In Search of Eden (7 page)

Oh, she stayed plenty busy. She went to church three times a week and served on the Threads of Love group and the altar guild. She did hospital visitation, taught quilting classes at Carol Jean's shop, took classes at the college, taught a women's Bible study, rented out rooms to tourists, bought season tickets to the Barter Theatre. She had taken a trip to England one year with David and Sarah and Eden, but what wouldn't she give to be once more ringing the gong for breakfast and seeing a hundred mismatched, gawky campers pour or straggle out of their cabins and gather around the long wooden tables. She remembered making vats of French fries, piles of hamburgers and hot dogs, and buckets of slaw.

But more than that, she had seen lives change at that camp. She knew that for a fact, and she impatiently brushed at her eyes as she recalled the cardboard box full of letters and pictures she had collected over the years. She sighed and looked out the window, the depressing thoughts taking on a life of their own, rewinding and preparing to replay.

“Wait just a minute,” she said out loud. “I'm not having this.” Somebody needed an attitude adjustment, and today it wasn't one of a throng of children or one of her own boys. It was she, herself. “Forgive me, Father, for being so hopeless and negative. You are the God of all hope.”

She dropped the curtains, bowed her head, and started the day over again by putting on her armor, piece by piece. Beginning with her shoes. “Thank you, Jesus, that I stand forgiven and cherished, firm and secure in the peace I have with you,” she breathed softly. “Thank you that the belt of your truth holds me together. That the body armor of your perfect righteousness covers and protects me. Thank you that the filter that protects my mind is the truth of my salvation, of who I am in you. I pray your Word would come against every scheme of the enemy in my life and in
those of my loved ones today, Jesus. And I thank you for the powerful shield of faith. I pray you would help me to stay under it. Strengthen my arms to lift it up. Put your angels around me, Lord. Help me to pray in the Spirit today, and lead others to pray for me.”

She took a deep breath and, remembering the tears and fractures in her own family, again brought that pain to the Lord. She closed her eyes once more, seeing at once the gentle shepherd and the captain of the heavenly armies. He would see to it all. She prayed for David and Sarah and Eden. She prayed for Joseph. She prayed that God would heal the rift.

“In the mighty name of Jesus,” she finished. “Amen.”

She turned from the window and finished her coffee in one long swallow. There were things needing to be done. She set down her cup and brushed her palms together, as if finishing off the self-pity and sorrow she'd been visiting. She checked her watch. Seven-twenty. Carol Jean and Vi would be here at nine to pray. She wondered if the snow would stop them and decided it probably would not. They both lived within spitting distance, and if anyone got stranded, they knew she would call on Joseph to drive them home in his truck. She went down to the kitchen to see what she could throw together for refreshments.

She rummaged through the fridge and dug out a few oranges, a sack of cranberries, an apple, and grapes. She took out flour and sugar and set to making orange-cranberry muffins. She was glad her late-season bed-and-breakfast guest had departed the day before. It was her policy to leave the two weeks before Christmas free for holiday preparations, and she had always done so except for the year that Homer Dawkins had asked to rent a room, even though he had a perfectly good house just over on Randolph Street. She shook her head at the foolishness of men. She had said yes because he hadn't a soul in the world, his wife having died just months before, and Joseph had immediately pitched a fit. Not just because some silly old man was willing to pay a hundred dollars a night to make cow eyes at his ancient mother, but
because he said it just wasn't
right.

