Johnny Angel

“He seems completely shut down. He just lies on his bed all day. He won't even come downstairs to eat. I have to carry him. Jim thinks I shouldn't baby him, but,” she broke down in sobs again as she tried to explain it to her friend, they were closer now than they'd ever been, and Alice had come to rely on talking to her every day, “in a way, Bobby and Charlotte are all I have left. Jim is never here, and when he is … well… you know how he is … he just anesthetizes himself so he doesn't have to feel anything. He doesn't even want to talk about him. He thinks I should clean out his room and give everything away. I just can't do that yet. Maybe I never will. I go in and sit in there sometimes. It's as though, if I sit there long enough, and wait for him, he'll come home. I haven't even changed his sheets. That must sound crazy to you,” Alice said apologetically, but Pam knew it only too well.

“I kept Mike's clothes for over a year, and I still have some of his favorite things.”

“I just wasn't prepared for this,” Alice said miserably. “Maybe I never will be. It never occurred to me that he could die, that something like this could happen to us. This happens to other people. I never thought it would happen to me … or to any of us….” It was almost exactly the way Pam herself had felt when her husband died unexpectedly. But losing a boy like Johnny at seventeen was even more of a travesty. Becky had even said that herself. Johnny had left a lot of broken hearts behind, but it wasn't his fault. Some people had told Alice that she'd be angry at him one day, for leaving them, but she couldn't imagine it. His death had certainly not been his fault. And no matter how shattered they were by it, by no stretch of the imagination could she blame her son.

They had all been planning to go to the lake in late July, but they canceled their plans and stayed home. By August, Alice was still awake all night, but at least Jim was drinking less. He had gone back to drinking beer in front of the TV at night, and had stopped drinking gin. Charlotte was playing baseball again, and Alice had asked Jim to go to her games, just to show her some support after everything that had happened to them, but he said he didn't have time. And Bobby was still lying on his bed most of the time. Despite all of Alice's efforts to lure him downstairs with her, and keep him entertained, the moment her back was turned, or she answered the phone, or did anything, he went back upstairs to his bed. The house was like a tomb at night, they each kept to themselves, nursing their wounds, and thinking of him. And for a while every afternoon, Alice sat in Johnny's room.

And when Pam took a good look at her in early September, she thought Alice looked worse than she had since June. Johnny had been gone for three months by then, but for his mother nothing had changed. She was as grief-stricken as she had been in the first few days after his death, and she could barely make herself get dressed every day. When she did, she wore jeans and a sweater with holes in it. She looked every bit as depressed as she felt. Pam even offered to do her hair for her, but Alice just shook her head and said she didn't care.

The kids had gone back to school again when she started getting stomach pains. They were fierce and sharp, and she finally mentioned it to Jim one night and he looked concerned.

“You'd better go to the doctor right away.” They were all frightened about each other now. Their own mortality had been underlined. Alice worried about Charlotte now constantly, getting hurt while she played, or hit by a car on her way to school on her bike. The concept of invulnerability had been permanently dispelled.

“I think I'm okay,” Alice said unconvincingly She was more worried about the kids. Charlotte had gotten two migraines that week, and had to come home from school. And Bobby wouldn't go to school at all. He locked himself in his room so he wouldn't have to go, and the principal of his school had said to wait another month and see how things went.

The stomach pains got worse over the next few weeks, but she didn't say anything. She knew she had to be strong for the rest of them, and she said as much to Pam. Becky was still in bad shape too. She was working full-time again, but all she did was sit at home and cry at night. She never saw her friends anymore, or went anywhere. Johnny had left them all in sorry shape.