Tell Me It's Real(110)
“And do you think I don’t love my son?” she asked, her eyes bright. “Do you think I don’t care for him, that I don’t worry about him every second of every single day?”
“If you do, you’ve certainly got a weird way of showing it.”
To this, she said nothing.
“Look, I didn’t come here to attack you,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “Not really. Nor did I want to make you feel bad. I… I don’t know. I just want you to see Vince the way I see him. I just don’t want you to have any regrets. And I certainly don’t want him not to know how his own mother feels before he won’t be able to find out anymore. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you.”
She looked away, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. I wondered if I even should have been in this hospital room. The more I thought about it, the more duplicitous it seemed, like I was going behind Vince’s back, meddling in affairs that weren’t mine. I tried to justify it to myself by saying I was doing this for Vince, and that if he really felt about me the way he did, then he’d understand, or he’d have brought up his parents already, consequences be damned. But this felt like transference, and it didn’t feel right.
I took a step back, sure that the conversation was over, sure that if she did speak again, it’d be to tell me to get the hell out of her hospital room, to never come back here again, and that she’d make sure Vince knew what I’d done and how I’d gone about it. Wildly, I thought that maybe I’d never even make it out the door, because the Secret Service would barge in and I’d be arrested and thrown into Guantanamo with terrorists, never to see the light of day again except for a window the size of a book ten feet above my cot in the prison cell where I’d spend the rest of my life. The First Lady of Tucson would have her revenge because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my face out of someone else’s business.
And she did speak. But what she said was not what I expected.
I was about to turn and make a run for it when she said, “Vince died when he was nine. Did you know that?”
“No. I didn’t.” I looked up at her. She was staring at the flowers, the sun encroaching on them further.
“We lived in a house over on the west side of town. It was a nice house. A big house, with a garden and a pool. Andrew hadn’t yet considered running for any kind of office, but he made good money with his construction business. I was a teacher, but we wanted to get pregnant again and were talking about having me stay home permanently. Vince was always an independent child, but it’d seemed lately that he’d become even more so, and I missed having a baby in the house. I missed the way they sounded, the way they smelled. I missed the little laughter and holding them in my arms.”
She sighed and looked down at her hands. “So we decided to have another baby, decided to try before we were too old to have another, and everything was going to be perfect and wonderful. I wanted a little girl. Andrew wanted another boy. Vince couldn’t care less either way as long as it didn’t interfere with his life. He was very blunt as a child. Very straightforward. No-nonsense. He was never the smartest kid, and he’s not the smartest adult, but you’d always hear the truth from him, no matter how abrasive it could be.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’ve noticed that.”
She smiled to herself. “I figured you would. That’s the difference between Vince and most people. He doesn’t beat around the bush about things, but only because I don’t think he knows how. He’s singularly driven at times, if there is something he wants. Oh, he doesn’t step on others to get it; no, I think that would hurt him if he tried. He… he just knows what he wants, and he goes for it, and the only consequences he doesn’t worry about are those that could happen to his own self.
“One day, when he was nine and we were trying to have another baby, Andrew and I were upstairs and… well, you know. We were trying. Vince had been playing outside with his friends all morning and wasn’t expected back in until lunch, which would have still been an hour away.” Her voice was getting quieter, rougher. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to say anymore, but I couldn’t find the strength to speak.
“After Andrew and I had finished, I went downstairs to make a cup of tea. I’d decided that I wanted the mug I’d used that morning instead of getting a new one. Had I not done that, I would not have walked over to the dishwasher. I would have not looked out the window. I would not have seen Vince floating facedown in the middle of the pool, the water around him red.”