What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay (20 page)

“You can’t save people.”

“Sometimes you can. You did.”

“Never. You can help. But they save themselves or they don’t. I’ve told you that.”

That sentence made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I put the pomegranate down. “You just … watch?” I said. “
Everyone
?”

“Yeah. You just watch.”

I don’t think I am going to be able to stand life if that’s true. I saw a cat get hit by a car once. I could see the car coming and the cat in the street, and I screamed at it to get out of the way but it didn’t. The car kept coming, and when it hit the cat, it spun it around on its back. They didn’t even stop. I picked up the cat and I made Mom drive us to the vet with it, but it was dead by the time we got there. I wouldn’t believe it was dead. I held it in my lap, wrapped up in a towel, all the way to the vet and I was sure he would save it.

I stared at the pomegranate juice on my fingers and remembered how the cat’s blood had soaked my jeans. Is it going to be like that with people? Does God really just let things randomly happen? Surely he can’t
want
some of the things that happen to be that way. Wars and little kids dying, and Darren being dead? Why would God want that? So it must be random.

It’s not as if that never occurred to me before. But I never thought about
my
life being random. About things happening to
me
being random. About somebody I love just dying. About somebody I love coming to pieces. How do people live with that? Once something like that happens to you, how do you go on living your normal life and not be paralyzed with terror that something else is going to drop out of the sky on you? That the next car that comes by will spin you around in the road like that cat?

18

Ben was waiting for me when I got home, with some more great news. Father Weatherford called him and said I have to see a counselor about “what happened in the basement.”

“What?” I said.

Ben looked uncomfortable. “He’s worried about Felix.”

“Well, he ought to be,” I said. “He hasn’t got any place to live, thanks to those busybodies.”

“He didn’t mean that, I’m afraid,” Ben said. “He means he’s concerned that Felix may have hurt you in some way.”

He was watching me carefully to see what I did. I could tell. I nearly lost it. “That is the stupidest thing I ever heard!” I was almost shrieking. “Do they think I’m a moron? Do they think he’s some kind of child molester? They don’t know shit!”

“And you do?”

I tried to get a grip. “I know Felix isn’t dangerous. To me or anybody else. You ask Mom!” I glared at him.

Ben sighed. “I did. She said the same thing.”

“Has she quit crying?”

“No.”

I started to cry again, too. “I hate this! I hate everything that’s happening! I hate people getting killed, and you and Mom splitting up, and I hate being scared of everything!”

“Oh, honey.” Ben looked really sad. “Maybe you can talk to the counselor about that, since Father Weatherford wants you to go see him.”

“Him? Him who?”

“I think you can pick. He said the parish would pay for it.”

“This is about ‘insurance liabilities,’ isn’t it?” I asked.

“Probably. I expect the church is a little gun-shy, on the whole.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go see Lily’s mom. But I cannot believe they want me to see a shrink. And I am not going to see someone who’s already decided Felix must have molested me and will try to make me remember stuff that didn’t happen! And I’ll run up a big bill. Their insurance company can pay
that
.”

I especially hate that they’re hounding someone who’s been a comfort to me, and telling me to be scared of him, too. I’m already scared of enough stuff.

I told Lily what they’re making me do and asked her if it would be weird for her, me seeing her mom, because it occurred to me later that it might be. It would have been an out. But she just said, “No, Mom has pretty good sense.” Which doesn’t sound like a testimonial, but is a lot more than I can say for my mom. So I have an appointment for Friday.

Jesse came to school again yesterday, but he’s still acting like there’s nobody else in the room with him most of the time. It’s freaky. There haven’t been any more pictures in my locker. He sits hunched over at lunch, eating his sandwich like somebody’s going to take it away from him. He didn’t even answer when Mr. Petrillo talked to him in art. Mr. Petrillo just went on to the next person, which was me. We have assigned tables, so I’m still next to Jesse. Jesse was acting like I wasn’t there, which was kind of a relief. We’re studying the Impressionists, and Mr. Petrillo has us painting a tub full of water lilies, trying to be Monet. Mr. Petrillo looked at my water lilies and said he liked the way I’m handling the light that reflects on the water from the studio skylight. When he went on to the next person, I snuck a look at Jesse.

He was painting a water lily petal, up close, with his nose practically in the paint. Just painting the same stroke over and over again.

He caught me looking at him and I thought he was going to get mad. But he shook his head, like someone trying to shake water out of his ears, and he suddenly smiled at me and said, “Hey, do you want to go up to Rose Valley tomorrow? We can take your silly dog and hike up to the waterfall.”

I stared at him. Rose Valley is a place up in the foothills where people go to camp. There’s a waterfall and picnic tables and nothing else. And he thought I’d go
there
with him? After what happened Saturday?

“Yeah,” he continued, like nothing had happened with us. “It’s so peaceful up there. I saw a roadrunner on the old fire trail once. I need to go someplace where there’s just birds and trees, you know. I need to go there with you.”

“Jesse—”

“You’re not still mad, are you? Just because we had a fight?”

A fight
? “That was more than a fight,” I hissed at him.

“I thought you loved me!” he snapped. “I love you.” He smacked his hand down on the edge of his easel, hard enough to rattle it on its legs, and people turned around to stare at us. I ought to get used to it.

“Anyway, my folks won’t let me,” I said in a hurry, because I was afraid he’d start yelling. “They think I’m too young to go in cars with boys.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but would be if they knew it was Jesse.

