Back to You Page 7

  “One day she made some and left it on the table and you ate it all up!” she squealed and burst into hysterics, the kind of youthful, genuine laughter that always made Michael respond in kind.

  “I ate it all up,” he repeated with a nod. “And I made a big mess, huh?”

  “Yeah, you need a bath, Daddy.” Michael smiled before she added, “My grandma lives far away.”

  His smile dropped. “Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “When will she come to visit me and make me apricot jelly?”

  He swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s a very far trip,” he said, rubbing her hair, and he couldn’t help but wonder, as he so often did, if he was doing the right thing by keeping his mother out of Erin’s life. When he had called her against his better judgment to tell her he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, she used the opportunity to point out all the lives he’d ruined, and how this would just be another one to add to the list. She ended the conversation with, “For God’s sake, I hope you’re going to abort that child.”

  And he hadn’t spoken to her since.

  But he wondered—if she were to meet Erin, if she got to see how smart and wonderful and kind she was, maybe she would be the kind of grandmother Erin deserved.

  Or maybe she’d ruin her, the way she had him.

  “What else did Grandma Rose cook?” Erin asked, pulling him back to the present, and he smiled, thankful for the reprieve.

  “She made the best zucchini bread,” Michael said, lifting his arm to accommodate her as she snuggled closer to him. “That’s how she tricked me into eating my vegetables.”

  “Daddy,” she sing-songed. “Begetables don’t grow in bread!”

  Michael laughed. “No, but you can bake them in bread. It tastes delicious. Almost like cake.”

  “Can we make zucchini bread?”

  “We can try,” he laughed. “I’m not as good as Grandma Rose, but we can certainly try,” he added, turning the page.

  “That’s Daddy and his friend at bagruation,” Erin said.

  “Graduation,” Michael corrected softly, his eyes on the picture.

  “Hey!” Erin squealed, sitting up suddenly, pointing at the picture. “That’s Miss Lauren!”

  Michael stared at the picture, although he hardly needed to. He had looked at it so often after he first left Scranton that he could close his eyes and conjure it up with perfect clarity.

  He stood several inches taller than her in his black graduation gown, his lips curved into a slight smile as he looked down at her. Lauren leaned into him with one arm extended, holding the camera away from them as she took the picture. Her head was resting against his chest, her dark red hair spilling over his gown as she smiled at the camera.

  Her smile was always his favorite part.

  She smiled straight up to her eyes, so happy to be next to him, so proud of him that day. She was the only one who had showed up for him, standing and clapping when his name was called, whistling loudly as he walked across the stage, and taking the one and only picture of him in his graduation attire because, as she had beamed, “Everyone needs to remember their graduation day.”

  “Miss Lauren dances with us,” Erin said matter-of-factly as she laid back down.

  “Oh yeah?” Michael answered, still lost in the picture.

  “Yes. And if someone’s sad, she hugs them. Once, Kayla was crying because she missed her mommy, and Miss Lauren taught her the Brave Song. And then she taught it to everyone. And she promised if we sing it when we’re scared, we’ll feel brave.”

  Michael smiled, pulling his eyes from the picture to look down at his daughter. “Didn’t I tell you Miss Lauren was nice?”

  “Yes,” she said with a nod. “I think she’s really a princess, but she just forgets to wear her crown.”

  “I think so too,” Michael said, and his voice wasn’t as upbeat as he intended; he dropped his eyes and swallowed before turning the page.

  “That’s Daddy and Uncle Aaron,” Erin said. “That’s how I got my name. Aaron, Erin. Erin, Aaron,” she sang, moving her shoulders in a little dance beside him.

  “That’s right, baby,” he said, forcing a smile. This probably wasn’t the best night to do this; looking at Aaron’s picture on the tail end of looking at Lauren’s was a little more than he could handle just then.

  “Uncle Aaron lives in heaven with your Grandma Rose, right Daddy?”

  “Right,” he said softly, closing the album, and Erin was too distracted to object.

  “And his bed is a cloud and he plays games all day and he eats so much ice cream!” she expounded excitedly.

  Michael laughed softly as he stood from the bed. “He has a nice life up in heaven. But he still watches over you. From all the way up there,” he said, pointing up to the ceiling. “He protects you when I’m not around.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead before he ushered her under the covers and stood, turning on her night-light.

  “Did he protect you when you were little too?”

  Michael stopped and closed his eyes.

  Always, he thought, but instead he said, “Yes, baby girl. Sweet dreams.”

  And then he walked out of her room, turning off the light and closing the door, thankful he was able to get out before she could see the look in his eyes.

  March 1989

  Michael sat on his knees at the dinner table, pushing his green beans around on his plate with the hopes of making it look like he’d eaten some.

  “Is it time for birthday cake yet?” he asked, thinking of the triple chocolate cake his mother had baked for him.

  “Not until those green beans are gone,” his mother called from the kitchen where she was loading the dishwasher.

  “Come on buddy, a couple of bites,” his father said from behind him, rubbing his hand over the back of Michael’s head before he walked around the table and sat down next to Aaron.

