Stepping Into Sunlight (18 page)

Then I ventured out to the back steps to watch Bryan. Laura-Beth was in her yard, hanging up white T-shirts and Ray’s immense boxers. Not the scenic view I longed for.

Her eyes were sharper than I’d realized, because when she turned from clipping some tube socks to the line, she spotted me.

“Howdy, neighbor!” Clothespins spewed from her mouth and she beelined for our fence.

I hoisted myself up and walked over to meet her. “Is your dryer broken?”

She laughed. “Why run the
eee
-lectricity when the sun can do the work? I noticed you don’t hang out your laundry.”

I looked at our yard. “I guess we don’t have a clothes pole.”

She squinted. “Well, if that don’t beat all. Never noticed before. Too bad you didn’t catch that before you bought the house. Well, I guess you can string something between the house and your tree. That’d do ya.”

Sure. I’d get right on that. I’d love to give the neighbors a show of my unmentionables.

“So, I saw you down to the corner when I was driving back from the Kmart with the twins. At the bus stop. Is your car broke?”

I didn’t want to explain my project to Laura-Beth. “No, I was just . . . sitting there for a while.”

She twisted her mound of frowzy hair into a knot and clipped it with a clothespin. “Well now, I hope you don’t mind some advice . . .”

I’d lost count of how many of her conversations opened with that line.

“You wanna be careful. We have a lot of crime around here. You know what I mean?”

Laura-Beth waved and headed back to her laundry basket. The words she’d said swirled around my head—an incantation to conjure memories. Bloodshot eyes. A voice snarling and spitting curses. Tense angles on a frenzied face under a baseball cap.

I raced into the house to splash cold water on my face. My hands paused under the flow of liquid, and I studied them. My fingers didn’t look very different from those that had clenched the gun: slender, with pale skin and chewed nails. I couldn’t dismiss him as an aberration. Whatever he’d done, he had been a human. As much as I tried to define his actions as animalistic, the fact remained he was once a little boy like Bryan. He’d drawn pictures of dragons and knights and built castles of Legos. He’d kicked a soccer ball around a backyard. One day he’d shot two people, tried to kill me, and then run into the sunny afternoon.

Sadness poured over me. I let myself feel the despair. Dr. Marci had encouraged me to stop shutting down my thoughts. She said that as emotions were stirred up, I should feel them, process them, and come to terms with them.

But they were as unwelcome as my meddlesome neighbor. Still, I opened the door and invited them to stay for tea. I agreed with them that the crime was a horrible, tragic example of what people were capable of. And slowly, the feelings thanked me for the sandwiches and took their leave.

The timer on the stove beeped loudly.

Maybe Laura-Beth’s culinary suggestions were more helpful than her warnings about the dangers of our neighborhood.

Bryan, ears always tuned for the sound of imminent food, barreled into the house. While he washed up, I lifted the casserole from the oven and set it on the kitchen table.

The orange-tinted lump didn’t look at all like the picture on the box. I poked it with a fork, and the tines couldn’t pierce it. Bryan had been right. Apparently grits were the same thing used to make concrete driveways.

Hi, Tom-o-my-heart,

It was wonderful hearing your voice today. I played the message
again and again. Sorry I wasn’t home. I was out for a walk. I’ve been
experimenting with southern cooking, so I’ll have some new recipes
for you to try when you get home. But tonight Bryan and I decided to
keep it simple and have bologna sandwiches. I’m glad you got your sea
legs right away. I was wondering how well you’d be able to preach the
Gospel while doubled over the rail. LOL! Are you ever . . . scared? Yes,
yes. I know we are always in God’s hands. But I just wondered. Do you
ever worry when the ship heads into hostile waters?

Come home soon. I need you to take your turn at tucking in
Bryan. Tonight he begged for
Hop on Pop
, and my tongue still hasn’t
untangled. We finished up with some of the
Rootabaga Stories
, since
those are your favorite.

I watched the first two messages again today. They helped a lot.
But then the disc locked up. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I pushed all the
right buttons, and even cleaned the thing. If I don’t get it to play, you’ll
have to call again and tell me what you said, okay?

Remember your promise. You ARE coming home safe, aren’t
you?

Two million hugs, Pen

chapter
15

I
N SPITE OF MY
failure with the grits, I woke on Friday with a distant star of optimism flickering in my heart. During the past week I’d begun to join the human race again—the support group, the worship service at the mission, my small good deeds that forced interaction with people. And nightmares had only woken me twice last night. A huge improvement.

I pulled on a crisp blouse and my best jeans, fastened my hair back with a shiny barrette, and even touched some mascara to my lashes.

“How come you’re all dressed up?” Bryan asked, digging into his instant oatmeal.

“I thought I’d drive you in to school today and chat with your teacher a little.”

His eyebrows disappeared under his mop of bangs. “Am I in trouble?”

“Should you be?” I hid a smile.

He reached for the jam. “The gum in Chelsea’s hair was Aidan’s fault, not mine.”