Joseph was always concerned about the
rightness
of things, and she feared sometimes that it got in the way of his seeing the
goodness
of them. A fine distinction, but she felt it was important, somehow, and she worried about her son's inability to see it. But, of course, in this matter, he'd been absolutely right. She couldn't have the two of them staying in the house all alone together, what with Homer's own place merely a stone's throw away. There was the appearance of evil to think about, even at their age. The solution she'd come up with had satisfied her quite well, but Joseph still fumed whenever anyone referred to it. She had prevailed upon her son, and he had moved back into his old room, now done over in pink and green with lace curtains. He had spent two weeks glowering while Homer had a fine time helping her hang Christmas lights and wrap packages. The man hadn't wanted to leave when the holidays were over, but she had sent him packing on January second, bright and early. Joseph had left the same day, and she smiled with a rueful sigh. Having her son sit at her supper table every night, even with the frowns and grunts that replaced polite conversation, had been a blessing. Her spirits sank when she thought about Joseph, but she took herself in hand. There was no time for melancholy today. There were preparations to make. Besides, the story wasn't over yet.

She checked her watch again and switched on the radio. The local station was playing Christmas songs from Thanksgiving until New Year's. She greased her muffin tins while Johnny Mathis crooned and was just softening her butter in the microwave when she heard a commotion on the porch. The front door opened and Joseph called out. She smiled in pleasure and walked out to meet him, her hands dusted with flour. She stopped cold when she saw his face, for it was gray, simply gray, as if all life and hope had been drained from it.

She felt a flutter in her chest and a dryness in her mouth. “Who is it?” she asked quietly, hands suddenly dangling by her sides.

He didn't answer, just came toward her and reached his arms out, and that was when she knew.

“It's David,” she said.

He nodded, and it was a good thing he had a hold on her, because her legs gave out and she had to sit down on the stairs.

chapter
6

S
arah looked at her hands lying helpless in her lap and thought how odd life was. Her hands had been busy just hours ago. She sat now amid the calm but urgent activity in the intensive care unit and felt a sense of bewilderment. There were four nurses in David's room and one doctor, each doing things to her husband. At least they said it was her husband, but if she hadn't seen the discolored thumbnail from a baseball accident when he was twelve, the tiny scar above his left eyebrow, hadn't had his wallet and wedding ring handed to her in a brown manila envelope, she would not have believed it. She certainly would not have recognized him. She had expected to see him broken and bleeding, but she had not expected the hugely swollen state that distorted his features and made him seem like a stranger lying naked there on the bed. He was covered with just a sheet, and she was reminded of Jesus in the hour of His extremity. They had told her the swelling had something to do with his injuries, something about intra-or extra-cellular fluid, but all she knew was that he did not look like someone she knew, someone she loved, and irrationally, she held the wild hope that the man there on the bed was not her husband at all but someone else's husband. That her
own husband would come walking through the door any minute now. He would calm her fears and stroke her hair and hold her and comfort her. Because that's what David did. He ministered to others. He helped others. But what happened to the sheep if the shepherd was cast down? It made no sense, and the bewilderment returned. She tried to pray again, opening her mouth but making no sound, gaping like a landed fish gasping for oxygen. Her need was too deep for speech, and she thought of the groanings of the spirit that were too deep for words.

His hair was the same, she told herself, and she focused on his hair. His beard was the same, as well, but if she looked at his beard, then she must look at his face, and she couldn't bear to look at his face. Even his hand, when she held it, caused her pain, for it, too, was grossly swollen and unfamiliar. But it didn't matter, for she couldn't touch him at all just now. They were working on him and had sent her out again. They allowed her near only once an hour for a few minutes. The rest of the time she waited here in the hall or out in the waiting room. She had pulled a chair near the glass window, and no one had stopped her, so here she sat. She looked once more toward David, then down at her hands again.

It amazed her that everything could change so suddenly, that life was so fragile when it had seemed so fixed. Just yesterday evening she had been making soup and worrying about their daughter. It seemed so trivial now, but then she had been browning meat and slicing onions, watching the knife slice cleanly through the outer papery layers and peeling them away swiftly and wondering why everything couldn't be as simple as cooking. Follow the directions and things would turn out as you expected. A cup of this, a pinch of that, cook at the prescribed temperature, and the end product was assured. She had been comforted in the rituals of measuring and chopping and stirring. In knowing that there were some realms in which actions had predictable results. If meat was put in a pan over high heat it would turn brown. If you added baking soda to a bowl of batter, it would rise. She had
even enjoyed washing her dirty dishes, squirting in the soap and rubbing it around with the bubbly cloth, then seeing pots and bowls emerge from the steaming hot water clean and squeaking. Why couldn't life be as straightforward as that? she had wondered. More particularly, why couldn't raising children work the way it was supposed to? Why couldn't you do the right things and say the right things and have them turn out right, like a pot of soup or a loaf of bread?

