Ron Dionne
Son O’Mine
1.
His voice was low, barely containing his rage.
“There will be no funeral,” Darren said.
It was something less than a gasp that escaped his wife Elspeth beside him. Something less because, Darren knew, she hadn’t energy enough for the full-fledged sound. From the sedatives. Which were administered for the shock, which she had been taking for seven days now.
The minister blinked.
“I mean no disrespect,” Darren said, although he did.
The minister found his words. “It is not like it was some time ago, or like with the Catholics, if it’s still that way with them — God loves us all, and takes us all in, no matter how we come to him—”
“Save your breath, Father. Or Reverend. Or whatever you are.” Out of the corner of his eye, Darren saw Elspeth’s head drop even further.
The minister touched Darren’s arm but pulled his hand away when Darren flinched. “Even if you come in anger, He knows what it is to suffer a loss as you have suffered. After all, His only son—”
Darren held up his hand. Whether it was the gesture or the look on his face that stopped the minister mid-appeal, he could not tell, but stop the poor man did, and subsided, in his attempt to persuade, and in his posture, sinking back in his chair.
“I will pray for you in your grief,” he said. Catching Elspeth’s eye, he added, “Both of you.”
Elspeth said, barely a whisper, “Thank you, Father.”
…
On the car ride home Elspeth resumed her inconsolable weeping. Darren’s knuckles were white on the wheel with the effort of keeping the car on its due course, at regulation speed, avoiding all trees and oncoming traffic and sharp roadside drops and urges toward excessive speed and any other means of quick exit and release from their new hell of knowing that their son had finally, at last, after all the caring and loving and hoping and fostering and coddling and leaving alone and confronting and forbearing and understanding and listening and waiting and longing and bearing witness and accepting and persevering and relenting and embracing and standing by if needed and overlooking if required and hands off and hands on and medicating and rescuing — done it. Null to all, and void.
Darren’s white knuckles trembled because though in moments like this he wanted more than anything to take the same annihilating exit he would not do that despicable thing unto his wife, oh no, not he, not now, not ever. He would not do what that evil fuck had done to his mother and to his father and to any and everyone else who had loved him. Narcissistic prick. Monster! Beyond profound disappointment! Ungrateful, inconsiderate, slothful creep—
Elspeth’s hand hard on his thigh.
Speedometer at 90. School zone.
He braked.
“Maybe pull over,” she choked out.
He pulled over.
She withdrew her hand and clutched the car door handle as she wept.
He would not. He would not do it. Not that. Not that fucking thing.
He let out a sudden, low cry.
Elspeth started, shrinking from him further toward the door. He squelched a second scream and hammered the car steering wheel.
A policeman stopped by the car. Darren relaxed his foot, realizing the engine was revving, though somehow he had had the presence of mind to shift into park. The policeman was an acquaintance, known to them from activities at the high school, and recognized them, and knew their situation. After asking several times in several different ways whether they were sure they were okay and could drive home safely, the policeman left them alone.
“I need more tissues,” Elspeth said at length. There were no more in the car. Darren drove slowly home.
No, he would not do the same as his son.
And he would find a way to tell him so. To his face. Soon.
…
But how?
The first swing of the sledgehammer put a coarse gouge in the top of the garage work bench. Satisfying in a way, but not the total destruction desired. It took more swings, many more swings, through the pain of ripping muscles in his back that in any other circumstance would be debilitating but that now were mere butterfly wings brushing his cheek to achieve total annihilation of the work bench, of the tool-holding pegboard above it, of the two bicycles hanging beyond that on the wall.
Of the second car, his baby, the ‘58 Karmann Ghia he had been lovingly restoring all these years.
Of the washer, and the dryer.
Of the skis — especially his - hanging in their racks on the opposite wall.
He stood atop the car hood, breath heaving, surveying the damage. A considerable debris field — but not satisfying. Not nearly satisfying.
What next?
He stumbled through the destruction to the door to the mudroom, and through that to the back yard.
