The Gate (8 page)

“You better go back there and think about what you've done, mister,” she'd say, and her tone let me know that I'd be there for a while.

Having the attention span of a Labrador puppy at the time, I decided to use my jackknife to carefully cut my way through the left lower edge of the screen in my bedroom and then sneak outside to play. About an hour later, I jumped up, grabbed the outside sill of my bedroom window, pulled myself up and in, and folded the screen back as close to normal as I could. Then I walked out into the living room, apologized, and went back outside to play.

The next week, she was washing windows, and she discovered that the screen had been cut. Thinking that her son would never do anything that stupid, she naturally assumed that someone was trying to get into the house, not out. She worried all afternoon about the screen-cutting bandit until my dad came home and heard what happened.

Dad knew my dark soul much better than my mom. He took me into the bedroom and talked to me about the importance of being honest. After several denials, I finally admitted the truth, and he made me go apologize to my mother.

There's something awful about disappointing your mother, and for me, the worst part was that she cried. Well, when she cried, I cried, and a few minutes later, she was holding me and I kept repeating, “I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry.”

She said, “I forgive you, Sky, I forgive you!”

The last few years of Mom's life had been difficult. She had osteoporosis, diabetes, and complications from sixty-some years of cigarettes, and it had robbed her of the joy of life. She lost feeling in her feet, was tethered to an oxygen bottle, and took a regimen of pills morning, noon, and night. She could no longer do the things she'd always done, and when anyone else tried to do them for her, it made her feel useless.

People who are used to giving sometimes have a hard time receiving.

Mom was a giver, not a taker, and being forced to be on the receiving end of things was a bitter pill for her to swallow. People who are used to giving sometimes have a hard time receiving. At times she'd take her frustration out on those she loved, and in the last few years of her life, I didn't visit as often as she would have liked. I let the busyness of my life reduce our relationship to phone calls and cards. For some reason I found it easier to say “I love you” with a pen than in person. I'd see her on holidays and stop by for a few minutes when I was in town, but not like I used to. She never complained, but I knew it bothered her.

———

“I'm sorry, Mom,” I said as we held each other in the driveway. “I'm so sorry.”

“For what?” she asked, with a puzzled look on her face.

“For everything. For the way I let you down, for all the times I made you worry or broke your heart. But mostly for not coming to see you as much as I should have,” I said, taking a long, deep breath.

“Nonsense! You came when you could. You had your girls to look after and your practice, and I know how much time you spend looking out for Ben these days. So don't be ridiculous. You've got nothing to be sorry about! We were always connected at the heart.”

As always, hearing her say that I was forgiven made me feel
better. God always stands at the end of the driveway of heaven ready to welcome the prodigals home, and Mom stood right beside him. She always said God's not about guilt or blame; that's who
we
are, not who he is.

“Come on,” she said. “Let's go inside, and you can get washed up. But don't dawdle . . . dinner's almost ready. And don't forget to use soap!”

God always stands at the end of the driveway of heaven ready to welcome the prodigals home.

I did as I was told, and when I came down, the dining room table was set and so was she. The tablecloth beneath the gold-rimmed china had once been her mother's, and silverware, not stainless, sat atop pale green linen napkins. Clear goblets were filled with water, ice, and a slice of lemon, and a wine glass bubbled with something that sparkled. A turkey, browned and sliced, sat on a silver tray surrounded by bowls of riced potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, cranberry relish with orange peel, and dressing. Mom always made Aunt Mina's duck dressing. It was an old family recipe made with sausage and celery, and it was my favorite.

When I first walked into the dining room, Mom was wearing a green flowered apron that hung from her neck and was tied around her waist, but she took it off for dinner. Beneath the apron she wore a cream-colored pearl-button blouse, a pearl necklace and bracelet, a peach-colored suit, and black-and-cream checked high-heeled shoes. Like my wife, Mom had always had a weakness for shoes, and Dad had always had a weakness for Mom. He always said she was beautiful, and he was right.

We talked and laughed and talked some more, mostly about me and the struggles of growing up. She and I had spent many nights sitting at our kitchen table struggling with math, geography, or reading.

———

“Read the sentence out loud,” she'd say. “Come on, you can do it. Sound it out.”

“I fa, I fa, I fa, I fed the god.”

