Beyond Tuesday Morning (13 page)

A boy named James in her class at school lost his firefighter daddy. And last summer his mommy got married again, so now James had a new daddy. No, not a new daddy, but a second daddy.

Sierra walked into the bathroom and made a face at the mirror. She didn't want a new daddy. But sometimes she looked at James and thought how lucky he was because now he had a second daddy. And that wouldn't be so bad, but not Captain Hisel. He was old and he didn't talk to her or play with her the way a second daddy should.

“Ready, honey?” More happy voice.

Sierra jumped. “Almost.” She took the cap off the toothpaste and set it careful on the counter. Sometimes if she wasn't careful the cap rolled onto the floor and once when that happened she couldn't find it again. Then she squeezed out a pea-sized spot on her pink Barbie toothbrush, because before she used to put a whole caterpillar size on but then it would grow inside her mouth and come out the sides. When that happened it usually got on her nightgown, so Mommy said use a pea size.

Thinking about her teeth made her tummy feel a little better. Her toothbrush was the best kind. It had a little motor on it. She put the bristly end in her mouth and pushed the white button. The toothbrush wiggled and jiggled and cleaned every tooth sparkly clean. Sierra spit out the old toothpaste and rinsed out her brush.

She was just looking for one of her dinosaur flossers when Mommy walked in and leaned by the door. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Sierra didn't look up. She found a new flosser, opened it up, and pushed it between her teeth. That way she didn't have to start having the talk with Mommy just yet.

When she was finished, she put everything away, and dried the wet spots off her face. “Okay. I'm ready.”

“Well.” Her mommy lifted her eyebrows high and looked at the sink area. “That's the neatest teeth-brushing job I've ever seen.”

“Thank you.” Sierra stood perfectly still, feet together, and waited. “Can we go to my room now?”

“Sure.” A strange look was in her mommy's eyes. “Everything okay, honey?”

“Yes.” Her tummy did a drop. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. She followed her mommy across the hall and into her own pink bedroom. Then she flopped up on her ruffly bed and let her feet hang over the edge. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Her mommy still sounded happy, even though she looked curious. She sat on the bed too, up near the pillows. She pulled her feet up and hugged her legs. “What's up?”

Sierra turned so she could see her mommy better. “Katy said something weird when we were at her house.”

Right away Mommy got a funny look on her face. “Something weird?”

“Mmhmm.” She nodded. “She told me how come my daddy didn't die in the Twin Towers if he was with her daddy.”

Her mommy's mouth opened, but no words came out. Also her face looked a little whitish. Finally she said, “Well, Sierra, that's a good question.”

Good question
was what Mommy said when she didn't want to give an answer. At least not a quick answer. Sierra made sure her tone was nice. “So what's the answer?”

“That was a very hard time for everyone, honey. Nothing that happened was easy to understand.” Her mommy leaned her head back for a minute. When she looked at Sierra again, her eyes were wet. “God knows exactly when each person will come home to heaven. I guess that's my best answer.”

Sierra tapped her fingers on her leg. Her mommy's words still didn't feel like an answer, really. “So that's why he didn't die when Katy's daddy died?”

“Sierra, why did Katy start talking about that? What brought it up?”

“The helmets.”

This time Mommy looked sickish around her eyes. Her voice got quiet and shocked. “The helmets?”

Her daddy's fire helmet sat on her dresser. It was cleaned off because it got dirty in the fire where Daddy died. It sat right next to the picture of her and Daddy from one of the days after he came home from the hospital. He had bandages on his head, and crutches. The picture was special, just like every picture Sierra had of her daddy. But the helmet was the most specialest thing Sierra owned. Katy had one too.

“That.” Sierra pointed to the helmet. “Katy has one on her dresser too.”

“Yes.” Her mommy made a coughing sound. “That's because Katy's mommy felt the same way I do. That you girls should have the helmets that belonged to your daddies.”

“That's not what I mean.” Sierra shook her head. Her stomach still hurt a little but she was getting frustration inside her. “Katy says they found their helmets at the same time. When they were cleaning up the Twin Towers.”

Her mother looked at her and blinked. Then she leaned close and hugged her for a very long time. When she pulled back, her eyes said very certain that their talk was over. “Sierra, it's too late for this tonight.” She kissed her and gave her butterfly kisses, the way Daddy used to do it. “Let's talk about it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Halloween. And it's Sunday. I'll see Katy at Sunday school and then what if she says that thing again? What am I supposed to say?”

Her mommy looked down and said the quiet words, “Help me, God,” which Sierra did not understand. Why did her mother need God's help to answer one easy question? Next her mommy looked up and said, “Let's have church at the beach tomorrow, Sierra.”

“At the beach?”

“Yes.” Her mommy's chin was shaking a little bit. “You and me by ourselves. We'll go to the same beach where Daddy and I used to take you jet skiing, okay?”

“Won't it be too cold?”

“Probably.” Mommy did a sort-of smile. “We'll wear our sweaters and bring chairs to sit in. Then we can read from the Bible and pray and have a little talk.”

“About the helmets?” Sierra wasn't sure she could wait that long, plus she wanted to tell Katy she was wrong. It wasn't weird at all. But the part about the helmets still didn't make sense.

“Yes, about the helmets.”

“And then go to Katy's dress-up party for dinner?”

“Yes, that too.”

A good feeling came into Sierra's tummy, then. Because even though she had to wait, at least she would know the answer. She wouldn't have any more questions about her daddy or why he didn't die in the Twin Towers or how come Katy said they found his helmet next to her daddy's helmet.

After tomorrow, everything would make sense.

