Michael
“Iheard about this afternoon,” my father scolded me, his face still buried in the local newspaper. I knew he would have. Hell, he probably knew all the details before I’d managed to get Jagger buckled into his booster seat. It was one of the major drawbacks to living in the same small town where I grew up. My parents knew everyone. It didn’t matter that I was a grown man who hadn’t lived under my parents’ roof in nearly a decade, the phone chain was still alive and well any time I screwed up. And lately, it seemed my parents’ phone had been ringing off the hook.
“Honestly, Michael,” my mother added as she carried the first bowls to the table for our weekly Saturday evening dinner. “I know you’re doing the best you can by him, but maybe it’s time to admit you can’t do it by yourself.”
I gripped the back of my chair so tightly I thought the wood might splinter in my grip. My jaw ached from how I clenched my jaw. “Icanraise my own son. Millions of people do it on their own every day. Why am I any less capable than all of them?”
Mom tsked as she returned to the kitchen for the next load. I followed her, hoping she’d be so thrilled I was helping without being asked that she’d forget to be upset with me. She cupped my face in her hands, squeezing so I had no choice but to look down into her brown eyes. “You are perfectly capable, but I fear you’re also overwhelmed. It’s summer now, but what are you going to do in a few weeks when school starts?”
“We’ll get by the same as we did last year,” I informed her.
“Oh, Michael.” She shook her head as she spooned mashed potatoes into a serving bowl. “It’s not going to be the same this year. I worry that it’s going to be too much for you to work and be there for him.”
“What am I supposed to do? It’s not like there are a ton of jobs around here, so I had no choice but to take what I could get,” I protested. Although they kept their feelings to themselves, I knew my parents felt as though I had wasted my potential when I dropped out of school. I wanted to scream at them, to make them understand there was no way I could keep going, knowing that I’d already failed twice in my life. If I’d finished, that thought would have festered in the back of my mind every time I walked into a patient’s room.
“I know that, Michael,” she responded softly. “As I said, your father and I understand that you’re doing the best you can. I still wish you’d consider going back to school. You were so close to finishing. And with grants and loans, you wouldn’t have to worry about working.”
I also wouldn’t see my son. She failed to understand that med school wasn’t like my years as an undergrad. The program was demanding and there was no way I could put everything into school and still be there for Jagger. Granted, it might appease my in-laws for a while, but I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t use that as an excuse to take him away.
“You know that’s not possible, Mom,” I argued. “Thomas and Connie already complain about the amount of time Jagger spends here. If I tried to finish school, I’d be gone even more, and that’d give them the opening they need to file for custody of him.”
Mom shook her head as she walked away from me. I thought that was the end of it, but when she returned from putting the last of dinner on the table, she stood in front of me and forced me to look at her. “How many times do I have to tell you they’re not going to do that? They don’t hate you.”
“They do,” I insisted. “And if they think I can’t take care of my son, they’ll take him.”
“No, they won’t.” She shook her head and muttered something under her breath before walking away, effectively ending the conversation. I followed her, trying to make myself believe that she knew better than I in this situation.
I was sure my in-laws blamed me for not being home the night Erica died and were just waiting for me to screw up badly enough that they could seek their revenge. Every time she felt me sliding into the darkness, Mom reminded me that I couldn’t have saved Erica. As much as it killed me, I knew the doctors hadn’t been lying. She had an undiagnosed heart condition and they said her death would have been nearly instant. Still, I couldn’t forget the way her fingers gripped the pillow when I walked in to find her on the floor beside our bed. She was gone by the time I got home, but there was no way anyone could convince me it had been a painless death. If Ihadbeen there, the Whittaker family still would have blamed me. And nothing my mother said could convince me otherwise.
The next two hours were relatively peaceful. We sat and ate dinner as a family, and I listened while Jagger and my mom talked about going back to school shopping the next day. My father pursed his lips and glanced at me. I knew he wanted to chew me out for relying on my mom to do too many of the things I should’ve been doing with Jagger, but he didn’t. Like Mom, he now picked his battles.
