All Dressed Up (38 page)

“That’s not
the point. That he was nasty is not the point.”

“The point is
you know it was wrong, and you care that it was wrong, and you care
that throwing water on the dress was wrong, and you’re my mother
and you’re a good person, because it’s exactly what you’ve said to
me – if you weren’t a good person, then you wouldn’t feel this bad,
and I just want to tell you not to obsess over these things because
it’s when you’re eaten up inside that you react this way, say
things or do things.”

“And you don’t
ever? You don’t ever? I feel I don’t choose this, it chooses me.
Doesn’t it choose other people, too?”

“Sometimes I
do.” She loosened her arms, and Angie let her walk away, so she
could just look at her. My daughter. And we’re friends. “Like,
there’s this woman at work…”

“Oh, so you
do? You really do?”

“Of course I
do!”

“But you let
it go.”

“I bitch to
Scott. Or I laugh.”

Scott laughed
at that moment, a big, joyous guffaw. “Honey, you have to come see
this commercial.”

Brooke went
in, but the commercial had ended. Angie could see the two of them
through the open kitchen door. Scott captured her, pulled her down
onto his thighs and they looked into each other’s faces and for the
first time – the first time – Angie understood.

It was like
the sun had burst out, like everything was suddenly bathed in
radiance and clarity. The sensation of wisdom and joy, or joy
through wisdom, was so sharp and strong and wonderful that it
brought tears to Angie’s eyes and her heart seemed to swell. She
knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Nobody could live like this. It
was too intense.

But for now,
in this moment, she suddenly understood why Brooke loved Scott, and
why he was good for her, and good enough for her, and why he would
be good for Angie if she could let that happen, let herself be the
good mother-in-law she wanted to be in her heart, and everything
was okay and right.

He reminds me
of Wade, she realized. Wade at twenty, not at thirty. Wade before
he’d tightened up and gotten so angry and mean and they’d stopped
talking to each other.

She called
Lainie back and told her as if the words themselves were powerful
enough to make it come true, “They will find Billy. They will. I
just know, Lainie. I know it in my heart.”

Chapter
Seventeen

“Your lights
were still on,” Mac said, at Lainie’s door. “Has there been any
news?”

“No,” she told
him. “They’re going to try to get some sleep. Like Christmas when
you’re a child, you know? To make first light come faster. They’ve
been combing through the woods, but with his bike left by the gate,
they’re thinking he might have accepted a ride.”

“Oh, no. Oh,
no.”

She’d phoned
him earlier, on his cell, and found him in the middle of a church
meeting. He’d told her he would call back as soon as he could. Now
it was eleven thirty and here he was, and even though she was still
angry at God, she couldn’t be angry at Mac.

“My meeting
ran late,” he said. “I didn’t know if you’d still be awake. Decided
to drive by and see if your lights were on.” He had his feet
planted on her porch floorboards in a biker stance, although he’d
come in the staid white car, not on the Norton.

“We’re just
standing here.” She flapped her hands. “Please come in.” At her
invitation, he stepped eagerly through the door and into her arms.
She managed to shut the door behind him and then she just didn’t
care. They didn’t have to go any further. They could stand between
the door and the stairs all night, holding each other, at home in
each other’s body heat. “Explain the universe to me, Mac, because
it’s not making sense.” Her voice trembled against his warm
ear.

“You mean
explain why this isn’t God’s fault?”

“Yes. I want
every excuse in the book. The dog ate my homework. I never got the
memo. I’ll listen to them all. Two things I want. To forgive God,
and for Billy to be safe. Not in that order.”

“Billy comes
first.”

“Yes.” She
told him about Charlie, when he was twelve, and had to break out of
Mac’s arms and pace around the house because during that horrible
three months, too, she’d barely been able to sit down. She told him
about Billy being Emma’s child, that this was the reason he’d run
away, because he’d found out the truth.

It turned out
that Mac already knew. Emma had told him the day of the canceled
wedding. “We were a little callous with each other that day, and it
helped her, somehow,” he said. “The protective value of some
distance. She was aching over what she’d done, aching to talk.”

