“A. Lot. Of. Moon.”
I didn’t say anything. I just held on to my son’s hand and kept looking up at the moon, blurry in the purple-and-pink summer sky, and wondered if I would remember this moment forever and fearing I would.
*
I was a man with an Overall Plan and the first step in this Plan, Phase I, was to drive to Champaign, Illinois, about two hours south, and spend the night. The next day, we would kill time at my alma mater, the University of Illinois, doing God knows what, before moving on to other, slightly vaguer, phases. Though I would quickly abandon this night-driving strategy, I originally thought traveling with Ethan while he slept would be easier.
It would make more sense, of course, to fly, but planes were not an option. Our few attempts with Ethan in the friendly skies had been so traumatic, so disruptive, that I was sure the FAA had us on the No-Fly list. We were driving or we weren’t going to Karen’s wedding.
I backed out of the driveway and drove slowly with the windows down so Ethan could see Wilton, Illinois, his home, our home, one last time. Wilton was a fine Chicago suburb, delicately torn from the pages of some glossy House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Big Homes for Rich People publication: aspirational, affluent, it had lots of long brick driveways filled with lots of German-engineered cars. I had married into Wilton some thirty years prior and had had, thanks in part to my high-school teacher’s salary and South Side of Chicago upbringing, a somewhat uneasy and self-conscious relationship with it from the start. But I had lived there a long time and so had Ethan. It was home.
I turned the corner. “Say good-bye, Ethan.”
“Bye! Idiot!”
“You need to stop saying that.”
“Okay. Idiot!”
I raised the window, uttered my first official sigh of the trip, and wondered if I should stop for coffee. I was very tired.
The last few days had been an exhausting and emotional blur. I should have been focusing on my daughter’s wedding in Charleston, should have been thinking about Karen, my oldest, but as always, my every move, my every thought was dominated by Ethan. The good-byes, the trips to his favorite places—Mariano’s, Panera, Rafferty’s Pub, Aurelio’s Pizza, Denning Park. One more swing ride, one more Sprite from Chuck at the bar, one more piece of cheese from Denetha at the deli, one more bike ride around Wilton. One last day in Ethan’s World.
There were details to confirm, phone calls to make—to the Jefferson Davis Inn, Ocean View, to all the hotels we would be staying at along the way. And then there was the packing. What to take, what to ship, what to toss, what to store? A thousand things to do, a million imagined and anticipated scenarios.
The constant activity did serve one positive purpose, however: it had kept me from thinking.
But all that was over. Alone now, without the shield of my to-do list, the Doubt and Guilt returned. In an effort to cope, I reverted to survival mode: keep driving; get to Champaign; get to the hotel. In other words, do what I’ve always done when it comes to Ethan: just take the next step, just get through the day.
The Doubt and Guilt pressed their advantage, though, pummeling me. Desperate, I tried to cover up, play rope-a-dope, let the Doubt and Guilt have their way until they punched themselves out. To be sure, I could have counterpunched, defended myself, argued my case (“This is the best option”), but instead I just drove on. The moon was in front of me now, silvery and pale, and as we headed south, I envied its solitude.
*
During a distant, optimistic phase of my life, when I still had hope that things would turn out okay or at least close to okay, when I still believed that I would lead a semblance of a normal life, travel, go interesting places, see interesting things, I signed up for a credit card that rewarded me with Marriott points. The more I spent, the more free nights I would get at a Marriott hotel. A simple and common promotion but one that ultimately proved to have little value for me since we, specifically I, never went anywhere. Consequently, for years, the card served as a cruel and ironic reminder of my landlocked status. Every time I pulled it out at an uninteresting place (Target, Walmart, Hot ’n’ Fast Pizza) and saw the Marriott logo, my heart broke a little. Rather than exchange all my points for TVs or computers or a treadmill, I continued to hoard them with the obstinate hope that one day I would cash in. Apparently, that day had come.