Once the dishes were cleared, I followed Jagger up the stairs and into my childhood bedroom. Now, it was his bedroom when he was here, which I knew was too often. It was hard to believe how independent my little man was. I watched, fascinated, as he first laid out his clothes for the next day, then turned down his sheets and placed the book he wanted me to read to him on the pillow. He pulled out a pair of fresh pajamas and carried them to the bathroom, where he waited on me to get my act together and draw him a bath.
“Daddy, can I tell you something?” Jagger asked as I massaged baby shampoo into his scalp. At home, he fought me about washing his hair, but never on Saturday nights. Never when we were at my parents’ house.
“Anything, buddy,” I assured him. The narrowed eyes when he looked up at me said he wasn’t sure I was telling him the truth.Was I really such a bad parent that my own child didn’t feel like he could talk to me?No way in hell should a five-year-old feel that way.
“You promise you won’t get mad?” he pressed, sucking his lower lip into his mouth. He flinched away when I tried to rinse the shampoo out of his hair, but he didn’t scream bloody murder like he did when we were at home.
Water dripped all over my shirt and jeans as I made a cross over my chest. I tussled his hair when he laughed at the wet spots all over my clothes. “What got you worked up, champ?”
“I don’t want to go live with Grandma and Grandpa,” he said flatly. Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes. My heart broke. Jagger looked about as upset as I felt after hearing those words come out of his mouth. This was really bothering him, as if he thought it was a foregone conclusion. Even worse, it was my fault. He’d obviously heard me ranting to my mother about my fears without hearing her tell me I was being ridiculous.
“That’ll never happen,” I assured him. My mom and I needed to be more careful about talking about certain topics when he was lurking about. He was curious, and the last thing anyone needed was him being scared I was going to leave him with his grandparents if he went there for a visit.
“Promise?” Over the past few months, Jagger and I had had many talks about the meaning of a promise, and that you should only say you promise if you knew you wouldn’t have to break it. Could I give him a guarantee that it’d never happen?
Without a shadow of a doubt. He was my son, my reason to live, and I’d be damned if anyone was going to take him from me. I had no clue where to start, but I wouldn’t let him down. “Pinky swear.” I held out my outstretched little finger and we both laughed when he wrapped his entire hand around it. I rolled my eyes, knowing he’d done that to break through the tension that’d been growing in the room.
Nights like this made it harder for me to go to work. During the week I started at six, but on the weekends I didn’t go in until nine, which meant I could be here until he was in bed. That was both a blessing and a curse because I got more time with Jagger, but it left me with an ache in my chest because he always tried to drag out bedtime, as if that’d make it so I didn’t have to leave. I wished like hell something better would come along so I wouldn’t have to go. I wanted to be the one tucking him ineverynight. I wanted him to know I would be there if he woke up in the middle of the night, crying for his mom the way he still did from time to time. More than anything, I wanted him to know he could always count on me to be there when he needed me, and I wasn’t sure he felt that.
I reached for the panda towel and held it out once he’d finished scrubbing his body. “Come on, buddy. We’ll have to hurry if you want there to be time for an extra story.”
I hugged Jagger tightly as I carried him back to the bedroom, much to his dismay. He protested loudly that he was big enough to walk, but I was the one who needed this time. I needed to hold him, to breathe in the scent of his shampoo and body wash. It was what would get me through yet another night of moronic, redneck drunks.
Someday, this wouldn’t be our life, but for now, it was what I had to do. Mom was right. I needed to do some serious thinking and make some changes. With Jagger getting ready to start school, I wanted to give him a normal childhood filled with awesome memories. Normal wasn’t something we’d been in a long time, and it was up to me to give that to him. Jagger had already lost one parent; I couldn’t let myself slip away right in front of his eyes.
