Author: Regency

Title: Great Ex-Spectator

Characters: Edward, Alan

Summary:  Alan Quartermaine through the eyes of his father.

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                The day I put him in the ground changed me as much as the day I first held him.  He was my son, my true heir and I will always love him.

                “We commit our father, husband, son, and brother to the Kingdom of Heaven,” the priest begins, solemn as though he’s known my son the way only his family knew him.  Indignation rises up in my chest and my heart thunders.  It thunders like the loudest shot from any gun and the pain is equal thereto.  I reach for my chest and will myself to calm down.  The tears that don’t fall aren’t only for me.

                The world is watching us fall apart.  Not every being on this earth, no, but the people who think they know us well, think they know what we’re about and what we mean to each other.  Those people, I feel them watching.  I clutch my chest for a handhold if nothing more and will myself to be stone.  I remain human and I continue to bleed.

                Though the fullness of Alan’s life fills the room, I can’t look at him.  He’s so still, so silent.  The box ahead of me could be invisible and I would still avoid it as if it were a sworn enemy.  It is my enemy, it stole my son.

                I will not release the fragile skin above my heart, I can’t.  It is the thing that bound me to this boy, to this man, all his life.  It will bind me forever more.

                When he was just a toddler, so young and impressionable, I took him with me out onto the grounds of our old estate.  I lifted him into my arms and I turned him towards the house.  In the most serious voice I could muster I told him, “This will all be yours someday.  This is the sum of what we are, my boy.  It’s up to you to make sure it always is.”

                Young Alan looked backed at me with the same serious face, then he looked at everything I was bequeathing to his infantile hands.  Perhaps he didn’t understand, couldn’t have understood at such a young age.  I never knew.  For the next moment, he reached up and soundly popped me on the jaw.  I laughed at his boldness and never thought of it again.  My son was nothing if not Quartermaine.

                The service continues as people from all over this town and from other places come to pay their respects.  Somehow I raised a good man.  No, that isn’t right.  Lila raised a good man.  This wasn’t because of me; the worst of him was what I gave him in my absence.  The best came from his mother.  They’re finally together again and I envy them both.

                In truth, he hasn’t left me yet.  I still hear him in my ear, fighting back the only way I ever taught him to: with flogging words and barbs that draw blood.  He was nothing if not Quartermaine.

                On either side of me, there are the two women who have cut and been cut deepest.   Monica and Tracy sit bravely, their grief more their own than any glittering possession.  And I think I’ve developed a complex for envy because I envy them their self-control and wish that I could relegate the shadows of this great life gone to the bottom of a glass.

                I know it will never be enough now.  The false comfort of amber nectars, and golden and red won’t save us.  My son showed me that as his sons showed him.  Why did it take me this long to realize that I was never meant to be the teacher, but that I was meant to be taught?  By my firstborn of all scholars.  Too many lessons have been lost to this senselessness.

                There is a pall in the room as the priest steps down and I see that I’ve missed it all in my daze.  I didn’t stand behind the podium and say words I should’ve been saying for decades.  Once again, I was lost in contemplation with myself and the opportunity came and left me with no impression.  And so the consistent thread throughout my life becomes clear.

                My son isn’t with me anymore and the anguish I feel is my own doing.  Although I’m grateful Lila isn’t here to suffer alongside me, I think only she could soothe me, only she could seal the open wound.  The worst of it is how unnatural it feels.  A father should never bury his child.  In this family it’s become some sort of tradition.  Alan buried AJ and Jason feels as good as gone.  Now, my boy is buried deep and I would wish the experience on no one.

                I  have been the greatest spectator of his life, but now I will watch no more.