Eleven days of heartache
by Chris Alonzo
I return my son to his mother, 119 miles away, 238 miles round trip, unlock the door, and find the apartment I left behind about six hours earlier. Sometimes we have dinner together, the three of us. Sometimes her boyfriend is on his way over and I hit the road early.
When I walk in I get to work. I put away the beer I've bought (up until a couple of weeks ago this was a sixer bought at the Alabama state line, but Georgia has finally kicked her theocratic chains to let the heathens buy beer on Sundays.)
I've been in my Atlanta apartment long enough that, to the outside eye, I should have more furniture than this. But, economics aside, this is intentional. The outside eye will perceive a large, sad, empty apartment. And, eleven days in a row it is.
But then, for two and a half days, it is a playground. It is a candy-colored funscape, with a giggling, charging toddler screaming and waving his arms, room to run, all uncontrollable laughs and puppet shows and Papa Bears demanding, "Give me those belly meats! I need those belly meats to live!" And Papa Bear knocks the toddler to the ground and digs in, while the toddler howls with unencumbered joy.
I pick him back up to his feet, and he laughs and collapses into me, and he kisses me. I hug him tightly, inhale deeply, savor it, keep it, own it.
*****
I put the beer away so that it's cold when I need it. I start with the big items, the playhouse I picked up at the nice Goodwill near where I work in Sandy Springs. A few features of the house don't work; I was unaware until my mother came to visit and she unfavorable compared it to the one my brother and his wife have for their daughters. Still, for all we know, it is perfect.
I lug that first. Then I gather up the scooters: I still don't have very many friends here, so no need for a dinner table for extravagant dinner parties. More room for scooter races, I say. One is a tiny car, the other is a fire engine. The electrics don't work on either, but he doesn't know the difference.
Then I grab the wicker basket and start gathering. We bought that basket together before he was born, as a baby laundry hamper. Now it houses his toys at my house, all the little hand-held doodads. The little guitar that plays Yankee Doodle when you press the purple button. The rainbow-colored ball with the bell inside. The bear puppet. The frog with his enormous eyes.
Once that's clear I move on to blocks. I bought a full set at a flea market in Alabama, right after I moved. We had already outfitted a full nursery in Brooklyn, but now we needed two of everything. This place had some really nice deals. I'll need another set of blocks soon: we're down to about five or six, and now that he actually recognizes the shapes I want him to have a full set to play with. Maybe next time I have him.
I move his little chair against the wall and put his tray in the sink. His clothes go in a stack next to the diaper genie, waiting for the next laundry day, and the remote controls come off the high shelf. The child-proof locks come off the cabinets. I begin scrubbing surfaces sticky from fingers covered in fruit and buttered corn.
I finish things off with the dominoes. My family plays Bingo on Christmas; just a weird tradition we started as a way to kill time while we waited for Santa Claus, but as we grew up it turned into its own thing. It is some serious shit. We check cards.
One Christmas, while I was in high school, I won a set of dominoes. It has followed me everywhere I've been for the past 17 years or so -- every shitty apartment, every house that was too good to be true. Screaming fights, sirens, laughter, ruckus: the box has been there.
Now my son has claimed them. He loves them. They're a perfect little distracting toy for him: fit perfectly in his hand but too small to possibly swallow. If my son is in my house he probably has a domino in his hand. When he is gone I find them everywhere: in the DVD shelf, in the bathtub, the bathroom sink, behind the changing table, under my pillow. They are physical reminders of the logic of a child.
I find as many of them as I can, and I put them back in the box. I shove everything against the wall in his room, with its blue accent wall, with its array of glow-in-the-dark constellations mapped accurately against the Northern Sky.
I close the door to this room and I do not open it again.
I crack the beer that has been waiting for me. How quickly I drink it, and how many cigarettes I smoke, depend on how things have been left and how long I have until I see him again. Tonight is a bad night. Tonight, maybe spurred on by the long weekend, maybe spurred on by us having a particularly love-y time together, he didn't want to see me go. Usually I try to at least be there to put him to bed, or give him his last bottle. But tonight was an early night. Everybody going out to dinner, and I was invited, but "everybody" included my son's father for eleven out of fourteen days, so I demurred.
And my son followed me. And he cried. He outstretched his arms, wanting me to pick him up and hold him.
I did. When I picked him up, he relaxed on me, like he didn't want to ever move from my shoulder.
But I had to go. So I put him back down and I left. And the last thing I heard in Alabama outside of my car was the sound of my son crying and his mother sweetly imploring, "Say goodbye to Daddy!"
I am drinking quickly.
This is the hardest part of the week, with eleven days to go, and this house will host no joy between now and then. No colors, no excitement, no laughter. I will come home from work, change my clothes, cook dinner, get on the computer, and sleep for the next day. I will do this, counting backwards, holding my breath.
I will keep finding dominoes. And I will drink very rapidly indeed.