“No,” she'd say. “You didn't feed God, you fed the
dog
. Come on, Scout, you've got to think. Now try the next sentence.”

“I sa, I sa, I was the cat.”

“Come on now, you weren't the cat. You
saw
the cat.”

“No, I didn't,” I'd say in frustration.

“It's all right,” she'd say. “That's enough for tonight. We'll try it again tomorrow.”

———

Unlike those nights that seemed to last forever, this one flew by. “I must be going,” she said. “But before I do, I've got something to show you.”

She pulled a piece of paper and a pen out of her purse and began to draw circles. The first one was ever so tiny. The next one was a little larger and encased the smaller one. She kept drawing circles until they ran off the page.

If you were going to draw the circles of life, who'd be closest to the center?

Then she said to me, “In this little circle, there's just enough room for you and God. That's it, no one else. In the next circle, there is room for you and your girls. Just enough room for the people you love the most.”

“And you,” I said. “You'd be in that circle too.”

“That's so sweet,” she said. “But no. I'd probably be in the third circle, along with Ben and Sharon and your dad. In the next circle you can put the other people you love, and in the next one, your closest friends. The circles keep going out and eventually, when you get past friends and neighbors and coworkers, the circles are filled with people you don't know. It's not that you don't care about what happens to those people, it's just that you care more about the people closest to the center. Do you understand?” she asked.

“Of course,” I replied, wondering what the point was.

“Now here's the point,” Mom said as though she was reading my thoughts. “We tend to live our lives several circles out. We work, or go to school, or spend our free time with people in those circles, and we spend our lives worrying about what they think. What we wear, what we drive, where we live, all of these things are outer circle stuff. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“Let me try to explain,” she said. “Imagine that you just got a new car, and on your way home you saw your neighbor. What would you do?”

“I don't know. I'd probably honk and wave and roll down the window and say hi.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And you would because you'd hope he would think the car was cool, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But now, here's the thing. When you got home, do you think Carol would love you more because you got that new car?”

“Of course not,” I said.

We need to learn how to live in such a way that we impress the inner circles.

“And yet,” she continued, “most of us live our lives trying to win approval from the people in the outer circles. It's all part of the conspiracy. It's as if the Fallen One snuck in while we were sleeping and rearranged our values. Suddenly the things that matter the most were cheapened and made to appear less desirable. At the same time, the things that are temporary, things that have no eternal value, were made to appear priceless, and attractive, and of ultimate importance. So this is what I have for you. Write this down, and when you have doubts, when you have a question about what matters or a decision that will involve your family and your future, draw the circles.
Live to impress the inner circles
. If you have to choose between making your kids happy or making the people at work happy, choose the kids.
If it comes down to disappointing your friends or your family, disappoint your friends. And now hear me on this,” she said. “If you're forced to please your wife or your mother, please your wife. Always press in toward the inner circles. Always!”

I walked her out to the car and said, “Mom, I don't want you to go. There's so much more I want to say, so much more I want to do, and so much more I want to ask you. What is this conspiracy that everybody is talking about, and what did you mean when you said the Fallen One snuck in while we were sleeping? Everyone is talking in riddles. What does it mean and what does any of it have to do with me?”

“I can't tell you everything,” Mom answered. “You have to feel your way along on this a little bit at a time. But I can tell you this. The Fallen One is the ancient adversary, the serpent who seduced Adam and Eve in the Garden. The morning star cast out of heaven. He goes by many names—some call him Satan, others call him the devil, still others call him Beelzebub or Lucifer or the Prince of Darkness. But whatever you call him, he is the tempter and the accuser of humanity. Like a shooting star he was flung from heaven, and since that day the angels refuse to even whisper his name. Any evil comes from him. He's behind it all, even the accident.

“Look at me,” she continued, putting my face in her hands and turning my head toward hers. “That's on him, not you, do you hear me? Somewhere you got the idea that it was your fault. It wasn't. Sometimes bad things happen. You need to believe that, Sky.”

It was a moment between a mother and a son that needed to take place. Lord knows, I wanted to believe her, I needed to believe her, but somehow I just couldn't. Things you've held onto for so long are hard to let go of, even if they're wrong.