Pool furniture next. Memories of the self-murdering bastard lounging in the summer sun reading comic books or looking at his goddamn phone, nothing wrong with him at all, nothing at least that prevented him from relaxing. With swelling pride, Darren observed that he was getting quite good at swinging the sledgehammer, if he would be so bold as to observe so himself. He was glad he had found it when he entered the garage, not quite knowing how he would express what he was feeling, how he would embark upon his journey of ultimate confrontation. But this? So far, so good.
Short work of the cheap aluminum and plastic fabric furniture.
How about the pool itself? Destroy the lining, let the water flood the yard, the neighbor’s yards, the street, the neighborhood, life. But too hard. Too hard to bend over and hit the pool side effectively. God I’m getting old. Water in the way. He let out a scream of rage, a scream that elicited the sound of windows and screen doors all around the neighborhood opening.
He could hear them listening. Wondering. Pictured them putting hand to ear, saying, “Good lord, do I hear depravity raging?”
Let them —
Elspeth from the upstairs window: “Darren! Darren! What are you doing!?”
The grill. Yes, the grill — but not the tank of propane. Uh-uh-uh. He unhooked that first and moved it safely away and then rendered unto the grill strokes of pure nihilistic modern art masterworks. MOMA, the Tate Modern, the Getty — all would be proud, pleased, smug to own.
Still not enough.
“I’m coming for you!” he shouted to the sky. “Do you hear me?” Phony Karloff: “I’m coming for you, Barbara!”
The fence. Yes. The fence.
Good chopping there. Who cares that some was his, some belonged to neighbors. All were offensively standing upright as if nothing ever bad had ever happened to anyone anywhere ever at all in the whole wide world —
Confusing voices shouting at him, mostly in anger. A lot of “what the fucks?” going around. He giggled.
“Comin’ for ya. Oh boy. Oh you goddamn son o’ mine, you better believe I’m coming for you.”
Then a voice, a different voice, a practiced, more authoritative voice, coming up behind.
He turned to look.
Whaddya know? It sounds authoritative because it belongs to — yep, you guessed it — authority.
“Mr. Wallace, put the sledgehammer down.”
“Why? My home, my hammer. It’s my hammer and I’ll swing if I want to, swing if I want to.”
Authoritative hand near the gun at the authoritative hip. Reinforcing partner same, behind.
Elspeth: “Darren, listen to him. Jesus Christ. Please.”
Well. Darren looked around the yard. At the police. At the destruction. At the sledgehammer in his hand. Not in Elspeth’s eyes.
To the sky, he said, “This ain’t finished.” And dropped the sledgehammer.
…
“The grieving process,” the therapist was saying, “in circumstances such as yours, often includes a period of intense anger that can be very hard to deal with.” Elspeth was next to him, tightly holding his limp hand in hers.
“Yeah, that’s what the priest said,” Darren said.
“Oh? You have spiritual counsel? That is very good to hear. This is a very difficult time for anyone, Mr. Wallace, and it is very important for you to know you are not alone, and to avail yourself of any and all sources of comfort and help—”
“I told him to get lost,” Darren said. “This ain’t got nothing to do with anybody but me and my son, now. His mother—” He cocked his head toward Elspeth. “— is at peace with it, in her way.” He gave his wife’s hand the merest of squeezes. “In pain, but accepting. She can have the priest.”
“Darren,” Elspeth said, “she’s trying to help.”
The therapist did the same facial expression dance number that the priest had done the other day. “Well, Mr. Wallace, if I may point it out, actually, it’s exactly that — acceptance is where you ultimately want — where you need — to go. Isn’t it? I mean, what else is there?”
Darren, who had slid into a slouch, straightened up in his chair. His wife continued to grasp his hand, like it was the leash on an untrustworthy, a bitey dog.
“I got other plans,” he said.
The security guard in the corner of the room tackled him before he could do much damage to the therapist.
2.
There was the clearing of the table to do. That took a few minutes. Elspeth’s mother cleared the unused place setting for Elspeth’s sister Piranga, who, true to character, had not shown up. Then the washing up, with pleasantries about the excellence of the meal Elspeth had served, simple roast chicken, and the lovely china, and the impressive little herb garden under lights at one end of the kitchen, that Elspeth maintained, through it all. Then back to the table again, for coffee. And more silence to fill.
