Tunnel Vision

27

Zack took an MBTA train from Copley Square to Alewife station, where his mother picked him up. He hadn’t visited her since leaving the hospital. All their get-togethers had been in town at restaurants or walking the streets, at first with his cane, then without. They went to a few movies and spent an afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts—as if making up for lost time. And he felt a bond begin to renew itself.

About twenty minutes later, they arrived at the white colonial on Hutchinson Road in Carleton, the house where he and his brother were born and where he’d lived until he’d started college. “Feels strange being here.” He hadn’t slept over since last Christmas vacation.

“It’s nice to have you back, even for a night.”

For the last six years he had lived in dorms and apartments, so that entering his own room was like slipping into a time warp. Nothing had been changed—the same movie posters; same photos of him, high school friends, soccer teams; same collection of paperbacks, travel shot glasses, high school wrestling trophies. Also a photo of Amanda, his first girlfriend. They had met during sophomore year and dated for four years. But, sadly, last year that ended when she and her family moved to England. They had kept up telephone and e-mail contact, but eventually their remoteness could not keep things alive. They broke up, and he was left with another hole to live around. His life seemed pitted with them.

Maggie had prepared Zack’s favorite dinner, chicken parmigiana with a mixed salad and blue cheese dressing, fresh baguette, and pecan pie with coffee ice cream. She, too, was making every effort to strengthen that bond. He’d once overheard her tell a friend how he never shared things with her; how other mothers were “good buds” with their twenty-something kids and did things together. She felt cheated—their conversations reduced to her asking questions and his responding in monosyllables. She was right, of course. And their estrangement was rooted in a child’s irrational blame for not preventing his father from leaving. Mothers were supposed to make things better. Of course, it wasn’t her fault, but his distance had become habitual. His postcoma life would be a turning point.

To add to his guilt, she handed him a check for $500 to pay bills. He gave her a hug, thinking how she had no idea what a hole he had dug for himself. “You’ll be happy to know that I applied for a part-time job.”

Maggie’s face lit up. “You did. That’s good. What is it?”

“I don’t want to say too much until it happens. But it’s at a local lab.”

“Good for you. Let me know if it comes through.”

After dinner, they settled in the living room. He sipped some juice, she a glass of the Cabernet he had brought. As they chatted, his eyes moved to the fireplace mantel and the simple blue-and-white urn with his father’s ashes. Near it was a clutch of framed photographs—a family portrait in front of the house, shots of Jake and him, one of Zack and his father at Sagamore Beach. Zack was beaming over a huge striper, his father smiling proudly next to him. Behind them, the breakwater jetty that formed the western flank of the Cape Cod Canal. For two weeks every summer, they’d rented the same cottage on the dunes looking over the bay, the canal less than a mile down the beach to the east, the Manomet cliffs a mile to the left, the vast blue bowl of the Atlantic spread before them. “I miss those days.”

“I’m sure you do.”

He could see that she wanted to avoid reminiscing. His eyes slid to the urn—what the Benedictines had given them. “What happened to him?”

She looked nonplussed. “Who?”

“Dad.”

“You know what happened.”

“I mean after Jake died. He changed.”

“Why are you asking? That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe because it’s Memorial Day weekend. Plus he was my father, and I’d like to know.”

“What difference does it make?” She sipped her wine. “He changed. We all did.”

“He became different, withdrawn. I used to think he would have preferred that I had died, not Jake.”

“That’s ridiculous. He loved you both equally.… I think he felt guilty.”

“Guilty for what?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Frankly, he blamed himself that Jake was gay.”

“What? That’s ridiculous.”

“Of course, but he thought he should’ve been a stronger male model, doing more masculine things with him, with you both. Then he wouldn’t have been gay, and he wouldn’t have gone to that bar.”

“Because he wasn’t a jock didn’t turn Jake gay, for God’s sake. It’s genetic.”

“I know that, but I think that’s how he saw it. Also, the Church viewed homosexuality as a sin. It still does.”

“The Church. The bloody friggin’ Church.”

