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The day after Mom walks out on Doctor Madden, she visits her son’s grave.
That’s the one time he tries to get away. He’s stuck to her for every second of every minute of every hour before this, but he senses where she’s going and he tries to leave. He knows it will hurt, but he’d prefer that pain over this one. He doesn’t want to see his grave. He doesn’t want to see the tiny tombstone with the carved name and date starting to fade. He doesn’t want to see how little space there is between the birth and death. That’s not him, anymore. He didn’t die then. He’s alive. He’s right here.
He tries to get Mom to see that. He feels the decision in her mind, how firm it is, and he tries his best to persuade her. “I’m never going away,” he tells her. She doesn’t even look at him.
He keeps talking. She keeps ignoring him. He sees her reach for the doorknob and flinches.
“How are you going to get there?” he sneers, fear making him sharp and angry. Mom isn’t used to this side of him, and that gives her pause, which he seizes. “Dad has the car, remember?”
Mom stares at him for a moment, eyes slightly narrowed like she’s realizing something about him. He’s seen that look before, and the experience it was paired with makes him take a physical step back from her. He wants her to expand her view of him, round him out, add more facets to him so he feels more real, but he doesn’t know how he feels about this kind of look—wounded, maybe accusing.
“I don’t need the car,” Mom finally answers. She turns back to the door. His shoulders drop, one hand flitting to his stomach, anger cracking and breaking as quickly as it came. He can never keep one trait for too long.
“What?” he asks, and this time his voice is small and scared, now that he’s realized he can’t convince her not to leave.
“I’m going to walk,” she announces matter-of-factly.
He doesn’t know what to say to that.
He decides that he won’t say anything.
He also decides, in the same instant, that if that’s where she’s going, he won’t go with her. He’s managed to be without her before (never mind how he’s done very little of that over the past months, and none at all over the past twenty-four hours). He can do it again. And maybe, in some convoluted way, it will sway her if she knows he’s not coming with her. If she doesn’t feel his approval, maybe she’ll hesitate again.
She doesn’t. She knows in a moment that he wants to stay behind—that he wants her to stay behind—and completely ignores it. He feels her pushing away his silent plea as if he were doing it himself, and he almost whimpers. He bites it down and plants his feet.
Except his feet don’t listen. They start moving.
He slips through the front door just before it closes and trails behind his mother.
He’s shouting at himself the whole time. What are you doing? he demands. We don’t want to see this.
You don’t, a familiar voice corrects. He glares at the pavement, cursing that voice silently, but it keeps walking. You know you need to see this too, don’t you?
I—that doesn’t matter, he hisses.
Are you sure?
I’m sure.
He’s not. He was before; he was sure for years that he was living, in some way. If by sure, he meant ignoring everything else he felt and pretending that was the truth.
If he was sure about anything, it would have been that they’d never visit his grave again. The Goodmans did it once, to oversee his burial. Not to grieve, because neither of them did properly. That was his window. But they went there to put his body in the ground, lay down some flowers, and let the tombstone grow weathered and worn for seventeen years.
The closest they got to another visit was Mom putting together a memorial of sorts in the backyard of the house on Walton Way. It wasn’t much of a memorial, considering she didn’t make it with that intention. It was a spot set to the side with flowers he liked and a swing that both of them could sit on if they needed time alone (or together). Dad built the swing, because he didn’t trust Mom with the tools. He thought it was for the backyard in general. Mom didn’t tell him who it was for until she was finished arranging everything.
And he’s gone to see that himself, when he feels particularly sentimental. There aren’t flowers anymore—the new owners aren’t very good at keeping up a garden of any kind—and the swing likely can’t support any meaningful weight, but the alcove is mostly intact. But that’s different than this, because there he can play at being alive. He can push away the facts.
Facing his actual tombstone, he can’t.
He tries to dig in his heels, tries to turn around and go the other way. Mom doesn’t look back once, and that hurts him, but not more than how every fiber of his body is screaming. He’s being ripped in two, tugged along by Mom and wishing that he could go the opposite direction. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop himself from following her. So he fixes his eyes on her back, hopes she feels them, and swallows back his nausea as they enter the cemetery.
Mom didn’t bring any flowers. There are a few already there, rotting away. Maybe left by a well-meaning stranger who didn’t want to leave any grave unappreciated. The thought of someone he doesn’t know reading his name, thinking about where he might be, leaving a gift for him makes him feel even more sick than he already is, though he doesn’t know why.
“Well. We’re here, now,” he says, too loud compared to his mother’s quiet contemplation. She’s staring at his tombstone, but he’s doing everything he can not to look at it. Part of him wonders if something will happen to him if he does. Part of him wants that. “We can go.”
Mom doesn’t respond to him. She crouches down, brushes her fingers over the inlaid letters of his name, takes a deep breath. She sits down next to the tombstone and leans against it. She drops her head against it.
He fails to keep looking away. His eyes flick over to Mom; hers are closed, and there’s a slight frown on her face, her brow furrowed. She looks like she’s forgotten he’s even with her. He feels himself growing more uncertain with each second. His hands rise to fidget with his hoodie strings.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t even flinch at his voice.