Across the table, her mother took her hand, and pointed her chin upstairs. “And him? How is he?”
“Yes,” her father chimed in. “Darren -- any better? At all?”
Elspeth shook her head. It was what they had avoided talking about all afternoon. Actually, she felt it might be a relief to talk about it somewhat freely, though she knew in her bones no one really wanted to hear the truth, not all of it. For instance, they knew of the visible damage to the pool furniture and the fences, and that the police and mental health professionals had been involved, but she hadn’t mentioned the destroyed contents of the garage, where her parents so far had had no reason to go, or the kindness of the therapist who hadn’t pressed charges.
“No, I’m afraid,” she said. “Worse, if anything.”
“Oh, no,” and “oh, dear,” her parents said simultaneously.
“I think it’s driven him literally mad,” Elspeth went on. Why not? “The last couple days he just sits on the edge of his bed, breathing heavily, staring, just staring.”
Her father straightened his spoon against the edge of his napkin. “Does he … say anything?”
“Nothing at all. Not since the other day. Just sits and stares.”
“Do you speak to him?” her mother asked.
“I try. I tell him, ‘Darren, you have to eat.’ He doesn’t eat. The last thing he said, two days ago, was ‘I will get there.’”
“Where, exactly?”
She looked into her mother’s rheumy eyes, her father’s hooded ones. “To Alan.”
Her mother gasped. “Does that mean that he is going to… like Alan?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s crazier than that, Mom. Alan… I hate it, but I can understand.”
Her parents held each other’s hands.
“What else could that mean, then,” her father said, “‘getting there’?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “Shouldn’t he be in a hospital? Under observation somewhere? Has he said anything or done anything…menacing?”
Elspeth snorted a laugh. “You know that old joke, a mother or a father warning their child, if you commit suicide, I’ll kill you? I think literally that is where Darren is. Only it isn’t funny.”
The sound of the doorbell startled them.
Her mother clucked her tongue. “Piranga, it must be,” she said. “At last. I’ll get her.” She rose from the table and went out of the room toward the front door. Elspeth and her father waited, listening. Elspeth did not really care one way or the other if her sister came. She had called once, after the suicide, with the clumsiest of condolences. A strange call to make or receive, between sisters who had not spoken in years. Now, with sibling differences rendered almost quaint compared to what at last had happened, Elspeth was almost interested in how her sister was. Had her aggressive strangeness moderated at all? Had she made any progress in her peculiar folkloric endeavors, something involving paganism or some other obscure, unconventional rejection of everything most people followed in any normal society, the more obscure the original language, the better?
And there she was, arriving in the dining room ahead of their mother. Very much the same as Elspeth remembered her. Petite still, same slim stature, size zero into her forties somehow, same wild hair but now adorned with broad streaks of white on either side of the left-handed part, same enormous glasses that magnified her eyes like museum specimens in formaldehyde jars. She wore a long black raincoat and had a characteristic enormous colorful handbag of some probably Central or South American make in the crook of one elbow.
She held out her arms toward her sister. “Ellie,” she said.
Elspeth took a breath and pushed herself to her feet. Their embrace was cursory.
“You’re so late, you missed dinner,” their father said.
“There is some chicken left over,” their mother said. “I’ll get it—”
“No worries, I ate already,” Piranga said. She glanced around the room and impaled her sister with her bottle eyes. “Where is Darren?”
“He’s not feeling well,” their mother said, overlapping with Elspeth saying, “Upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Piranga said. “I need to see him.”
Their mother said, “He’s really indisposed.”
“No matter, I’ll deal,” Piranga said. “Where is it, this way?” she said, pointing behind her to the stairwell off the dining room.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Elspeth said. “I’ll take her.”
