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Benny parks the Mustang, takes a moment to calm his nerves. Exhales slowly, imagines his breath settling into his diaphragm, pictures a still quiet spot within his chest to place all the static. He focuses on that spot, feels his breathing quiet, gains control over his racing heart. It’s the same technique he used every time he slid into a cockpit, a capsule. It’s second nature now. He needs it today.
He hauls himself out of the car.
His arm is without a sling or a cast for the first time in months. There’s more metal in his radius than bone, but it’s finally holding together. He’s slowly cracking through scar tissue in his rotator cuff with PT twice a week. His goals are simple now: hold a spoon, take a book from a shelf, reach a cereal box, open a soup can. He can’t bear to think about the goals he once set for himself: deep space travel, a Mars mission. The sense of loss is suffocating.
Thanks to the knee brace he can manage without crutches. The ACL repair at least was textbook. He’s got a bit of cadaver ligament tying his own back together. Someone else’s tissue is thriving inside him. It’s an odd thing to think about, how the dead still connect to the living.
Guilt starts to needle him as he fishes out the vase of flowers from where he wedged it between the passenger seat and the center console. He should visit more. He hasn’t seen her since before the accident. He feels like a shitty son. Flowers seem like an empty token.
But he’s here now. He hopes she’s content with that.
It’s a postcard-perfect fall day: cerulean blue sky, trees dressed in yellows and oranges and technicolor reds. The lawn is immaculate, green and lush. Life struggles on, even as the year edges toward winter. There’s a feeling of fight in fall.
Benny limps up the hill, clutching the flowers. She’s waiting at the top, completely awash in golden afternoon sun. That makes him smile. She’s always loved the sunshine. He heaves himself up the last few feet of the rise to where the ground levels at last, and comes to a smart halt in front of her. There’s a hitch in his chest. There always is.
“Hi, Mom.”
The grounds crew must have mowed just after the last rainstorm, because a cut butter-yellow dandelion is plastered right across the top of her nameplate: AMANDA ELLEN BLUE 1964-2005. For a moment he contemplates sweeping it away, then decides against it. Dusts off some errant clippings from the top of the stone instead.
Benny settles gingerly down in the grass. Still can’t bend his knee completely, and the climb has made it ache. He rubs at it with cold fingers for a few seconds. It still aches.
He sets the vase against the headstone. “I brought you some flowers, Mom. Zinnias. Your favorite.” He turns the bouquet carefully until the prettiest of the multicolored blooms face front, then leans back and surveys his work. It’s just right. She’d have loved them.
The October sunlight feels marvelous on his back, chases away the chill. He folds his hands in his lap and lets the silence come. He sits with it, feels it deepen around him. A breeze rises, then falls.
A glint off to his left catches his eye. A large slice of the bay is visible through the city buildings, sunlight dappling the waves. He’s never noticed that before, in all the times he’s sat beside this stone. If he squints he can make out the bow of a destroyer at the navy yard bobbing slowly in the chop. He wonders idly if Vega’s reentry was visible from this hill, a far-off fireball hurtling to earth. He wonders if they would have buried him here, beside his mother, if he’d drowned that day beneath the crippled capsule.
He startles badly when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He startles badly at everything these days. He pulls it out and checks it with a shaking hand.
It’s B. He’s like clockwork. Warmth spreads through Benny’s chest.
Im on lunch at last. Just saying hello. See you tonight round 6. Try to stay out of trouble til then.
Benny can’t help but smile at the screen. B always finds a way to wring a smile out of him. And Benny’s still grinning like a fool when the tears come, hot and sudden and unexpected. He pushes the phone gently back into his pocket, scrubs his eyes hard on his sleeve. Looks up at the granite block that’s all he has left of his mother.
“Momma, I have so much to tell you,” he says.