Only Son (8 page)

“Of course, dear. I'd love it. There's plenty of room—”

“I think it would be just the guy-guy and me, Mom,” she said, leaning against the drapes. “Paul—I don't think he could get the time away from work. See, I'd like to stay a couple of weeks, maybe even a month—if that's okay with you.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “Well, um, that's fine, dear,” her mother said. “Stay as long as you want….”

Carl's face hurt from maintaining a stoic smile. And making small talk with all the strangers outside the church was wearing him out. “Yes, he was a great man,” Carl would lie, pumping one hand after another. “My father mentioned you in his letters. Thank you for coming.”

The old man had written about once a month: dull updates and invitations to come visit. The letters had been addressed to a Portland post office box which Carl had rented. Several of them had alluded to
“the Oriental gal who works for me
,” a widow named Han Serum, his father's live-in “housekeeper.”

Carl never met her. Yet she was the only one he could pick out among the strangers. When he spotted the petite Asian woman climbing the church steps, Carl broke away from an old city councilman and called to her: “Mrs. Serum?”

At the top of the steps, she turned to stare at him.

He'd extended his hand. “Mrs. Serum? I'm Carl…”

She shot him such a cold look that Carl pulled his hand back. “I do not want to talk with you,” she said evenly. “I'm surprised you even bothered to come.”

“What? Wait a minute—”

But Mrs. Serum ducked inside the church.

 

A senile former mayor gave the eulogy:
“Walter Jorgenson was a loving husband, devoted father…”

Carl sat in the front pew, stifling a yawn. He glanced over at Mrs. Serum, alone in the pew across the aisle from him. She was around fifty. With her gaunt, vulturine features and the grey streaks in her sixties-throwback beehive hairdo, Mrs. Serum didn't seem to fit the “mistress” mold. But she'd been living with his father for years. Carl studied her face for bruises, but there were none. She caught him staring. Carl smiled timidly and faced forward.

He wondered what the hell his old man had told this lady to make her so bitter and mean toward him. God only knew what kind of lies the old bastard fed her.

Carl felt on the outside of everything. So many familiar sights, yet he no longer had any connection to his “hometown.” Last night, he'd driven his rental car past the house, knowing he would have to step inside eventually. But the red brick estate held too many memories. After seventeen years, he couldn't enter that house again just yet. He'd spent the night at a Travelodge.

The only thing he cared about was in Portland. He hated missing his nightly vigil outside the McMurrays' town house, and feared something might happen to the baby in his absence. He'd have to take him as soon as he got back. This funeral—this charade heralding his father's kindness—had Carl desperately wanting to disprove the theory that abused children grew up to become abusive parents. He wasn't like his old man. He'd be a wonderful dad to that boy. At his own funeral, his son wouldn't have to put on an act for strangers. His tears would be genuine.

Carl wished he could cry. He wanted to feel something besides fatigue and alienation. But for so many years, fear was the only emotion his father had induced in him. The old man had died for him long ago—on that night over dinner, when Carl had first struck him back. But there had been someone else in the house who couldn't stand up to the old man.

As Carl grew stronger, his mother seemed to deteriorate. The bruises she used to conceal with makeup were poorly camouflaged in the last years of her life. She was only forty-two, but could have been mistaken for Carl's grandmother. Carl day-hopped at a local college so he could be close to her.

One afternoon, he returned home from classes and found her facedown on the floor in the front hallway. She lay at the foot of the stairs, her periwinkle blue, tea dress wrinkled up near the top of her sprawled legs. A dark puddle of blood framed her head and mingled in her blond hair. She wasn't moving at all.

On the way to the hospital, Carl rode in the back of the ambulance with her. The medic had rolled an ugly bandage around his mother's head, and a spot of blood bloomed on the gauze over her left eye. Carl held her limp hand. The medic had said he wasn't sure she'd regain consciousness. He'd asked how it happened. Carl said nothing, but he knew.

The old man must have come home for lunch, then started in on her. How could he have just left her there? It was criminal—attempted murder, or manslaughter. If she died, they'd put his father in jail.
I won't have to stay here and look after her anymore
, Carl thought;
I'll finally be free of him—if she dies
.

