From The Dead (24 page)

Jesse had sensed God’s smile on him that day.

So when did everything change? When did Jesse start
to retreat?

He couldn’t pinpoint a particular day or event that
triggered his withdrawal, but he knew the change had been gradual.
Circumstances blended together as he entered high school. Jesse
grew angry. And then came his relationship with Caitlyn, followed
by confusion when they discovered she was pregnant.

Coaxed by the creak of a nearby water pipe, Jesse
snapped out of his reminiscence.

He walked down the platform’s stairs, headed down a
side aisle of the auditorium, and turned off the lights.

CHAPTER 39

Wind, cooled by the temperature of the water, swept
over the surface of Lake Erie. Jesse felt invigorated as its gusts
rustled through his hair. Mid June proved balmy with minimal
humidity and temperatures in the low eighties where he lived
further south, but here in downtown Cleveland, as he overlooked the
lake, the air brought to mind a Canadian summer.

Jesse and Drew sat side by side on a park bench a few
feet from the lake, watched sailboats drift along and pedestrians
gravitate after some downtown shopping. Distanced from the ocean,
his perpetual west-coast tan in a fade, Jesse felt at home again.
Before him, lazy waves danced along the endless horizon as he
basked in the sun. He listened to the lapping water as it nudged
against its concrete perimeter.

They had grabbed a to-go sack of burgers, fries and
sodas—Drew reminded Jesse that in northern Ohio, people called the
beverage “pop”—from a fast-food outlet down the street. When
finished, they threw the trash away and Jesse reached into his
backpack.

“All righty, ready to get some cool pictures for your
room?” Jesse asked.

Drew bounced on the seat once before he caught
himself in his outburst of childhood innocence.

Jesse hadn’t used his camera since his journey home
from L.A., in those days following the suicide attempt. Eager to
introduce his camera to a positive turn of events, he held it in
front of his son.

“This is a digital camera,” Jesse began, “but many
people still like the natural side of a film-based camera. If they
wanted to take shots of slow-moving objects on the water, they
might load it with film that will advance at a speed of 200 since
the camera’s not mounted on a tripod. That way, the picture won’t
be affected as much.”

Drew gave him a quizzical look, as if Jesse had just
recited a page from Plato’s journal.
Okay, so I’m not an expert
parent.

Jesse stifled a laugh and clarified his words. “For
fast action, you’d use fast-speed film. For slow action, you’d use
slower stuff. But this is digital, so we’re safe.”

“Gotcha.”

They approached the barrier above the water. Jesse
handed the camera to Drew, who, without hesitation, pointed it
toward the closest sailboat and peered through the lens.

“You see that rectangle that shows what your picture
will look like?” Jesse said. “Do you want to know how the pros line
up their shots to make them look cooler?”

“Yeah.”

Jesse pulled a pen from his pocket and drew a
tic-tac-toe frame on the palm of his own hand. “It’s called the law
of thirds: You take that rectangle you looked at and, in your head,
divide it into thirds, top to bottom and left to right, so it ends
up looking like tic-tac toe.” Jesse drew a dot at each of the four
spots where the vertical and horizontal lines intersected—the four
corners of a square in the middle of the frame. “These four points
are where the thirds meet together. They’re the strongest places in
your picture. When you line up your shot, pick out the one thing
that you want to be the main object in your picture, and try to
position it at one of those four points. So if you wanted to take a
picture of a sailboat, that would be the thing you’d put there. The
boat is traveling right to left; so to make it look like the boat
has made a lot of headway, place it toward the left; to make it
look like it’s on a journey, place it toward the right.”

Drew responded with an exhale of confidence, one that
lingered between understanding and the thrill of a kid in the
company of an adult who made him feel significant. He aimed the
camera to take a few practice shots of a boat, one with a
green-and-yellow sail that flapped in the wind. As Drew pointed and
clicked, Jesse could tell he’d gotten the hang of it. He showed
Jesse his latest attempt.

“That’s great! Move it a little further to the
left—give the boat a chance to catch up to your focal point by the
time you click the camera.” Jesse checked the next shot. “You’ve
got it, bud! We’ll select the best one and blow it up to poster
size for your room—a Drew original.” He patted his son on the
back.

