The Fives Run North-South by Dan Goodin Read Free Book Online Page A

make my way to the adjacent hotel, take a shower, and try to sleep. But for a second I just wanted to sit at Peter’s bedside.
    I was looking at his face as he slept. It’s one of those things that punches your gut as a parent, looking at the face of your child as he sleeps. We don’t do it often enough. The shape of the nose. The places where the skin is a little tighter. The dash of freckles. We hold their face in our minds always younger than they are at the moment. And as I really looked at it, I saw signs of aging that surprised me. Time had marked him in ways that I hadn’t noticed.
    I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held Peter’s hand.
    Probably not unusual, but there had to be a last time. I do remember holding it. A few times stick out in my mind, but there were probably hundreds. Back when he was young. Crossing the street. Early Halloween walks. Entering a crowded party, him looking for reassurance. But there had to be a last time. Did it plenty when he was three years old. Four. Six. But at seven? Nine? I couldn’t have recognized the final time it had happened; I’m sure I’d have marked the moment. You do that with the big things; you try to keep a snapshot. What we miss — and what fades more quickly — is the ordinary, the faded days where a young family has gravity, and the comfort of permanence. Easier to recall are the standard - fare big moments.
    I remember clearly the day he left for college.
    We walked down to the car, packed up and ready to take him from our home to his college dorm up in Vermont. I remember how I had to fight the urge to reach out and take that hand again, knowing if I did he’d look at me in surprise with an edge of discomfort. It would be followed by a smile and a retreat; the required display of masculine embarrassment. No, the last time I held his hand would remain just that.
    As we strolled from the house to the car, I was recalling another time — the time I first realized that I couldn’t put him inside the hard shell of my care (why is it that those slightly more painful snapshots have to be the ones to so easily stick?). He had been twelve, perhaps thirteen. One of those school events, I don’t know, science fair, play, something. Suze and I had been seated in the bleachers; he’d been below us on the gym floor talking with a friend. His ears…always those ears. They grew out when he was five and it took another twelve years for his body to catch up to them. Made him easy to pick out in a crowd, poor kid. And then that other boy had walked by him. I remember the face: it had that smirk that made it evident he expected the world’s seas to part before him. You wanted to smack it off his face because he was probably right and it simply wasn’t fair. He was a head taller and much broader than my boy. And as he passed by he’d chucked his fist into my son’s ribs. I’d watched as my son’s face mixed shock, embarrassment, fear, and shame, all of which merged into a weak smile as he looked up at the smirking boy. A smile that said: “Ha. That was funny how you poked me.” Smirk Boy had just rolled his eyes and walked on. And I’d simply clenched my fists. You can’t put that hard shell over them, and that’s when I first felt the pit. In my side, like someone scooped out part of the meat from under my ribs and replaced it with a clench.
    As I held the door to the car open the pit came back. Peter was looking in at his friend Alex, anxious to get going to Vermont. Behind me Suze hugged herself and forced a smile.
    “You good on cash?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “Well, if you’re offering…” he said.
    For the third time that hour, I pulled out my wallet and slipped more bills into his eager hand. He stuffed them in his jean pocket, another ball of money for the collection.
    “You going to let us know when you get there?” I asked.
    “I’ll text ya’,” he said, jumping into the car.
    I flicked his ear. “Hug your mother,” I