Chasing Forgiveness (7 page)

I leap up in bed so suddenly, so quickly, that all the muscles in my stomach tie into a knot, and I can't straighten myself out. My legs cramp, and I crumple into a ball. The sheets are soaking wet. I wonder if it's all sweat or if I was so scared that I wet the bed. Would I do that?

I look at my digital clock. It's only two in the morning. At least three more hours until even the tiniest bit of light will come into the room.

I can still hear Mom's voice, and I have to think about how much of it was a dream and how much of it was real.

Then the door opens and in walks Mom.

“Preston?”

I gag on my own saliva.

“Preston, are you all right?” She sits on my bed, and I hug her tightly, trying to believe that it's true. But the more tightly I hold on, the more quickly she slips away. In the dark, it does look like Mom, but I know that it is Aunt Jackie.

After the funeral, things were supposed to go back to normal. That's what Grandma said. But this is not normal. It's been more than two weeks, and there are no chores. There are no plans. I don't go to school anymore. I don't go out much anymore. I just eat, sleep, and sit in Aunt Jackie's living room, watching TV. And I have nightmares.

Aunt Jackie dries my tears as if I am a small child. “Do you want me to stay in here with you for a while?”

I shake my head no. “What time do we go to Grandma and Grandpa's tomorrow?” I ask her.

“About noon,” she says. She seems a bit hurt that I'm in such a hurry to go, but living with Aunt Jackie is just too close to being with Mom. And besides, Aunt Jackie knows she can't handle having us here. Especially after what Tyler did yesterday.

She gives me a kiss. “Call if you need anything, Preston. Just call.” She leaves the door open a crack as she goes.

And when she is gone, Tyler, lying awake on the bed on the other side of the room, asks the Question of the Week.

“When's Mommy coming back?” he mumbles.

“Go to sleep,” I tell him. I never want to talk about this with Tyler. Let Grandma explain it. She's better at it. He knows she's dead—he was at the funeral—but he just doesn't get it.

“When's Daddy coming back?” he asks.

I pretend to be asleep, and eventually Tyler nods back off. Tyler may not understand, but I do. I understand perfectly.

My dad shot my mom and then shot himself.

I can say it, because it feels like it's not really happening to me. The words just don't mean anything anymore if I keep saying them over and over. Dad shot Mom, Dad shot Mom. I've said it to myself so much that I don't feel a thing. That's how come I can sit and watch TV all day. I don't think I ever want to do anything else.

Dad's in jail.

He's in the hospital of some jail somewhere, recovering from the gunshot wound he gave himself. He sits there, and I don't know what he does or what he thinks about. Maybe he just sits and watches TV all day, too.

I close my eyes and try to force myself back to sleep by thinking of football, but that backfires, because all I can see is Weavin' Warren Sharp.

I don't think we'll ever hear from him again—he managed to weave himself out of this situation with the same skill
he brings to a football field. I wish I could blame the whole thing on him, but I can't because it wasn't his fault.

“Warren Sharp wasn't dating your mom,” says Grandma. “She just met with him a couple of times—she was star-struck, that's all.” You'd never know it was just a couple of times by the way Mom talked about it and by the way Dad reacted. I guess I'll never be sure of the truth, though, because I don't think any of us will ever mention Warren Sharp's name again.

Thinking of this does not help me fall asleep, so I change gears in my brain, and I think about the most comforting thing anyone has said to me. It was one of Grandma's friends on that awful Thursday night, when we all sat on the floor in the empty living room, reeling from the blow of what Dad had done.

“You'll see her someday,” the woman said. “You'll see her again in heaven.”

I know this is true. It must be true, because if it's not, how can I keep from going crazy?

So I will see my mom in heaven. But for now, I'm here in this room, so I pull the covers over my head and pretend that I'm already there. I wonder what Mom does all day in heaven. Does she float around? Does she play the harp? Do you look down on us, Mom? Do you see me there? Are you outside my room trying to turn the doorknob?

If you can't come to me, then I'll come to you. I'll die and go to heaven just as soon as I can.

