B0092XNA2Q EBOK (32 page)

As the water rushed in, pinning me against the seat, the thought running across my brain was not the next breath or swimming to the surface, but why?

That was nine years and 197 days ago.

People have long asked how could the death of an innocent young woman who was not my daughter or wife affect me so
much? Did I have an “inappropriate relationship” with Jody? The question offends me and, no, I did not. I loved her but everybody loved her. Jody’s death hurt me but it wasn’t her dying that sent me through the concrete wall at a hundred and forty miles an hour.

The bus that hit Jody broke or shattered thirty-seven bones in her body. After all she had already suffered and survived, I simply could not—then or now—make sense of that. Jody died of internal injuries and the bleeding that resulted. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could do nothing but stand around and watch. In shock and disbelief, I drove to the spot where she was hit, her blood still staining the street, and found myself screaming at the top of my lungs, “If this is how all our hopes and love and good intentions end, then why not put a bullet through each one of us and call it a day? Why put us here, give us each other, and fill us with dreams and gifts and expressions, only to spill them across the street like cheap paint!”

We buried Jody, her tender echo faded from the hospital halls, and I found myself in an angry place where joy is fleeting and suffering is constant. Where the power of words rests not in what they could do, but in what they couldn’t. So I pushed my foot through the floorboard and took a meteor shot off the southern tip of the continent hoping to drown myself in gin and salt water, and bury me and my gift at the bottom of the channel. Three days later, I woke naked on the beach to a wrinkled old man in a white robe, smoke rings exiting his mouth, and a fishing pole in his hand.

Steady took me home, did his best to address the wound. But I never let him at it, so I’ve been hemorrhaging for a decade. Then a few weeks ago, for reasons maybe only Steady understands, he shoved the jagged piece that is you in the gaping hole that is me.

And it worked. I stopped bleeding. The evidence is in your hands.

There’s one more thing: Door number three is not an exit. Not a way out. For you, it’s a backstage dressing room where you can hear the performers on the stage and the audience response, but you’re forever barred from joining the show. For me, a world filled with paper, but no ink. On this side of the door, we live alone with our memories, stripped of the expression of the gift but not the remembrance of it—or the need to use it. That remains and grows. Unsatisfied.

Katie, turn around, walk back through. Write your own story. Start with a clean page. One with no words. Where the ending, the next turn, next twist, next reveal, next conflict that demands a resolution, is unwritten. And where the resolution is unscripted. And when you get there, standing in the spotlight on a pedestal made for one, spill your bag of pieces on the stage and tell the world—tell them all the way back in the cheap seats—“This was once me… but it isn’t anymore.”

I
hitchhiked home. Couple of guys in a thirty-year-old Ford pickup carried me to Everglades City. I wasn’t very hungry, but I bought some groceries. Fifteen minutes after being home, I admitted that in all my time aboard this or any boat, I’d never felt more alone.

The argument in my head was two-sided: I should’ve done something, anything, to keep her from hurting herself. The flip side argued that, in reality, what could I do? Even if I hovered over her like a helicopter 24/7. If someone is bent on hurting herself, she’ll find a way to do it. She was a grown woman; sooner or later, she was responsible for herself.

It didn’t help much and I didn’t believe it, either.

I spent the evening on the back of the boat, staring out across the Milky Way, watching shooting stars scratch the underside of heaven’s floor. Mosquitoes were buzzing my head. I lit a citronella candle and when they finished laughing at it they kept buzzing my head. I was chewing on something Steady once told me: “By your
words you’ll be acquitted, and by your words you’ll be condemned.” When he said this, he was pointing his finger in my face.

