Read Pam of Babylon for Free Online

out for the family to snack on, and throwing away that which appeared indigestible.
    When Pam appeared at last, she repeated what she knew about the tragedy to Bill and Bernice. Bernice seemed to shrink. Pam asked her if she would like to watch TV. They went into the den, and Bernice sat in Jack’s chair. His afghan was there, still smelling of his aftershave. Pam put the remote in her hand and shut the doors. Bernice would have some down time.
    After the door closed, she buried her face in the afghan. She breathed deeply of the scent, a combination of something fragrant, herbal, and chemical, like a man’s deodorant or aftershave. It was her son’s scent just after he got out of the shower. She recognized it from the time he was a teenager. He would come in after a day of roughhousing with his buddies and head for the shower. He would then come down to the dining room, just in time for dinner, with clean sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and a towel around his shoulders to catch the drips from his just-washed hair. She loved seeing him like that, relaxed, sitting around the table with his brother and father, talking sports and school. He was so vibrant as a teenager!
    Harold worried about the boys. With so much written in the press about teenage suicide, drug use, and high school dropouts, he was vigilant, always inquiring about their activities, asking them if they needed anything or if he could help them in any way. He sat through more awful rock concerts than any parent could be expected to endure, and he drove the boys and their friends anywhere they wanted to go at any time of day or night. He made himself available to his sons. It paid off. Both boys were happy and successful, married to wonderful women, and devoted to their families.
    When Harold died the year before, it was Jack who took it the hardest, even more so than she did. He was inconsolable, lost his appetite, took time off work, and hovered around her until she asked him to go home. It was really sad. He never seemed the same after that. He kept asking her if his father had done what he wanted in life, if he had met his goals, if he was satisfied with his life.
    And now this. Two of the three most important men in her life were dead. Just Bill and Anne and the kids remained. She’d forgotten about Pam and her children. She knew she must be in shock, the unrealistic event of her son’s death hovering at the periphery of her thought. But was it a dream? How could Jack be gone? Jack, who was larger than life, the maker of dreams, always strong, always on top of it, always dependable, wouldn’t he walk into the den any minute now and say, “Mother! Stay right where you are! I’ll pull up a chair here”? And he would do just that, pull his desk chair over while she sat in the recliner, his chair. He would take her hands in his, gaze into her eyes, and make a horrible joke or ask her if he could pass gas, or some other inappropriate comment, all the while with the most holy look on his face. They would laugh, she almost screaming, her sons the only ones who had the power to make her relent her poise long enough to laugh at a joke.
    She bowed her head, the afghan waded up in her hands, and started to cry. He would never walk through the door of this den again or come to her house unannounced, yelling as he slammed the door of the regal entryway, “Mom, where are you?” She would never again run into him at the hardware store on Amsterdam and 92 nd Street, suggest they have a cup of coffee together, and walk arm and arm to Columbus, going into their favorite coffee shop and sitting there for hours, forgetting the time, talking about everything. He used to ask her opinion of different political figures in the city so she made sure she read the papers every morning and checked the online news stories. She thought he might have done it on purpose to keep her on her toes. She would never know. He told her one time how proud he was that she was his mother and that