He pushed the thought out of his mind before he dare wish for it. Carl squeezed his mother's hand.

Three hours later, she was sitting up in the hospital bed. The room was dark, because she said the light hurt her eyes. The clumsy bandage around her head had been replaced by a smaller patch. They'd said she'd suffered a slight concussion and she would have to spend the night at the hospital. This seemed to worry her; but Carl, seated in a hard wood chair by her bed, was more concerned about how it had happened.

“Quit protecting him, Mom,” he whispered. “He did this to you, didn't he?”

“Carl, I was alone in the house all morning,” she said, still very groggy. “I fell down the stairs all by myself. It's silly—I know. But I'm telling you the truth.”

The stories were always the same:
I tripped over the coffee table—so clumsy, or I slipped on the kitchen floor
. She'd be so bruised or weakened by these “accidents” that Carl never had the heart to browbeat her into admitting what had really happened. But he knew. After all, throughout most of his childhood, he was the one who was supposedly accident-prone. One word from her, and Carl would have taken his father apart. But she protected the old man, and never gave Carl that chance.

“I won't fall asleep tonight,” his mother was saying. “I know I won't, not in this hospital bed, with nurses running up and down the corridor. I won't sleep a wink….”

“They'll give you a pill, Mom,” Carl sighed. “Don't worry.”

“The pills won't work. Listen, honey, you—you're coming back to see me tonight, aren't you?”

He nodded. “Sure, Mom.”

“There's a bottle in the back of the kitchen cupboard, where I keep the spices. Could you bring me that bottle, honey?”

“What's in it?”

“Oh, just a little bit of gin. I think if I had a drop or two at bedtime, it would relax me, help me sleep…”

“You want me to bring you some gin?” Carl asked numbly.

“That's the last thing you need.”

Carl looked over at his father, silhouetted by the light coming through the doorway. He'd called his father's office three hours before, and now the old man finally had come. He lumbered into the hospital room and dropped his hat on the foot of her bed. “Three quarters of your liver's destroyed and you want him to smuggle you a bottle of gin. Christ Almighty, woman, what am I supposed to do with you? Doctor just about told me the blood from that cut on your forehead was ninety proof…”

She bit her lip and slowly—almost painfully—turned her head away from him.

“Mom, were you drinking?” Carl said. “Is that why you fell down the stairs?”

She closed her eyes. “Would you both please go? I don't feel well. Come back later…but for now, I need to rest.”

They drove back from the hospital in silence. His father stared at the road ahead, and the headlights of passing cars cast shadows across his stern face. Carl sat on the passenger side, close to the car door. He wondered why he hadn't seen it before. Most of the townspeople considered Teresa Jorgenson a teetotaler. But then, she'd always been an expert at camouflage. He knew his father beat her, but now, he'd never be sure how many times she'd been telling the truth about her “accidents,” and when she'd been covering up for the old man.

“How long has she been drinking?” he asked quietly.

“Long enough that it's made her sick. I give her a year.”

“Until she's well again?”

“Till she's dead.” His father glanced at him for a second. “Get used to the idea.”

Eventually, he did. His mother began to spend more time in the hospital than at home. Visiting her after classes became part of his routine. Sometimes, they just watched TV together; but all too often, she was delirious from pain or her medications.

“You're leaving him after I die, aren't you?” she asked him, one rare afternoon when she'd been lucid.

“You're not going to die for a long time, Mom.”

“I've made my will,” his mother said. “You'll be twenty-one this November, won't you?”

“Yeah, Mom. But I—”

“You'll get everything. With my furs and jewels and the savings, it comes to about twenty thousand dollars. That's what the lawyers said. It'll be enough for you to go away and finish up school. I should have sent you away a long time ago. He wanted to put you in one of those military schools. I should have agreed to it, but I wanted you here—selfish. I didn't think about what you had to go through living at home—with him.”

“Let's not talk. Okay, Mom? Let me turn on the TV…”

Her bony hand wrapped around his. “Forgive me, Carl…”

“What for? You didn't do anything, Mom.”