  “Are you excited for your party this weekend?” his brother asked, and Michael grinned and nodded. It was the first party he’d be having with his friends from school, and his mother had booked Jumpin’ Beans gymnasium. It had been the talk of his class for the past few weeks.

  “You should be. You’re a big man now. Five years old is a whole hand.” Aaron held up his hand, and Michael leaned forward to slap him high five. Aaron laughed, and Michael grinned proudly as he ate another one of his green beans. Nothing made him happier than when his brother thought he was cool.

  “Okay, so what are you working on?” their father asked as he looked over Aaron’s shoulder to see the homework assignment.

  “Science, but I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best, but seventh-grade science might be beyond my scope of memory,” he said with a laugh, turning the notebook on the table so he could get a better look. “Oh, hey wait, I think I remember this stuff. Punting Squares, right?”

  Aaron laughed. “Punnett Squares.”

  “Same difference,” his dad said, playfully punching him on the shoulder, and Michael forced another green bean into his mouth as he watched them.

  “We’re doing eye color,” Aaron said. “I have to figure out the possible offspring of two hybrids and two purebreds.”

  “Yeah, I remember this,” his father said with a nod. “The dominant gene is represented by a capital letter, and the recessive is lowercase, right?”

  “I think,” Aaron said, squinting at his notebook.

  “Here,” his father said. “Let’s do the purebred. We’ll use two blue-eyed people. So put two lowercase b’s there, and two more over there,” he added, pointing to the square on Aaron’s page. “Right. Now cross them, and see what you get.”

  “Are you done with those green beans yet?” Michael’s mother called from the kitchen.

  “Almost,” Michael lied, looking down as he pushed a few more around his plate.

  “There, you did it,” his dad said.

  “Yeah, but that can’t be
right.”

  “Why not?”

  “‘Cause it says that two blue-eyed people can’t have a brown-eyed baby.”

  “Right,” his father said.

  “But you and Mom have blue eyes, and look at Michael.”

  The sudden silence was what Michael remembered the most. It was so abrupt that he looked up from his plate, because to him it seemed like everyone in the room suddenly disappeared.

  And then he saw his brother’s face, and he was suddenly afraid without understanding why. It was the same face Aaron wore when he’d accidentally ridden his bike too close to their mother’s new car in the driveway and scratched the side: a pathetic mixture of fear and guilt.

  Michael only remembered bits and pieces after that, partly because he’d blocked it out, and partly because he didn’t understand how the pieces fit together.

  He remembered Aaron dragging him upstairs when the yelling started. The voices were so loud and strained that he didn’t even recognize them as his parents’. He remembered hearing words he knew were bad even though he didn’t know what some of them meant. And he remembered the shrill sound of his mother crying.

  But above all, he remembered hearing his name over and over, interspersed with sorry and please. His mother kept saying, “He meant nothing,” and Michael wondered if she was talking about him.

  Did he mean nothing? Had he been bad? He tried to remember something that he could have done to cause this, but he couldn’t think.

  The yelling transitioned into the sound of things being thrown, and he cupped his hands over his ears.

  He didn’t understand any of this.

  Aaron sat next to him on the floor of his bedroom, holding him and telling him that everything was okay, even though Michael could hear in his brother’s voice that it wasn’t. And that’s how he fell asleep that night: curled against his brother’s side as Aaron continued to talk to him in an attempt to drown out the sounds of what was happening below.

  The next morning Michael woke up hoping everything would be okay. Everyone would say they were sorry, and maybe they could have his birthday cake for breakfast.

  Instead, his mother was locked in her bedroom, and his father was standing in the living room with a bunch of suitcases. He wanted to ask him where he was going. He wanted to ask if he could come. But the words stuck in his throat, and he kept looking to his brother, wanting him to say the words that he couldn’t.

  But Aaron’s head was bowed, his eyes sad, and that’s when Michael knew that whatever this was, it was bad.

  His father spoke to Aaron and promised him he would still see him, just not everyday.

  And then he left without saying a word to Michael.

  In the days that followed, he did come back. But only for Aaron, and only a few times. Each time he showed up, a screaming match would ensue between his parents that mirrored the first one, and eventually his father started calling Aaron instead of coming over.

  And a month later, he moved away. Michael remembered asking his teacher where California was, and she said he’d have to take a plane to get there.

  He knew better than to ask his mother about anything that happened that night, or anything pertaining to his father at all, for that matter. The one time he tried, his mother yelled at him and told him she didn’t want to talk about Daddy anymore.

  It was more than her just being angry with Michael. She was mean to him. She’d become mean in general after that night, but especially to him. And eventually he just found it easier and safer to keep his distance from her.

  In a matter of a few weeks, he’d lost his father and managed to make his mother extremely mad, and he didn’t understand how or why.

  So Michael did the only thing that made sense; he clung to his big brother, the only sense of normalcy left for him, the only shred that remained of his former life.

  For a long time, he didn’t dare talk with his brother about what happened. Aaron never brought it up, and Michael was afraid to do so for fear of losing him, for fear of making Aaron angry the way he made his father and his mother angry.

