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**Vincent Lane** · (07-23-2016)

Huntington Hospital, Huntington New York - Wednesday morning.

“Look, ma. There he is when he was a baby.”

I’m sitting next to my mother, who’s tied up in a dreamcatcher of hospital wires. IVs, monitors, breathing tube, feeding tube, painkillers, and so on. She looks like some kind of husk. Some puppet, a marionette, dangling from all the tubes and wires. She can’t talk, or really even move, but when I show her the pictures, her hand squeezes mine just a little. I can tell she is glad to see them.

I don’t know if I feel the same, though. They came in the mail a few days ago, just a pile of glossy photos from years ago. Things I never got to see. Nikki and Bobby when he was a newborn, a baby, a toddler, a little boy… I see Nikki smiling in ways that I’d completely forgotten about. Lucid, sober smiles. Real happiness. Love.

I see a little boy who has my smile. My blue eyes. My blonde hair. In one picture he’s smiling and flirting with an animal trainer at Busch Gardens down in Tampa, a girl who couldn’t even be 21 in that picture. She blushing like the High Scholl quarterback just called her beautiful and asked her to prom. He was already a little heartbreaker. A loverboy.

“See him here, mom? He’s just learning to walk.”

Her soft hand, like warm tissue paper, squeezes me ever so gently. The heart monitor continues with its rhythmic pulse across a screen I can’t see, beeping reassurances I’m not sure I believe.

My mom has never met Bobby. Hell, I only met him a year or so ago. I never even knew about him until Nikki called me out of the blue one day, and even then I thought she was full of shit. I had just gotten really big, I knew she was just trying to find a way to get some of my new money so she could shove it into a needle and put it in her veins.

But he was real. Is real. He even went on the road with me. It was actually pretty cool having the little dude around. It made things tough, though. The road. Once I started really blowing up and winning singles titles and being on call at all times for pressers, meet and greets, talk shows… I could tell it wasn’t going well for Roxy. I mean, the things she’s been through… we don’t even know if she could ever have a kid, you know? Having to be stuck at home with her fiancé’s son from a previous relationship, well, it was dragging her down, man.

Problem was, I blamed her a little. I shouldn’t have. I’m the one who made the choice and I know now that she’d have done whatever I wanted to do. I was stupid. I thought it was best for everyone if Bobby went back home to Nikki, like we had originally planned. It’s not like he doesn’t love her or anything. For a junkie, she actually managed to raise a pretty good kid, after all.

So when Bobby wouldn’t even look at me the day he got on that plane, when he hugged Roxy goodbye but not me, I took it out on her. I let my hurt blind me and it put a wide chasm between us, emotionally. I had sent him away because I thought Roxy would leave if I didn’t, but then after all was said and done, I didn’t have either of them. I fucked up.

“Oh look! Here he is at Easter time. They were dyeing eggs and he’s drinking the water! It’s all over his face!”

Mom squeezes my hand a little harder, and I can tell she is trying to get my attention. I look down at her little grey face in the pillow and she gestures with her hand, making a sort of arthritic pointing movement with her thumb towards me. She’s nodding as best she can.

“I did that? With the Easter eggs, I did that too?”

Her nodding gets faster and she smiles, the corners of her mouth turning up around the tube running down her throat. The nurse told me there was a good chance that tube wasn’t coming out. I might not get to hear my mom talk anymore.

“What about this, huh? Did I ever write all over the wall with magic markers like Bobby did here?”

Mom nods again at the picture and I actually manage to smile and laugh along. I didn’t enjoy much about my visit to Tampa in 2014, but one thing I distinctly remember is that wall. Nikki never painted over it or cleaned it off, and at the time I took it as a sign of laziness. I thought some other kid had done it, maybe one of the ones she said she babysat for sometimes. Then I saw the picture I was holding up for my mom, with Bobby and the wall covered in ribbons of color, a wild, unkempt rainbow spread across them both. His infectious smile was as white as the only thing he was wearing – a saggy diaper. Nikki was more human than I’d given her credit for, and she just wanted to keep the wall it had been that day.

One thing that’s tough to deal with regarding these pictures, though, is the fact that I’m not in any of them. Here’s my kid, growing up, seemingly older in every photo, and I’m not there. I wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t there. Who knows what I was doing when my son said his first word or took his first steps? And that’s why one day last week it really hit me. While I was sitting here looking at the pictures, feeling sad for myself for not being there, I was letting it happen all over again… only this time I knew it.

I think mom noticed the tear that rolled off of my cheek. Or maybe the one that she spilled was just a coincidence. All I know is I was busy locking eyes with her when I felt my phone buzz. I’d probably just ignore it, but it’s being persistent. Most times people just call once and leave a message, but this had some urgency. I guess there’s no harm in checking your cell phone, deathbed or no deathbed. Welcome to life in 2016.

“Oh shit… I mean… oh my god.”

I felt her hand squeezing and I knew she was asking me what was going on.

“It’s Bobby! He called. I guess I didn’t get a voicemail alert because of the shitty, er, crappy service here in the ICU. I got texts, though…”

And just like that, she’s the one holding my hand. Like I fell of my bike the first time or was on my way to my first day of kindergarten. She was back to being the one comforting and soothing me. Mothers are always mothers, no matter what.

“Mom he says he’s in New York, too! In the city. He must have been checking the XWF site if he knows I’m here. What the fuck is he doing in New York? Sorry, shit. I mean. Forget it.”

I text him back with my right hand, still having my left squeezed by my mother’s. I might need a heart monitor myself soon, it feels like my chest might explode. I can’t remember the last time I was this nervous.

He replies right away. Him and Nikki moved up here a few months back. He was trying to get into Juilliard! Jesus, he’s still so young… and New York City is a tough town. Funny that I went from Long Island to Tampa to chase my dreams and he chased his in the other direction. And how impressive is it that Nikki would be willing to uproot her entire life, everything she’s ever known, to help him make it happen?

“Oh wow… mom… he says he wants to see me while I’m here…”

I want to go. I don’t want to go all at the same time though. My mom’s lying here probably dying, you know? But it’s my son. I’m torn, I don’t know which way to go or what to do… so, just like always, mom teaches me what the right thing to do is.

She squeezes me one more time, and she nods her head toward the phone while keeping her eyes locked on mine.

“I mean… I can still catch the LIRR out to the city. It’s only like an hour. I can meet him, and make it back to see you some more before I have to leave. Right?”

She nods again, and her hand on mine is firm. She’s telling me to go. That it’s okay.

“I WILL come back. I’m gonna bring you a shitload of flowers too, ma, I promise. Sorry again about the cussing.”

Her eyes are wet, but not as wet as mine. I finally have to break my gaze away from hers and check my neon Swatch, pulling up the LIRR times on my phone browser at the same time.

“Crap. Okay, yeah. I’m gonna go do this. Thanks, ma. I love you something crazy, you know that? Don’t you get any dumb ideas about dying or anything, either. After I get back from England and you get out of here, I’m gonna fly you out to Los Angeles and you’re gonna see what the good life is all about. I promise. You hear me? I promise, you’re gonna get to see the Pacific.”

We’re both crying like babies, and I’m still the one, I think being comforted by her instead of the other way around. Here she is, lying in a hospital bed with who knows what going on inside of her… but she’s the one lifting me up.

I bend over and I kiss her on the forehead, and then again right on the back of her hand, right on top of the IV bandage. She keeps nodding, and I tell her goodbye and that I’ll be back to see her again.

Then I go.

But this time I’ve got a cell phone with a camera, and the pictures are going to have me in them.

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