Heaven Should Fall (14 page)

Chapter 15

Candy

The jungle-camo jacket pulled tight across her brother’s back as he lay in the dirt with his eye up against the AR-15’s iron sight, trying to get a bead on the paper target’s red center. The scuffed bottoms of his boots faced Candy. Their father crouched beside him, rattling off instructions in a voice that had the crack of a rifle in it, so sharply did it cut the air. In response Elias squeezed the grip and the bipod in turn, as if he was milking a cow, or crushing one of the foam stress balls they gave out at the hardware store.

Pop. Pop.
The second one was hesitant.
Pop.
She squinted, tightened her arms across her jacket, prayed for him. They had been here for three hours, in this clearing in the heart of the woods, long after their father’s friends had packed up and gone home. It was their job to run back and forth to the house in search of additional ammo, beer, gun-cleaning equipment, bags of corn chips or whatever else their father might order. In between, Candy drew letters in the dust, quizzing Elias on his alphabet. He was only in the first grade; she was in the third. When he grew tired of that she placed acorn caps and bits of gravel in each of his palms and asked him to find the sums. It gave her a good feeling to teach him this way, a tender and grown-up feeling, and sometimes when he got an answer right she felt the urge to pull him into her arms and rock him like a baby doll. But he would never tolerate that.

It had been all right until their father called Elias over to try his hand at the AR-15—calculated, Candy could see, to show off for their friends—and Elias had missed every shot at the target. Their dad, inspired by three or four beers’ worth of overconfidence, had been embarrassed by his son’s incompetence, his forgetfulness about even the most basic elements of loading and handling a rifle. The failure had won Elias an hour of remedial training, and their father’s frustration escalated with every missed shot.

“No,” he said, incredulous. “No, no and no. Why’s your hand shaking? Stop that. Just
look.
It’s
red.
Just line ’em up.”

Pop.

Candy winced. Their father’s arm flew out at Elias, attempting to cuff him on the side of the head, but he dodged it. Quickly he made a second grab, this time for the back of Elias’s jacket, which bunched up like the neck of a kitten. Without letting go, he cupped his other big hand around the back of Elias’s head and, with a steady, deliberate rhythm, knocked his forehead into the leveled stump on which the rifle rested.

“What’s rule one.”

“Point it in a safe direction.”

“What’s rule two.”

“Finger off the trigger.”

“What’s rule three.”

“Know what you’re shooting at.”

“Then why don’t you, you worthless fucking turd.”

He dropped his clutch of jacket and Elias slumped against the ground. After a moment Candy skittered over, gathering up a clinking armful of empties to be sure she looked useful, and ushered Elias out of the woods. Their father ignored them, staying behind, unloading his rifle alone.

Once home, Elias clunked straight up the stairs and climbed into bed. Candy followed at half his pace. His bedroom door creaked a little on its hinges when she pushed it open, but his closed eyelids didn’t flutter. He only curled into a harder ball beneath the blanket, like a potato bug showered with light. Above the blanket, the bridge of his nose and his forehead were sheeted with the pale brown grit of the clearing.

She stepped into the room and softly shut the door behind her. Without even removing her shoes, she climbed into bed behind him. She draped a hesitant hand against his shoulder; then, when he didn’t move, she wrapped her arm across his chest. His solid body beneath the blanket was radiant and warm. Carefully she rested her forehead against the bristled back of his head. She could feel her own humid breath double back to her as it hit his neck. His heartbeat against her wrist seemed to stoke the furnace of his body, pushing out heat and more heat, unrelenting and as constant as a star. The regret she felt for him, enormous though it was, had no good word, no solid shape. It was only a reaching out, a formless but abject remorse. She would stay with him until he awoke. Only through her steadfastness would he know the depth of her loyalty, her alignment with him.

In the cocoon of her brother’s warmth, she fell asleep.

She was awakened by a steel grip at the back of her dress, pulling its collar tight against her throat, jerking her puppetlike from the bed. She knew it was her father, and so she gritted her teeth and held down the impulse to scream. He was shouting,
You leave him alone, you don’t coddle him, he doesn’t need you.
Her shin scraped the edge of the bed, but then she was on her feet, stumbling backward, tugging the lace of her collar away from her neck. Elias’s eyes were wide open, but he hadn’t moved.

“You get down there and you help your mother with the dishes,” her father shouted.

“He was just asleep,” she said, her voice low and shaking, pleading in its tones for calm. “Already asleep.”

His large rough hand hustled her out the door. Downstairs in the kitchen she could hear his ragged shouting, his voice coming through the ceiling like sound through water, all vowels. She pictured the earnest effort on her brother’s face earlier as she drew letters in the dust:
A. O. E for Eli.
As she floated the plates in the hot water beneath a tower of brittle suds, she remembered how snug his warmth had been beneath the woven blanket, how her arm across his chest made her feel like she could lash them together like the logs of a raft, keeping them adrift until it was over.

