Once a Boy

“You look good boy. Where you been?”

It has been many years, many roads. Aimless, weaving lines of trying.

“She told me you'd be coming home. Said you'd be here.”

This 'she' is my mother Gloria.

Henry walks up to me and wraps me on the chest.

“Huh!“

“You look great....you really do! Where you been?”

“Yeah, Dad, I don't know...it's been awhile.”

Not used to my father's interest. Not used to his gaze at me. These eyes are sparked. They are buried inside this old man.

“Dad, I'm going to put my stuff in my room.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Sure.”

I turn and I see a stack of papers. She must have been looking at them when she spoke to me the other day.

“Hal”, mom said, “there's a whole stack of papers we need to go through. And Hal, I need you to show up this time.”

There they are. The bundle. The stack. The story. The end. It took that to bring me back to this place, back to Henry and Gloria.

“It's a miracle.”

“What's that Dad?'

“You. Here. Talking. Standing here. A goshdarn miracle.”

Am I smiling or is that a bus driving through my mouth?

I kind of bump into the counter with my bag.

“Need a hand Patrick?”

Blood just floods me whole.

“Patrick?”

Am I even breathing?

Is he messing with me?

I manage an “I got it.”

I walk up the stairs. Missing all of the details a homecoming deserves. Missing smells and objects and memories pasted on a banister, a lamp, a door jam. Open the door to the room. My room. Even here with SO MUCH SHIT TO TAKE IN....my mind flat-lines to a box on the bed. I open the box immediately. Because you see, I already know what is happening here. This box is labeled Patrick and in it are the matchbox cars, the string, the blue foamed cat-water stained and crusty from that day. A favorite shirt she liked on him. And the stupid mittens he always ate with.

Henry has dementia. The stack is all about that. The firmness in her voice the other day that grabbed me by the scruff and shook me home was steeped in her finality with whatever he was or is. And now I have stepped in it. And I am not even me. I am the other. I am that ache and strain of that autumn day in my 12th year of life. That day a 7 year old boy dropped into the muck. That day made this box. Once a boy, now a box.

He is a tricky bastard, Henry is. She said so herself.

“How bad is he?”, I asked. “Well Hal”, she clipped, “sometimes he's in and sometimes he's not.”

He is a tricky and manipulative bastard. Always has been. Was that day. Wasn't watching us...wasn't even around.

“It all happened so fast” - that's what he told them that day.

“Couldn't save him...just couldn't.”

Wasn't even there.

“Patrick?”

He is calling me.

“Patrick, you in there?”

He is outside my room.

“I got you some ice cream.”

I sit on the bed. I stare through the door. I feel the point flipping and twisting on the little dial, my life. I reach into the box. I pull out the blue cat. I hug it to my chest. I open my mouth.

“I'm in here dad. I would love some ice cream.”