They headed slowly out Second Avenue, passing the early-morning cyclists, and the
walkers and joggers skirting the puddles. Jim counted three joggers pushing big-wheeled
baby strollers ahead of them, young fathers letting the young mothers sleep in.
The day was looking grayer, the sun making its way behind more rain clouds. But the
automatic sprinklers along Second Avenue were hard at work on the lawns of the brand-
new houses—oblivious, nobody with the good sense to shut them off, or maybe nobody
home. Often, at the really big places, that was the case. Like the big place at the end of
their own street, the one with the wings and turrets, and a rose garden put in already,
but not a living soul around.
“Stone Harbor is so pretty,” Valerie said dreamily from the back.
“Yes.” There wasn’t much left of the real Stone Harbor, the summer place of his
childhood. Most of it had been bought up and bulldozed, to make room for multi-million
dollar places that took up whole blocks. But he didn’t feel like going into that with her.
At the stoplight he looked over his shoulder. “Is he asleep?”
She smiled and gave a thumb’s-up. “Out like a light.”
What was it he didn’t like about her? He drove on, shoving the question away, though
he’d have to deal with it eventually. Maybe that had been his gripe with her from the
beginning—her arrival as the instant-daughter-in-law, an out-of-the-blue permanent
fixture in the family. And then she’d immediately made it worse by bringing a baby into
the picture. Jim had done the math: It couldn’t have been a shotgun wedding. Even if
Andrew had been a full term baby, his arrival would have come a good 11 months into
the marriage.
When he glanced over his shoulder again he found that Valerie had closed her eyes—
probably exhausted, with all that nursing around the clock. It reassured him to feel
sympathy for her.
It began to rain, fine as mist. At the inlet, they rounded the point and rode up the
drawbridge. He rolled down the window to pay at the tollbooth.
“Oh! I dozed off,” Valerie said. “I’m not very good company.”
“That’s OK. Go ahead and get some shut-eye. We’re not even to Wildwood yet.”
He turned the windshield wipers on low. They squeaked back and forth, clearing the view
of gray water, gray clouds, and a lone, hovering gull. It occurred to him that it was the
sort of morning that made a person long for a dry corner to hunker down in, with a cup of
coffee and something good to read.
* * * * *
One cold Sunday the previous winter, Jim and Scott had driven down to the beach house
to do some repairs and install a new vanity in the bathroom. Afterwards, heading back to
Baltimore in sleet and rain, they had pulled off for coffee at a roadside place outside
Bridgeton. They’d sat in a booth, while the sleet hissed at the window, making plans for
the beach house. Scott had made a list on the paper napkin, starting with the necessary
jobs at the top and ending with his grand scheme—to tear down the old screened-in
porch and build an addition. He’d even sketched the addition on the back of the napkin.
Jim still had that napkin. It was in his dresser drawer at home, top left, under the socks.
“Family’s growing, Pops,” Scott had said that winter Sunday, smiling slyly. “You’ll need
room for the grandkids.”
At that point, Jim’s sole struggle had been to deal with a grandchild coming so soon,
before he’d even adjusted to the daughter-in-law. But soon after he’d had to deal with
the dread.
The dread arrived a couple weeks later, when Scott called to tell them his unit had been
deployed to Iraq. Jim was on the phone in the bedroom. Betsy was on the extension in
the laundry room downstairs. When Scott said Iraq, Betsy yelled it back to him—Iraq? Jim
could hear the water going into the washing machine behind her, then Scott: It’ll be all
right, Mom.
Jim had known it was coming, ever since Scott joined the National Guard. He’d known the
whole time Scott was playing soldier on the weekends, taking all the high-tech training
they had to offer, not to mention the extra paycheck. Jim could have said I told you so,
but inexplicably the news had stunned him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t get enough air
into his chest, and had to sit on the edge of the bed with the phone resting on his
shoulder.