  But one night after Aaron got off the phone with their father, and Michael’s hopes that his dad might ask to speak to him were once again crushed, he finally broke and asked his brother what he’d done wrong.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quietly, walking into his bedroom, and Michael followed.

  “But Daddy’s mad at me.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s mad at Mommy,” Aaron said, walking over to his shelf and grabbing his Walkman.

  “But why won’t he talk to me anymore?” Michael asked, and his own voice sounded funny to him, like it was shaking.

  Aaron looked up from his cassette tapes, his expression pained, but he didn’t answer.

  “Does he still love me?” Michael asked, and this time his voice squeaked, and his eyes felt hot.

  “Yes,” Aaron promised. “He still loves you. He just…he just forgot that he does,” he added softly.

  Michael didn’t want to cry in front of his big brother. He wanted to be a big man. But he felt his face contort as a little sob escaped his lips, and he dropped his head, trying to hide.

  Aaron was up in a second, putting his arm around Michael as he walked him over to the bed. “It’s okay, Mike,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Mommy and Daddy are mad at each other. But they love you, and I love you.”

  “But what if you forget that you love me, like Daddy did?” Michael said through his tears, and Aaron shook his head.

  “Never. I’ll never forget.”

  “Even if you get mad?” he hiccupped.

  “Even if I get mad. I promise, I won’t ever forget that I love you.”

  And with that, Michael buried his face in his big brother’s shirt and sobbed.

  It was the last time he ever allowed himself to cry.

  After that he ignored the pain and the confusion, the feelings of rejection from both his mother and his father. He had his big brother, and that was all that mattered.

  That was all he needed.

  Eventually, Michael got used to harboring questions he knew would never be answered. It just became a part of who he was, and he became very good at ignoring his feelings.

  It wasn’t until eight years later, sitting in the middle of Miss McCarthy’s third-period science class, that he finally understood.

  They were learning about Punnett Squares.

  And suddenly he knew why the man he thought was his father left him when he was five, and why he never wanted to see Michael again. Just like that, after all the years spent wondering, it was suddenly crystal clear why his family had fallen apart.

  It was all his fault.

  October 2011

  “Have a good day, baby girl,” Michael said as he leaned over and kissed the top of Erin’s head.

  “Bye Daddy!” she beamed before she turned and ran through the door of her classroom, and Michael straightened with a sigh, torn between feeling relieved at her newfound independence and saddened that she no longer clung to him.

  The director of the day care facility gave him a knowing smile, and he smiled sheepishly in return. Just as he turned to leave, he could see that she was laughing too, although he couldn’t hear it, but he remembered so perfectly what her laugh sounded like that it didn’t matter.

  And then Erin came into view, dropping her backpack and sprinting over to the circle before throwing herself into Lauren’s lap and hugging her tightly around the neck. Immediately Lauren wrapped her arms around Erin, rocking side to side, and when Erin pulled away, Lauren reached up and took her face in her hands, saying something to her with a smile. Erin nodded enthusiastically, and Lauren laughed, moving over to make room for her in the circle.

  He turned quickly, ignoring the ache in his chest as he held the door for a woman entering with her two children before he crossed the parking lot to his car.

  It was a short drive to West Linn Street, where his crew was working on the new
medical offices that were going up. Michael parked his car in the designated off-site area and walked down a small hill to where two utility trucks were stationed.

  “What’s up?” Dean called from behind the truck as he slid a piece of sheet metal to the edge of the truck bed. Dean was tall and dark-skinned, a few years older than Michael, and they had become fast friends when Michael joined the crew a few months earlier. It was clear that Dean had a questionable past, and Dean seemed to recognize that Michael did too; it was one of those things that was understood between them but never discussed. He also had a daughter, six months old, and was in the middle of a nasty custody battle with his ex-girlfriend.

  “Hey,” Michael answered absently, and Dean stopped.

  “You okay? Your girl have a hard time getting dropped off again?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. She’s good,” Michael said, reaching into the truck and grabbing the measuring tape and an oversized black marker.

  Dean looked at him for a second and nodded, never pushing. “Get the measurement of that union,” he said, sliding the sheet metal off the truck and laying it on a wooden board on the floor.

  Michael walked inside, weaving around the construction horses and wires, and he climbed up the small ladder with the tape in his hands.

  The task was rote and monotonous; it kept his hands busy, but his mind was free to wander, which wasn’t a great thing today.

  It had been two months. Two months of seeing her almost every day. Two months of polite, pleasant formalities. And each day it became harder and harder to endure.

  He missed her.

  He’d spent the last eight years missing her, but this was different. It used to be that it just existed somewhere on the edge of his consciousness; it was always there, but it was like background noise. He had learned to ignore it, to function around it. But now, seeing her everyday, watching her with his daughter, she was in the forefront of his mind all the time. And no matter what he did, he couldn’t function around it anymore.

  Michael climbed down the ladder and out to Dean, giving him the numbers, and together they rolled the sheet metal into a long tube on the wooden platform. Dean held it in place while Michael walked down its length, measuring it with the tape, marking certain spots with the marker and jotting down lines to be used as points of reference.