My Son

"Could you buy me those shoes?"

No "please."

No "...if I work...could you loan me..."

Just deep, dark green eyes that stare blankly though my own bright blue eyes. The chestnut brown hair that I so lovingly combed when he was a child falls across his forehead, matted under an old baseball cap.

His left hand instinctively moves toward the front pocket of his jeans. Jeans that are so tight that the outline of his ever present iPhone has worn a rectangular shape into them.

I shift and glance at my weary husband before I return my attention to the conversation at hand.

Is he going to answer that right now? In the middle of a conversation? Why?

Imperceptible; the feeling that tore him away from his demand, but I could feel it.

I knew the phone would go off.

Just as it had countless times before.

When we had been arguing. When he told me that his father and I were the worst, that we were ruining his life. That he couldn’t stand us. That we were nothing to him.

But that doesn’t happen anymore; the screaming matches.

He has once again retreated into that screen. The world of likes, shares, and controlled emotions on display.

A glimpse of white, and the slightest hint of a chuckle escape from my son. My attention toward him falters, and I look to his father who too has perked up at the sound of our only son’s first display of happiness since the accident.

He’s on the mend, I think to myself. Good. I’m glad. It’s time for us to both move on.

But just as quickly as it came, the smile disappeared and my son looked up from his phone and tucked it into the same spot in the same pocket without a second thought. He looked to my husband. My husband quickly withdrew his wallet from a similarly worn back pocket and handed it to our son without a word.

My husband clung to his wallet like my son clings to his phone.

A wallet is a different sort of crutch for the suburban man who had grown up in the rural south. A man whose calluses from working on his family’s farm caused him to have trouble completing his school assignments on his mother’s beat up type writer as child. A man who had received a scholarship that funded his collegial education— a man who decided that his wife and child would not want for anything.

As he watches our son walk into the store to spend an obscene amount of money on sneakers that he doesn’t need, and will only wear with matching t-shirts, I look at the bags under his eyes and my gaze falls to the haphazardly tucked in shirt that now has an abundance of room for the belly that is no longer there. The belly which I had previously encouraged him to exercise away for so many years.

Now he was becoming gaunt. The accident was slowly killing him.

I can do nothing but watch him wither.

Our son walks slowly back to where we both wait for him. The cell phone in his right hand, stealing all of his attention. He wordlessly carries his bag and my husband’s wallet in his left hand. When he gets near to his father he wordlessly hands the wallet to my husband without taking his eyes of his screen.

The two turn swiftly and pass through me as though I am not even there. And as far as they know I am not there. As far as they are concerned I am drifting at the bottom of the lake which they have to pass over each day. On the way to work, on the way to school, even on the way to this mall.

Each day they have to pass over the bridge with the mismatched concrete where my car broke through.

The memory of my accident haunts them daily…no wonder they have changed so much.