All the Nights Are Long Now

“Image 9” by David S. Rubenstein

Susan stops by with the girls on Sunday night. She says she’d called earlier in the week and talked to Evelyn, but Evelyn never told me, and she sure isn’t available now.

Maisie runs straight through the house without even saying hello, while Kate hovers in the front doorway, holding her mom’s hand and looking at me with her big sad brown eyes. She got those from Evelyn.

“Say hi to Grampy,” Susan says, and pushes Kate towards me. I hate it when Susan tries to force it, when she makes them give me a hug goodbye or tell me what happened at school last week. I know she thinks I don’t know how to do it myself.

Kate swallows and tips her little face up at me, and says, “Is Granny home?” I glance at Susan, and then I lie.

“Not tonight,” I say, “just me tonight.”

Kate doesn’t need to know that her grandmother took a Valium at 5:30 and climbed into bed, and won’t be with us again until late tomorrow morning. She’s been doing that a lot lately, opting out of the slow evenings.

I don’t mind, not too much. Right after Rick died, I had to help a drunken Evelyn enough times that I don’t fight her on this. I don’t understand when her sister calls me and says she is worried about her. Evelyn’s not going to bounce back. She’s old. We’re old. We lost our only son. There’s no path back. Evelyn will be sad she missed the girls tonight, but even they break her heart. Maisie especially, she reminds us both of Rick and sometimes Evelyn stops whatever she is doing and looks like she might crumple up like a piece of used aluminum foil.

“We’ll go get some dinner started,” I say, and reach out to take Kate’s hand. She lets me grab hers and looks back at her mom, and then out towards the back where her sister is playing.

“It’ll only be a couple of hours,” Susan says, “Evelyn said it would be fine…”

“It will be fine,” I say, trying to reassure my daughter-in-law, “we’ll make dinner and maybe watch a movie. Or catch fireflies,” I say, remembering that I owe my granddaughters something that looks like a real summer before they start third grade.

“Maisie will want to help,” Kate says, and she runs through the house to her sister. Maisie will not want to help, I know, but she will be mad if we don’t ask. She always has some project going in the fairy garden she’d built with Evelyn last summer, flower petals and acorn cups and little bits of shine claimed from the recycling bin. Now Maisie tends to it alone.

“Thank you,” Susan says, still uncertain in the doorway.

“We’ll be fine,” I say, smiling at her, trying to convey an air of capable confidence. I’d done this before. I’d raised Rick. Though, to be fair, Evelyn always took care of everything, she got him all his clothes and a new backpack every fall, signed him up for every season’s sport, got him to the doctor and the dentist. Rick never liked doing the things that I liked to do and am good at—he didn’t like to work with his hands. When I tried to show him how to plane a piece of wood or make a perfect join, he’d ask why he couldn’t just buy it. I remember one conversation after the girls were born and Susan and Rick and the babies were over and Susan asked me if I could take a look at Maisie’s crib because it wasn’t quite right. Rick rolled his eyes all the way back into his head and said, “Jesus, we’ll buy a new one.” 

 ***

I guess I manage to convince Susan that I can handle this one night. “Ok,” she says, and pulls the door shut behind her.

I start towards the back, but Kate is already coming inside. “She’s busy,” she says, and then looks around me to the front door. “Did my mom go?”

I nod.

“Ok,” she says, and I watch her brace herself for the next few hours. Would her mom come back?

“Let’s see what we can put together for dinner,” I say, and Kate leads me into the kitchen. I pull open the fridge while she looks in the pantry and soon we’re side by side at the counter. She measures milk and butter for the boxed mac and cheese that Evelyn always has on hand for the girls. I cut up peppers and celery sticks. We have some snap peas from the next door neighbors’ garden, too. Evelyn always knows which veggies the girls might actually eat, and she remembers which one of them wants their celery peeled and which one likes to tug off each individual celery string with her teeth. I can never remember which is which.

“How’s the summer been?” I ask Kate, and she shrugs.

“Ok, I guess,” she says. “We haven’t really done anything. Maisie and I play outside a lot. Mom…”

“Your mom has a lot on her mind,” I say. I don’t know why I want to defend her. It makes me angry to think of the girls all alone. Susan still has to parent.