“That's right,” she murmured. “I didn't do anything. From the very beginning, I knew. When you were just a baby, and you'd cry at night, sometimes he'd wake up first. Then I'd check on you after, and I'd find—” She shook her head and tugged at the bed covers. “I'd find he'd stuck a rag or a washcloth in your mouth to stop the crying. God knows how many times you could have choked to death when he did that. And I kept quiet about it. All these years,
I didn't do anything
.” She started to cry. “I'm sorry, Carl. I should have been a better mother to you….”

“Well, I survived,” Carl mumbled. He handed her a Kleenex. “Here. Don't talk anymore, okay? Don't talk, Mom.”

She died three weeks later. His father didn't shed any tears—not until the funeral mass. He suddenly started blubbering in front of the congregation. Carl couldn't tell if the tears were genuine or for show. He stood beside his father, but the old man never took hold of his arm for comfort. Nor did Carl reach out to him.

Perhaps the townspeople in St. Matthew's church now expected the same show of emotion from him that they'd witnessed from his father eighteen years before. Then again, Mrs. Serum and several others probably figured he'd returned only for his father's money.

Well, he'd need it. Yesterday, he'd asked the funeral home for an estimate: $4880.00. He couldn't swing that—even if he cashed a bond he'd been saving for “baby money.” He'd be broke.

But with the inheritance, he could give his son a good home, something better than the one that McMurray couple gave him. The sale of his father's house alone would see him through a few years of unemployment and full-time parenthood.

But he hadn't come all this way just for money. No one would understand the real reason. All his life, he'd kept his father's abuse a secret, not so much to save the family's reputation, but to carry on the pretense that his father loved him. He didn't want anyone thinking that he was unworthy of a father's love. He needed to play out the charade to its finish now, and a few tears—however forced—might help. He wished he could cry.

“That's what I remember most about Walter,” the former mayor was saying from the pulpit. “His generosity. He always gave so much of his time and money to this community. He left behind a bountiful contribution to the city of Santa Rosa…”

A tiny alarm went off in Carl's head. After listening to all the lies, he heard something which seemed horribly true—and so much like the old man. All of his money was going to the city, not his son.

“Just two weeks ago,” the ex-mayor went on, “Walter discussed with me his plans to leave a large part of his estate to our city, his beloved hometown…”

Carl felt as if he were being yanked out of a childhood slumber again, a terrible, wakening blow to the side of his head. How could he be so stupid? Of course, it all made sense now. One final act of hatred, made public: cut the estranged son out of the will and stick him with the funeral cost.

There went his “baby money.” He couldn't afford to quit his job and move to Seattle now. All hopes and plans for his son, shattered. He shifted restlessly in the pew. He just wanted to run out of the church and disappear someplace where no one could find him. He glanced around, wondering if they saw the panic and pain on his face. He caught Mrs. Serum staring at him.

She smiled.

 

Mrs. Serum sat beside Carl in the other green chair at the law office of Bracken and McCourt. Carl had said hello when she'd come in. She'd nodded curtly.

“Why didn't you want to talk to me yesterday?” he'd asked quietly.

But just then, Mr. McCourt cleared his throat. A heavyset man in his late fifties, he had glasses and a full head of white hair. He shuffled through some papers on his large maple desk, and announced it was time to read the will. The housekeeper got to keep the house and all the furnishings with the exception of those items Mrs. Jorgenson had bequeathed to Carl back in 1960.

Carl slumped lower in the chair. That was all he'd get—junk already belonging to him. Was that why he'd come to this reading? Or did the old man have a hateful good-bye for him too?

Fifteen thousand dollars in stocks and bonds also went to his father's housekeeper. Another ten thousand went to the city of Santa Rosa to help erect the monument to its World War II veterans.

Carl straightened in his chair when Mr. McCourt looked at him from over the rim of his bifocals.
“‘And to my son, Carl,'”
he read,
“‘I leave the remainder of my estate: approximately fifty-five thousand dollars in savings, insurance, and stocks.'”