The sisters mounted the stairs, Elspeth in the lead, not saying anything. Where Elspeth was more or less indifferent to her sister, Darren had always actually despised Piranga as a kook and a slacker, a not particularly interesting case of arrested development. Elspeth imagined this interaction would not last very long, not in Darren’s present near-catatonic state. And then, afterward, back downstairs, Piranga likely would say some nonsensical things and their father would feebly try to understand and their mother would execute Olympic-level mental yoga to keep the peace and soon enough Piranga would go away and it would be years, if ever, before Elspeth saw her again, which would be the best, if not a good, thing.
Darren was as Elspeth had described, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring toward the corner of the room, his breath whistling in and out of his nose as if he were pumping iron.
Elspeth muttered something in another language, possibly Spanish or Portuguese or even Quechua, Elspeth would not be surprised. To Elspeth, she said: “You weren’t kidding.”
“Doctor said give him a few days to come out of it. If he doesn’t, take him to the hospital.”
Piranga made her eyes into black pearls behind her glasses. “Oh, no no no, don’t do that.” She moved around the bed to face Darren, to interrupt the space he was staring into.
“Darren, Darren,” she said. “Hello. It’s your least-favorite sister-in-law.” She squatted before him and looked up into his face. “Do you hear me?”
She reached out and touched his forearm. His whistling breathing stopped for a moment, then resumed at a slacker pace.
“Darren,” she said, “I want you to listen. You need to hear me. Are you listening? Can you hear me?”
“I don’t think he’s going to respond, Pir—”
Piranga waved a hand impatiently. “You heard the change in breathing, didn’t you?” To Darren she said, “Now hear me now. I have something to tell you and I know you want to hear it, that you must hear it, more than anything else anyone has ever said to you.”
She stroked his arm. She moved as if to grasp his chin with her other hand but thought better of it. “I wish I could get his eyes to focus on me. It’s not going work unless he’s focused.”
“What isn’t going to work? Jesus, Piranga.”
“Should I try shouting?”
Elspeth ran her hands through her hair and glanced over her shoulder to make sure her mother wasn’t lurking, listening. “Piranga, he has been violent. I don’t know if you should shock him in any way. Seems, I don’t know, risky.”
Piranga moved her face very close to Darren’s, nearly close enough to kiss him. With one hand calmly stroking his forearm, she reached up with her other hand and pinched his nostrils closed. The whistle of his breathing ceased. After a few seconds his head jerked, and she pulled her hand away.
“There,” Piranga said, peering into his eyes and smiling. “You see me, right?”
The smallest of nods.
“Good. Darren. Listen: I know how.”
3.
Totarelli at last got the outboard motor started and the small boat moved away from the pier towards the bridge towering high above them across the river. Piranga gave Darren a cautioning look, reading the contempt for Totarelli on his face.
“Patience, Darren, we’re almost there,” she said.
Darren forced a bubble of charity into his judgment, like bursting a painful zit. For his part, Totarelli, Piranga’s long-time partner and always scoundrel, looked abashed at how much trouble he had had with the boat, this after claiming to be an old hand at such things. Clearly, he had no more experience with boats than he did with honest work or basic hygiene.
Darren looked away, toward the bridge, which stretched across the river like a leer, and the rendezvous point under it. So, so slow was their progress toward it on the slightly choppy water, the wind whipping their hair, driving a chill into their bones despite the bright, mocking sunshine.
It had taken the police three days to find Alan’s body, about two and a half miles downstream from this bridge. But Piranga had insisted that they get as close as possible to the place where he had actually died for their meeting to be effective, rather than where his body had been found. And as far as could be known, that place would be where he made impact with the water, or somewhere nearby beneath it. They could only guess from which point Alan had jumped, but it stood to reason that it would be from mid-span, given that there was a small toll-taking station at one end of the bridge manned by guards who might see a would-be jumper and intervene, and a small viewing station at the other end, often populated with sightseers enjoying the beautiful scenery of the Hudson River fjord. They, too, might try to help.
“Are you feeling anything yet?” Piranga said to him as the boat crept closer at a tauntingly slow pace.
“You mean, from that concoction you had me swallow?”
“Yes.”
He felt the eyes of Totarelli, the chef, peering at him with keen interest.
“I didn’t take it.”
Piranga’s jaw went slack.
“You said —”
“I barfed it up,” Darren said. “After you told me lover-boy there made it.”