“You snuck off before, didn’t you?” Jesse said.

“I got caught. They grounded me.” Also not true, but there’s no way I’m going to go up to Rose Valley alone with Jesse.

He stared at me. “Are we going to let that matter?” He shook his head. “Angie, I need you.”

The bell rang and I started stuffing things back into my bag. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment after school.”

“Call me when you get back. We need to talk about this.”

I took off before he could say anything else and got in Ben’s car like bears were after me. Ben must have thought I looked funny because he said, “Are you okay with this, Angelfish? You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to. Just the once, to keep the rector happy.”

“It’s okay.” I’m probably the only person in Ayala who’s never seen a shrink before, anyway. We know people who have a personal therapist, and a group therapist, and a couples therapist, and one for the dog. And in any case, I have to say that Lily’s mom is kind of cool. All Lily’s friends call her by her first name, Helen, and she has blond hair in a bowl cut and round glasses. She’s pretty like Lily but she never seems to pay any attention to what she looks like. Once she had on shoes that didn’t match.

“It’s nice to see you, Angela,” she said, opening the door to her office. “I understand you’re here under protest.”

“Ben says I don’t have to come again if I don’t want to,” I told her. “But I want to come long enough to run up a huge bill so you can send it to the parish. I’m furious at them.” I plopped down on her couch.

“I’m not sure that’s entirely ethical.”

“It wasn’t ethical to kick Felix out of the church basement when I
told
them he hadn’t done anything to me.”

“And you’re quite certain about that?”

“Yes! Do they think I’m so dumb I can’t tell what somebody’s doing? And what makes them think
they
can tell who’s dangerous and who’s not? I don’t see how anybody can tell that!” Plainly, I can’t.

“Well, it’s not easy,” Helen said. “There are signs we look for. Behavior that’s appropriate and behaviors that aren’t. And, of course, sometimes we’re wrong anyway.”

“Well, Felix hasn’t done anything that’s inappropriate. I
told
them that.”

“Do you want a drink?” She waved a hand at a little refrigerator in the corner, under a stack of magazines. “And who exactly is ‘they’?”

“Father Weatherford and two Altar Society ladies.” I picked a can of mango juice and curled up again on the couch. “And some insurance company moron that’s all worried about getting sued.”

Helen kind of snorted. She has the funniest laugh. “It’s the function of insurance companies to worry about getting sued. They do it for a living.”

“Can’t you tell them Felix is okay?”

“If I’m convinced he is, I can.”

“What do I have to do to convince you? This isn’t fair. People are supposed to be innocent until someone proves they’re not, not the other way around!”

“True. But when it comes to the issue of child abuse, people are often not inclined to wait until someone is hurt.”

I said, “I. Have. Not. Been. Hurt,” and glared at her.

Helen looked like she was trying to decide something. She bit the end of her pencil, which she hadn’t been writing with but kept sticking behind her ear and then taking it out again. “There are privacy issues, you understand. Things I can’t tell you because they’re about other people.”

“Uh huh.” I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I didn’t like it. “If you mean you think you know something bad about Felix, but you can’t tell me what it is—”

“Calm down. The opposite is equally possible.”

“You mean you know something good?” She didn’t say anything. “Possibly?”

“Hypothetically speaking—”

I started paying attention. She wasn’t going to tell me if I wasn’t careful.

Helen said, “Hypothetically speaking,” again. “As just as a
for instance
, if a counselor was concerned about a client’s relationship with another person, if the counselor wondered if that other person might be destructive or not, and that other person had a counselor too—”

“You might talk to that other counselor,” I said. “Pretending that you weren’t, of course.”

Helen snorted again. “You’re quick on the uptake.”

“Felix has a counselor at the VA he sees sometimes.”

“Does he? Fancy that.”

“What did he tell you?”

Helen sighed. “You aren’t doing this right.”

I remembered Grandma Alice talking about how her husband wrote home during the war, pretending he was telling her some movie plot. “Ben’s working on a new film,” I said. “There’s this homeless guy in it, he’s a Vietnam veteran, he used to be a medic and he still worries about the soldiers he couldn’t save, and he lives in a church basement and makes friends with this girl.”

“Does he?” Helen said. “An interesting approach, Cleversides. I’d like to see that movie. Well, given his background, rather than wanting anything from the girl, I think this character might be more likely to see himself as a rescuer—her protector—don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Helen nodded. “I expect that comes out when he talks to his counselor.”

I expect it did
, I thought, and I was really grateful for Helen and the counselor at the VA, who were willing to break the rules to keep something awful from happening. To either one of us. So I said, “Thank you.” And then, “If we don’t say anything about other counselors and stuff like that, is it okay to actually talk about Felix and me?”

“That’s what you’re here for.”

“If you tell them he’s okay, and he wouldn’t hurt anyone, will they let him move back into the church?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I’m going to try to convince them.”

We talked some about how people get worked up and assume that what they expect to happen is what really
is
happening, and they don’t want to hear anything that conflicts with that. Like the Altar Society ladies.

“That’s what Felix told me,” I said. “I don’t see how a person can be as smart as he is sometimes and be somebody who’s living under a tree.”

“The hardest person to impart wisdom to is ourselves,” Helen said. I really like Helen.

“Do you think people’s trauma, you know,
leaks
?” I asked.

“Leaks?”

“Hypothetically speaking, um, if a person has weird dreams, and they are actually somebody else’s dreams, would you say that person was crazy?”