“Your father began to accept my ideology,” she reminded me. “Thank goodness because finding him will be much easier now.”
“I’ll tell you where he is, Mom,” I quipped, having visited his grave the day before. “I don’t think he’s been hiding.”
“Don’t be a smart ass, son,” she corrected. “And that was not your father, by the way.”
I laughed out loud. “Then whodid we bury?” I joked.
She tsked and looked away. We sat in silence and enjoyed our popsicles. She wasn’t angry because she didn’t get angry. Another amazing trait she possessed. We observed three hummingbirds as they flitted around her backyard feeder. I read her mind before she could speak. “They say humming birds are spiritual creatures,” I offered. “Some even believe they’re visitors of lost loved ones’ souls.”
“Would you be open to that idea?” Mom asked, looking beyond me and toward the manic birds.
“I would. Now tell me who we’re summoning before I forget to ask again.”
“Cooper,” she answered, as easily as if I’d asked her a yes or no question. “Timing is everything in this particular event,” she added.
I’m not sure how I knew her answer before she voiced it, but I wasn’t surprised she said Cooper. “And why him?”
“I will be dying on August 30th, honey,” she announced. “That date is important for you to remember.”
“I know what the date is, Mom, and I’m not really excited about you sharing that news with me. Nobody is dying anytime soon and certainly not on that day.”
“The date is the most important part,” she declared. “And I’m making sure we are prepared.”
I stood and walked to the edge of the patio, gazing across the lawn toward a giant maple tree in the yard. There were still a few loose boards from where a treehouse used to be attached to two of the largest branches, eight feet off the ground. A private fort for me and Cooper when we were kids.
“I’d prefer you didn’t do that to me, Mom,” I said, turning around and staring at her in disbelief. “That is unfair. Do you seriously want me to have to add your death to that date?” I was angry now and returned to staring at the yard so she couldn’t see my face.
“Hear me out, son,” she argued. “Please?”
I had given one hundred percent of my effort to be patient with her beliefs since I’d been home, but this news was a setback in my willingness to accept what I didn’t understand. I wanted her to be happy and to feel heard but this was crossing a line.
“Not the thirtieth, Mom. You cannot die on that date,” I declared. “I won’t accept that date and I’m asking you not to talk about this to me again.”
“It has to be that date, Michael,” she insisted, her weak voice rising. “I’m doing it for you,” she defended.
“NO!” I yelled. I turned back to her, sorry that I’d yelled. I leveled my voice and my emotions. “No, Mom. I mean it. BothCooperandyou? On the same day and just a month after Dad died? You cannot expect me to live with that reminder for the rest of my goddamned life.”
And with that I stormed off the patio and around the house, ending up in the front yard. I glanced toward Cooper’s bedroom window, expecting to see a cat. The cat wasn’t there. Instead, I located it sitting on the front stoop. The black feline had yellow eyes that pierced mine from across the quiet street.
“What?” I whispered. “What the fuck do you want?”
I watched as the cat twirled its tail, slowly curling and uncurling the snake-like appendage; the yellow eyes boring through my soul.
CHAPTER TEN: Mike
Twelve Years Ago
Cooper began to fill out and catch up to me in the size department the year we turned sixteen. It was that summer on our birthdays that I began to notice how beautiful he’d become as he physically matured. Every time I felt a surge of emotion for him that I didn’t understand, I’d tamp it down deep out of confusion.
We both took the driver’s test for our licenses on July 12th, our actual birthday.
“Street legal, buddy,” he said, waving his temporary paper license in my face.
I grabbed it from him and stared at his handsome face in the black and white picture on the thin paper. “Yikes,” I said. “Sorry the pic turned out so bad, dude.”
Cooper snatched it back and stared at his image before looking at me. “The pic’s not good, is it, Mikey?” he asked, looking sad. “Now I gotta show this for six more years and be embarrassed.”
“Five,” I reminded him. “We get new ones at twenty-one, bro.”