“It was the
wrong time for Billy to find out. And it was my fault. Sarah says
it wasn’t, but she’s wrong. Why am I talking about forgiving God,
when it was me?”

Mac followed
her as she paced the house, and occasionally they trapped each
other in some strange spot for a hug, and he pressed his soft mouth
on her face and her lips and tried to make her hair behave with
little strokes of his fingers. She loved his rich, rumbly voice and
the warm press of his cheek and everything about him. “Should we
forget God for tonight and just work on Billy?” he asked. “Is there
anything more we can do to help the Deans before morning?”

“I want to
deal with God. How could he have let me talk so loud? How could he
let Billy run away? I want to understand. Tell me how you see
it.”

“Okay…” He
sighed, collected his thoughts and began. “We never pay this much
attention to God when life is good, that’s part of the
problem.”

“Oh, poor guy,
that must really cut him up!”

“Lainie…”

“I’m angry.
And I’m whipping myself. And God. And both whips hurt.”

“I know they
do.” He grabbed her shoulders and slid his hands up against her
hair. “Because the hurt is the other side of the coin to the love.
Love couldn’t be as powerfully good as it is, if it wasn’t also
sometimes powerfully bad, hard to live through. It’s trite. It’s
been said a million times. It’s all I can offer. I think each
person understands it in their heart a little differently. I can’t
give you my many paths to God meditation right now. I have one.
It’s thought through and written down but, I’m sorry, I can’t
produce it for you, just like that.”

He snapped his
fingers, then shook off the contact and took his own turn at being
angry. She watched him, and even loved the way he moved when he was
agitated like this, all angular and highly-strung and muscled.

“I can’t,” he
repeated. “I don’t think you want it. And even if you do, I can’t
give it. Didn’t you bargain with God that you’d forgive him and
believe in him if he brought Charlie back?”

“Of course I
did. And then after Charlie did come back I thought, That’s so
cheap of you, God. To buy my faith by dropping my son into my life
unharmed.”

“And you
couldn’t scrape together much faith in such a cheap God, after
that.”

“No.”

“Even though
you might concede that he exists.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll
feel the same if Billy is found safe.”

“Oh God, he’s
going to be found safe! Tell me he is!”

“I don’t know
if he is,” Mac said, without flinching. Lainie screamed at him and
shook him by the shoulders, then she collapsed against his chest
and wept painfully, no tears, just dry, jerking sobs and moans. “I
don’t know if he is,” he repeated. “And I don’t believe that God
reaches out and saves one child while choosing to let another one
go. I don’t believe he has one of those little signs on his desk
that reads, The buck stops here. I think that would be too hard a
task, too unfair of us to ask it even from God.”

“Would it?”
She lifted her head. “So I’m supposed to feel maternal toward God
now? I’m supposed to appreciate what a tough time He has?”

“It can be a
complex relationship. You said you wanted to understand God, and
I’d like to argue that He gets the rap for all sorts of things He
doesn’t deserve.”

“Like the fact
that I spoke too loud at the hospital because I didn’t know Billy
was in the bathroom right beside us.”

“I’ll get back
to you on the exact mechanism God uses to cause people to speak too
loud in hospitals. But it may require some research. Shall we
adjourn the Faith in Crisis meeting for tonight, sweetheart?” His
voice came tenderly, all of a sudden, and the word sweetheart
dripped into her veins like warm syrup. She plowed her forehead
into his shoulder and felt his arms enclose her body.

“How many more
of these meetings will we have to have?” she asked him.

“I’ll let you
know when I stop having them myself, okay? I’m hoping maybe only
another twenty years?”

“Do you really
have them?”

“Yes, but my
bouts of certainty are pretty addictive and becoming more
frequent.”

“Addictive
bouts of certainty. I can see that. I’d travel far for those.”

They sat on
the couch. Mac kept his arms around her and his thigh squashed
against hers. “Dawn comes faster if you sleep,” he said softly.

“Are you
staying?”

“May I?”

“Always.”

He kissed her
and she decided that when Billy was found safe she would remember
to appreciate God for his invention of kisses.

