Retirement

      Though Collin got to the chintzy restaurant half an hour after the party’s start time, he found its honoree, a man whom he’d never seen arrive a second late for anything throughout their twenty-five year friendship, absent. Just in case he’d missed him, he, again, surveyed the room—a banner screaming, “Happy Retirement!” draped across the ceiling, streamers taped to bisque-colored walls, and coworkers clustered around scratched walnut tables, chatting as they sucked cheddar chunks off toothpicks and sipped champagne from glass flutes. Sure enough, no sign of Tommie. Definitely not normal.

This shouldn’t have surprised him. Tommie hadn’t acted “normal” in weeks. He’d declined nearly every invitation that Collin had extended. He picked at his food, even when Collin got him his favorite meal—a Whopper and onion rings. He’d smiled and laughed at appropriate times, but Collin could see darkness peeking through that flimsy veil of light, and it terrified him. He had urged Tommie to open up—to talk to him, or a professional. But Tommie refused, declaring himself, “fine,” and, “not crazy.” Just like his brother.

           And then this retirement business. Tommie had claimed that he’d simply tired of the daily grind, but Collin knew better. He knew that, like him, Tommie loved the job—driving CATs over dirt hills; cutting and placing and drilling and nailing boards; laying bricks and cement; setting glass in window frames with sawdust in their hair and the sun tanning their backs. Sure, they had bad days. Everyone did. But Tommie would never sacrifice the satisfaction that glinted in his eyes when they admired their finished products unless something earth-shattering had happened.

If at any time, Collin would have expected that turning point to have occurred after Tommie had found Justin in a necktie noose in his closet. Collin could tell that he’d had to struggle to keep his voice steady and tears away when he’d told him on the phone, and he knew that he’d begged him not to come not because he didn’t need him, but because he didn’t want him to see him break down. Of course, he’d felt tempted to go, anyway, but he knew Tommie well enough to know that succumbing to grief in front of someone else would cause him more distress having to deal with it alone. Thus, he’d stayed away.

He had also spared him the burden of having to comfort someone else when, himself, in crisis; he had not told him the thoughts racing through his mind: How could this happen? How could Justin do this? How could Collin have failed to see this coming? How could he have been so stupid? What kind of friend let their friend suffer behind a mask, too cowardly to force the issue? Did he even deserve other relationships, platonic or otherwise? To this day, he hadn’t found the answers, and it had nearly driven him insane.  He couldn’t let it happen again.

           Unless, of course, it had already happened. His stomach deflated, bile surging into his throat.

It rose higher still as he spotted his boss making a beeline for him, eyes flashing in a way both familiar and unwelcome. Proving that, in his universe, only losers bound themselves with manners, he cut right to, “Where is he?”

           “I don’t know. I just got here.”

           “He’s your friend.”

           And your employee—for the past twenty years, in fact. The words tingled on his tongue, all the more tempting for his distress, but he bit them back, reminding himself of what Justin used to say: “Slam that jerk, no more work.” Instead, he asked, “Did you try calling him?”

           “He’s not picking up.”

           He said this as if Collin deserved the blame—as if, earlier, he’d come to Tommie and said, “Hey, Tom, do me a favor: if Anderson calls, can you please ignore him until he goes out of his mind?”

           He did, though, take Tommie’s failure to pick up as a bad sign. He clung to his cell phone like a squirrel an acorn, and he definitely wouldn’t want to miss a call from the boss—at least, the old Tommie wouldn’t.

“I’ll try him,” he said.

           “You do that.”

           He wandered away, slipped his phone from a pocket of his slacks with a sweat-drenched hand, and placed the call. Three rings, and then: “Hey. You’ve reached Tommie. Leave a message if you feel like it.” Beep.

           “Tommie, where are you? Call me as soon as you get this.”

           He hung up and tried again. Same result.

           Heart pounding, he returned to Anderson. “I’m gonna go look for him. Call me if he shows up.”  

           Not waiting for an answer, he barreled to and then out the restaurant’s oak double-doors, to his Honda. He drove to Tommie’s house, a ranch sporting chipped navy blue siding and white shutters, set back from the street by a strip of mowed but dry grass. Tommie’s ten-year-old pickup wasn’t in the driveway, but he tried the doorbell, anyway. As expected, no luck.

