Where the Broken Lie (19 page)

“What does that mean?”

I unscrewed the lid to the vodka and splashed more into my glass, filling it back to the rim. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I have nothing to say.”

“Well, sometimes it helps to talk.”

I laughed. “Oh yeah? Tell me, what does it help, Tam?”

She didn’t answer.

“My brother called yesterday,” I said. “You know what he asked me?”

She shook her head and I took another drink.

“He asked me how you were doing. Sure, at first it was like, ‘How you doing, bro—holding up ok?’ in that macho bullshit way. I said I was fine and that was the end of it.”

Everything began to swirl around me. I kept trying to refocus on Tammy, but my eyes couldn’t catch her.

“Well, he knows that you’ll talk when you’re ready to,” she said. “And he knows how strong you are.”

“HA! Is that right? Well, tell me, Tam—how strong am I? Strong enough for this? Strong enough to lose my son—is that how strong I am? Who the hell is that strong?”

“No. You’re not that strong, Tucker. I know you’re not.” She moved toward me, but I pulled back.

“I think I hurt less than you, Tam. I can’t imagine hurting more than I do right now and I hurt less than you—the whole world says so.”

I drank down the rest of my drink and put the empty glass on the counter next to the near-empty vodka bottle.

“Now, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

On the way home from visiting Grandma one night, I stop in for a drink at Joe’s Place, one of Glidden’s oldest drinking establishments. I nestle up to the bar and wait for my vodka tonic like a baby robin waiting for mama to come home with a big juicy night crawler.

Dad took me here once when I was in college. It was the only time the two of us ever went out drinking together. I had sat on this barstool and—for a while anyway—went drink for drink with that father of mine—the war veteran, the womanizer, the life of the party. I wanted to find something of him inside me that night, but all I ended up finding was a stupid college boy who couldn’t hold his liquor.

After I vomited in the men’s room, Dad said goodbye to his buddies and ushered me out. I was expecting laughter and jokes at my expense, but none came. Maybe because he was ashamed of me. Maybe because he saw I was ashamed of myself.

“Another one?” asked the barkeep, yanking me back to now. “Vodka tonic, right?”

I nod.

This is the problem with not moving far from home—with not leaving parents, grandparents, and history behind. You can’t rub your hands on the mahogany bar at Joe’s without remembering that part of your father is soaked in to the grains of the wood.

Grandpa Mueller, too. This had been a favorite hangout of his and I can see the face of my mother’s father looking back at me from inside the mirror behind the bar.

My world is haunted by all these ghosts. Some of them gone, all of them living. Memories of them all half buried beneath flimsy little tombstones in my mind that mark that which once mattered or—just as often it seemed—that which never mattered at all.

I hope that in some corner of heaven there is a tavern where I will someday reunite with all my family and friends. Where Grandma Gaines is young, Katie Cooper is grown, and Ethan is just whoever Ethan is. Some heavenly Joe’s Place where I can sit at the bar with Dad on one side and Grandpa Mueller on the other and we are all young and vibrant and full of life. So that each of us can be that particular sinner we are meant to be. Each of us battles to hold down the evil inside of us, and to hold off the evil around us. Because evil breathes and lives and is as omnipresent as God. You’ll find it in your safe places where it stays dormant for days and weeks, months and years. It lives and lurks there, greedily stealing in sin and in silence.

In stillness.

It isn’t always so easy to spot, evil. Usually it’s buried inside of some sort of 
want.
The want of smaller things, bigger things, softer things, harder things, younger things, better things, things we don’t have.

Evil is a dragon monster, but not the fire-breathing kind that lives in fairy tales. This dragon monster is a slimy microscopic parasite that burrows, chews, and claws its way deep inside of some 
thing
, some 
place
, some 
one
 and attaches itself there. It sets up camp, makes a home, and then it spreads.

You will find it near you and around you. And if you are honest, you’ll find it within you. You can hide and be cautious and you can check over your shoulder, but it will find you.

… he had felt something change inside him that day Tucker’s little girl went missing. Or then again maybe not. Maybe something unchanged inside him. Maybe it was all just monster food. He couldn’t embrace his monster, but he could no longer deny it either. It hadn’t, as he had hoped, died after that day with Katie. Which meant it would never die. A thought that depressed him. He couldn’t defeat the monster, but maybe he could hide from it …

“At age five Tucker is very concerned about death. He doesn’t want anybody to die.”

