Thread by @NancyRomm

This thread is not about my father, who died February 13, but a fictional father I am writing about. My dad -- pure left brain, math savant, stockbroker -- always grinned, if a little anxiously, when I showed him my work.

It was both a mystery to him that my -- that anyone's -- brain worked this way, and that someone would risk having their work not liked; he worried about this, worried for me; he did not want me to have hard landings.

Two weeks before he died, we had a nice five-hour visit.

Before I left, I thanked him for some money he had loaned me a year earlier; told him it had it easier to move back to New York and also, in a roundy-round way, was making it possible for me to be part of launching some media that we hoped would put some good in the world.

I gave him the rundown; he sucked in every word, and then he started to cry, and to nod. Thank you for the landing, Dad xx

“Tom died in a boat accident on the Island. He was fourteen. He was with his friend Henry; we knew his parents; his father was the police chief. He and Tom had taken Henry’s motorboat onto the Bay.

"I’d explained to Tom these sorts of boats are not designed to go more than above 40 and to keep it under that, plus Sunny didn’t want him racing. They were doing it anyway, racing two boys in another boat, slightly older kids. Henry was driving and Tom bounced out.

"We don’t know whether he hit his head on the side of the boat or whether the water that caused the injury. If you are going fifty or sixty, the force with which you are hitting the water can make it feel like concrete.”

“You looked this up,” said Reymundo.

“Yes. In either case, we know that Tom did not die of the head wound but that he drowned. The coroner confirmed this, telling me that foam had come from his nose and mouth, and that this is what happens when someone breathes underwater.”

"I had just gotten to the house. I'd taken the 3:15 out to the Island. I never did this but a meeting had been cancelled so I took an early train. I surprised Sunny in the kitchen. She was at the sink rinsing cherrystone clams.

"My daughter Cassie passed me going down the stairs as I went up to the bedroom to change
I did not hear the knock on the door.

"I was emptying my pockets when I heard Sunny and Cassie laugh, a loud peal of laughter that made me listen more closely. My first thought was, a baby has been born. The next instant I realized they were screaming. I must have taken the stairs five at a time.

"Sunny was slumped before the front door, and Henry’s father Hank was leaning over her, and behind him, in the doorway, was Henry. He was a black-haired boy with equally dark eyes that were, that moment and looking at me, enormous and haunted, and I knew.

"I turned to Sunny, I got on my knees before her and took her shoulders and said, 'Hold on, hold on.' She was sucking air through her teeth. I grabbed her shoulders and told her to look at me.

"This is when I saw the whites of her eyes go lavender and her pupils pin, and thought, my god, she’s suffocating herself.

"I shook her several times before she breathed, and then she started to shake so hard that the front door, which she had fallen against, started banging against the wall, I had to use my strength to hold her steady.

"Hank got on his knee and took her other shoulder, and as he did I could see Cassie had backed herself against the wall and with one hand was sort of clutching the air, and – I won’t forget this – Henry took her hand and held it.

“They had known each other essentially their whole lives and the boy had the presence of mind to take her hand, two kids who by rights should have been playing around in the sun instead of having their lives wrecked.

“I don’t know how long we stayed there, long enough that Hank and I got Sunny to her feet, and as we took her up the up stairs, I sensed her sliding into a hole where I would not be able to reach her.

"This was 1979, I guess it was routine for people to call doctors to administer a sedative. I don’t know if this did happen, only that several friends of Sunny’s were there when the doctor arrived.

"I was at the dining table with Hank. Henry was there. I told him he had been through enough, but he wanted to stay. He was a good kid; I already told you that. Hank kept his hand on his son’s back as Henry told me what happened.

“They’d been on the Bay trying to keep up with two older boys, local kids. They were hitting the other boat’s wake, for fun. They were going ‘pretty fast,’ he said, and Tom bounced out.

“Henry had swung the boat around immediately but did not see Tom, because there was a lot of wake, white water, but then he saw the back of Tom’s white t-shirt billowing up. Henry saw Tom was facedown. The other boys had turned around and helped get Tom into Henry’s boat.

"They all saw the gash on his forehead and didn’t think he was breathing; Henry said there was…”

Robert paused. “There was some foam coming from his mouth. One of the boys drove Henry’s boat to shore and Henry sat with Tom.

"The harbormaster called the paramedics and Hank was there in two minutes. Henry had blood on his shorts when he told me this so I surmise he stayed close to Tom in the boat, he was a good kid that didn’t deserve any of this; none of us did.

“I phoned the other boys’ schools and left the message that they needed to get out to the island immediately. John was at Cornell and had a car. Stewart was at Vassar. He called back and asked if he could bring a friend.

"I told him no and that a Metroliner was leaving from the station near Vassar in fifteen minutes and he was to be on it, to take a cab out to the house when he reached the Island. He arrived around nine o’clock. The house had filled with people.

"I took Stewart outside and told him what happened. He wanted to know whose fault it was. I told him it was no one’s fault and to be a help to his mother and his sister, if he could.

“I did not see Stewart for about an hour. There seemed so much to be taken care of; I was in a sort of automatic mode. A friend of Sunny’s told me I should try to eat, to at least have some coffee.

"There were aluminum trays of food on the dining table, and someone had started a percolator.

“Stewart was by the dining table with a sometime friend of his, who asked quietly how the accident happened, and Stewart said, ‘They were probably stoned.’

"There was time for me to see the fright in the eyes of my son, who was five inches shorter than me and always will be, in the second before I punched him full in the jaw.

“This happened just as John walked through the front door, this is what greeted him; his father socking his brother in the face, so that John was grabbing my arm.

"He knew - because John is most like me - that I was going to hit Stewart again. It was a day when we were all grabbing one another, holding each other up and knocking each other down.

“Stewart wanted to leave the next morning. God knows I might have let him. My brother and his wife arrived very late and held us all together. She was the one who noticed the clams late the next day, stinking in the sink. I was the one who went to the hospital to see Tom.

“I want to tell you what a fourteen-year old boy, or my fourteen-year old boy, looked like in death. He looked perfect, as I had seen him looking the week before, but for the bruise on his forehead.

"The doctor had cleaned it up so that Tom looked in repose, not as though he’d been through trauma. I was grateful for that, for Sunny’s sake. Perhaps we need to believe that the body does not suffer, and I don’t think Tom did suffer. I tank god it was quick.

"I stood over my son and told him how sorry I was; that I wished I had been there to protect him. That it was my job to take care of him and I had not. I asked his forgiveness. I know this is magical thinking, but what else can we do?

"We had the service and that was a ghastly thing. We had to carry Sunny in a chair to the graveside. She was 38 years old but seemed twice that. There is no manual that tells you how to do any of this.

"Sunny did not leave the house the rest of that summer, and when we went back to the city after Labor Day, she could not go back. I told her I would rent it, that I would sell it. I didn’t. I own it still.

"I can’t let it go because that is where Tom is, and where perhaps John, if I can find him, will find some peace.” [end]