Stefan finally went upstairs. After another hour, so did I. Jep was having dinner with the team and would be home late. I didn’t want to fall asleep without him being there, but somehow, I did do that.
Lately, I’d begun having new nightmares, in which I would wake up crying, sweating, my heart punching in my chest and all I remembered was that I’d been carrying something in my hand, but I’d dropped it, and now everyone would die. Julie suggested I follow Stefan’s lead and get some really good therapy. “Forgive yourself or you won’t be able to go on.”
Stefan worked all day Sunday, but that night, as he was all but falling asleep over a plate of red beans and rice, I plucked up my courage and said, “You know, you’re not giving them a chance. I’m sure there’s a group, like a social group…”
“This isn’t Parents without Purpose, Mom. There’s no group for My Violent Offender Valentine.” He went on, “I don’t need a dating service exactly. I need a dating intervention.”
“There’s got to be that girl out there who would understand.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Mom. I told you this.”
He was restless, though, and motioned for me to follow him outside. It was the weird weather that persisted all that year, today was not even cold enough to need a coat. We stood on the porch, in the beautiful winter night, a gentle dry cold, a soft breeze that occasionally shook snow from the trees with a shower of sparks, all a necklace of colored lights that seemed to run along one continuous roof on our street. When I turned to ask him something, I saw that he was crying. He remembered how much Belinda loved Christmas, how she’d start making gifts in September, and four different kinds of cookies. And after Christmas, she’d say, don’t get depressed, it’s almost spring. “O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
“Ode to the West Wind,” I said.
“I’m already forgetting her,” he told me. “I can’t remember how she smelled. Her cologne was like cookies, I used to think. Like cookies and tea.”
“That’s human,” I said. “That’s how we survive.”
I should have been happy, and I would have been, if it hadn’t been for the nagging knowledge that some befanged fate was waiting. Nothing had changed.
Not long afterward, the night before I was going to go away with Julie for a few days, Stefan casually mentioned that he’d been talking to a girl, online. His voice was tight; clearly, he wasn’t going to answer questions, but he offered that she was a junior in college, at a private school near Milwaukee. He hadn’t yet told her the truth about what he had done, but had revealed that he’d gone to prison. She expressed surprise, but remained interested.
Stefan said he was trying to hang in there this time, even though it made him sick.
“Of course, I want somebody to love,” he said. He described again the women in the visiting room at The Hill, how they seemed to actually like knowing that their men couldn’t leave them or cheat on them. “I’m sure some of them were normal people, like Roman’s wife, or they got involved from a prison ministry or something. But most, no. There was one girl who stood out. This girl was gorgeous. She was as beautiful as a movie star, but you took one look in her eyes and you could see she was so crazy, and the other women were afraid of her. Trina told me the word was that one time, to prove to her husband that she loved him, she used the edge of a metal chair to cut her arm open, right in the visitors’。 I’m not making that up.”
I said nothing. Stefan noticed the silence. He continued on. “Like, I’m a grown man and I’ve never had sex. People thought, you know, at Portland High, that I’d been getting it regular since I was fifteen, but how Belinda was…”
“Sorry, Stefan, but I can’t hear this. Talk to your father or Will about your sex life.”
“I have to be perfect, Mom. I have to repent, every day, forever. I can’t need anything. My whole life is just being sorry for…”
“Please, Stefan…”
I went back inside and ran up the stairs. A few moments before, my son and I had been having a decent chat about something toweringly difficult. This was evident proof of just how much further south a situation could go even when you thought you were tied up at the McMurdo Station of scenarios. Closing my bedroom door behind me, I took refuge in my bed and flipped my laptop open to begin the march through my neglected emails. A text message from my phone popped up on the screen, then another.