William Cass
Before our weekly exchange with our severely-disabled/medically-fragile son, Ben, I came upon two things that had belonged to my ex-wife, Molly: a book and a leather-bound journal. I found each behind the nightstand in Ben’s room next to the rocking chair where we used to take turns singing the same three lullabies to him each night. They were both dusty, spider-webbed, and must have fallen behind there years ago. Ben was our only child, nonverbal and nonambulatory, and had just turned six. Molly had left me the year before when he was at his sickest, admitted to the children’s hospital for his worst pneumonia yet, which eventually resulted in tracheotomy and G-tube surgeries. It took nine months afterwards in the hospital’s convalescent wing for him to recover and for me to find nursing so I could bring him home. It was several more months before Molly began having Ben with her for a few nights a week; by then, our divorce had become final.
When I got home from the hospital one night during the early part of that long admittance, she was waiting for me in her fleece jacket on the edge of our bed with a suitcase at her feet. I stopped in the doorway and looked from the suitcase to her. She held my gaze, her big eyes sad, but resolute.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m done being a martyr. I have a right to be happy.”
I felt my eyebrows knit. “What are you talking about?”
“I respect you. I admire you.” She paused. “But I don’t love you anymore.”
It was as if someone had slammed a two-by-four across my chest. I heard myself say, “Is there someone else?”
“That’s only part of it.”
She stood and lifted the suitcase. I reached for her, but she shrugged under my arms and out of the room. I heard her go through the back door, heard her car start in the driveway, heard her drive off. The floorboards felt like they’d fallen away. I lowered myself to my knees and began to weep.
~
After I’d brushed the dust and spider-webs off, I opened the book. It was hardcover, a children’s classic that Molly’s grandfather had given her as a girl. The note to her on the flyleaf wished her a happy 10th birthday and was signed, “Love, Papa.” Molly had told me about how she revered her grandfather who had died shortly before we met. I opened the journal next. It held entries she’d written to Ben in the months and days leading up to his birth. I read several at random. They all had to do with her hopes and dreams for him: how we’d pick huckleberries together with him at her family’s lake cabin, how he and I would play catch in the front yard, how she looked forward to chasing seagulls with him on the beach.
I closed the journal slowly and looked around Ben’s room in the gloaming’s half-light, at his tiny wheelchair at the foot of his rented hospital bed, at the oxygenator, sat monitor, suction machine, feeding pump, diaper packages and the rest under its raised sides. I swallowed, shaking my head, and took the books into the bedroom that was now mine alone.
~
I brought both with me in a paper bag when I went to pick up Ben from Molly that Sunday morning. Like usual, she had all his medical equipment neatly arranged at the foot of her ramp that led from the house to the curb. I left the paper bag near where I’d lock Ben’s wheelchair into place and began loading equipment into the van. As I did, I could see the back of Molly’s lover, an older man named Don, who was painting the fence along the rear of their property. He’d co-taught several high school classes with her, and I’d often cared for Ben on weekends so they could spend time together lesson planning for the week ahead. Seeing him, I felt my jaw tighten and avoided looking his way.
I was just finishing with the equipment when Molly pushed Ben down the ramp and up to the van. I kissed his cheek, fastened his wheelchair into the lift, and started it raising. I asked Molly how he’d been doing.
She shrugged and blew out a breath. “Oh, no real change. Needed a little O2 overnight, had a few seizures, moderate suctioning.”
I nodded. Behind her stiff, removed demeanor, I could still see the young woman I’d fallen in love with and married, and the same, familiar flush as always passed over me. The lift stopped, Molly ruffled Ben’s hair, and I started locking him in place inside.
I heard Molly say, “Well, then, guess I’ll see you later.”
I lowered the lift and watched her walk back up the ramp, my lips pressed in a tight line, vaguely aware of Don and his moving paintbrush in the near distance. I fingered my wedding ring in its spot in the small pocket of my jeans. When the front door closed behind her, I got into the van and drove as far as the end of their house, then stopped abruptly and brought the paper bag onto my lap. I took out her grandfather’s book, got out of the van, trotted back to their mailbox along the curb, and slipped it inside.
I drove away quickly without looking back. I didn’t know if Molly had seen me, and I didn’t really care. I didn’t know what I’d do with her journal, but just then, I didn’t care much about that either. Ben had coughed, sending a little explosion of secretions from the opening in his trach. At that moment, I only wanted to get him home where I could clean him up, suction him, and hold him in the rocking chair. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, but more than anything, I wanted to snuggle him and sing him his regular three lullabies.
William Cass has had over 300 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. A nominee for both Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net anthologies, he has also received five Pushcart Prize nominations. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, was recently released by the same press. He lives in San Diego, California.
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