Scott was in Iraq before the winter was over, before the baby was born. The whole
family had made the best of it—chipper emails, containers of cookies and brownies,
photos and videos of the baby from day one. Scott said he liked the work in Iraq, said he
was very busy and the time was flying. Before they knew it, he’d be home. It’ll be all
right, Mom.
But for Jim it was catastrophic. He had to concentrate on staying level, and felt worn out
before he could even set his feet on the floor in the morning. He couldn’t read the paper,
or watch the news. Even the local stories—mother of three killed by a drunk driver, two
ditch diggers dead in a freak mudslide: Unbearable sadness was just around every
corner. He had to keep bolstering himself against it.
“What’s the matter?” Betsy kept asking. “Is it Scott? Are you worrying?”
He withdrew from her into silence, and then felt hurt, as though it were she who had
turned away.
They had married in 1970, two months after he came home from Vietnam. They’d
immediately bought a home, a dilapidated rowhouse that exacted a lot of backbreaking
work. Both of them had good jobs as schoolteachers, but after the children came along,
and until the youngest was in middle school, Betsy was mostly stay-at-home—which was
fine with her, fine with both of them. Every summer they moved to Stone Harbor, to the
cottage that for years had belonged to Jim’s mother and now belonged to Jim. A friend of
Betsy’s from college owned a paint and wallpaper business in Cape May, and there was
always summer income for Jim, and for the kids too, when they got to be teenagers.
It hadn’t been entirely a bed of roses. They’d had to nurse their daughter Chris back from
near-death after a car accident her senior year in high school. And then Jim’s mother’s
had died of breast cancer.
Jim had always been close to his mother. His father, a melancholy alcoholic, had died
young, but long before that Jim had taken on the role of the good son for his long-
suffering mother. He’d been a model teenager, a levelheaded college student. He’d even
managed to come home from Vietnam in one piece so that is mother could get on with
her life.
Ever since Scott was deployed, Jim would think of his mother and suffer again the same
shock of realization—that she was gone now, that he no longer had to shield her from
bad news. He suffered the shock almost daily, as though he couldn’t get reality into his
head.
Betsy had been nagging him. “Maybe there’s something you can take, something mild,”
she said. “I think you should call Dr. Josephs. It’s not like you, Jim, to be so tired all the
time.” She seemed hurt too, as though he’d failed her in some way. Tired. It struck him
that it was just like her to couch it in the mildest of terms.
The day they were packing for Stone Harbor, Betsy had gotten sidetracked into sifting
through a shoebox of old photos. Apparently Valerie had asked her to bring a few
pictures of Scott when he was a baby.
“Look what I found,” she said, when Jim came into the bedroom.
It was not a baby picture. It was a photo of Jim in Vietnam, with his arms around two
buddies from his supply unit. Instantly his eyes filled with tears, not because of any
feeling for his younger self or for the other two, whose names he’d have trouble calling
up, but because for a moment he actually thought that the boy in the middle—blonde and
sunburned, dressed in fatigues, grinning back at him like he hadn’t a care in the world—
was Scott.
He handed the photo back to her.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Jesus,” he said. “We were babies.”
She frowned at the photo. “You were twenty-three.” Her voice was so level he wanted
to shake her.
He’d never told her much about Vietnam. There hadn’t been much to tell. He’d been
assigned to the big supply depot at Ben Hoa, where he spent his days filling out forms,
moving things into the country and out to the bases—everything from fuel and ammo to
potato chips and beer. He’d witnessed only two distant rocket attacks, neither of which
hit their mark. And other than a black eye sustained in a game of pick-up, he’d managed
to come through his tour of duty unscathed.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t been touched by the news of the others—killed, severely injured.
But now, staring at the photograph, feeling the dread roll over him again, he realized he
couldn’t remember any of the particulars. He’d read about post-traumatic stress
syndrome. But what trauma had he suffered really? It felt as though something might be
waiting back there, something terrible and crippling, poised to move into the light. Was
he being punished for the blitheness of his youth, for not paying attention?
next page
walkers and joggers skirting the puddles. Jim counted three joggers pushing big-wheeled
baby strollers ahead of them, young fathers letting the young mothers sleep in.
