The son stood across the small creek, 40 yards from the father. The father, 28 or 30, held a football, preparing to punt. I’ll say now the boy seemed tense.
Owen’s Star Wars Lego figures, sets, and pieces had been a constant moving currency between my house and my ex-husband’s across the four years since our divorce.
In March, a lower bunk in the freshman dorm. In April a bolted-down bed in the psych hospital. In May, the twin bed of my youth, back in my mother’s house.
Niantic, Willimantic. Pattagansett, Hammonasset. Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Aspetuck. Shetucket…. I am seven years old. Our second grade teacher makes us memorize the Connecticut rivers.
It turns out the coroner has a pamphlet to give the next of kin. It is a single trifold sheet, with the crooked wavy text of multiple generations of photocopying.
The woman who stood in front of me in the checkout line at the grocery store had Down syndrome. She was shorter than me by almost a foot and I couldn’t tell how old she was.