The Saturday Boy

hadn’t. I curled into a ball and hugged my knees but it didn’t help. At that moment I didn’t think anything would.

“How do you know?”

“There was a man—a soldier—an… officer. He came to the house last week while you were at school,” Mom said. She was playing with my hair, twirling it around one of her fingers. I didn’t think she knew she was even doing it.

“What day?”

“Thursday.”

“I had rehearsal that day with Violet and Mr. Putnam.”

“Okay.”

“We went over the blocking for our scene.”

“Okay.”

“Blocking is how the actors know where to go onstage.”

“Okay,” Mom said. “Is there anything else?”

“Violet doesn’t have a television.”

“Derek.”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“Derek, don’t you want to hear my story?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because I already know how it ends.”

I reached out and placed my palm flat against the wall, feeling the plaster that was a little bit rough in some places and a little bit smooth in others. It was cold. I could hear Aunt Josie moving around downstairs. I held my palm against the wall for as long as I could, until it got too cold, then I put it between my legs to warm it.

“I’m going to tell the story anyway,” Mom said. “For me. You don’t have to listen.”

I held my palm against the wall again. Longer this time. Till I was sure my fingers would snap off. I pictured them breaking like twigs, coming off neatly at the knuckle and falling between my bed and the wall. I imagined them being carried away by mice.

“An officer came to the house last week,” Mom started again. “His name was Llewellyn Moore. He was a captain. He told me that your father’s helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan and he was missing and that they were looking for him and he was sorry.

“After he left I stood there. In the doorway. Just staring down the driveway for I don’t know how long. At first I told myself it was all a mistake and that I was standing there because I knew he’d come back and apologize but deep down I knew it was because if I let go of the doorknob I’d fall down.”

Mom kept talking, telling me the story of the worst week of her life—how she panicked every time the phone rang, how she stopped eating and couldn’t sleep without having nightmares. She told me that one day she even tore the house apart looking for hidden cameras because she’d become convinced that she was on a reality TV prank show and that Aunt Josie had come home and found her sitting on the kitchen floor crying in the middle of a pile of broken dishes.

“But Aunt Josie said she—”

“I know she did,” said Mom. “She was covering for me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Mom said. “I’ve never felt so helpless and scared. It crushed me. It almost killed me. Not knowing if your father was alive or dead made me sick. I just couldn’t do that to you.”

“Oh.”

“Then yesterday morning Captain Moore came back and well… now I know. I was going to tell you. I swear I was. I never, ever meant for you to find out that way.”

I didn’t say anything. It was kinda hard to breathe. My chest suddenly felt like someone was sitting on it.

“He’s actually a very nice man.”

“Do you think he was scared?”

“I don’t know about scared—a little nervous maybe. It must be hard to give such bad news to a complete stranger.”

“I’m not talking about that guy. I don’t care about him,” I said. “I’m talking about Dad.”

“Oh.”

“Do you think Dad was scared? Y’know—in the end?”

It was Mom’s turn to not say anything. Maybe she hadn’t thought about that. I thought about that kind of thing all the time.

“I don’t think he was scared,” I said. “I bet he was brave.”

“Fear is natural, Derek. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”

“Budgie says only wussies say stuff like that.”

“Budgie’s an idiot,” Mom said. “Would you like to know what true bravery is? True bravery is all about conquering fear; so in order to be brave you have to be afraid first. You can’t have one without the other.”

I thought about that for a minute. Then I remembered a couple of things Budgie had done that I thought were brave but now I wasn’t so sure.

“What about the time Budgie made those wings and jumped off his garage?” I asked.

“That wasn’t brave. That was stupid,” Mom said. “But getting back to your father, I do think he was scared but only because he was in a scary situation. I do not think, however, that he would let fear stop him from doing what he needed to do.”

What she said about bravery made sense. What she’d said about Budgie had also made sense. He was kind of an idiot. Now that I thought about it, making wings out of two old umbrellas and jumping off a garage had never seemed stupider.

I thought for a little while about fear and courage. I thought about my dad and wondered what it must have been like toward the end. Had he known he was dying? Did his life flash before his eyes? Was he thinking of me and Mom? Of home?

In the movies the dying soldier always pulls out a picture of his family and traces the surface of it with a trembling, bloody finger. Then, right before he dies, he says something like, “I’m sorry we never got to build that tree house, Billy,” and the picture slips from his hand and the camera follows it to the ground.

I didn’t know if Dad even had a picture of me with him. If he did, I hoped it wasn’t the goofy one from first grade where my hair’s all messed up and I’m missing my two front teeth. That would be embarrassing.

“Does your life really flash before your eyes right before you die?”

“That’s what they say.”

“All of it or just parts?”

“I don’t know.”

“And does it happen with all types of death or just the ones where you have time to think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Because if it happened suddenly like in a car crash and only parts of your life flashed before your eyes and they all happened to be the bad parts, then well… don’t you think that’d be kind of a rip-off?”

“I suppose that would be a rip-off. That’s why I think probably only the good parts flash by. Like a highlight reel.”

“What’s a highlight reel?”

“It’s like a movie of only the best parts.”

“Hm.”

“Indeed.”