Sitting on the back of that boat, I was wrestling with that. I thought a lot about Jody, Rod, and Monica, the kids on the floor gathered around me as I read, the shuffling feet, long faces, big round eyes, the scars, Band-Aids, IV lines, approving looks from doctors and nurses, my life before this one. There was a time when I would have done anything for those kids. Anything. When the reservoir of my hope was deeper than I ever imagined. Deep enough to live by. But, now? Some might say I’m a coward. Maybe that’s true. Pain is a powerful deterrent. Especially pain of the heart. I know that. And I think Isabella Desouches knows that, too.

I sat there trying to name that thing that scared me. The fear I walked around with, or walked around with me. The fear that had me living all alone on a boat in the middle of nowhere where nobody could get to me and nobody could hurt me and nobody could make me cry. And yet, there were tears on my face. The image appeared: the hospital. The idea of setting foot in that hospital, sitting on the floor and reading a story to a bunch of misfits, scared me. I’d seen what it had done. Could do. Then I saw what it couldn’t. And somewhere in there, I broke.

I cried loud and long. Ten years’ worth of tears.

I woke as the sun cracked the tops of the mangroves. I’d slept in a chair so I was stiff. I brewed some coffee and sat with my legs in the water. Trout in the current called to me, my poles hung above me idly, but I didn’t want to fish. I didn’t want to do anything. I spent the day moping around. Feeling sorry for Katie. Feeling sorry for me.

At noon, I called Steady. He listened, and said little. The truth hurt him. And, in retrospect, his tone of voice told me he was disappointed. That we’d failed. That I’d failed. I told him I’d stay close
to home in case, for some reason, she decided to find me. She might feel safe here. He hung up quietly and I didn’t wander out of eyesight or earshot from my boat until the days ran into weeks.

But Katie never showed.

By April, I was knee-deep in a pity party so I drove out to the memorial. The place was packed. Three hundred boats dotted the waterline. People were swimming and partying everywhere. The swollen masses surprised me. I stopped and asked one man in a float tube with a beer in his hand, “What’s all the commotion?”

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. He proffered his beer at me. “Dude, it’s Easter.”

In my solitude, I’d lost track. “Oh yeah, sure. Right.”

I circled the growing circus of anchored boats. Kids in floats, Jet Skis cutting the water, go-fast boats sitting restless, bikini-clad Coppertones from South Beach, beached whales from Long Beach, and the purely curious. The air smelled of coconut rum, cigarette smoke, suntan lotion, and pot. The number of white PVC crosses driven into the ocean floor numbered more than a hundred. All shapes and sizes. It looked like a game of pick-up sticks gone awry.

I shook my head and put the whole scene in my wake. Soon they really would have a reason to mourn. In the few times I’d talked with Steady, he had not heard from her. No email. No voicemail. No “To whoever finds this letter” letter. We called her cell phone, the one from the safe-deposit box, but she never answered and neither did voicemail. My guess was that Katie had gone quietly. In her own way. Her own time. No witnesses. Regardless, I felt it was only a matter of time before someone found the body.

The pain in my chest was an ache without expression. I found it difficult to breathe.

I took to the backwater and got lost in old alligator and mangrove trails that no man had ventured into in a long time. Late afternoon I made my way home. The sun was setting.

Katie was ever on my mind. In truth, she was all I thought about. I wondered how she’d done it. And how was I going to live with
myself when I found out. While I couldn’t answer any of that, I knew I needed closure. Maybe Steady did, too. I’d stayed gone long enough.

Time to see the old man.

I bathed, rode to my slip at Chokoloskee, and drove to Miami, realizing my visit might well leave a bitter taste on his favorite day of the year. Other than his sunrise service, his eight p.m. mass would be the most attended. And a larger crowd meant it would be easier to get lost. I parked, pulled up my collar, and waded into the crowd looking like a guy who was punching his card on his once yearly mass attendance—the sound of my flip-flops drowned out by the nearly thousand people talking and echoing off the walls.

A thousand candles lit the interior. Lingering smell of incense. Hushed tones. Families hurrying to a pew. Rows squeezed tight. People kneeling, genuflecting, lips moving. Little girls in white and pink dresses. Boys in seersucker suits. Mothers fussing over their hair and tucking in their shirts. Fathers fussing over mothers fussing over kids who looked just fine.

