For a fact, I didn’t know either. The etiquette for this particular mourning eluded me.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’m still not supposed to drive until my eye heals more,” he said. He seemed angry, for some reason. Lately he seemed angry all the time, which I put down to his frustration with his injury and its aftermath. “Of course I could, but I’m not supposed to.”
“When do you want to go?”
He said, “Soon. I’ll let you know when.”
So I waited for his request.
I busied myself with my manuscript, on which I was finally making some progress. The editor at the publisher of my previous book had written me several emails, calling herself “really quite eager.”
One day, I came home from getting groceries to find Will Brent, Stefan’s best male friend from growing up, sitting in the kitchen. The two had played football together and remained close throughout high school. Will had been, in fact, Stefan’s one true buddy. So complete had been Stefan’s absorption with Belinda that he had never seemed to require other friendships, and though Belinda had more friends—I’d seen her with groups of girls—her first loyalty always was to Stefan as well. They spoke to each other each morning even before they had breakfast; they told each other good-night, last thing before turning out their bedroom lights.
“Ho, Stefan’s mom! Long time no see!” Will said. They were eating a pizza. Will was drinking a beer. I thought that it was the first time that anyone Stefan knew from before had actually reached out to him, but Will later said he had tried to visit Stefan when he was inside, but Stefan had turned him away. Family was one thing, but Stefan had no interest in friends seeing him that way. I remembered Will as a handsome mischief maker, but now he was in a combined BS and master’s program in nursing.
“Hey, Will!” I said, and then, hating myself, added, “You can’t drink, Stefan.” Even if he had been of age, his parole forbade him to touch alcohol or drugs.
“And I’m not. Will can drink though. He’s twenty-one.” To Will, he said, “Parole condition. Not that I was ever a big boozer.”
“Leave that to me,” Will said.
They were going out to play bocce ball by the lake with some guys Will knew from college, and for some reason, this cast me into a panic. What if someone who knew us saw him? What if someone who saw the local news coverage spotted Stefan? Not that they necessarily would recognize him, in the baseball cap he donned, but what if they did? What if some busybody snapped a picture of Stefan frolicking with friends while Belinda lay folded cold in earth at Angel Oak Cemetery?
Stefan looked, if too wary to be eager, then at least willing to go, glad of a break from the endless days he’d spent alone since his surgery, hours watching detective shows and cold-calling prospective employers. He did go with Will. He was careful of his eye but still yelled and sweated. He had fun, got exhausted, went for fried perch with the guys, left his sneakers by the door so he wouldn’t track in dirt. Luckily no one was out front to harass him when he came home. Will was busy that spring with finals and planning for a summer nursing internship, but he went out of his way to make time for Stefan.
Stefan marveled at this, and the expression of wonderment on his face turned my heart.
“Nobody treated me any different,” he said. “I could tell the others were curious, but Will was direct and just said, this is my boy Stefan. We go way back. He was responsible for a bad accident, and he went to jail. That’s over now. So we’re good. And they were good. It was like I was a regular person.”
“You are a regular person.”
“You know I’m not, Mom.”
After that Stefan saw Will often, most weekends, sometimes going over to campus with him to see a movie or shoot pool at the Union, sometimes just hanging out at our place and playing games on the PlayStation console my parents had given Stefan as a belated Christmas gift, which Stefan had never taken out of the box. Stefan didn’t really have the same hand-and-eye coordination since the accident, but he was happy to play electronic games with the others now. Even touch football and lifting weights were off the table for him for the time being. Still, Will introduced Stefan to a group of guys and girls who welcomed him. The group of them went to a ball game. They went to the movies. They went out to hear music. Stefan mentioned that he was interested in Will’s plans for a combined degree. He talked about getting a master’s in English, maybe teaching someday and though we knew that was probably unrealistic, at least the teaching part, we didn’t say so. He talked to his therapist, sometimes in person, sometimes on the phone. It seemed sometimes that things were beginning to fall into place.