Totarelli looked away, with finality. As done as Darren was with him, he was equally done with Darren, it was clear.
Piranga said, “Then I don’t know if any of this will work, Darren.”
“I will see him,” he said, leaning towards them.
“I believe — I know you want to, but the connection might not — Your brain has to — ”
“I. Will. See. Him,” Darren repeated.
“So risky. It can go wrong. Badly wrong.” Her eyes were wide. “Badly,” she said. “What would I tell my sister?”
Dear Elspeth. Already years past him. Always the understanding one. Well, I guess she would just have to understand a little bit more, in the event.
He pointed with his chin at the small satchel Piranga held in her lap. “I’ll bite on the ash thing,” he said, “if that makes you feel any better.”
Piranga opened the satchel. She traded looks with Totarelli. “Well,” she said. “I suppose, of the two, actually this might be the stronger medicine. Since we have no baseline for your susceptibility to the mixture. I mean, possibly.”
Totarelli held the tiller and gazed off into the distance, indifferent.
Closer the bridge grew. Darren had to crane his neck to see the walkway high above, from which his son, his only son Alan James Wallace had jumped ten days ago. Or was it eleven? Twelve? Did the number matter?
“All right, then,” Piranga said. “You’ll let me do it? You won’t fight me, pull any mean tricks like throw me in the water?”
“He does that and —” Totarelli gestured to indicate Darren would have a rough time of it as a result.
“Me?” Darren said. “Meek as a rabid ram me?”
Totarelli swore. The bridge loomed.
“This good enough?” Totarelli asked Piranga.
Piranga and Darren consulted with a look and Piranga gave her partner a nod. Totarelli cut the motor and dropped anchor.
Darren said, “Do your magic.”
They adjusted their seats so that Darren and Piranga were on one bench, facing the bridge. Darren leaned into her arms.
“Head back,” she said, “eyes open.”
“Roger,” Darren said.
“The anger,” Piranga said. “The anger, and the love, not the humor. Use them.”
“I cannot feel the love.”
“Know that it is there.”
“I know it is there. Deep.”
“Like the water.”
“Yes, like the water. The goddamn water.” She mixed the small amount of Alan’s ashes they had taken from his urn into a shallow dish of saline.
“Feel the love. Remember the love. Seek the love.”
“Get on with it.”
“Allow the anger but feel the love.”
“I love the anger.”
“You father-thing,” Piranga said. She took a deep breath. “This may sting.”
She lifted the dropper above his eye and it was a horror-tipped sword that cleaved the bridge and the sky above it into uneven fragments, a torn carcass of all of his life in the past, all of his life and love in the past compressed and disfigured and transformed.
“Ow. Ow ow ow,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. Suddenly he wanted to cry, and to be held.
“Come on, you can do it,” she said. “Other eye.”
He forced it open. It was an agony. The vengeful sword dropped another foray of Alan ash slurry into his eye and Darren cried out.
“Now in you go,” Piranga said in his ear.
And she and Totarelli helped Darren to his feet, wobbling, and shoved him into the water.
Where he sank. And did not breathe. Eyes still stinging from the eyedrops, he felt the weight of his body ebb and flow against the density of the river’s moving waters.
“Call out his name,” Piranga had said, “call out his name until there is no more air in your lungs. Then when you feel you are going to die — you won’t, remember that — open your eyes.”
He called his son’s name.
“Alan!”
He called the name of his son. He called him and called him.
“Alan! Alan! Alan!”
And remembered.