Steady meandered near the front door, shaking hands, hugging babies, kissing children. Draped in purple, his smile wide. Face beaming. The gold stitching on his vestments reflected the candlelight. He liked to say that the church had bedazzled him.

I found a place in the back. The last row. On the end. A long way from the front and even farther from Steady’s eighty-four-year-old eyes. I didn’t want him to see me until after. Didn’t want to ruin his service and seeing me alone, without Katie, would ruin his service.

The music started, as did the processional, and it’s a good thing the fire marshal was not in attendance. Sardines had more room than us. I’ve often thought that Catholic services were good exercise and that Catholics were, or should be, in better shape than, say, Baptists or Methodists. The Catholics stand up, sit down, kneel, repeat. While most other denominations only stand up and sit. ’Course, the Anglicans and Episcopalians stand up, sit down, kneel, too, so I’m not sure what that says. Anyway, every time I attend
one of Steady’s services I am reminded of a term he once used with laughter: “aeroba-church.”

Wasn’t long and the entire congregation was kneeling. I followed suit. Heads bowed. Mine, too. I fought the urge to leave. Drive to Katie’s condo, see if she’d hung herself from the balcony, slit her wrist in the bathtub, or passed out in the foyer after eating a hundred or so pills. But something told me that was not the way she’d go out.

After the readings, Steady invited the kids up front. Sat among them. Explained why today was his favorite day of the year. Behind him, high on the wall over his head, the banner read:
EGO SUM LUX MUNOIS.
The kids listened, laughed. He had them eating out of his hands.

Following his mini-sermon, he returned to the altar, broke the body, and offered the blood with a smile, saying that it “speaks better things than that of Abel.” Up front, the rows emptied as people made their way to the front, where Steady dipped a wafer in the wine and placed it on their tongue.

I sat and stared at the worn marble at my feet. A tear dripped off my nose and landed on the floor beneath me. Then another. Then another. The drops gathered in the vein of the marble.

Another was cascading down when a thumb appeared from over my shoulder and gently brushed my cheek.

She wore a scarf, sunglasses, no fingernail polish, faded jeans, flip-flops, white oxford, collar up, untucked. She placed her hand on mine and knelt. She was trembling. Her fingers wove between mine like vines.

Katie lowered her sunglasses and stared at me. She kissed my cheek, exhaled through a tear-stained smile. She pressed her hand flat across my heart. Tried to speak, could not, tried again, and still could not.

She leaned against me. Melting into me. Temple to temple. Worn marble floor staring back at us. Her tears mixed with mine. Up front, Steady showered us in Mass. His voice echoing. She scanned the horde around us, mustering her courage.

She took a deep breath, then brought her legs up beneath her, coiling, as if readying herself to stand. She pressed her lips to my ear. Her breath warm on my face. “You were wrong about one thing.”

I looked at her.

“Words do bring people back to life.” She held my face in her hands and kissed my lips. “Especially, yours.”

Katie stood, walked around the back of the pew, and stopped in the center aisle. No script. No rehearsed lines. Katie Quinn was directing herself. Steady stood before her, forty or so rows forward. He saw her, squinted, then his shoulders rolled, he choked up, composed himself, and his smile spread. Maybe he let out a breath. Katie turned toward me, then gently untied the scarf around her face, pulled the sunglasses from her eyes, let them fall to the ground, and began the slow walk toward Steady.

A woman to her right screamed. Followed by another. And another. Whispers grew into loud conversation. People stood on the pews.

Katie approached Steady. Glassy eyes and a smile he couldn’t erase. She stood before him, penitent. He dipped the wafer and placed it on her tongue. She bowed. He placed his hand on her head and his lips moved. Pandemonium might best describe the congregation at this moment.