He used the word worthless and I couldn’t think of a worse word about yourself.
His voice was level, serious, empty even.
I know all his voices.
I know I didn’t listen very well when my son went on and on about some golf tournament or how some pro bowler dropped the trophy and it shattered or the standings of his favorite pro-football team or baseball star or “playoffs” or all those other foreign terms.
When he was a little boy I played catch with him in the backyard. He patted me on the arm and said, “That’s O.K., Mom.”
When he was 19 years old, neighbor kids would ask him for a game of street hockey. They knew how to rile him up.
His billfold was messy, but he didn’t do drugs or cigarettes or alcohol. I had to barter (“Want to go out to eat?”) with him to clean his room or to mow the lawn but he was mindful of conserving water in the shower, and helped me fill trash bags on Earth Day.
Things he knew I cared about.
He got up an hour early to do his homework. When he graduated one of his teachers came to his Open House, an honor accorded only two students a year. He didn’t willfully miss one day of school and carried that attendance to his first job at a grocery store.
He bought treats for the dog.
He tips waitrons heavily out of empathy. He once to worked at MacDonald’s and he once bought a set of kitchen knives at a garage sale because didn’t want to hurt their feelings by walking out empty handed. I worry about that –that people will see how soft he is like that young woman he dated who preyed on him for money. He’s forgiven at least one person that I ‘m personally aware and know of for standing him up.
We talk, mosey, even take time to stop like we had all the time in the world. His peers will want to beat the naiveté out of him. Naivete is not cool, but I thought he was and he a hero for being the way he is: kind, gentle, caring, compassionate. He can be warm, sensitive, emotional, affectionate and expressive. One morning he left me a note warning me the back step was slippery.
Now, there was nothing left.
I asked the Police for a Welfare check when he didn’t answer his phone.
They called me back.
“We found your Son.”
Elizabeth’s work has been published in Literary Reviews.