As Drew took additional shots, Jesse tilted his head
back and took a deep breath of the scent of rich water. Compared to
the Pacific Ocean and its hectic, surfer-speckled waves, Lake
Erie’s two-foot waves looked like ripples of serenity. They
glimmered beneath the sun.

Another scarlet drop fell. Jesse watched it land on
the railing.

“Oh my gosh!” Drew said. “Are you okay? What’s wrong
with your nose?”

“I’m okay, bud.”

Short of breath, Jesse feigned normalcy for Drew’s
sake. He didn’t want him worried. But for a moment, Jesse felt as
though he couldn’t regain his breathing. His heart rate increased.
He reached behind, stumbled backward a few feet to the bench, and
sat down. Jesse tried to pretend this was all a simple
inconvenience. On his brow, a sweat broke forth, but it dried and
cooled him like rubbing alcohol in the lake-kissed breeze.

“Is that blood?”

“No big deal; just the humidity.” Drew wouldn’t know
any better.

A minute later, Jesse’s body returned to normal—his
body, not his concerns.
Stress, that’s all,
he convinced
himself. This would not defeat him. Not during his time with his
son.

Jesse took some deep breaths, relieved when the event
ended. He inhaled through his nose deeply to prevent an escape of
further drops. After another minute to relax, he noticed Drew, who
still stared at him. Jesse decided to distract Drew’s attention
from what he’d just witnessed. Caitlyn couldn’t hear about
this.

He nudged his son. “So, what would you be doing on a
Saturday if you weren’t here?”

With a shrug, Drew said, “Not much. Maybe play on the
computer.”

“What about your friends from school? Wouldn’t you
hang out with them?”

“I don’t really hang out with anyone.”

“How about your friend Ryan across the street, the
one I saw you shoot hoops with one day?”

“Ryan’s parents are divorced. He visited his dad that
night. He’s only there maybe once a week.”

Jesse flipped through his past chats with Drew. “You
mentioned you went to a baseball game in Akron with a friend and
his dad—how about that friend?”

“That was Ryan too.” Drew fidgeted with the camera.
In search of intriguing buttons he could push, Jesse figured.
“Mostly I hang out with my mom.”

“You and your mom get along pretty well, huh?”

“Yeah. Plus, I don’t like to leave her alone
much.”

That sounded odd. “Why not?”

A soft-spoken Drew gazed at a wayward seagull that
must have taken a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong shoreline.
“I don’t think she’s too happy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A few years ago, I got home one day and thought I
heard crying come from my mom’s bedroom, but I couldn’t tell for
sure. So I walked over to her room real quiet and peeked in, and I
saw her sitting on the floor against her bed. It was her—she was
the one crying, but she tried not to make any noise.”

Jesse leaned closer to capture each syllable. “Why
did your mom cry?”

Although the incident had made an obvious impression
on Drew’s memory and caused him discomfort, he seemed open to
talking about it. Maybe he needed someone to confide in.

“I don’t know what was wrong,” Drew replied. “I asked
her, but she said it was nothing. Then she looked at me and smiled,
but she still looked sad. I think she just tried to make me feel
better about it.”

Jesse didn’t know what to say. He ached at the
thought of Caitlyn weeping. “Does your mom cry a lot?”

“Not anymore.”

“What did you do when you saw her crying that
day?”

“I rubbed her shoulder to try to make her feel
better. She asked me to sit down by her, so I did. Then she gave me
a hug and kept holding on, real tight.” Drew set the camera aside.
“I don’t ever want her to be sad like that again, so after that day
I decided to stay with her as much as I can because I know that
makes her feel better.”

“Does she know that’s why you don’t leave her
often?”

“No.”

Jesse chewed on this a moment. “And you said she
never told you why she cried that day, huh?”

Drew shook his head. “All she said was, ‘I’m sorry
you couldn’t meet your dad. For some reason, I always believed you
would.’”

Thunderstruck, his ache doubled on Caitlyn’s behalf,
Jesse covered his head with his hands. All these years, and he’d
had no idea. If he’d known about Drew’s birth, would Jesse have
tried to take care of them? Jesse had no idea.