The day was looking grayer, the sun making its way behind more rain clouds. But the
automatic sprinklers along Second Avenue were hard at work on the lawns of the brand-
new houses—oblivious, nobody with the good sense to shut them off, or maybe nobody
home. Often, at the really big places, that was the case. Like the big place at the end of
their own street, the one with the wings and turrets, and a rose garden put in already,
but not a living soul around.
“Stone Harbor is so pretty,” Valerie said dreamily from the back.
“Yes.” There wasn’t much left of the real Stone Harbor, the summer place of his
childhood. Most of it had been bought up and bulldozed, to make room for multi-million
dollar places that took up whole blocks. But he didn’t feel like going into that with her.
At the stoplight he looked over his shoulder. “Is he asleep?”
She smiled and gave a thumb’s-up. “Out like a light.”
What was it he didn’t like about her? He drove on, shoving the question away, though
he’d have to deal with it eventually. Maybe that had been his gripe with her from the
beginning—her arrival as the instant-daughter-in-law, an out-of-the-blue permanent
fixture in the family. And then she’d immediately made it worse by bringing a baby into
the picture. Jim had done the math: It couldn’t have been a shotgun wedding. Even if
Andrew had been a full term baby, his arrival would have come a good 11 months into
the marriage.
When he glanced over his shoulder again he found that Valerie had closed her eyes—
probably exhausted, with all that nursing around the clock. It reassured him to feel
sympathy for her.
It began to rain, fine as mist. At the inlet, they rounded the point and rode up the
drawbridge. He rolled down the window to pay at the tollbooth.
“Oh! I dozed off,” Valerie said. “I’m not very good company.”
“That’s OK. Go ahead and get some shut-eye. We’re not even to Wildwood yet.”
He turned the windshield wipers on low. They squeaked back and forth, clearing the view
of gray water, gray clouds, and a lone, hovering gull. It occurred to him that it was the
sort of morning that made a person long for a dry corner to hunker down in, with a cup of
coffee and something good to read.
* * * * *
One cold Sunday the previous winter, Jim and Scott had driven down to the beach house
to do some repairs and install a new vanity in the bathroom. Afterwards, heading back to
Baltimore in sleet and rain, they had pulled off for coffee at a roadside place outside
Bridgeton. They’d sat in a booth, while the sleet hissed at the window, making plans for
the beach house. Scott had made a list on the paper napkin, starting with the necessary
jobs at the top and ending with his grand scheme—to tear down the old screened-in
porch and build an addition. He’d even sketched the addition on the back of the napkin.
Jim still had that napkin. It was in his dresser drawer at home, top left, under the socks.
“Family’s growing, Pops,” Scott had said that winter Sunday, smiling slyly. “You’ll need
room for the grandkids.”
At that point, Jim’s sole struggle had been to deal with a grandchild coming so soon,
before he’d even adjusted to the daughter-in-law. But soon after he’d had to deal with
the dread.
The dread arrived a couple weeks later, when Scott called to tell them his unit had been
deployed to Iraq. Jim was on the phone in the bedroom. Betsy was on the extension in
the laundry room downstairs. When Scott said Iraq, Betsy yelled it back to him—Iraq? Jim
could hear the water going into the washing machine behind her, then Scott: It’ll be all
right, Mom.
Jim had known it was coming, ever since Scott joined the National Guard. He’d known the
whole time Scott was playing soldier on the weekends, taking all the high-tech training
they had to offer, not to mention the extra paycheck. Jim could have said I told you so,
but inexplicably the news had stunned him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t get enough air
into his chest, and had to sit on the edge of the bed with the phone resting on his
shoulder.
Scott was in Iraq before the winter was over, before the baby was born. The whole
family had made the best of it—chipper emails, containers of cookies and brownies,
photos and videos of the baby from day one. Scott said he liked the work in Iraq, said he
was very busy and the time was flying. Before they knew it, he’d be home. It’ll be all
right, Mom.
