Collision Theory by Adrian Todd Zuniga

Author:Adrian Todd Zuniga
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2018-03-21T18:51:06+00:00

Twenty-Eight

After a fresh-fruit breakfast, Mom and I sit alone on the couch, a blanket over her legs. A photo album on her lap.

“Here he is when he was two,” she says, and points to a picture of Joshua. He’s standing in snow up to his ankles, a branch in his right hand and a wool cap over his ears. I search for signs that he looks like me. But he looks like any child, really. Unformed and sweet.

My mother runs her thumb over the picture. I can feel her remembering.

When the spell breaks, I ask her, “Where were these pictures when I was young?”

“We didn’t want to confuse you,” she says. “So once you started walking, we kept the pictures deep in drawers and put his clothing in boxes in the attic.”

“You hid them away?” I ask. “And not just from me, but from yourselves.”

“That’s not how it was,” Mom says. “Memories of him were everywhere. He was never hidden from us. Year after year, your father and I would talk about going up to the attic and paring his things down to those essential, heart-aching items we couldn’t let go. But we never did throw anything away. Why put ourselves through having to choose? Your father can show you, if you want. But it always takes him a day to recover. As for the pictures, we looked at them when we could stand it. When you were in bed, or at school.”

“I remember the candles,” I say.

“We still do it. All of January,” she says. “We keep a town full of candlemakers in business.”

When I was young I’d asked why they lit candles, and my parents told me the same thing every year: “To remember those we’ve lost.” I never asked for specifics, and since all of my grandparents had passed before I was born, I assumed the candles were for them.

“You could have told me,” I say.

“Maybe,” she says. “But it feels like there was no right answer.”

All this helps me connect the dots between my parents’ ongoing mourning and my own reservations about speaking up or speaking out. I was a quiet, careful child who learned to step gently in the world. I hadn’t thought of it for years, but now I remember going to bed at night in grade school, for months straight, feeling like the planet itself would unravel if either of my parents were to die.

“I guess we felt like we didn’t want your life tied to that night,” Mom says. “After the accident, the doctors said you were in perfect health. But it was hard to believe in anything when Joshua was on life support. You came a month early, and six days after that, Joshua slipped away. I remember holding you that night. Our sweet little pea who’d come early, in a hurry to save us.”

My mother puts her hand on my knee and holds it there. Warmth spreads all through my leg. I feel ashamed for all the times she was made to suffer while I denied her, over and over, by not coming home these past years.

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