My mother wrote these words in my baby book over twenty-five years ago and I have not wavered on the matter. I still don’t want anybody to die. This probably made me a weak Christian, but I’ll take that bird in the hand every time. This life has always been good enough for me.

I suppose that the antidote to this fear of death is a strong faith, but my faith is just one of my ten thousand weaknesses. But in defense of the Weak in Faith everywhere, I have to say that it would be a hell of a lot easier to believe in a God who took the time to actually talk to you once in a while. I don’t mean talk to you through feathers or back-scratched messages. I mean talk to you in a sitting down to dinner and discussing our day sort of way.

“How was your day today, Tucker?”

“Good, God. How was your day? Dinner smells wonderful. Filet mignon again!”

Even better would be God the career counselor or God the life coach.

“What should I do with my life, God?”

“Have you thought about missionary work, Tucker? Or perhaps a career in advertising and sports marketing?”

Why not give us tangible proof of heaven? I mean, to get the big payoff in the end, we’ll still need to be good people and follow the Ten Commandments and help old ladies cross the street and all that. But why make us wonder if we’re doing it all for naught?

I suppose it has something to do with the importance of the mystery of faith, but I don’t want my God to work in mysterious ways. I want my God to work in pragmatic ways, which I think would actually go over pretty well with people.

Within a matter of days and in a non-committal sort of way, death began to settle inside of Grandma. Still I was not really saddened. Death quietly crept into the room on tippy-toes like some exaggerated cartoon monster and I sat back and waited for her to transform, as if I was waiting for a green light to turn red.

Grandma’s three day stint in the rehabilitation center became four. Four days became five, five became never-to-leave. Even though I loved her as much as ever—maybe even more after these weeks with her and Grandpa—the thought of her death did not sadden me. I found an almost anxious comfort in the fact that she was going to die. Like it was a return to the natural order of things. She was seventy-seven years old; it would be okay for her to die.

Or maybe Ethan’s death had permanently changed me, made me hard. All I knew was that the fact that life actually ends for each of us at some point was a concept I had struggled with my entire life and yet somehow I was almost indifferent to the prospect of losing her.

I loved Grandma very much.

I would miss her dearly.

It was okay if she died.

Still, I visited her every day. She always looked tired but seldom complained. Every time that I was there Dad was either there, too, or had just left or was going to be arriving shortly. Most times I brought Tory with me. She would hold tight to my hand as we walked those grim hallways that lead to Grandma’s room.

Old eyes fell on her tenderly. Old hands reached out for her. Old smells enveloped us, seeped inside. In us, they saw their past. In them, I saw my future. The place frightened Tory, but she always wanted to come. Always wanted to see Great Grandma.

One time as we were leaving, Tory said to me, “Dad, how come Great Grandpa isn’t in here, too?”

“Well, Great Grandpa isn’t sick like Great Grandma is, Sweetie,” I said. But I knew what she was asking.

“But Grandpa Ron isn’t sick and he’s always here with Great Grandma.”

“It’s very hard for Great Grandpa. He visits a lot, but it’s hard for him to see Great Grandma feeling so sick.”

The truth was that I had wondered the same thing myself. I hadn’t asked him about it, though. Didn’t have to, as he was always volunteering excuses.

He felt a cold coming on and thought it best to stay away for a couple days. Dugan Clark was coming over to give an estimate on re-roofing the house. The truck had stalled on him and he had spent all morning working on the engine.

Grandpa visited his wife, but not like a husband. He came and went like a neighbor or a second cousin or a volunteer from the church. Two or three times a week, maybe fifteen minutes at a time.

“It sure is nice of Grandpa Ron to stay with Great-Grandma all the time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Tory, it sure is.”

“It’s because that’s his mommy, right Dad?”

“That’s right.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, Tory?”

“If you get sick like that someday, I’ll stay with you, too. Every day. I promise I will.”

When we get back to Willow Grove, I hand Tory off to Tam who sent our little girl to bed for a nap. I head up to the playground in search of more “mouths of babes” type wisdom from my swinging friend. But there would be no such insights on this day.

As I approach the park, I see the limp body of Swinging Girl lying across the arms of Son Settles.

Son takes a quick look around, doesn’t see anyone. Doesn’t see me approaching from behind him. Her body cradled against his, he starts toward the street where his car is still running and the passenger-side door is open. As he scuttles toward the car, his L.A. Dodger baseball hat blows off his head.