She could tell I was struggling, and so she continued. “Nothing happened that can't be rewoven back into the fabric of God's plan. He's still in charge of Ben's life, and yours. Sometimes things happen that we all wish hadn't happened. Sometimes it looks
like evil has gotten the upper hand. But that's just a momentary interruption in the flow of things. God's plan is like a river—it winds, it turns, it might even get dammed up once in a while, but in the end, its force is unstoppable.”

“I know that's true,” I said. “But sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Jesus may have conquered sin and death on the first Easter, but I see the power of evil every day in my line of work. Divorce, addiction, abuse, guilt, failure—these things can bring even the strongest to their knees. I'm sorry, Mom, but some days it seems like Satan is winning.”

“Listen,” Mom countered. “I know that sometimes life isn't fair. It feels like Satan and Ahbee are equals in the battle of good and evil, but nothing is further from the truth. Satan is no match for him. Satan is Michael's counterpart. Once the two of them were alike in every way. In the time before time began their strength, beauty, and magnificence were unequaled among the ranks of the angels. But then Satan was tripped up by his own desires, and ever since that day he's tried his best to pull the rest of the world down with him.

“I would love to tell you more, but I can't. I've stayed too long already. Besides, that's what eternity is all about. This was just supposed to be a little taste of that. But if you're still hungry, I left you a little something in the fridge.”

As she was getting into the car I said, “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too,” she replied. Then she kissed me good-bye, closed the car door, and drove away.

Back inside I looked in the fridge, and there was a pie covered in meringue with a note that said, “Grandma Jacobs sends her love.”

Every Thanksgiving, my mother would make the meal I had just eaten, and Grandma would make a butterscotch pie like the one I found in the fridge.

I cut myself a big slice of memories, poured a glass of milk, and went upstairs to bed.

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.

François Fénelon

Y
ou're on your own today, Scout,” Ahbee said as I came downstairs for breakfast. “It's a beautiful day outside, and I think you need to take a walk down by the creek and do a little thinking. You've had a lot of stuff thrown your way, and maybe you should try to unpack some of it on your own.”

I noticed the creek the day I arrived. The lake narrowed just past the mailbox, and then it spilled over a little dam and flowed under an old iron bridge. It called out to be explored, and this was as good a time as any. And now I knew why there were water shoes at the end of the bed where I'd left my sandals the night before.

Nothing happens by accident here
, I thought to myself.

“Or anywhere else,” Ahbee said as he laid two blueberry pancakes on the plate in front of me. “There is always a plan, even when you can't see it.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “I never understood how Ben's accident could be part of your plan.”

“Just put your dishes in the sink when you're done,” he said, walking toward the kitchen. “And as for the accident, we'll talk more about that later.”

When I opened my eyes after saying the blessing, Ahbee was
gone. He'd left an old Cub Scout knapsack lying on the kitchen table. Beside it was a note addressed to me that said, “Enjoy the walk and the lunch,” and I knew I was on my own.

God always has a plan, even when we can't see it.

After breakfast, I walked down the road toward the west end of the lake where it spilled into the creek, and that's when I noticed the U-shaped swimming dock. It looked exactly like the one by the public beach all those years ago. Suddenly my mind was full of memories I'd kept hidden in a dark corner of my soul for twenty-five years.

———

It was the Fourth of July weekend. I'd taken a MasterCraft boat in on trade the week before, and to be honest I kind of buried us in by putting a little more money into it than it was worth, but I'd promised Ben that I'd take him and his friends up north skiing for the weekend, and a promise is a promise.

Mom and Dad had rented this big cottage for the month of July, and we were all going up there for a long weekend. We needed a break. I'd been working sixty-five-hour weeks at the dealership, and Ben was in football camp at State. Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, and Florida had recruited him pretty hard in high school, but there was never any doubt where he was going. Ben had been a State fan since he was a little kid, and for him, college was all about football.

Like Dad, he'd lettered in both baseball and basketball three years running, but as a freshman, he was the starting quarterback from day one. Dad had named him Benjamin, which means “son of my right hand,” and he was. Like Dad, he was a natural athlete. It came easy to him. I was Schuyler, the scholar, the other son, the left-handed one. I played a little ball too, but never like Ben. He was just special. And he was so likeable that even though I was a little jealous of him, I still couldn't help but admire him, and so, like Dad, I never missed one of his games.