He remembered the first day in the hospital when the boy was born, and the debate had not been decided, whether the tiny thing in his mother’s arms was to be called Alan or Benjamin or Samuel. He did not remember how they decided it would be Alan but Alan it had since then been, and for a long little while a happy Alan, too. Until the kindergarten teacher suggesting more play dates because he often seemed to lose track of time and had to be reminded of things, like class being over, like putting on your coat before going outside, like using the bathroom like the other children so as to avoid needing to bring extra pants to school. Like talking to other people. Like being able to tell people why you are crying. He remembered things evening out, being pleasant for a time, and a small group of friends around the same age on the block, and happy little league games and summer carnivals and bedtime stories and monster movies and catching praying mantises and frogs and fireflies. He remembered how the all-enveloping darkness had gradually fallen, embracing them all and just not, just not letting go. He remembered the crying spells, the withdrawal from interactions, the shutdowns. The banging of the head against the wall. The awful scythe of puberty and how unfulfillable his son’s longings must have been with the now frequent spells of collapse, the absences from school. To love and be unlovable. That refrain. That heart-breaking refrain. Then the hospitalizations—
How deep was he in the water? It did not matter. Until you feel you are going to die, his crazy sister-in-law, the occultist lunatic, had said. Well, here I am, death-feeling. Here I am. Dare I open them? Dare I crack the windows?
Darren opened his eyes.
He was not prepared for the proximity of the screaming face, the scale of it, dwarfing the now clearly insignificant blot of fear that pestered his own insides. Vast, so horribly vast it was, the scream a scream of unendurable intensity. The distortion was so extensive that Darren almost did not recognize the little boy within it, the seedling he and Elspeth and all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and teachers and counselors and psychologists and friends had cultivated and loved and nurtured to no avail since the beginning of Alan-time. He almost did not recognize his son. He almost thought he, Darren, had after all died and was now confronted with an inescapable demon of his own conscience.
But it was Alan. A touch on his hand. The touch from the last time he had held his father’s hand in public. Age nine. So long a habit, like wearing shoes or blinking or breathing, the holding of hands when walking. And then, of a sudden, one rainy spring day, he saw his son raise his hand toward his and then decide not to take it. To grow up now. Coupla extra drinks that night, let me tell you.
The scream continued.
No air left to speak with, Darren willed his son to hear his thoughts:
What should I do?
What should I do?
How can I help you?
From the darkness and dimness of the cold rushing water came a glimmer — a thought? A sound? A pulse? — convening upon a single thought:
Let me go.
Let me go and it is finished.
Every day you wake and hate me, and it holds me here.
Let me go — and I will let you go.
His hand. A little memory-hand in his, ghostly, yet palpable.
It was nothing you did, you and Mom. Nothing you did. It was all me. I’m so sorry.
Oh, no, not sorry —
Darren forgot his anger. His anger fell away like an unwanted husk, redolent of questions about why it had been borne to begin with, why it had existed in so vicious and vibrant a form as to control his waking thoughts and deeds. Oh, poor Alan. Oh, poor Elspeth.
Don’t-
The hand squeezed.
Don’t. . . And I won’t either.
…
Darren felt an intermittent blush of cold air on the top of his head. Heard voices. The water-muffled put-put-put of a boat.
Something hit him, hard, on the back.
His eyes, still open, now saw anew the mundane reality of the river water and the filtering of day-to-day ordinary sunlight through it.
He was floating face down in the water, the cool air the river breeze blowing across the crown of his head as he bobbed.
He pushed his legs down, lifted his face up and gasped air.
“Darren!” It was Totarelli. “Grab the oar.”
Treading water, Darren turned to grasp the oar extended toward him, the oar they had pounded him with to waken him.
It was a struggle to get back into the boat, but at last he sat on the center of one of the benches, shivering, a blanket wrapped around him, Totarelli at the tiller guiding the boat back to shore and Piranga hunched forward, hugging herself, and peering into his face.
“How long was I under there?”
“About a minute,” she said. “Heard you hollering. Quite a few good loud ‘Alans.’”
He smiled.
“So?” she said, anxious.
Darren watched the bridge slowly recede. With it there seemed to recede irrevocably a period in his life that already seemed distant and discrete.
“I said I would see him,” he said. “And I saw him.”
She waited for him to say more, but when his face collapsed, she moved to sit next to him and hug him and tell him it would be okay in time. She looked at Totarelli, who shrugged his lips with a degree of satisfaction.
END
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Ron Dionne is an American living London, UK, for the time being. His most recent stories appear in Baltimore Review, Wallstrait, BULL and The Muleskinner Journal. His Blue Sky handle is @rondionne.bsky.social.