Chapter 16

Leela

Things between me and Candy weren’t always so strained. There was a range of time—between when she was ten and thirteen years old, say—that I thought she might turn out like a regular daughter anyway. She grew real interested in homemaking arts around that age, wanting me to teach her sewing and how to make peach pies and such. It felt a little like a game, but I went along with it. For a while she had a hutch of rabbits in the backyard, white ones, and the babies came out so tiny and sweet you couldn’t help but love them like they were kittens. But then Eddy said they weren’t worth keeping unless we used them for food, and then once a week or so Candy’d go out back with Eddy’s .22 pistol and shoot a few for supper. I’ve lived on a farm all my life, and still I couldn’t stand the sight of her skinning those things on the counter. They were the same little creatures she’d been loving on just the day before. I couldn’t abide it, so they had to go.

Back then we still got along fine with Randy, and we all spent time together often. Randy’s wife, Lucia, she was in my kitchen three or four days a week, and we traded and lent and borrowed things like our two houses were really one, just broke in half and dropped ten miles apart. She had her two little girls then and they tagged along everywhere with her, bobbing along with their pigtails and their dresses made from the same fabric as hers. I had to work not to envy her. Candy was getting ready to turn twelve, and I was feeling the loss of her childhood. Lucia’s daughters were just toddlers then and I kept thinking she still had all those years ahead with them, all that potential for happy memories, and here she was pregnant with the next one, too. But this is just exactly why the Lord tells us not to covet things, not once but twice. Because envy will eat at your soul if you let it, and it’ll take you to a place inside yourself where you’ll have the things of this world at whatever cost. So I tried to push it all down deep, because the truth is when I tried to give it up to the Lord, it seemed like even He didn’t want it.

One afternoon, when Lucia was sitting at my kitchen table drinking herb tea as we watched Cade chase her little girls around in the backyard, I let it slip a little bit. I said, “Even though he’s almost seven years old, sometimes I think about having one more. Don’t know if I’m ready to say goodbye to those baby days just yet.”

And she said, “I wouldn’t with Eddy.”

Well, I just stared at her then. There she sat with her hand on her mama belly, with all her long hair swept back just so, that mug of lemony tea in her other hand. She was watching her girls, and looked so much at peace. And yet that statement had just come matter-of-factly right out of her mouth. I said, “I beg your pardon.”

She shrugged her shoulders and kept watching her girls a minute. Then she turned her eyes on me, and I steeled myself inside, because I knew Lucia was one to say what she was thinking when she looked like that. She said, “If Eddy were my kids’ father, the way he’s been acting, I wouldn’t want to bear another one of his. I’d just say no thank you. Because you know what, Leela—and don’t you look at me that way, because I’m telling you the truth. The Lord commands us to raise them up in righteousness. And there’s no point in bringing them down from heaven in the first place if that’s a covenant you can’t keep.”

I said, “I think you ought to be leaving now.”

“Oh, it’s no reflection on you,” she said. “But something’s gone dark inside that man and you know it. It seems like he’s always grinding on the edge of that temper like a blade. You didn’t do anything to deserve that, and I’ll tell you what, neither did Elias. Randy said next time he sees his brother pin that boy against the wall, it’s going to be the last time.”

I stood up, and once I did, she pulled herself up, too. “Well, I guess I’ll fetch my girls,” she said.

After that I didn’t say one more word to her. I didn’t have the kind of words inside me that could talk about those kind of feelings. I’m not a violent person in any way, but as soon as she walked out the door I felt like kicking it and slamming on it with both fists. All I had inside me was a scream, and it seemed to fill me up like a tongue of flame. I was made of rage. I don’t think I really understood until then why we need redemption. I knew why we need strength from the Lord, sure, and his help in carrying our burdens. But it wasn’t until right then that I could understand how even a good-hearted person, a God-fearing person, could break every commandment in her heart, shatter them all like a mirror falling off a wall.

I never told Eddy what she said. He saw I had a cold shoulder for Lucia after that, but he chalked it up to women’s bickering. It was a few months later that I found out I was expecting again, and I took that news with joy, even as a small part of me guarded itself a little. I could feel that baby’s spirit hovering around me, and I knew who she was. It was different from with Candy. I remembered this spirit from the first time, with Eve, like when a good friend walks up behind you and without even looking you know who’s standing there. It was a welcoming feeling, as if inside my heart I was saying,
Oh, hello there.

You know, I remember, when I was a child, how some mornings my mother would pull up the shade as she was waking me for chores, and I’d turn and see the light so bright that I had turn back to face the wall. And other times, when it was pig-slaughtering season, I’d watch them string up the hog, but once they slashed it open I’d grimace and look at my father instead. And this was one of those things. When I woke up one morning and found my sheet thick with blood, my heart couldn’t bear to look upon it. Instead I just pictured Lucia, sitting there filled up with her son and all her sanctimony, telling me why I didn’t deserve to bring down another soul from heaven, or to give a second chance to the one I’d lost the first time. Why my family wasn’t good enough for Eve.

A lot of women might pat my hand over that, and say, oh, Leela, those are the thoughts of a grieving mother. You’ll be forgiven of all that anger. But if you want to know the truth of it, I don’t want that forgiveness so much as I want an answer to my question. If the Lord wants to grant us our righteous desires, then I want to know why he kept taking her back from me. Because you can’t fault a woman for the man she married. God knows we go in with the best of intentions. I think Lucia was wrong about that, and if she wasn’t, well, the Lord and I have some things we need to work over. I can take on the burdens of my children’s failings, but not those of my man. It’s too much to ask, and I don’t say that too often.