She had sighed as she worked, the day's energy already spent in her never-ending mission to turn her daughter into something other than a wildcat.

Eden was not the child she had imagined.

She had imagined a little girl who would wear pink. Who would adore coloring and making scrapbook pages adorned with tinsel and glitter, who would want to play dolls and dress-up. Well, the dress-up part had come true, she thought wryly, thinking of Eden's disguises. Once she had decided that the mean girls at school were plotting against her friend, and she had dressed up like a bag lady and lurked in the park, listening to their conversations and writing everything down in that spiral notebook she carried everywhere. Then there was the night disguise—a set of dark clothes and dark face paint she had put on so that she and the girl next door could spy on the neighbor's older brother. And of course it had all begun with the cowgirl outfit she had worn at age five. It was still a treasured possession.

Sarah had imagined cozy talks with her daughter, the two of them sitting on a ruffled canopy bed, slowly turning the pages of a fairy story, watching
Little Women
together, and having tea out of china cups. Instead, she spent half her time trying to
find
her daughter, or having found her, to find out what she was up to. She could picture Eden's dark hair, freckles, and squinty-eyed stare, that pretty little rosebud mouth a straight line, chin jutting forward, jaw clamped as tight as a pit bull's.

A little princess she was not.

In fact, as Sarah frequently bemoaned to David, who persisted
in being amused rather than concerned at his daughter's antics, they were well on their way to having a hellion on their hands. She sighed again in aggravation. Eden needed a firm hand. And both of hers were completely exhausted. Tiring did not begin to describe the state motherhood had become for her. She felt a familiar guilt. It was probably all her fault. She shook her head resolutely and stirred the vegetables with vigor. The solution wasn't to pile onto the sofa in frustration. It was to try harder. She picked up the notepad on the table and made herself a note—
Sign up Eden for soccer lessons tomorrow
—telling herself guiltily that she was not simply shifting her daughter to someone else for a few hours. Eden would learn a new skill and burn off some energy. And what would she do while Eden ran and played?

Sleep. She had eyed the sofa hungrily.

Then the telephone rang. Wearily, she had moved to answer it, and as she heard the unfamiliar voice and the heart-stopping words, she sensed a sharp knife running down through all their lives. No, a guillotine blade, forever severing what had been from what was to come.

They had all stepped into the
After
when that telephone had rung, and they'd left
Before
forever behind.

She felt guilt now as she remembered Eden's pleading to let her come with her to Minneapolis. She had said no and wondered again whether it had been from a genuine desire to spare her daughter or a knowledge that she couldn't cope with all this and Eden, too. But Eden just wanted to be with her father. Sarah knew Eden loved him best, and that was all right. That was just fine, because she wanted Eden to have what she needed, and who wouldn't need David? Who wouldn't love David best? He was a rock to both of them.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if she might will them all back in time. She tried again to pray, but all that would come was
Help him, Jesus. Help him, Jesus. Help him, Jesus.
A hand on her shoulder startled her back to here and now.

“Mrs. Williams?” It was the volunteer from the waiting room.

She nodded.

“There's a family member to see you out in the foyer.”

Ruth. She rose quickly and fairly ran through the wide halls lined with carts and machines. The double doors to the waiting room took forever to open after she tapped on the square button. Then there was her mother-in-law, standing in the middle of the hallway, wearing her pretty red coat and clutching the handle of her purse with both hands. Her face was red and swollen with grief and distress. She looked older and tired.