Lying awake at
four in the morning, Emma heard sounds coming from downstairs and
leaped out of bed. Her heart jolted and rattled in her chest. She
struggled to control her breathing and a flood of adrenalin
crackled through her. Halfway down the stairs she realized it was
only Mom on the phone, talking to Dad, soft and anxious and
tender.

“Wait until
morning. No, no, please, not now. Okay, okay. Leave a note for the
neighbors. So you’re leaving almost now?”

Emma creaked a
floorboard with her movement and Mom whirled around. She looked
bewildered and wide-eyed and exhausted. “Are you going back to bed,
Mom?”

She shook her
head. “It should start to get light soon.”

“I’ll make us
some hot chocolate.”

They sat
drinking it at the kitchen table, letting the silences and the
words come the way they wanted to. “Did he hurt your feelings,
Emma? In his note? Saying that he didn’t want to switch over?”

“Oh God, Mom,
I’m bigger than that, don’t you think?”

“I tipped up
the canoes. I thought he could be hiding under one of them and
maybe he fell asleep. I’ll check them again when it’s light,
because maybe he crept back…”

“I feel like I
should be running. Just running and shouting all night, calling
him. Why is this so slow? Why aren’t the police setting up search
teams? Why aren’t they putting out that Amber Alert thing?”

“Because he’s
a runaway, not an abductee and it’s not a freezing night and they
think he’s most likely hiding somewhere close by. Which is good
news. Except it doesn’t feel that way.”

“Morning is
never going to come.” They heard a car, and Emma bruised herself
twice on the table and chairs, on the way to the window that
overlooked the parking area in front of the house, in her
desperation to discover that it was a police car with a
ten-year-old boy wrapped in a blanket, walking on his own two
feet.

But it wasn’t,
it was Charlie.

She went out
to him. The air was chilly, striking damp and heavy on her
shoulders even through the sweatshirt she’d put on, and she
thought, Is Billy out in this, wearing short sleeves?

“I finished at
the hospital after midnight and came straight up,” Charlie said.
“Is there any news?”

“No. Nothing
yet.”

There was a
pulse of hesitation and then he held her so tight and warm that she
could feel herself moaning into his shirt, which muffled the sound.
They stood this way for a long time. His cheek heated hers. His
voice whispered on her hair. “He’ll be okay.”

“But every
minute feels like an hour. I’ll be a hundred years old if this goes
on for long. A thousand years old.”

“Listen! He
ran away. He even left a note. That means he’s in control. It’s not
like he’s been abducted.”

“He’s ten! And
I’m sick of being told it could be worse!”

“It could be
so much worse. He’s acting by choice and in character. Is he the
kind of kid who’s going to be cowering somewhere? Would he take a
ride from a stranger? Would he get lost two hundred yards from the
house? Tell me what he’s like, Emma.”

“How would I
know what he’s like?”

“You know more
than you think.”

“I don’t. I
don’t know him at all. I don’t even think Mom knows. I think
Sarah’s the one who really knows him. And Dad. And he’s not
here.”

“So let’s talk
to Sarah.”

“She’s
asleep.”

“No, I’m not,”
said Sarah’s voice from her upstairs bedroom window.

Sarah made
more hot chocolate. Emma had begun to shiver – actually she didn’t
even realize it until Mom turned on the oven and opened the oven
door. The kitchen gradually grew warm as they sat around the table
talking about who Billy was…

“I don’t think
he’d take a ride from a stranger,” Sarah said, for about the fifth
time. “I think Dad’s wrong to have waited in Jersey.”

“He should be
on his way up, by now,” Mom said. “He’s had a horrible night.” She
gave some detail, including the fact that he hadn’t slept. No one
had, it turned out.

“If Billy just
wanted Dad, wouldn’t he call him?” Sarah suggested. “He calls him
sometimes at work.”

“He talks to
Dad through the bathroom door,” Emma said. “Doesn’t care what Dad’s
doing in there, whether he might want some privacy. It was one of
the first things I noticed about him when I moved back home.” She
laughed, but then cut off her own sound like a piece of bad film
editing, because it hurt to think about what she’d been like a year
ago, noticing the occasional thing about Billy in between dreading
her patients, sleeping off her eighty-hour work weeks, and making
kindergarten crafts for her wedding.