At the Seams

Chapter 16: Day 5 - 3:32 am

Chapter 16: Day 5 - 3:32 am

The static transfer sensation of a proximal body awakens Mary. The room is dark but for a slight green haze falling onto her pillow and a red glow emanating from the dying embers in the fireplace. Mary sweeps her surroundings with her good eye. Jay is in place beside her, sleeping. Sam sits in the bistro chair to her right.

Sam's elbows are propped on his knees, his hands pulling at the last of the hair on his head, his eyes downcast. After a moment, he drops his hands and looks at Mary, unaware that she gazes back. In the green gloom, Sam’s face appears pinched, his eyes puffy. Can't sleep, baby? Mary thinks. You never can when things are out of whack. She pities Sam. As he sits, tortured, his heart hardens along with his resolve. To do what? Mary will never know. She knows only that Sam will need a principle for which to fight, to anchor him. Slowly, through the suffering of grief and loss in the coming weeks, Sam will simplify himself to a crude point of unfeeling drive. Else, he will not survive.

Sam's face wavers in the shadows, as if Mary has summoned a mirage of her man to visit her in the night. Green light reflects dully on his cheeks. She can tell he is crying. He issues strangled noises as he tries to control his volume. Never has watching images of pain sickened Mary so. Poor, weak Sam.

Tears stream, Sam's face writhes, and, once, Mary thinks he wants to speak. The deep breath he draws, however, escapes in a jagged sigh before he can use it. Sam never says a word.

Oh, Sam, Mary thinks, the voice in her head one of despair and pity, I remind you of your mom, now, don't I? Are you angry with me? I promised you I would never abandon you, and now I must. Mary remembers Sam talking about the loss of his mother, how disconcerting it was for him when she was suddenly and inexplicably gone. His father wanted to protect Sam from the truth, couldn’t bring himself to explain murder to an eight-year-old. Lost in his own despair and ignoring his son's needs, Sam's father never provided Sam any explanation at all. For weeks, all Sam understood was his mother was gone, vanished, and apparently not coming back.

The viewing brutally rocked him—his mother so beautiful, so staged, as if she were a doll or a painted statue. While his father mourned with other family, Sam sat in the first pew. He stared at his mother's body, lovely amongst the pleated satin in the casket, for three hours before he pissed his pants, causing a big uproar in which he was labeled a troublesome little instigator. He said nothing at all until weeks after the burial. No one noticed.

At the funeral, Sam's father kissed his wife's cheek, told her he loved her, and said goodbye. When he asked Sam if he wanted to do the same, the boy turned lily-white and swooned, nearly toppling into the casket in his faint. For a year after seeing his father's lips touch his mother's still doppelganger, Sam was unable to touch his father. No one noticed.

Discovering a copy of his mother's death certificate among his father’s papers weeks after she was in the ground, Sam finally learned about the murder. Unable to understand his mother's impermanence to begin with, Sam became confused to obsession about why someone could or would take her from him. He started collecting newspaper clippings about dead women, but only if the articles mentioned surviving children. In recalling the bizarre behavior, Sam said he was trying to make sense of his mother's murder by organizing or systemizing death. He compiled dozens of albums before the phase passed. He burned the albums on the concrete floor of the backyard patio the day after he graduated high school. No one noticed.

No one noticed, either, that Sam never spoke a word about his mother's death, to anyone. Finally, at age nineteen, in an angry, drunken frenzy, he told Mary every detail he could remember. He cried and screamed until dawn, then passed out in Mary's arms, liquor and madness leaking from his pores like a bitter perfume. When he awakened, still lying limply in Mary's sore arms, he favored her with an uncharacteristic expression of openness and gratitude. "I love you, Mary,” he said, his voice awestruck."This is the first time since my mom died that I don't feel completely alone."