After dinner that mom had cooked was over, we gave David a bath and tucked him in his nest again. He looked cute in pajamas with a teddy print on it. The sleeves were a bit too long, but apart from that it fit him quite well.
I put him into mom´s lap, set my camera’s automatic timer on, ran over to join them and took the first family photo. Scotty lay sprawled underneath our legs and watched over his new friend. We look just like a happy little family if it was not for one very important person who is missing to make my happiness complete.
Night passed smoothly, Davey not waking up one single time and I was the one who had to drag him out of his bed following morning. I set the alarm clock for eight o´clock, because I wanted to be in Loitsche as soon as possible. I packed things roughly for one weeks‘ stay, we put David’s safety seat into mom´s car and at ten we were already on the road heading home, taking the shortest way… to Tom.
Mom was entertaining Davey the whole time, sitting on the back seat beside him, Scotty was sleeping in the separated cargo space and I couldn’t bring myself to think of anything else but him during the whole time while I drove. How is he going to react when he sees me? And how is he going to deal with meeting Davey? If Sabine was right and Tom would turn out to be jealous, it would get incredibly hard on me.
After an hour and a half we are there.
„Here we are, we´re at granny’s. Let’s get out.“ I smile encouragingly at David and open the door on his side.
Gordon is already standing at the doors of the house, watching us getting out of the car.
„Come over here and give us a hand!“ mom shouts at him, when she sees how he´s hesitating, not being sure if he should approach us or not.
„This is your grandpa,“ mom informs David and points at dad who is already walking towards us.
Davie looks him up and down and says: „Hello, grandpa,“ flashing him a friendly smile. It´s great to see that he is accommodating to all changes and for him totally new routines just beautifully. Soon my son has million questions, shooting them non-stop and mom is answering all of them with unbelievable patience.
Mom was telling David about our family the entire journey over here, so he already knows about an uncle Tom too. When I listened how nicely mom spoke about him, I almost started to cry. She was trying to clarify to Davey a concept of a family and all relationships within; what a grandpa means and what brother means and that she is actually my mom and grandpa is my dad. Davey’s head must be full of it right now, but he managed to listen to it all as if it was a fairytale that is told before sleep time.
Grandpa gives his grandson his big hand and they are already friends, just like that. He then lifts Davey up and place him sitting behind his neck, how he used to do with us, and they walk to the house together. I let Scotty out, take our bags from the boot and follow them to the house. I glance discretely at the window of Tom´s room and I am almost sure I caught a glimpse of his silhouette standing behind the curtain. I don´t know for sure though, it might have been just mom’s cat making the curtain move.
So it seems that it couldn’t be the cat, Brita, because Davey is already cuddling with her in the kitchen and Scotty is watching him enviously. I´m glad that Tom showed at least a slight interest in us.
I put our bags in my old room, pausing silently at the Tom´s door for a while, which is right across from mine. There´s an absolute silence there. He must know about me, he must feel that I´m standing behind the door, we can always sense each other’s presence like that. I stand there for a while, but when nothing happens, I go back to the rest of the family.
I look happily at those three. Gordon is holding a laughing Davey in his arms and I watch as they are dancing to the beat of some rock hits, and mom is just watching them dying of laughter. They all look so happy together. Even Tom’s absence can’t ruin this moment.
It´s lunch time and mom starts cooking. Yesterday she delegated Gordon giving him a list of what to buy, so everything she needs is waiting for her. She announces lunch should be on the table in one hour and my throat suddenly tightens when I realize how much my mom loves family lunches and Tom knows it too. If he comes out and join us, I would finally see him after three long days of separation. My nerves are killing me so I leave the dancers in the living room to have fun together to retreat to my room and start unpacking our things putting them in the wardrobe.
I leave the door half open and when I’m pulling a pillow case over Davey´s pillow, I can hear soft tones of Tom’s guitar. I step closer to the door to be able to catch the music better and my heart starts jumping with joy when I hear what Tom is playing. It´s one of our songs.
„You´re everything that I am, and everything that flows in my veins,“ I mumble along to Tom´s playing and I´m starting to feel optimistic, hoping that everything will be all right after all. Maybe not immediately, maybe not just yet, but if I give him more time, he will surely come around eventually, coming back to us. „Somewhere will be the time, let us go together into the night, I can hear when you silently scream, I can feel every breath you take… I don´t want to be alone…“
MY LOVE, YOUR PLAYING IS BEAUTIFUL. LOVE YOU. BILL. I type the message quickly and send it to Tom. The sound of music dies down when a sharp peep of an incoming message is heard from his cell phone. I´m hoping, waiting, watching the phone display with his photo on it. Maybe he will text me back, knowing I´m in the next room, but I wait in vain. Sadness engulfs me again, but I kind of expected this reaction.. I finish my unpacking and decide to join my mom in the kitchen where I find two cooks in full work, being busy. Mom is peeling potatoes and David, dressed in a huge cooking apron, is passing them to her one by one.
