Page 24 of The Legend Next Door
Ben Stirling
Lucaishavingasad day today. He didn’t sleep well last night, and he’s not himself. He’s been quick to anger all afternoon, and he was listless this morning. I took him to a skate shop right after breakfast to try to cheer him up. It meant we missed coffee with Jeremiah again. He had an early yoga class to teach yesterday, and in retrospect, two days without seeing him has probably hurt Luca’s mood more than the new skates helped. I’ve tried encouraging him to talk about how he’s feeling, but that hasn’t done much good either. I’m trying really hard to make sure he knows it’s okay to talk about Liz, cry, and show his pain any way he needs to, especially as I know all too well the damage it does to bottle it up, but I don’t know if I’m getting it right.
Maybe today is one of those days where the unrelenting nature of grief has got on top of him, and much as I wish it was different, nothing I can say or do helps. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare to see your child in pain and not be able to take it away. Everyone’s always sayingtalk about this feelingandtalk about that feeling, but honestly, I get where Luca is coming from. Sometimes I just want to yell, “Fuck off! Talking doesn’t do shit.”
If Luca had that kind of vocabulary, I suspect that’s what he’d like to say to me right about now.
I’m almost at the point of putting the TV on and letting him watch it for as long as he likes, even though history has taught me that runs the risk of causing his mood to plummet until he has to be carried kicking and screaming to bed. So before I resort to that, I make a last attempt at distraction.
“Hey, bud,” I say. “You know what I was thinking.” He gives me a look I’ve previously seen on teenagers who think their parents are idiots. “I was thinking it might be fun to set the table and eat in the dining room instead of in the kitchen. What do you say? Do you still remember where everything goes?” Before Liz died, she’d started asking Luca to set the table for dinner on nights when I was home. It was nice. It gave our meals a different vibe. Not formal, but purposeful. Present. Being at a table set with placemats, proper cutlery settings, and our good napkins made our meals feel like an occasion.
I haven’t thought to do it since it’s been just the two of us, but tonight, it might be just the thing that saves the day.
“Forks on the left and knives on the right,” I remind him.
Fortunately, it works. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember,” he says, getting up off the sofa. “I used to get them mixed up sometimes, but that won’t happen anymore because Mrs. Vernon taught me this.” He extends his forefingers and straightens his thumbs, making a perfect L with his left hand and one that’s the wrong way around with his right. “It’s easy. This is left, this is right.”
“Okay, let’s do this!” I’m way, way more excited about this than I’d ordinarily be, but if we can end today on a positive note, it’s a win I’ll be only too happy to take. “You get the table ready, and I’ll get dinner finished.”
He jogs to the dining room with a little bounce in his step for the first time today. I get the casserole out of the oven, and I’m about to start dishing up when I hear it—a long intake of breath followed by a thin cry.
My heart drops. I know what’s happened before I get there. It’s happened to me too. It happened a lot in the beginning, and even now, if I’m tired or distracted, there’s still a risk.
Three place settings, not two.
Luca is standing in the dining room with two placemats on the table and one in his hand. His face is scrunched up, not in anger, in pain so deep all the names that exist for it barely begin to scratch the surface.
The second I see him like that, I’m there too. I’m in the same awful place as he is, drowning, angry and sad and confused. My own grief is bad, but his amplifies it a hundredfold. He’s just a little boy. My little boy. He doesn’t deserve this.
I try to take the placemat from him, but he holds on to it tightly and starts fighting me, so I scoop him into my arms and hold on to him as he flails.
“We were three people,” he cries. “We were three people, Daddy, and, and I’m still a three-person. I’m a three-person. I don’t want to be two people.” He sobs until his voice grows softer and watery. “I’m a three-person, Daddy. I’m a three-person.”
I cradle his head in the hollow between my neck and shoulder as a solitary thought plays on repeat in my head.
I’m a three-person too. I’m a three-person too.
I’m weak by the time I put him down, shaking inside, kicked in the chest, and cracking at the seams.
I don’t know what to do. I have no idea how you’re supposed to deal with things like this. I didn’t sign up for this. No one fucking prepared me for days like these. No one warned me. No one told me what to do.
Luca is still holding the placemat, clutching it to his chest.
“Put that on the table and get the knives and forks out,” I say, remembering something someone said to me recently.
You’re not alone.
There are major hockey fans all around you.
I dial Jeremiah’s number, praying fervently that he answers.
He picks up immediately.
“Sorry to do this,” I say, talking quietly while walking out of the room toward the kitchen so Luca doesn’t hear the conversation, “but can you come over? Luca’s… We’re having a sad day, and we could really use some company for dinner.”
We all have things that define us. Characteristics. Behaviors. Morals and beliefs. Here’s the thing about Jeremiah, here’s the thing that makes him, him. Here’s what defines him as a person. When he hears my voice, he doesn’t ask why or what’s wrong. He doesn’t get worked up because I’m upset, and he doesn’t get that weird, almost-excited, too-fast way of talking most people get when they’re exposed to intense emotion in others.
He simply says, “What time should I come over?”