She waved her hand. “Please, don’t get started. We did our best. We went to family counselors and support groups…” She trailed off.

“Instead he became born-again and fell off the earth.”

“There’s no point in being bitter.”

“Hard not to be.”

“He had a terrible time with it,” she said. “The court dismissal only made it worse. Even medication didn’t help. But religion did. Like it or not, he found solace.”

“Yeah, abandoning your wife and kid to become a monk. Nice religious values.”

“I suppose it was better than a life of grief and violent fits.”

“But it’s just the kind of hypocrisy that turns me against religious people. They fortify themselves with pious abstractions, but aren’t there for the important things.”

“Let’s please change the subject.”

But Zack disregarded her. “Did his parents bring him up religious?”

“Yes.”

“What about when you got married?”

“Why are you so interested in his religious background?”

“Because I am. Because I never really knew him well. Because I’m wondering what the hell made him give up family for a fucking monastery.”

Because something happened in that lab booth the other night.

He could feel her measure her language.

“He was a very spiritual person. I wasn’t, so I guess I couldn’t relate. On Sundays he went to St. Agnes, and I went to the Unitarian church in the center. He didn’t like that because of the secularist-humanist mentality. They didn’t talk about God.”

“You mean he was more interested in heaven than earth.”

“Can we please change the subject?”

They were quiet for a few moments as he stared at the photos of him and Jake.

“They’re still breathing and living their lives,” she said.

“Who?”

“Those bastards. Volker’s a carpet salesman in Waltham. The other one moved to Connecticut. I can’t even drive that way without my stomach filling with acid.” She began to cry. Zack went over and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth trembling. “It’s just so unfair. So unfair.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “I know.” And he felt the heat of rage rise up in him as it always did when he thought about Jake’s killers. They had beaten him with a tire iron.

“He’d done nothing to them.”

While he held her, his eyes rested on the urn. When the monk delivered it, he said that Brother Nicholas had died in his sleep, clutching his crucifix. A few weeks later, insurance money began arriving in bank checks. “He took the coward’s way out.”

His mother sat up. “Who?”

“Dad. It’s like one of those tabloid headlines: MAN LOSES GAY SON TO KILLERS, LEAVES FAMILY, JOINS MONKERY, FINDS GOD. DIES.”

* * *

They watched the evening news until Zack got tired and announced he was going to bed. He gave her a hug and kiss good night, then took a shower and got into bed. Someplace he had read that the average adult took about eight minutes to fall asleep. He probably dozed off in less than two. He slept deeply and dreamlessly until sometime after midnight, when he woke up. For some reason, his room was totally dark—no light seeping through the window blinds, no glow of his clock radio. Not even a light strip under his door from the hall night-light his mother still kept. Stranger still, he could smell the heavy salt air of the ocean. He could even hear waves gently lapping the shore in the black.

He tried to move, but his arms and legs wouldn’t respond. He strained his muscles to push off the blanket, but he couldn’t. What’s wrong? Then a thought shot up: He had had a stroke. Or an aneurysm. His brain was so screwed up that while he slept he’d suffered some kind of neurological collapse that had rendered him blind and paralyzed. He tried to call his mother, but only a faint cawing sound escaped him. What the hell is happening to me?

He let a moment pass, then tried to scream but couldn’t get his lungs to respond. All that came out was a pathetic click. He tried again and this time couldn’t suck in air. Couldn’t fill his lungs.

A thought sliced across his mind like a blade: I’m dead.

No. If you’re dead, how can you even think that? Death was being completely nothinged. Worse than a coma, where voices filtered through. Being dead had none of sleep’s awareness of sleep. He wasn’t dead, because suddenly things changed.

And it wasn’t a dream.

Cold. Shivering. The core of his body had turned to ice. Fishy night air against his chest. Electrode suction cups. But this wasn’t a reality he recognized. A clammy alienness filled him.

Suddenly the sucking silence was shattered by a banshee blast.

Hands on him. Hands carrying him. Laying him down. In a hole. Then something landed on his face.

Sand.