The Boy Who Crossed the Hangar First

The calls that did not come

Courtney called Mason three times in October. Twice in November. On Thanksgiving she sent a text that said Happy Thanksgiving buddy love you, with a turkey emoji, to my phone, because Mason did not have one.

I handed it to him. He read it and handed it back.

“Can I write back?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He typed for a long time. Then he gave me the phone and went to watch the parade replay with June. I did not read what he wrote. I just hit send. Later that night I looked, because I am human. He had written: Happy Thanksgiving Mom. Kayla made the stuffing with no celery for me. I love you. When are you coming.

She did not answer that night. She answered two days later with a heart.

I did not say a word against her to him. Not once. I was raised in Abilene by a mother who used to say that a child is half of each parent, and when you talk down about one, the child hears you talking down about him. I believed that then and I believe it now.

But I will not pretend I did not have thoughts. I had plenty of them. I had them in the shower and in the car and while I was scraping tartar off strangers’ molars. I thought about twelve hundred dollars, and I thought about the man in the passenger seat, and I thought about what kind of woman leaves a nine-year-old on a porch.

Then I would come home and Mason would be at the kitchen table with his spelling words, and he would look up at me with Ryan’s eyes and his mother’s mouth, and I would remember that he was half of her too.

Christmas

In December the Family Readiness Group at Ryan’s company put on a Christmas party at a church fellowship hall off Grant Avenue. There was a Santa, who was a retired first sergeant named Mr. Ortiz with a real beard. There were cookies on paper plates and a bounce house in the corner for the little ones.

Mason did not want to go. He said parties were for kids whose dads were home.

“Half the kids there won’t have their dads home,” I said. “That’s the whole point of the party. Your dad’s whole company is gone.”

He went. He sat on the edge of the folding chair with his coat still zipped. Then a boy from his class named Tyler, whose dad was in the same platoon as Ryan, came over and asked if he wanted to throw a football in the parking lot. Mason looked at me.

“Go,” I said. “Keep your coat on.”

They came back in forty minutes later with red cheeks and a story about how Tyler had thrown the ball onto the church roof and a deacon had to get a ladder. Mason was laughing. It was the first time I had heard him really laugh since October.

That Christmas I bought his presents with my own paycheck. A new bat, because his was too short. A Royals hoodie, because he had outgrown the last one. A book about the Army with pictures of helicopters. I wrapped them at midnight on the floor of my bedroom with June asleep in her crib.

Courtney sent a gift card for forty dollars, in the mail, with no note.

Mason opened it and said, “Cool,” in the voice kids use when it is not cool at all. Then he put it on the shelf in his room next to his baseball, and as far as I know it is still sitting there.

On Christmas night Ryan got a video call through. It froze every few seconds, and his face came in pieces, but Mason held the phone up so close to his own face that all Ryan could see was one eye and a nose.

“Back up, bud, I can’t see you,” Ryan said, laughing.

“I can see you,” Mason said. “You look tired.”

“I am tired. But I’m good. You being good for Kayla?”

Mason looked at me over the top of the phone. “Yeah.”

“He’s better than good,” I said from the couch. “He’s the best help I’ve got.”

After the call, Mason sat with the phone in his lap, looking at the black screen.

“Kayla,” he said. “When Dad comes home, can I be the one who sees him first?”