„Daddy, look, we´re cooking.“ The tiny boy looks at me with a serious face and reaches for another dirty potato. He´s so cute, he’s almost bursting with pride.
„I see… make it delicious, chef.“ I stroke his head and go to have a look at Gordon. He´s sitting in the living room watching TV.
„What are you watching?“ I ask him out of politeness, seeing clearly that he´s not really paying any attention to the TV program at all. He looks like he is pondering something in his mind.
„What… uhm… I don´t even know, I´m thinking of something else,“ he answers and smiles a little. „You have a beautiful son, Bill. Congratulations. You couldn’t have made your mom happier. She´s over the moon. That time when you had told us about you and Tom, she cried for two nights. One of the things she couldn’t stand was the thought she wouldn’t have any grandchildren but now she got one. You made it happen, even if only by mistake,“ dad looks at me and we both start to laugh.
Silence spreads around us again and we sit together like that for a while. TV is on, pictures flashing in front of us and dad can sense how much I want to ask about Tom. He turns to me, looking into my eyes seriously.
„It´s really hard on him. He leaves his room just about three times a day, when he needs to visit the bathroom and sometimes when I go out to the garden, he sneaks out, grabs something quickly to eat and disappears again. He´s locked in there with his guitar. He refuses to communicate. I’ve been trying really hard to make him talk to me, making him speak about it, but he shuts himself off. I´m really worried about him, Bill, it doesn’t look good,“ he ends his speech and watches me sadly. „It´s up to you now. I have tried my best, but I can’t help him. „
„I´m trying to make a contact via text messages for now, but he´s not answering me. That´s why we arrived, dad,“ I tell him. „I´m so incredibly sorry about everything that happened and I can understand how he must feel right now. I made a lot of mistakes and I am paying for them dearly, but I don´t want him to suffer. I know that he suffers the same way I do.“
There’s nothing else to say that could justify my actions to Gordon, everything is clear. It´s not my call anymore… nobody can help Tom… I can try to make him talk to me but it’s only up to him now how he wants to have it… and I’m scared. What if I won´t manage to get through to him? Is our relationship going to crumble down, leaving our brotherly bond shattered and in pieces? Maybe I have brought bad luck with me into this life too? The same bad luck which caused us to never say to each other what we were truly felt, the same bad luck of Tom dying? I can’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t take it the second time.
„Luuuunch is ready!“ Two voices yell from the kitchen.
Dad and I stand up from the sofa and walk into the kitchen. A tureen of hot soup already sits in the middle of the dining table, fragrant steam raising from it to the ceiling. Davey is seated in his high chair dad brought from the cellar, a tea towel wrapped around his neck, a spoon in his hand as he´s clinking it impatiently against the surface of the dining china. He beams at me when I sit down next to him.
Gordon is the one who walks to Tom´s room. I can hear from the distance how he knocks on his locked door. „Tom, lunch is on the table,“ he informs my brother shortly, but after a while he´s back with a gloomy face. He shakes his head as a sign of defeat, and when he sees disappointment in my eyes, he smiles encouragingly.
„Uncle is not hungry?“ David asks surprised and shakes his little head in disbelief. „But I am… very much so.“ He stabs his little finger into his belly. With his spontaneity he relieves some of the stifling atmosphere and we all start to eat with gusto.
Spoons are clinking against the dishes and Brita is sneakily circling the table. She´s nuzzling my legs with her soft nose, but when she doesn’t get any treat, she stretches herself and jumps onto a kitchen window sill. She watches a road that our house stands next to, but we live at the very end of the village, so the only traffic the cat gets to watch is one car passing by in half an hour.
Tom and I always wanted to get out of here desperately, to leave here for a bustling life in a big city. We felt like we were suffocating here, this boring, calm place unworthy of our ambitions. During the past nine years we’ve travelled around the whole world and today I can truly appreciate solitude and peacefulness which reigns here.
Tom and I used to play in a makeshift wooden hut we built with Gordon’s help from old planks at the end of our garden and while hidden there, we would make plans together how to get out of here, proving to all annoying doubters, with whom we used to go to school with, that we would be somebodys one day. We were the ones who would make it. We used to spend many long hours there talking, sharing our dreams. I don’t even know if that hut is still there.
