Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have A Family

Over the sound of passing cars, she hears someone calling. Lady! LADY!!! She knows she should stop but the feeling is far away.

She is at the sink filling the kettle with water to boil for more chamomile tea. Her hands are shaking. She wishes she could return to how it was earlier in the day. Everything until now had gone on without incident. Even with Adam, who arrived in the morning from Boston, alone and without a girl, thank God. June had at the last minute tried to persuade Lolly how much easier it would be on everyone if he stayed at the Betsy, where Will’s family and others were staying, but her response was instant and volcanic, and despite June’s delicate approach and stated worries, Adam was installed in the guest bedroom upstairs. Still, he’d been friendly to Luke, which was out of character and surprising given how he’d behaved when they met last year at Lolly’s graduation from Vassar. Adam refused to acknowledge Luke, and all afternoon muttered cradle robber and cougar under his breath. Regrettably, June responded on his level and reminded Adam that he’d been raiding the nursery long before their marriage was over. She remembers how quiet Luke became and how only later that night did she see the afternoon through his eyes: two middle-aged, bitter exes pointing fingers at each other for dating younger people. It was humiliating. She swore she’d avoid this kind of squabbling at Lolly’s wedding, and to her surprise, so far, it had required no effort. Adam had been respectful. No barbs, no bite. The last person she expected to upset the applecart was Luke. But by letting Lolly rattle him as he had, he’d opened up a can of worms she believed, or at least hoped, had been closed.

The kettle is full but she can’t move it from beneath the faucet. It is overflowing, but the gushing water, the weight of it in her hand, is soothing. She has no idea what to do next, so she does nothing. She feels cornered and angry and wrong. She wishes she could return to the front walk just an hour or so ago, hear Lolly call to her when she saw her step into the beams of the floodlights. Mom! She wishes she could start the evening over from there, steer it away from where it is. She watches the steady flow of water from the faucet, how it spills from the top of the kettle and disappears down the drain.

Cars whiz by, horns wail. She is walking faster, but the voice is closer. LADY! What on earth?!? She begins to run and soon someone grabs her arm . STOP, the voice shouts. What the hell are you doing? it asks, more bewildered than angry. She looks at the source — the beard, the flannel shirt, the white head of hair — but she does not see the man who helped her earlier. I’m sorry, she says, but not to this man. She is looking at the loose water, her trembling hands. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, she says again, dropping to one knee and then the other. For the first time, far enough away and next to someone she does not know, she cries.

I’d leave in the morning and the room would be a mess — sheets and blankets twisted in knots, clothes and towels on the floor. But when I’d come back at night after a day at the hospital with Robert, the place would be impeccable. The bed made, my clothes neatly folded on the dresser. Even the cap on my toothpaste would be screwed back on and my razor and comb lined up neatly on a folded face towel next to the sink. I’m not a messy person, normally, but when I look back on my time at the Betsy, I can see that I let myself slip. I had lost control of everything — my wife’s health, my boy, my business — and in this one space, this little New England motel room, the problems that existed could be fixed by someone else. That someone else was Lydia. I didn’t meet her in those first two weeks. But I did feel her; in the moments before opening the door to that motel room, I would anticipate the clean room, the restored order, the lemon smell of wood polish, and in those days it was the only thing that gave me anything resembling relief.

Robert was in a coma for three days. He aspirated his own vomit when he was unconscious, and they think he was oxygen deprived for as long as three hours before the police discovered him in that barn. I sat by his bedside until he came out of it. I know it may sound perverse, but a part of me misses those hours with my son. My role, what I could do for him, had never been so clear. I had to be near him. I told him about his sisters and his mother, our dogs and the ugly house being built across the street in the woods where he used to play. I held his hand, which was something I’d never before done and have not done since. I wonder sometimes if it’s like this with other fathers. What I know is that for me, having a son has been a difficult riddle, an awkward tiptoe between too tough and too easy. I never got the hang of it. Not like with my daughters, who were uncomplicated to be around, to love. The rules of engagement were much more obvious. Robert never liked sports. I think sometimes it was because when he was very young I was too busy with work and Kay and the girls to put a basketball in his hands and get him on the court. He liked his elaborate fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons and the books he made, and he liked Tim, but he didn’t have any interest in anything I knew about. When Kay was alive, she’d tell me it wasn’t his job to be interested in me, it was my job to be interested in him. If she was right, and I expect she was, I failed at the job miserably. By the time he left for Harkness I had convinced myself that Robert was better off without my meddling, that he was self-sufficient and would navigate the world of boarding school and college just fine without knowing how to play basketball or a father who knew his way around the castles in Dungeons & Dragons. I can see now how self-serving that was.

After he came out of the coma, Robert remained in the ICU for nine days. He was conscious but vacant, and his speech was impaired. I sat with him like those first three days but I did not hold his hand. Of all the things to remember, it’s hesitating with my hand that morning when he was newly awake and frightened, stumbling with the simplest words. That is a moment I would do differently if I had the chance. There are many. What could I have possibly been worried about? Everything is the answer. I was worried about everything. It’s painful to admit, but when I remember that time, I see myself as a skittish fool, wringing my hands over every little decision and getting most of them wrong. Why is it only later that things begin to make sense? Mostly, I’ve made my peace with the mistakes I’ve made, but every so often I bump into a memory and it will sit me right down. Not swarming my boy with attention and love in those early years, not grabbing his hand and pulling him toward me as much as I could have, letting him disappear to boarding school because it felt at the time like one less thing to worry about. These are the regrets that slip and drop down, and when they do, there is nothing to be done, no action I can take to make it better. I just let them come for as long as they will.

After his time in the ICU, Robert was moved to the hospital’s Acute Rehab Unit to try to get him walking, talking, and problem solving again. There was brain damage, but with work the doctors assured me it was likely he’d be fully functional, both physically and cognitively. They worked with him for nearly a month, and in that time I flew home for a night or two but for the most part stayed at the motel and saw Robert for breakfast and at the end of each day for dinner. The doctors wanted him to focus on the various therapies during the day, so I stayed away, worked from the motel room and spoke with Kay and my mother and sister, who were driving her to chemo and helping with the girls. Kay would ask about Robert but deflected any questions I asked about how she was feeling. She tried to be cheerful, but I could hear her fading away a bit more every time we spoke.