Chapter 4 - Oliver
My son’s name was Oliver Mercer.
He died at seven.
Three years earlier.
Etta was three at the time.
Oliver had been born with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
For years it was manageable.
Medication.
Activity limits.
Specialists.
Then arrhythmias.
An implanted defibrillator.
Hospitalizations.
He still went to school.
Still fought with me about vegetables.
Still cheated at card games badly.
Still believed every hotel pool existed specifically for him.
His final hospitalization lasted eleven days.
A ventricular arrhythmia became refractory despite treatment.
There was no secret.
No missing record.
No suspicious doctor.
No family conspiracy around his death.
I held his hand.
My former wife Natalie, Oliver and Etta’s mother, held his other.
He died between us.
Natalie and I had divorced two years earlier but parented both children together.
After Oliver died, she moved to Denver for work twelve months later.
Etta remained primarily with me during the school year and spent long periods with Natalie.
No ugly custody war.
Grief was enough.
Lenora was devastated by Oliver’s death.
At first I mistook her devastation for tenderness.
She kept his photographs everywhere.
Paid for a memorial bench at his school.
Sponsored pediatric-cardiology equipment.
Then she began saying things like:
“A family needs a boy to carry memory.”
I told her:
“Memory doesn’t have a gender.”
She stopped saying it around me.
Apparently not around Etta.
Then Lucas.
He was five when Oliver died.
Within months Lenora began:
Paying for his summer camps.
Buying expensive clothes.
Taking him on trips.
Nothing illegal.
A wealthy grandmother giving money to a grandson.
But now I remembered a sentence from two years earlier.
Lenora had told me:
“At least I can still make sure your boy has advantages.”
I thought she meant:
The family’s boy.
Lucas.
May you like
Not literally mine.
Now I was no longer sure what language she used when I was absent.