With Ben as quarterback, the Indians won the city championship in his sophomore year and district in his junior year, and they finished second in the state when he was a senior. They should have won it, but Johnson dropped two passes in the end zone, and then Wallace fumbled on the seven with a minute forty to go. Everybody knew the Indians were contenders because of Ben. He was big, strong, fast, and accurate, and college coaches got weak in the knees when they watched him on film. When Bucky recruited him, he said, “Give me two years, three at the top, and you'll go pro.” And we all believed him.

The incoming freshman class was full of superstars. Mickey Davis was coming from Catholic Day at right guard, and nobody got past him. At six foot four and two-eighty, he was built like a refrigerator. They said that Mickey didn't have calves, he had cows, and seeing him in swim trunks made me think they were right. Ben could almost be assured that he'd never get blindsided with Mickey in there.

Rafer “the Rabbit” Washington from downstate had already signed as wide receiver. He was lightning quick, with hands like fly traps, and he could jump like a rabbit—hence the name. Rafer was tall and lean with olive skin and a boyish grin. He didn't say much, but his game said it all.

And then the coup de grace was that Billy “White-Shoes” Barber, the sophomore tailback who'd set every running record State had, was back for at least one more year. Now with Ben inked to a full-ride scholarship, Bucky was starting training camp with the best weapons he'd ever had, and he'd coached some great ones.

Bucky had been pushing them hard, maybe too hard if you asked me, with two-a-day practices, mandatory film meetings every night, and regular workouts in the weight room. Bucky wanted Ben to put on twenty pounds. He said at six foot four and two-fifty-five, he'd be unstoppable. And he was right about that. The problem was, the pressure was starting to layer up, and
a little R & R was just what they needed. That's why I buried myself in that boat.

Bucky had gotten them a State van, and they were all sitting on the beach around a cooler of drinks when I got there. They were talking sports with Dad, and Ben told them about how Dad had tried out with the White Sox, but when he told them that he'd promised his mother he wouldn't play on Sundays, they sent him packing without so much as a train ticket home. Billy White-Shoes was howling with laughter, and his gold front tooth sparkled in the sunlight.

“I've never heard anything so crazy,” he said. “Jesus don't care if you play baseball on Sunday. If you get a chance like that, he expects you to take it. That's what talent is all about. It gets you a shot, and then it's use it or lose it.” Billy was a kid from the streets of Chicago who grew up fighting. After football season, his senior year of high school, he got in a little trouble running with the Black P-Stone Nation. When he got arrested, his momma got Bucky to talk some of the athletic boosters into quietly putting up his bail and getting him an expensive attorney. When the charges were dropped, Bucky told him he'd better clean up his act or he could forget all about his football scholarship. He did.

“My momma sent me down here with only one request,” Billy said. “She told me I better make the best of this 'cause God don't go handing out a lot of chances in our neighborhood, and I intend to do just that. I came real close to declaring myself eligible for the draft, but when Bucky told me that Ben was inked, I decided to play one more year. If we can win a bowl game, there's no limit to what my signing bonus might be, and then I'm going to buy my momma a brick house.”

Micky and Rafer agreed. Each of them was a great athlete, but football is a team sport, and when the team wins, they all win. And like every kid who ever put on a helmet, they all dreamed of going to the pros. But that day was about relaxing. They wanted
to eat some steaks, get some sun, and check out the girls on the beach.

“Hey bro,” Ben said. “Why don't you put that MasterCraft in the lake, and I'll show these boys how to water-ski.”

“You sure you'll be all right?” I said. “Looks like you've had a few brewskis.”

“Don't you worry about me,” he said. “But I'm not sure these landlubbers can handle it.” He bantered back and forth with his teammates while I put the boat in the water. I pulled up to the dock and asked Rafer if he wanted to ride along and spot for me.

“Sure,” he said. “But I don't know what spotting is.” I told him that the spotter sits in the back of the boat and tells the driver if something happens. Rafer had never been water-skiing, so watching someone else do it sounded like a good idea to him. I told him to sit down in the rear-facing observation seat and hold on.

While we were talking Ben grabbed the slalom ski and a life jacket, turned to Billy, and said, “This is how you do it without getting your afro wet.”

“Don't worry about me,” Billy said. “I've done this a few times before. Just don't embarrass yourself too bad in front of the cheerleaders.”