           Thinking that he might have decided to drink his problems away, he made his next stop a bar he frequented. The bartender told him that he hadn’t seen Tommie. He thanked him and left, stomach sinking.

           He wracked his brain and, finally, thought of one more possibility. It seemed distant; he hadn’t set foot in the park for five years, and, as far as he knew, Tommie hadn’t, either. But they used to go there all the time with Justin. He’d loved lazily strolling around the pond, skipping stones and searching the trees for cardinals. When he spotted one, he would keep his tone nonchalant, commenting only, “Oh, there’s another one,” but, as he did so, his eyes would sparkle like those of a child who had just received what he wanted most for Christmas. Tommie may have decided to go there for comfort—or to keep his brother close as he followed in his footsteps. The latter thought sent a new wave of nausea over Collin, but he continued to drive, clutching the wheel so tightly that his knuckles blanched.   

After an excruciating ten minutes, he arrived. He parked before the chipped sign announcing, “Broderick Park,” and squinted at the rust-colored dirt path that started beside it. He couldn’t see Tommie from there, but it turned about thirty feet in, and chunky oaks blocked the rest of it. He left the car and headed out, each step driving a nail into his heart, sweat plastering his shirt to his back. He rounded the bend; the pond around which the path looped came into view, today a white sheet that melded almost seamlessly with the sky. He spotted a figure sauntering along the path at the opposite side of the pond. His heartbeat quickened still more, and he broke into a run. Please, let it be him …

           He closed in and breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized his friend. Tommie, however, didn’t look nearly as happy to see him. Looking at him with a bite more appropriate for one who had abused one’s child, he demanded, “What’re you doing here?”

           “That’s what I came to ask you. Why aren’t you at your party?”

           Tommie’s gaze dropped to his left sneaker, with which he kicked the dirt, stirring up coppery dust. “What’s the point?”

           “Point is, Anderson put a little bit of effort into it, so, naturally, he’s on the war path. And everybody else came for you, too. Kinda rude to not show, don’t you think?”

           He sighed, eyes taking on a glaze that Collin didn’t like one bit. “I guess.” He wandered to the pond’s edge and sat down in the overgrown grass. Collin followed suit.

           “What’s going on with you, Tom? Why won’t you talk to me?”

           “’Cause you can’t do anything about it. Nobody can.” He grabbed a blade of grass, yanked it out of the ground, and twisted it in his fingers.

           Apparently, he intended to make him do this the hard way. Sucking a breath into lungs as stiff as playing cards, he said, “There’re treatments for this, Tom. I know you don’t like the idea of therapy or meds, but they really help a lot of people with this stuff.”

           Tommie squinted. “What’re you talking about?”

           “What’re you talking about?” Could he have mistaken? If so, what had caused the odd behavior? His stomach knotted. He didn’t want to know. But he had to; if anything he could say or do could help, he owed that to Tommie.

           Tommie hurled the blade of grass at the pond; it took a rocking descent and settled on its surface. His gaze dropped, red blotches crawling up his knotted face. Finally, he sighed and looked back at Collin. “See this?” He held up his hand; for the first time, Collin noticed it trembling.

           “What’s—“

           “It’s not gonna go away. It’s gonna get worse, and worse, ‘til…’til it gets me, I guess.”

           Collin stared at him, jaw nearly hitting his chest. Why hadn’t Tommie shared this with him earlier? Why hadn’t he seen it himself? Had denial buffered his perception? Or was he just that oblivious?

           “Don’t look so shocked,” Tommie said. “Why else would Anderson let me retire early with full benefits?”

           Yes, it made sense. He hadn’t wanted to stop; he had to stop. The shindig at the restaurant wasn’t a celebration at all. It was, in essence, a pre-mortem funeral.

           Biting his lower lip, he leaned and wrapped an arm around his friend’s shoulders. Rather than, as Collin had expected, stiffening, Tommie grabbed his hand, squeezed, and burst into tears.

           As Collin rubbed his back, a cardinal swooped in and landed beside him.