“I know,” Kate says, “she’s sad a lot so we try not to bug her.”

We fall quiet. Kate fills the big pot with water and sets it on the stovetop. I finish slicing the veggies, but then start to slice them thinner so I have something to do with my hands.

“We’re all sad a lot right now,” I say, and Kate shrugs again.

“I guess,” she says, “I know we’re supposed to all miss daddy.”

I still my knife. She keeps working, adjusting the flame under the pot and tearing open the cardboard boxes.

“Don’t you miss your daddy?” I ask. I notice my hands are shaking.

“Yeah, I guess,” she says, “but he wasn’t really around all that much and sometimes I forget that he’s dead.”

“Oh,” I say, and I try to say more. I want to say that sometimes I forget, too, but then it hits me like a semi-truck flipping over the median and obliterating everyone going about their every day business on the opposite side of the road. But I couldn’t find any words for Kate. I put my knife all the way down onto the counter, unsteady.

“I mean,” Kate says as she looks over at me and knows that she’s said the wrong thing, “I mean, I’m really sad, yeah, I am. I am so sad.” I watch her shift from trying to make herself cry, to trying to stop herself from crying because she is so confused about how she is supposed to feel.

“Kate,” I say, resting my hands on the counter and trying to hold my voice steady, “you get to feel however you feel about your dad being gone.” And I mean this, but it is hard to say out loud and it opens up a big void inside my belly. Sometimes I don’t know that he was all that much of a dad to them, which makes me feel bad, I guess, because I think it means he learned it from me.

Once, when Rick was a kid about Kate’s age, he came into the living room after I had gotten home from work. I had my hands at my sides and a beer at my feet. Two of the guys on my team had been laid off that day; I was still employed only because of a lucky roll of the dice. We hadn’t eaten yet, Evelyn was late with dinner because Rick had something after school, though I don’t think I ever knew what. I don’t know why I didn’t offer to pick up dinner on the way home, but neither Evelyn nor I would have known how to handle it if I had. It wasn’t our way then.

Rick had come tromping into the living room from whatever he’d been up to and I can picture him, all smiley and hot, his little body full of enthusiasm. And I remember my mind going blank and feeling a rush of anger, like, how can this boy feel so good when there has been so much shit today. And I remember thinking, how dare he bring this into my space. If my son thinks the world is all sunshine, well goddamn it, it’s my job to make sure he doesn’t get a day older thinking that.

And here he was, my beautiful boy, and I don’t remember exactly my words but I remember how angry I was, how I felt out of control and red hot and I remember the volume and I remember how I focused on spitting out those words at him.

Mostly I remember his face.

All that rosy pink joy swept away and he went pale, paler even than the undersides of his soft arms, and he looked up at me with confusion, and I remember that for a moment I was nearly blinded with rage and if I were a different man, I think I would have hurt my son in that moment, but instead I said something even worse, and then Evelyn came in and looked at me and grabbed Rick and the whole scene ended.

Later that night, I could barely make myself think of it, I was so ashamed. Evelyn didn’t speak to me for nearly a week, she would come to bed late and turn her back to me. I didn’t know how to try harder. It never occurred to me to try and make it right with my son. And now I’m stuck carrying this with nowhere to put it down.

 ***

Kate doesn’t have anything more to say to me after that. Soon enough we carry our dinner through the living room and out onto the back patio. Kate calls her sister, and then puts down the pot of mac and cheese and goes over to get her, because Maisie never comes the first time she’s called. She likes to be escorted out of her fantasy world.

The evening is cooler than I thought it would be, and it makes me worry that Evelyn might be cold upstairs in our bedroom with all the windows open. We’d gotten in the habit of opening them wide back when Evelyn started menopause, even cracking them open when the snow came and the furnace had to work overtime to keep up. Now, sometimes when I go to bed, I walk over and put a hand to her cheek and find it cold. It reminds me of when Maisie and Kate were babies, brand new, and Rick and Susan went away for an overnight and left us with them. Evelyn did all the work but I kept vigilant watch. I went into their nursery every two hours all night and rested my hand on their chests, making sure they were still breathing. Evelyn laughed at me, and then got real stroppy when I accidentally woke Kate, who then woke Maisie, and we had to give them both a bottle to get them back to sleep. Evelyn didn’t want me to go in again after that, but once she fell asleep I crept back in and hovered over their cribs. Now it’s Evelyn’s chest I check at night.