•  •  •

The next morning, Aunt Jackie piles us and our suitcases into her newly damaged Mercedes and drives us to Grandma and Grandpa's, where I think we'll be living for a long, long time.

Tyler sits in the back playing with Legos, oblivious to the shreds of the convertible top flapping in the wind.

I sit on the passenger side and look at Aunt Jackie, thinking how, from this angle, she really does look like Mom.

She sees me and smiles slightly, knowing what I am thinking. “Your mom was prettier than I am.”

“No,” I tell her, “she's just pretty in a different way.” I try to imagine Mom's face as it really is, but I can't. All I can see is the way it was at the funeral. All still. All frozen, there in the coffin. There were flowers all around, and I remember thinking how stupid it was to kill a bunch of flowers and stick them around a dead person. You'd think they'd at least let the flowers live.

Mom was wearing a pink dress. Someone did her hair and makeup. It wasn't the way she did it, and it made me mad. I wondered if she'd be stuck that way in heaven forever—in someone else's makeup, wearing someone else's hairstyle.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

This is what people tell you at funerals. It's because they can't think of something original to say, so they say the same old stuff because it's better than saying nothing. I wish they would just say nothing.

“What a terrible, terrible thing,” they say, and then they cry for you. Why do they have to do that? Don't they know that you've cried enough already? You don't need people to help you cry. Death would be a lot better without funerals, or at least without the people who go to funerals.

I kissed Mom as she lay there, surrounded by all those dying flowers and crying friends. I half believed that, like Sleeping Beauty, her eyes would open when I kissed her cheek. I prayed to God she would just sit right up, and smile and say hello, but I knew it wouldn't happen; God's ways aren't
that
mysterious. Her cheek was cold when I kissed her—frozen—and I cried because I knew she wouldn't kiss me back.

Grandma and Grandpa sniffled a bit, and they spoke to her, telling her they loved her. They spoke quietly, like they were afraid to wake her. Grandma took it very well—all wrapped in that invisible quilt—filled with the Peace she said God brought to her the moment the policeman first came to the door. I don't have quite the same peace. Maybe God just hasn't gotten around to me yet.

Tyler just stood there and looked at her, like he'd look at a picture. It hadn't really hit him yet. It didn't hit him until yesterday.

Halfway to Grandma and Grandpa's house, we come over a hill, and the view before us is spectacular. The air is clear, and the sun peeks in and out of big billowing clouds that are swept across the sky by a strong wind.

“Aunt Jackie,” asks Tyler, “do you think my mom is helping God hang clouds today?”

I think I'll always have two images of my brother fixed in my mind. The image of him asking wide-eyed, innocent six-year-old questions about Mom hanging clouds with God, and then the image of him yesterday taking that knife and slashing the convertible roof of Aunt Jackie's car over and over and over again.

•  •  •

“What do we do about Danny?” Grandpa says to Grandma, because he thinks I am asleep in my room. “What do we do?”

It's early Wednesday morning, just a few days after Tyler and I moved in with them. It's raining, and it's so dark out, I don't know whether the sun has risen yet. I stand in the hallway, just out of view, my back pressed firmly against the wall. Then I poke my head out, trying to stay in the shadows. Grandma and Grandpa sit in the breakfast nook, drinking coffee, dressed in bathrobes and slippers.

“What do we do about Danny?”

Grandma doesn't have an answer right away. This is the first time since the day of . . . since the day
it happened
that I've heard them talk about Dad. Well, sure, I mean they talk about him, but they don't really
talk
about him. Grandma gives me “weather reports” about Dad. “It's sunny today. Could rain later. Danny's healing nicely. Bit windy this morning.” That's how they've talked for the past two weeks.

But the way Grandpa's talking now, it sounds big. Maybe
I'll hear something important—the type of thing they'll never talk about with me.

“What do we do about Danny?”

Grandpa sounds tired of life. He seems older than I've ever remembered him.

“This is a test, Wes,” Grandma finally answers. “A test of our faith.”

