Edwards: 'What Were You Even Looking At, Robert?'

What Were You Even Looking At, Robert?
Steve Edwards

Karen said she was worried—that's all. Plenty of people got up early and jogged. Or did Tai Chi even. Some of her friends—Brenda and Eileen and Deb—used to drop the kids at the bus stop before school then walk downtown and back. She'd see them every day on her drive to work. "But you're... I don't even know, Robert."

"What?" he said.

"You're—"

"I'm standing in the front yard." He gave a laugh. "Explain to me what's so wrong with my standing in the front yard?"

It was breakfast time, still early, and Robert had already been out for the morning and come back inside. Before Karen and their son Nick got up, he'd quietly changed into his work clothes and started coffee. Now he sat at the kitchen table in full sun. His skin still felt cool, the scent of pine in his hair. It had felt so nice to be out at dawn, listening to birds, traffic on the highway back of the house, the slap of a neighbor's screen door, the dogs down the street barking at each other through a fence. The whole of creation waking up.

"It's a little odd," Karen said.

"Why?"

"I'm just saying."

She sugared the coffee in her mug and stirred it loudly and called down the hall for Nick. A moment later Nick appeared, bleary-eyed, hair a mess, sleep lines creased on his face. He was fourteen, a boy in a man's body. He rummaged for cereal and a bowl and milk, slumped down at the table. "You go out again?" he asked.

"I did," Robert said.

"Cool."

"You support this?" Karen said.

"He's standing there," Nick said. "Chill."

"As people drive by. Our neighbors. Anybody." Karen pointed her mug. "Your classmates, Nick. They drive this road. What are you going to say when they ask you what your father's doing in his pajamas in the yard?"

"I don't know."

"I'm in my robe," Robert said.

"You're going to tell them 'I don't know,' Nick? That girl you like. Alicia. You're gonna say, 'Oh, that's just my dad... in his pajamas.'"

"I don't like Alicia," Nick said.

"I'm in a robe."

"It's like you went out to get the paper but got lost," Karen said. "Like you just forgot to come back inside. I watched you out there this morning. You were staring up into the trees. What were you even looking at, Robert? What?"

"I was looking at the trees."

"And you don't think that's a little odd?" She shook her head. "Mrs. Burris next door probably thinks you have dementia."

"Mrs. Burris is the one with dementia," Nick said, slurping cereal, talking with his mouth full. "I heard her in her driveway once. She was telling her dog—what's its name? Jingle. She was telling Jingle that Kennedy got shot."

Robert laughed.

"Not funny," Karen said.

"You know that little voice she uses when she talks to the dog?" Nick screwed up his face like Mrs. Burris's and said, "'Oh, Jingle, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. Something terrible has happened to President Kennedy, Jingle...'"

"It's not funny, Nick," Karen said again. But she was fighting laughter now, too. She sipped her coffee and started giggling.

"Jingle," Robert said.

Karen held up a hand, waving at them to stop, stop it, but Nick said something in Mrs. Burris's dog-voice and Karen snorted and coffee came out her nose. "Damn it, Nick!" she said. She set her mug on the counter and grabbed a dish rag, began furiously wiping the spill. She told Nick it wasn't nice to make fun of people, especially his elders.

"You're the one laughing," Nick said.

"Nick," Robert said.

"If it's not funny, don't laugh."

"Your dad in his pajamas—that's what makes people laugh," Karen said. She wrung the rag out in the sink. "It's been three weeks! What am I supposed to think? If you're having some kind of problem, Robert, just tell me."

"I'm not having a problem," Robert said. And he said it again, quieter this time, woundedly, "I'm not having a problem." He turned his empty mug in his hands. Any peace he felt earlier had vanished. The damp grass. The birds. The air. If Karen could understand someone doing Tai Chi, why couldn't she let him stand in the yard and let the world happen to him a minute? It was the only thing he'd felt good about in a long time.

"It's embarrassing," Karen said.

Robert made a face.

"It is," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"You're just saying that."

"You guys need therapy," Nick said.

"Could you at least do it out back?" Karen said.

Robert studied the lines and wrinkles on his hands. He didn't know why she insisted on hurting him. "The light out back's not as nice," he said.

Nick shrugged and pushed away from the table and brought his dishes to the sink. After he disappeared down the hall, the kitchen felt quieter than before, quieter even than after Robert had first returned and put on the coffee and sat waiting for them to get up. Robert watched Karen pour herself a second mug and stare out the window over the sink, stone-faced. Once they'd been young and very much in love. He remembered one summer Nick was a toddler. They went to Cape Cod and caught the sunset at Race Point Beach, the sky on fire at dusk, the dune grasses going wild in the breeze. They held hands and walked, and Nick toddled out ahead of them chasing and being chased by the waves. How near those days seemed. Even after all these years, even after this morning's bickering: How near everything he'd ever loved and lost. As though he could open the front door some bright morning and wander right out into it all.

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Steve Edwards is the author of BREAKING INTO THE BACKCOUNTRY, a memoir. He lives in Massachusetts.