The girls and I sit down together and they chat to each other in their quiet secret language. It drives Evelyn crazy when they do this, and Susan has to leave the room entirely, but I don’t mind it. I think it is ok that they have a little something just for them.

Maisie wants all mac and cheese and no veggies, and gives me a look like maybe I won’t notice, but when I raise my eyebrows, she takes three snap peas and a couple of carrot sticks. Evelyn would make her take more and her mom would serve them herself, but I let it go. Kate makes sure she takes several pieces of each vegetable before standing up to serve us each a ladle full of pasta.

She’s added extra butter and milk so the fluorescent orange sauce pools on our plates and runs into the veg. It doesn’t bother me, but Maisie squeals and rescues her veggies from the orange puddle. Kate apologizes to her sister before serving her another spoonful.

We all eat together, quiet for the most part, because I can’t think of what to ask them and they don’t know what to say. Usually Evelyn wants to know about their little friends and their favorite books and all that, and I do always listen but it feels strange to be the one asking. The quiet stretches, an occasional crunch and snap of a bell pepper or a sloppy slurp of pasta. Maisie drops a little bit of macaroni on the table and tries to scoop it up with her fingers but it scoots away. The girls both giggle before glancing up at me. I can tell they are trying to figure out if I’m mad, so I smile and giggle a little bit along with them. Who could be mad about a loose and wild piece of macaroni on a summer evening?

But then I remember a dinner we had here at this same table a year ago. The girls were there, and Evelyn and Rick and Susan. Maisie knocked over her glass of milk right as we were getting ready for dessert, and I remember Rick was so mad at that little girl that he snatched her plate away and ate her serving of dessert himself while Maisie cried and the rest of us didn’t know what to do.

Later that night I’d tried to ask Evelyn, tried to check in with her, but she didn’t want to listen. Her voice had an edge to it, like she was mad at me instead of Rick, and I never figured out why. But now I wonder how many times did I get mad at Rick at the dinner table when he did some normal little kid thing? And maybe Evelyn didn’t want to hear me correcting Rick when I’d never bothered correcting my own self.

Maisie finishes her pasta first and helps herself to more, while Kate chews each mouthful with care.

“What time will Momma pick us up?” Maisie asks.

“She’ll be a little while longer,” I say, “she should be back long before bedtime.”

“Where’s Granny?” Maisie asks, and I see Kate poke her in the thigh and give her a look like she wasn’t supposed to ask that.

“It’s ok,” I say, putting down my fork, “She’s going to be so sad that she missed out on dinner tonight. She’s not feeling very well today, so she’s resting upstairs. She’d be down if she could.”

“Is she sick?” Kate asks, her eyes wide and on me.

“She’s not sick,” I say, and then pause. I’m not sure how much she needs to hear, but I can see the worry on Kate’s face. “She’s not sick in any physical way, not like you’re thinking. But she’s so sad sometimes, about your dad, that it’s almost like she’s sick. She’ll be ok again tomorrow, or the next day.”

“You mean cause Daddy died?” Maisie asks, and Kate pokes her again. I have to blink my eyes a bunch of times before I can respond.

“Yeah, Maisie. Because your daddy died. It’s a real sad thing and Granny can’t stop being sad about it.”

“Oh,” Maisie says, and she glances at her sister before picking up her fork and shoving in some more mac and cheese.

Kate is quiet but I can tell she wants to say something, so I wait until she gets brave enough.

“You’re really sad too, aren’t you Grampy?” she asks.

I nod at her.

“So is mom,” she says, “but you and mom don’t get so sad that you are sick.”

“I don’t know about your mom,” I say, picturing Susan on the day of the funeral, collapsed in her own mom’s arms, unable to stand. “But I’m sad enough that you might call it being sick. But it’s different for Granny. I think I feel just as sad, but it’s different.”

“I’m sorry you are so sad,” Kate says, solemn.

“That’s ok,” I say. I clear my throat and start eating again. I want to ask the girls if they are sad enough to be sick but I’m scared to hear their answer.