Jamie barely closed the door and made it to her bed before she collapsed to her knees. “God!” The sound was a whisper soaked with anguish and fear and desperation. “I'm not ready for this.”

This time there were no holy messages, no still, small voice assuring her that God was there, standing ready.

Always she had known it would come to this, that someday she would have to explain to Sierra how her father had actually been killed in the terrorist attacks. But now it seemed impossible to say the words, impossible to explain that the man she'd brought orange juice to, the man she'd sat with and sang with and read stories with for three months while he got better, hadn't been her father but a stranger.

In the years since then, Jamie had always figured she'd know when the time was right. But that wasn't really what she'd counted on. The truth was, she hoped she wouldn't have to tell Sierra until she was a teenager, eighteen maybe. That way her daughter wouldn't remember anything but a blur of hazy images from the time in her life when Eric Michaels lived with them.

But now? When she still had the picture of the man on her dresser?

She'd probably looked at it a thousand times in the last three years, and now, tomorrow on the beach, she would have to tell Sierra that the man in the picture wasn't her daddy.

I don't want to tell her, God
… She hung her head.
What's wrong with me? I should've said something a long time ago.

Her knees hurt. She struggled to her feet and fell onto her bed. Her own questions echoed in her heart until an answer started to form. She didn't want to tell Sierra because a part of her still wanted to believe it herself. That was the problem, wasn't it? Those were the three most difficult months of her life, and having Eric Michaels, believing he was Jake, was the only reason she'd survived.

God knew she would've crumbled much like the towers if she'd learned that week that Jake was one of the dead. So instead he brought her a substitute. A Jake look-alike.

Once she knew he wasn't Jake, she had helped him to figure out his identity. After that he'd gone home to his wife and son, but a part of her still held on to the comfort of knowing that she'd had Jake three months longer than Sue had Larry, than any of the other FDNY widows had had their husbands.

Telling Sierra the truth would change that time, alter the memories so that none of them brought comfort. How could they if the man in the memory wasn't Jake but a stranger? If she was forced to paint the situation with truth, those memories would be shocking, abrasive. How could she have mixed them up? What was
wrong
with her that she could sit and talk and eat and laugh with a stranger and all the while think him Jake?

No matter that a part of her wanted to tell Sierra the truth. It was easier the way she'd chosen to deal with it.

For three months she'd had Jake back, almost the way she'd always had him. And then, overnight, he turned into someone else, someone with a family in Los Angeles. Before he found his wife and son, she wished he never would, that somehow she could keep him. Even after she helped him find his family, even at the airport with his wife about to get off a plane and take him home, Jamie wanted to grab his hand and run away with him.

But that would've been wrong. First, because the man belonged with his family; second, because he wasn't Jake.

Even now, it felt like Jake had been with them. Eric had done such a good job of studying Jake's Bible, his journal, that as the weeks passed he actually sounded like Jake and acted like him. He even learned to curl Sierra's hair the same way Jake would've curled it.

He was
like
Jake in every way. But he wasn't Jake.

When Eric Michaels said good-bye, Jamie felt God's peace like never before. She watched him walk away, kept her eyes on him while he went to his wife and hugged her, then Jamie turned around without ever looking back. She had kept her promise and told only Sue and Aaron. The media called often back then, but she shared the story with no one.

Jamie stared at the ceiling. What had she done? Were her efforts to close the door on Eric Michaels so good, she'd forgotten to work through her emotions? She'd broken down when they had his blood tested, the day they realized he wasn't Jake. But her grieving had been over losing Jake, not about believing a stranger was her husband.

She looked at the clock. Nine-forty-five; Sue would still be up. The cordless phone was a few feet away, off the charging unit as usual. Jamie grabbed it and punched in Sue's number.

Her friend answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Sue …” Jamie's throat was thick.

“Jamie?”

“Yes, I … Sue, could you pray for me?”

“What's wrong?” Concern flooded Sue's voice. “You sound upset.”

Jamie's lungs hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled and pushed her fingers into the roots of her hair. “It's been a long day.”

“Weren't you out with Aaron and Sierra?”

“Yes.” Jamie closed her eyes. “That's not the problem.”

Sue waited. “What then?”

“I guess the girls were talking, and Katy told Sierra that rescue workers found both their daddies' helmets at the same time, in the rubble of the Twin Towers.”

“What?” Shock rang in Sue's tone. “Where on earth would she have heard that?”

“I don't know. Maybe she overheard us talking one day, or maybe someone else told her. Anyway, that's not the point. Katy's right; I don't blame her for telling Sierra the truth.”

“Did Sierra ask about it?”

“Yes.” Jamie opened her eyes, sat up, and slipped out of bed. She had nowhere to go so she stood there, unmoving. “She wanted to know why Katy's daddy died in the Twin Towers and her daddy didn't. And then she wanted to know about the helmets.”

“Great.” Sue sighed. “I'm so sorry, Jamie. You don't need this right now.”

“It's okay. I need it sometime and apparently God wants it to be now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Tell her the truth.” Jamie took slow steps toward the tall dresser, the one that had been Jake's. His Bible and journal sat on top, where she could easily find them when she needed to get lost in his heart, his mind, his faith.

“Oh, Jamie, no wonder you want me to pray.”

Tears stung at Jamie's eyes, but she resisted them. She put one hand on Jake's Bible. Beside her, within her, she could feel the Lord watching, standing guard, even though she hadn't heard Him speak to her that night. He was there and He would see her through the next day. “Yes, that's why.”

“I'll be praying the whole day. Call me when you're ready to talk about it, okay?”

“Okay.” Jamie ran her fingers over the Bible's worn leather cover. “Thanks. And who knows. Maybe it'll be the best thing for both of us.”