we should do?” I said in a small voice. He’d have never heard me had it not been so quiet here in the back of the house.
“What?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“We should open up those cards. We should read them and see what they say.”
His eyelids snapped open. He looked almost sick at the idea, and slowly, he moved his forehead away from mine. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Why?”
“Because…because I’d rather imagine what I want them to say.”
“And what is it that you’d want them to say?”
“I’d like to imagine that she was sorry. That every card was an apology that I had a chance to accept and didn’t.”
“Would that make you feel any differently about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we find out?”
He was quiet again for a long time.
I turned and walked over to the drawer, gingerly sliding it open, giving him the chance to protest. He said nothing, so I fished out the cards—there were sixteen of them. I began to arrange the various colored envelopes in order of oldest postmark date to the newest, all stamped in the month of October. The first one was dated 1994. He’d been six years old.
“When’s your birthday?”
“October fourteenth,” he intoned flatly as he watched me arrange the cards.
“Ah, a Libra. That makes sense. Passionate, artistic, gentle and sensitive.”
“None of that astrology stuff makes any sense,” he responded.
“Okay, whatever. Here’s the one for your sixth birthday,” I said, holding the sunny yellow envelope out to him. “Do you want to open it?”
“I don’t want to open any of them.”
“Can I open this one, then?”
He slowly nodded. I slid a fingernail under the tongue of the envelope and tore it open. It was a garish, generic card for a young boy with pictures of trains and trucks in bright primary colors. It looked young, even for a six-year-old. When I opened the card, a bunch of dollar bills fell out.
There was a short note inside, which I read aloud:
For Liam,
Wishing you a happy sixth birthday. I promise to take you out for ice cream very soon.
Love, Mom
I turned to William. “So did she take you out for ice cream?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Maybe.”
I placed a hand on his arm again. “You okay?”
He pulled away slightly. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? That card said absolutely nothing.”
“You want me to open the next one?”
He shrugged again. I set aside the six one-dollar bills—one for each year of his life—on his worktable and picked up the next envelope. The next few years were much like the first one. Always a cash gift that was equal to his age and a simple, quick birthday wish with a promise to see him or take him somewhere soon.
William grew a little more relaxed, if increasingly disappointed. Around his fifteenth birthday, he recalled that she attended some milestones, like his first amateur art show, but overall, her visits were infrequent. As he got older, she promised to take him out to dinner, and he made it a point to let me know that she never followed through.
As he stared at the last two cards in the pile, it was difficult to gauge his mood. But with a long sigh, he snatched up the second to last card, opened it with one quick, forceful tear and unfolded it without even looking at the artwork or formal message on the outside. A crisp twenty-dollar bill that had never been used slid out of the card. I added it to the orderly pile of cash on the table.
In a flat voice, he read:
Dear Liam,
I know it’s probably too late to explain. I don’t even know if I can. You are a man, now. A grown man that I don’t even know… But I hope you’ll understand someday.
With love,