The boat was a serious ski boat, with a direct drive 220 horsepower inboard that rumbled and snorted at idle like a racehorse in the starting gate. This baby wanted to run. It had a white hull with a wide blue strip that said M
ASTER
C
RAFT
in cut-out white letters on the side, and there was a vertical American flag in the stripe near the transom. At idle and at speed it laid low in the water, and even with a skier the boat was extraordinarily stable.

When we pulled up by the U-shaped swimming dock, a group of girls walked over from the public beach to watch, and I knew Ben was going to give them a show. I threw him the ski rope and started to pull the boat away from the beach. Ben slipped the ski on his left foot, lifted it off the dock, dangled it over the water,
and stood there balancing on his right. Then, with three coils of the rope still floating on the water, he yelled, “Hit it!”

I threw the throttle forward and the boat lunged into motion. Just as the ski rope became taut, Ben stepped onto the ski, creating a huge spray of water, and we were off. He'd been skiing since he was seven, and he was an expert. We pulled over to the other side of the lake where someone had set up a slalom course and took a pass at it. Ben pulled hard on the rope with his right arm, leaned on his back foot, and with water spraying eight feet in the air, he cut across the right wake. With his shoulder inches off the water, he easily went around the first buoy. He stood up straight, waved to the girls on the beach, and then pulled hard with his left arm, leaned in the opposite direction, and went screaming back across both wakes to circle the second buoy.

Right, left, right, left, stretching and pulling and leaning, he methodically worked his way through the course. After he hit every one, we circled back around by the beach to drop him off. When we got there again he pulled hard on his right arm and went racing toward the shore, but right before he went smashing into the beach, he leaned back, twisted the ski in a spiral, sent water flying in every direction, and stepped out of the ski in ankle-deep water.

“Your turn, Billy,” he said, and he handed him the ski and the vest. Surprisingly, Billy was a great skier. His first pass through the slalom course he missed two buoys, but by the end of the day he'd gotten every one. Mickey knew how to ski, but barely. He hung on for dear life on two skis, and when he tried to drop one he lost his balance and went bouncing across the water like a skipping stone.

It was an afternoon of too much sun, too much beer, and too much laughing, and it was exactly what they needed to unwind. All three of them had been teasing Rafer unmercifully about not skiing, and finally, about five thirty, he agreed to try it. Mickey and Billy helped him get the skis on. “Hit it,” yelled Mickey,
and Rafer popped out of the water like a bobber on a cane pole. He wobbled like a Weeble for about 150 yards and then went plunging into the water.

I pulled back around and circled in close to him. “Ya okay?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said, but I could tell that he'd swallowed a lot of water.

While he struggled to get his skis on, I put the boat in neutral, and Ben went back onto the swim platform to see if he could help with the rope. The current was pushing us back toward Rafer, and Ben was worried the tow rope would get fouled in the prop. He reached around the back with his right hand and grabbed the rope near the tow hook on the transom. Then, facing forward and still holding on, he leaned back trying to take up the slack with his left hand and keep it from fouling, but it wasn't enough.

“Put her in gear and ease forward a little,” he said, still leaning back and trying to whip the rope away from the prop as he balanced precariously on the back of the swim platform.

“Be careful,” I said. “That teak wood can get slippery when it's wet.” But with the girls watching the show from the beach, he ignored me.

“Take up the slack now,” he said, “or we'll be cutting that rope off the prop with a jackknife.”

When I pushed the throttle forward, I didn't realize that the steering wheel was cocked to the left, and for a split second the boat lunged ahead in that direction. It caught Ben by surprise, and he almost did a header off the right side of the swim platform. Unfortunately, he tried to catch himself by jerking on the rope with his right hand, and as I straightened out the boat, instinctively he kicked out his left foot for balance. He briefly balanced there acrobatically and then plunged into the water. When he did, his left foot was clipped by the propeller blade.

Even all these years later, the next few minutes are kind of a
blur in my mind. As I circled around again with the boat, Ben's head bobbed up out of the water, and he screamed in agony. I thought he was horsing around until I saw the blood. It looked like a scene from
Jaws
. There was blood in the water everywhere, and when I managed to get him in the boat I wrapped his foot in a beach towel and raced for shore.