But for Jim it was catastrophic. He had to concentrate on staying level, and felt worn out
before he could even set his feet on the floor in the morning. He couldn’t read the paper,
or watch the news. Even the local stories—mother of three killed by a drunk driver, two
ditch diggers dead in a freak mudslide: Unbearable sadness was just around every
corner. He had to keep bolstering himself against it.
“What’s the matter?” Betsy kept asking. “Is it Scott? Are you worrying?”
He withdrew from her into silence, and then felt hurt, as though it were she who had
turned away.
They had married in 1970, two months after he came home from Vietnam. They’d
immediately bought a home, a dilapidated rowhouse that exacted a lot of backbreaking
work. Both of them had good jobs as schoolteachers, but after the children came along,
and until the youngest was in middle school, Betsy was mostly stay-at-home—which was
fine with her, fine with both of them. Every summer they moved to Stone Harbor, to the
cottage that for years had belonged to Jim’s mother and now belonged to Jim. A friend of
Betsy’s from college owned a paint and wallpaper business in Cape May, and there was
always summer income for Jim, and for the kids too, when they got to be teenagers.
It hadn’t been entirely a bed of roses. They’d had to nurse their daughter Chris back from
near-death after a car accident her senior year in high school. And then Jim’s mother’s
had died of breast cancer.
Jim had always been close to his mother. His father, a melancholy alcoholic, had died
young, but long before that Jim had taken on the role of the good son for his long-
suffering mother. He’d been a model teenager, a levelheaded college student. He’d even
managed to come home from Vietnam in one piece so that is mother could get on with
her life.
Ever since Scott was deployed, Jim would think of his mother and suffer again the same
shock of realization—that she was gone now, that he no longer had to shield her from
bad news. He suffered the shock almost daily, as though he couldn’t get reality into his
head.
Betsy had been nagging him. “Maybe there’s something you can take, something mild,”
she said. “I think you should call Dr. Josephs. It’s not like you, Jim, to be so tired all the
time.” She seemed hurt too, as though he’d failed her in some way. Tired. It struck him
that it was just like her to couch it in the mildest of terms.
The day they were packing for Stone Harbor, Betsy had gotten sidetracked into sifting
through a shoebox of old photos. Apparently Valerie had asked her to bring a few
pictures of Scott when he was a baby.
“Look what I found,” she said, when Jim came into the bedroom.
It was not a baby picture. It was a photo of Jim in Vietnam, with his arms around two
buddies from his supply unit. Instantly his eyes filled with tears, not because of any
feeling for his younger self or for the other two, whose names he’d have trouble calling
up, but because for a moment he actually thought that the boy in the middle—blonde and
sunburned, dressed in fatigues, grinning back at him like he hadn’t a care in the world—
was Scott.
He handed the photo back to her.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Jesus,” he said. “We were babies.”
She frowned at the photo. “You were twenty-three.” Her voice was so level he wanted
to shake her.
He’d never told her much about Vietnam. There hadn’t been much to tell. He’d been
assigned to the big supply depot at Ben Hoa, where he spent his days filling out forms,
moving things into the country and out to the bases—everything from fuel and ammo to
potato chips and beer. He’d witnessed only two distant rocket attacks, neither of which
hit their mark. And other than a black eye sustained in a game of pick-up, he’d managed
to come through his tour of duty unscathed.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t been touched by the news of the others—killed, severely injured.
But now, staring at the photograph, feeling the dread roll over him again, he realized he
couldn’t remember any of the particulars. He’d read about post-traumatic stress
syndrome. But what trauma had he suffered really? It felt as though something might be
waiting back there, something terrible and crippling, poised to move into the light. Was
he being punished for the blitheness of his youth, for not paying attention?
next page
Pop Pop Page Two
by Madeleine Mysko
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
by Madeleine Mysko
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal