His father’s voice returning through someone else’s promise.
Then he looked at the child.
“My dad asked them to.”
“Your dad had two hundred friends?”
“No.”
The therapist laughed.
“He had maybe eight.”
“What about the rest?”
“They heard somebody needed them.”
The child thought.
Then:
“Did it make you less scared?”
The therapist considered lying.
Not because the truth was bad.
Because adults still felt pressure to give children beautiful answers.
He resisted.
“No.”
The child looked surprised.
“I was still scared.”
“Then what did it do?”
The therapist sat in the chair beside the wheelchair.
“It made me scared with people around me.”
The child stared.
“That’s different?”
“Very.”
The child thought.
Then nodded.
“Yeah.”
The therapist smiled.
The hospital window reflected both of them.
Outside, morning traffic moved along the road.
No motorcycles.
No thunder.
No spectacle.
Just cars.
Ambulances.
People beginning ordinary days.
The child asked:
“Do you still have your dad’s patch?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“At home.”
“Why isn’t it here?”
The therapist smiled.
“Because some things don’t belong in museums.”
That evening he drove to his mother’s house.
She was older now.
Retired.
Still incapable of allowing anyone else to load a dishwasher correctly.
His father’s vest hung inside a cedar cabinet.
The patch was sewn crookedly across the back.
The stitches he had made at ten remained.
He opened the cabinet.
Touched them.
His mother appeared.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“At what?”
“Bad sewing.”
She smiled.
“Runs in the family?”
“Apparently.”
They sat at the kitchen table.
She poured coffee.
He asked:
“Do you remember what I said that morning?”
“What morning?”
“The motorcycles.”
She stared.
“You expect me to remember one sentence from twenty years ago?”
“You remember everything.”
She smiled.
“I remember you asking for one.”
“I remember thinking you were half asleep.”
“I remember the windows shaking.”
“I remember you saying Dad.”
He looked down.
“Do you regret letting them come?”
His mother thought.
“No.”
“Do you regret letting the gray-bearded biker back into our lives?”
She smiled sadly.
“Sometimes.”
He looked up.
She laughed.
“I’m kidding.”
Then:
“No.”
“I regret that it took me four years.”
“You were angry.”
“I was scared.”
He stared.
She continued.
“If I let those people back in, I had to admit your father belonged to a part of life I didn’t fully know.”
“I resented that.”
“Then after he died, I wanted his whole memory to be mine.”
“That sounds ugly.”
“It is human.”
She sipped coffee.
“The gray-bearded idiot knew stories I didn’t.”
“That felt like theft.”
“It wasn’t.”
The therapist touched the table.