Chapter 17

Jill

My due date was three weeks away. I could hardly eat a thing anymore, with my stomach crowded out by the baby; also, I got winded easily, and my bladder had been shoved aside to make room for somebody’s head. I got up two or three times every night to pee, and that might not have been so bad except that the August heat—tolerable during the day, this being New Hampshire—seemed to settle over our bedroom at night. This made falling back to sleep an arduous task. We slept with our door closed, for privacy, and our windows open, for circulation, but it did little good.

And so, after using the bathroom one night, I trekked down the stairs to sleep on the sofa, where the air was cooler and Cade’s warm body would not be beside me. As I arranged the pillows I noticed an unusual sight over in the addition: Elias was awake, sitting in his old chair just the way he used to. I walked over to where he sat and said, “Hey. You all right?”

He grunted a yes and didn’t look away from the television.

“Haven’t seen you up at night in a long time.”

“No.” He exhaled a cloud of smoke and glanced at me. “I didn’t take my meds today.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” He seemed to toy with leaving that as his only answer, then spoke again. “I’ve been taking more than I’m supposed to.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m an idiot. When my leg starts to hurt I always pile on the Tylenol, you know—like, ‘kill it with fire,’ and it takes the edge off in no time. That doesn’t work so great with Xanax. And then you run low, and guess what? You got two weeks before you’re allowed to refill.” He sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I ought to know better.”

My heart ached for him, but I knew he would be ashamed for me to make a show of it. I nodded. “I’ll make you another appointment, okay? I’ll see what I can do to get a sooner one this time. They must have
some
way to fast-track them.”

A dullness descended over his gaze. “No. I don’t need people making special exceptions for me like I’m a friggin’ invalid. I’ll work it out. I’ll probably take one in an hour or two so I can get some sleep. Right now I’m just trying to remind my body who’s boss.”

I hesitated, but then reached out and stroked his forehead. It was beaded with sweat. “I’m sorry, Elias,” I said.

“Fuck, don’t be sorry for me. Jesus, Jill. You know that’s the last thing I want to hear anybody say.” He laid his head back against the chair and allowed me to stroke the sweat back from his forehead, massage his scalp with my fingertips. “This sucks,” he said. “I wish I’d stayed on the other stuff.”

“I’ll take you back to the doctor. They’ll straighten it out.”

“No. I’m starting to feel like a goddamn science fair project. Forget that. I’m just gonna get myself off this stuff and go back to what I know. It’s not worth it.”

“There’s got to be something that’ll work better than what you had before.”

“I don’t even care. I can live with that. I just don’t want to be like this.”

I rubbed his shoulders reassuringly, but when he didn’t lean forward as he normally did, I ran my hands down to his arms and kneaded the muscles there. “I love it when you do that,” he said. Then he laughed a little and said, “I totally fucking hate it.”

My hands froze in place, then retreated. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t stop.
God.
”

I began again, but hesitantly, feeling the sudden rangy energy his body was putting forth. He tolerated it for a few moments, then threw my hands off with a flail of his arms that was almost violent.

I took two steps back. He rose from the chair and walked around it to the refrigerator, retrieving a beer from the produce drawer. As he cracked it open and drank, I watched him from a distance. He wore a T-shirt that was large even for him, shorts that hit below his knees and, despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, a pair of battered running shoes. Elias was never without shoes. He slept in his sneakers. Now, for the first time since I had moved in, he looked as though he might need them to escape the house.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, my timing awkward, my voice small. “You can be hard to read, Eli.”

“I know it.” He sounded calm and ordinary. The refrigerator door closed, and the kitchen went dark again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just bugged out about the medicine.”

“We’ll take care of that next week, okay? Or as soon as we can get you in to the doctor, anyway.”

He leaned back against the kitchen island. “I’ll figure it out. Are you headed back to bed?”

“Sort of. I came down to sleep on the sofa. It’s too hot up there. Right now I’m so tired I’m dizzy.”

He set down his beer and held out his arms. It was the first time he had ever done that. I walked into the hug, and despite the complication of my giant belly, he found a way to pull me close with his arms around my shoulders. The bulk of him was too much for my arms to encircle, but I did the best I could. When he buried his face in my hair, his bristly crew cut scratched my cheek.

“It’s good you’re here, Jill,” he said.

I nodded, but I felt so exhausted and light-headed I couldn’t really reply. Unsteadily in the dark, I made my way over to the sofa and curled up on my side beneath the lightest afghan. In the cool and the white noise I fell asleep quickly. And then—I don’t know quite how much later—I was vaguely aware of Elias’s shadow passing over me, leaning in. Somewhere in the core of my mind I recognized the weight of his steps against the floor, the scent of his body. But that was all, until I vaguely heard the vibrato of someone yelling in the distance, over and over, and I could not tell whether it was Cade or Elias because the voice carried the pure raspy note of the Olmstead men, the common song of all of them, the one my son would sing someday.