When Melvin's son died he felt a great misalignment, his only son who took an overdose of heroin one night at a party and never came home - when that happened Melvin buried more than his son. His ego, what there was of it, was lain to rest. Melvin thereafter felt he might be invisible, he was beginning to doubt his solidity and he began to brood, unfamiliar with emotional states of any intensity. He was becoming less engaged each day and marveled that no one seemed to notice. He did not recognize himself. He expected to one day look into his mirror to shave and see a blank space. He was vaguely disavowed, he knew it, but was not prone to analysis.
After the funeral Melvin continued on as before; as if nothing had happened at all. His job hummed along although Melvin's wife Marietta took to drink until she started gaining weight and then took to pills to drown out Melvin and the dead son who slipped away from her at age sixteen when she couldn't reconcile motherhood with her darker side.
On a rainy day after his mother left him waiting downtown for hours on a street corner, his plans for the day ruined, Melvin's son returned home in a taxi, using his week's spending money, enraged beyond endurance, looked his mother in the eye and told her he wished she wasn't his mother, wished he had a strong mother, a sane mother, or just a nice mother, who showed up when she was supposed to, did normal things. Instead he had eternal guilt over his lost son-ship - he couldn't love his mother so delusional and irritating. "What have I got? A fucking head case and I can't take anymore of this crap around here"...he bellowed at her, he was close to crying but he refused, in her presence, and as he hurtled himself toward the door, he said a silent prayer in gratitude that he would be getting his driver's license in two weeks.
He finished high school living with his grandparents twelve miles away. He called his father now and again but did not speak to his mother. Melvin bought him a used Jeep and sometimes they'd take rides in the woods. He joined the army at eighteen and served a four-year hitch, saw combat in a war he considered dubious at best.
He entered college when he got back from the army, needing no money from his parents who seemed like a long-ago memory with no core. He wrote his father every three or four months because he was sensitive to his father's affection but said nothing about himself; neither where he was or what he was doing.
Melvin's son did finish two years of community college and had a degree in metallurgy and could accomplish alchemy with his skills. He was sought after by various high profile firms but after a night sitting in a restaurant in a necktie, listening to a stranger talk to him about a job he knew or cared nothing about - his uncle arranged the meeting and he was at that time, still trying not to offend - he knew if he turned this down, there was nowhere else to go so he began to drink much more and started taking cocaine with his girlfriend, Brenda, hanging out in the North Beach music scene trying to pretend that it had a big joyous meaning: he knew this wasn't likely the case, that this was a satire, a petty one at that, but he was there to drink vodka and see what else was available. Sometimes he would sit in with a band when they needed a drummer (in this too he was sought after) but never took music or himself seriously.
Melvin's son never got a job: Melvin found this incomprehensible having worked for the same company everyday of his working life, but in a way admired it: the pure spunk of thinking you would be absolved of the troubling dual between pleasure and toil though he himself found them interchangeable.
After a time, Brenda tired from so much partying, noticing her looks and health were failing fast, settled down with a job, partied less, turned instead to downers, and then after losing her job, heroin. Melvin's son followed her. He was just thirty years old, he had no reason to choose this path; he was handsome, intelligent, capable...Melvin did not understand his son and he felt a deep remorse as his wife found relief in anti-depressants and gossip and his job hummed along.
Melvin grew each day more certain that his life lacked any meaning, was without a touchstone. He knew he was losing himself in the mystery of what his son's life stood for but his son was dead and Melvin could not ask him the many questions that invaded his mind nightly.
He knew about drugs, he wasn't ignorant of the world, he just didn't understand the motivation; drugs were for sickness, disease. Recreational drug use had never entered the consciousness of Melvin. Alcohol he understood, his father drank heavily. Melvin and Marietta had a highball on Christmas Eve with his parents, a ritual long established.
He didn't get the value of artificial stimulants. What for? he'd sometimes ask. He encouraged his son in abstinence, to shun alcohol especially because it was socially encouraged. These were Melvin's views; he offered them to his son for what they were worth. In those innocent days, Melvin never worried about his son who was more intelligent than most and talented in numerous ways. Melvin was confident his son would never do anything stupid or shallow and would have a brilliant future, wrong on all counts.
Melvin's son did not get married but for a time lived with a woman named Eileen who had a daughter. She coddled him until he became too sick and then ditched him, left him for nothing, now dependent on one thing only. He never had any children, he did not fall into the usual traps men do but remained distant from all that life had to offer or claim. Melvin and Marietta often wondered what their son did with his time. He never spoke of much, though now Melvin searched his memory for clues, things spoken, but unheard...what was that comment he made at the dinner table before he left for the army? Melvin was trying to retrieve conversations he could vaguely remember for something he missed. Melvin would not accept that a man, his son would turn to such savage artificial means if he had any power in the world whatsoever. It wasn't exactly a suicide but Melvin, in his own mind, did not feel absolved. He expected a reckoning though nothing like it was ever forthcoming as his life hummed along and his wife remained in a state of numb.
Melvin was awakened at 3:14 in the morning two months after the death of his son. Marietta had been sleeping downstairs since shortly after the funeral. Somewhere in the late night sky with the cloud coverage moving swiftly across the window's frame, Melvin went on alert - maybe he was dreaming but he sensed an inner shift and heard the old Sycamore tree branches beating against the house; he saw that his son was in the bedroom looking placid only to begin to drift away when Melvin spotted him. Melvin saw him walking away with his back to the room and his son waved a casual goodbye, a gesture that lightened Melvin's heart: It was the same wave he gave Melvin as he walked to the bus that would take him to Fort Brass saying Don't worry Dad, I'll continue to show up like a bad penny, with a cartoonish walk and an idiosyncratic wave that Melvin couldn't help laughing at. Melvin saw him repeat this funny gesture as he drifted away into the night and he waved back or at least he thought he did.
A partial moon could now be seen in the window's frame but Melvin slept and when he awoke and found himself alone he bawled in a spontaneous burst of resonate sobbing that had been buried beneath his vacuous efforts at maintenance. He cried for everything lost and the utter futility of living with any certainty; it was all a riddle. His wife nor anyone else heard Melvin's sobbing, it did not last long and lingered only shortly in his chest but when he awoke the next morning he felt solidly stationed, he projected an air of slight bemusement lately missing in his demeanor; he thought it might have been only a dream, his son had not really appeared in the bedroom - but Melvin wasn't sure of anything now and it really didn't matter - when he looked in the mirror to shave he saw that he had been restored. He hoped his son would visit him now and again but was prepared to let him go.
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