Then Jesse remembered Drew beside him. He looked
over, relieved to find Drew hadn’t noticed his reaction.

“Why do
you
think your dad wasn’t around for
you?” asked Jesse.

The boy’s eyelashes fluttered once, his eyes
moistened. He must have gone through hell all these years, but he
held his composure. Not a tear escaped. “He would be here if he
could. That’s what Mom says, anyway.”

Jesse yearned to tell Drew the truth here and now:
His dad sat right beside him on this bench. Instead, he chose to
respect Caitlyn’s timetable.

Back on his feet, Drew took one more picture and
halted. He examined the display on the camera. “It’s full.”

In a daze, Jesse came to. He dug into his backpack.
“I’ve got another memory card for you.” And then, for a moment, he
stopped his search to gaze up at his son again. He watched Drew
examine the camera and, in all likelihood, rearrange the settings
to render it as challenging as a Rubik’s Cube to reconfigure. But
Jesse didn’t care.

As he gazed closer, Jesse bit his lower lip to
suppress a smile.

His son had his nose.

CHAPTER 40

Dressed in T-shirts and shorts, Jesse, Caitlyn and
Drew spent the entire day downtown at The Flats for a
Fourth-of-July celebration along the Cuyahoga River, where Drew had
a blast. When the three of them returned to Caitlyn’s house that
evening, Drew darted to his bedroom.

“Mom, I’ll be right back! I’m gonna get the bottle
rockets you bought me!” Drew shouted on his way down the hall.
Before long, he must have gotten distracted him in his room,
because he didn’t emerge.

Exhausted, Jesse and Caitlyn hauled themselves into
the kitchen.

“Would you like some iced tea?” she asked.

When he took her up on the offer and thanked her, she
told him she would meet him outside, so he wandered out to the
patio alone. Underneath a deepening sky, Jesse settled into a
plastic chair and marveled how, even past nine thirty at night,
daylight still lingered. Jesse had never figured out if these
summer daylight hours existed because Ohio sat further north than
other states or due to its position within the time zone. But
during the Ohio summers of his youth, he’d cherished the final
glimmers of early July light until they faded into history around
ten o’clock.

Soon Caitlyn made her way outside with two glasses of
iced tea. She handed him a glass. “You won’t believe this.” With a
touch to his arm as if to share a tidbit of inside humor, she said,
“I stopped by Drew’s room, and he’s conked out on his bed. He must
have lied down for a minute and fallen asleep.”

“Busy day. I’m sure he’s wiped out. One thing’s
clear: You and I no longer have the energy of a ten year old.”

“Half the time I fake it to keep up with him.”
Caitlyn pulled a chair beside his and began to sip her lemon-jolted
tea. Finally able to relax, she leaned back in her seat and drew
one leg up against herself. “Do you think that makes me a bad
mom?”

“Of course not.”

Unintentionally, and ever so discreet, Jesse glanced
over at Caitlyn’s sun-kissed leg, not more than a shadow in these
minutes before twilight. In times past, he used to caress her leg
and, in a shared joke, would try to find the solitary freckle
hidden inches above her knee.

Wait, what am I doing?
Jesse shook himself out
of the memory.

Then again, that freckle—it always made her chuckle
when he searched for it.

Jesse leaned over and brushed his knuckle against the
bottom of her calf in a featherlike motion. “The freckle, if I
remember.”

And sure enough, she responded with that same laugh
he relished, just like she used to. “Still there.”

“What did I name it?” Jesse scrunched his mouth in
concentration and sifted through the lush soil of their mutual
past.

Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “You named it
Judith.
Don’t remind me!”

She giggled more, and this time he joined her. When
the laughter died down, Jesse paused and recalled another
detail.

“Wait, I gave it another name later on, didn’t
I?”

Yes, he had. And in truth, though he pretended
otherwise, he had not forgotten. Now Caitlyn leaned her head back
at the memory.

“Emma,” she said and paused for a beat. With a smile,
she turned toward him and stared into his eyes. She looked ready to
blush. “You named her Emma, because you thought it sounded like the
name of a princess.”