I wonder if they’ll remember their dad in five or ten years, or if instead when they think about a father figure maybe it’ll be me that slips in. I sometimes picture what it would have been like if it had been me that died all of a sudden - and it could have been, I’m not doing very well with this low salt diet. My own dad died four years younger than I am now. We’re not a lineage of strong hearts. I bet Rick and Susan would have helped Evelyn put together a nice service and then maybe never thought about me again.

We finish dinner and I bring the dishes in and then come back with a packet of cookies from the pantry, a sandwich cookie that seems fancier than its grocery store packaging. The girls each claim two and bring them out to the edge of the orchard so they can eat and play at the same time. I sit alone at the table and watch them. I pick up one cookie and scrape away the top layer of lacy biscuit with my teeth, exposing the thin layer of chocolate in the center. Evelyn would scold me if she saw me eating like this, but I want to taste the chocolate on my tongue. I’ve never had a sweet tooth in my life, but after Rick died our old friend Jocelyn made us a box of special chocolate truffles that she left on our front porch in a little cooler so they wouldn’t melt. Ever since then I’ve found that I can’t face an evening without a little something sweet. I let the chocolate dissolve off the cookie into my mouth and look up at the stars.

Susan comes a half hour after dinner, and she ushers the girls out the door. They both give me a formal hug goodnight and Kate says thank you and then Maisie says thank you after her mom prods her. I wish they would all stay longer, I wish that when Evelyn finally gets up she’d find her granddaughters waiting for her downstairs.

Instead I walk them to their car and close them in and watch them drive away. I go back inside, where I do all the dishes by hand and soak a towel drying everything. I wipe down the counters and the stovetop, and then scrub out the sink and clean the little dish where we keep the sponge. Once the kitchen is all the way back together, I’m not sure what to do, I can’t think of anything except going to bed even though I know I won’t sleep. I turn off the lights out back and lock the door, double check that I’d locked the front door as well. I close the two windows in the living room and switch off the lights. I go back into the kitchen and turn on the light above the stove. Evelyn likes us to leave that one on, in case of what I don’t know. I stand at the foot of the stairs for a few moments, listening. But I don’t hear anything.

I start up the stairs, but I stop at the landing and look at the pictures on the wall. My favorite is there, Rick’s school portrait when he was eight. He was an arrogant little shit even then. He never let anyone tell him any single thing. The night before he got that picture taken, his mom suggested that maybe he should change his shirt, but he refused. He said this was his favorite shirt and he was wearing it and that was that. So now we have this silly picture, his head just floating there, because he’d worn a green t-shirt in front of that green screen. That night, Evelyn and I had laughed so hard we’d cried.

Evenlyn doesn’t laugh anymore. I turn and continue up the stairs.

 ***

All the nights are long now. I used to be able to climb into bed and close my eyes and that was it til morning. I don’t think I’ve strung together more than two or three hours since we lost Rick. I lie there, looking at the ceiling, looking for shapes up there, and trying to force my mind to do something other than spin. Most nights I kind of accept the spinning and ease into a memory for a little while. Sometimes the memory is of Rick as a teenager or as a dad, but usually it’s back when he was a little kid, sweet and silly, and I let myself sink all the way into it.

For a while, I can get lost in there.

Sometimes I can fall asleep in that space; those are the good nights. Usually, I snap out of it and am blasted again with the understanding that it is all finished. Sometimes that’s so much to bear that it’s almost like it knocks me out and then I fall asleep for a couple of hours. More often I have to get back up and move around the house before I can make myself try again.

The first few weeks after Rick died, Evelyn would take my hand when I was all agitated and even without saying anything, she would help bring me back into our bed in our bedroom and I’d manage to calm down enough to sleep for a bit. But Evelyn doesn’t take my hand anymore.

The stairs up to our bedroom are carpeted and let me step silently up and down so I don’t have to worry that I’ll wake Evelyn and bring her back into this world without Rick. I hope she’s dreaming all the best dreams. I hope she’s found him there.

about the Author

Mollie Hogan is a writer and recovering academic living in Seattle. She holds a PhD in health services and an MSc in epidemiology but mostly likes to read made up stories, chat with her children, dabble in fiber art, and bake really good bread. She writes short stories and novels.

about the artist

David S. Rubenstein is an American writer, photographer, poet, and painter.