I wonder what she means. How do you pass a test of faith? What happens to you if you fail?

“You know what they're saying,” says Grandpa. “They're saying it was premeditated. That he planned it. Good Lord, he borrowed the gun three weeks before it happened. What should we do?”

“He had a breakdown,” says Grandma. “You know that. We all know that. You saw how strange he was acting. He lost thirty pounds. He never slept. . . .”

“Three weeks, Lorraine! Who knows what was going through his mind for three weeks.”

“You
know
Danny!” says Grandma with more authority in her voice than I ever knew she had. “You've known him since he was fifteen! He's a good, good man. He's just sick . . . terribly sick.”

Grandpa rubs his eyes and takes a gulp of coffee. “They'll throw the book at him,” he says. “He could be in prison for the rest of his life.”

Grandma doesn't say anything. She just sips her coffee, letting Grandpa sort it out for himself.

Grandpa takes a few moments to get his thoughts together.

“Everyone thinks we should testify against him—help put him away—and make sure he never gets near the boys ever again,” he says. “They say that's the only way to put this behind us.” He puts his cup down because his hand is shaking. The rain pats the patio awning. “It would be so much easier if I could just hate Danny,” he says, “but I can't.”

“Hating him won't bring Megan back,” says Grandma.

Grandpa nods. “It won't do the boys any good either.” He looks at the steam rising from his coffee.

“Can we forgive him?” Grandpa asks himself.

And Grandma answers, “I forgave him the moment I heard what he'd done.”

They sit there for a long time, not saying anything. The sound of the rain hitting the patio awning fills the silence. Finally Grandpa reaches out and takes Grandma's hand, and he speaks to her in a soft, desperate whisper.

“Pray with me, Lorraine,” he says.

And for a moment, it seems to me that the rain gets lighter.

I turn and head back toward my room, but before I do, I take a side trip into Tyler's room. In a few days of living with our grandparents, this little guest room is already starting to look like Tyler's room at our old house. Movie posters on the wall, drawings on the desk, clothes and shoes thrown all over. He's adjusted as if nothing has happened.

I reach over and touch Tyler on the forehead. He is asleep,
dreaming of little-boy things, like I used to dream before the world split in half. He still doesn't really understand about that. Good for him.

I climb into bed with him, pretending I'm him. Pretending I'm just a little boy worrying about broken Crayolas and whether first grade will be harder than kindergarten. I stroke his hair, like Dad used to stroke mine. I must be his daddy now. I must protect him from evil things.

Danny should have killed himself instead,
I heard people mumble the night of the “accident,” when everyone we knew invaded the house. They mumbled evil things when they thought Grandma and Grandpa couldn't hear.
He should die and burn in hell forever.

I could believe them if I wanted to.

I could hate Dad like I hate the devil. Is that what Mom would do? Should I take Mom's side?

I could hate him, for Mom definitely did not deserve what he did to her—but then I look at Grandma. There is no hate in her toward anyone. How can she be that way? Is that normal? Is it right?

As I lie there, listening to the rain and to Tyler's quiet breathing, I realize that I don't ever have to side with my mother or my father ever again about anything. Now I can side with my grandparents. They will tell me what to do and how to feel.

They say they forgive Dad. And surely if Mom's parents can forgive the man who murdered her, then maybe I can, too.

The jail is a terrible place. Below, the floor tiles don't quite reach the walls. Above, old pipes run along the ceiling, weaving in and out of rooms like snakes. It smells like my worst pair of Nikes, and the gray walls are sloppily painted. Those walls seem the worst thing of all. Whoever painted the walls didn't care about the job—they steamrolled gray paint over signs and thermostats, anything that got in the way. Little gray splatters of paint cover the fading black and white tiles of the floor. Nobody should live in a place where the painters didn't care.

There are police officers and guards everywhere, but still I don't feel safe. The iron bars are covered with the same gray paint, slopped on by the same miserable workers. A gate opens in front of us, and the guard closes it behind. Then
another. I imagine I'm going through an air lock on a spaceship. The prison barge. I try to make believe it's all pretend.