I glanced at my watch. Too bad I didn’t have time to pull a few more interesting tidbits from my son. “I’ve been exchanging messages with your teacher, and I thought it would be a good idea to touch base. And I feel up to it today.”

An inner debate played across his face. Hooray, Mom was acting like a mom again. On the other hand, it was safer when moms and teachers didn’t collude. He decided on a grin. “Then she can give you the stuff about the play.”

Some of my confidence fled. I swallowed the last of my coffee and stood. “Let’s go, buddy. And tell me more about the gum in Chelsea’s hair.”

The squat grade school right-angled a generous playground full of sand and climbing equipment, while green wedges of landscaping marked off the parking lot and softened the line of the chain-link fence behind the property. Children in sweatshirts and jackets rocketed skyward on swings, whooped along a sliding bar, and raced around the curly slide and suspension bridge.

“Here, Mom. I’ll meet you inside.” Bryan tossed me his backpack and raced to a geodesic jungle gym.

I locked the car and hitched his bag onto my shoulders. What did they put into these heavy textbooks for second graders anyway? I’d have to ask Mrs. Pimblott.

I stared at the red doors. Another mom with a pigtailed daughter edged past me and hurried inside. Smoke billowed from a stack on the roof, as if the building were a tiny factory, pumping out educated children. I took a few deep breaths and smelled the ravioli on the menu for the day’s school lunch.

I’d felt the tug of anxiety when I left the house. Using tips from Dr. Marci, I had acknowledged the fear and moved forward anyway. Getting into the car had been another battle, but I’d pushed through. Now I stared at the noisy, chaotic building full of people. Could I walk inside? I took two more steps.

“Look, Mom!” Bryan’s voice carried over the other shouts and giggles from the playground.

I turned to find him. He hung upside down, his knees barely hooking him over the rail at the top of the dome. Inside the metal form, he dangled far too high above the packed sand. His hair swung down toward the hard ground beneath him. My throat constricted.

“Bryan! Get down!”

Too late. His stubby legs slipped. The heel of one tennis shoe grabbed at the bar for a second but then gave up. He hit the ground headfirst with a dull thump, his body splayed in a broken shape.

“No!” I dropped his backpack and sprinted to the jungle gym. I dodged around a boy in my path.

Bryan sat up and rubbed his forehead. “Did ya see that?”

I plunged through the tangle of metal bars. My rational eyes saw him stand up and laugh. My irrational mind only saw my past nightmare. The boy in a green shirt falling and not moving. The pool of blood.

“Bryan!” The only word that I could choke out. I grabbed for him.

A bell rang, and he wriggled away. “Where’s my pack?”

I pointed toward the red door, but my hand trembled. I tried to snatch him back, but he ran off, oblivious to the creature descending on me. The other children disappeared as well, funneled into the door. My whole body shook on the sifting sand beneath me.

He could have been killed. People die every day. The world isn’t
safe.

The threat pierced my skull like talons and screamed into my brain.

Need to get home. Get away. Run.

I stumbled through the sand and toward the parking lot, my hands groping for the car as if I were blind. I yanked the driver’s side door open and leapt inside. The click of the lock gave me a couple seconds of security. I panted a few desperate breaths and started the car.

Somehow I found my way home, raced inside, and bolted the door. As I leaned against the front door, my rasping breaths quieted. I was home now. Safe. But the silence was heavy with menace.

Floorboards creaked from the direction of the kitchen. The house settling.

A chill blew across the back of my neck. What if he’d found me? The boy with the gun?

Hide. Hide.

I ran to the bedroom and locked the door behind me.

A branch scraped the siding beneath the window. Just the wind. Or was someone out there? The furnace kicked in with a wheeze. The ductwork rattled with the footsteps of dozens of nightmares advancing. Every sound held a threat.

I cast my gaze around. The open closet offered refuge. I wedged myself inside and closed the door behind me. I curled tight, shrank, pressed my back against the corner.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.

Wait it out. You’ve been here before. It’ll pass
.

Some remnant of sanity coached me like a gentle doula, helping me through this brutal contraction. If only I could believe these panic attacks would eventually end.

Heat and cold played tag through my body. My stomach roiled. I curled tighter to try to contain the shakes.

The world tilted in strange directions. I rode out the dizziness minute by minute, a miserable carnival ride that wouldn’t end. How many minutes were passing? Or was it hours? Days? Slowly the floor leveled out. I leaned against the closet wall and drew slow, trembling breaths. Rational thought crept back gradually, along with the devastating knowledge that I’d failed again.

“All these years I thought I had strong faith, but a test comes and I crumble. I never knew I was so weak. What’s wrong with me?” The nearby terry-cloth bathrobe muffled my raspy whisper.

My self-loathing gave way to a stab of anger. After all, God made the universe spin. Now He was letting it swirl out of control. Didn’t He see what was happening to me? Didn’t He care? Hugging my knees, in the dark, I found my voice.

“Sure,” I croaked through my dry throat. “You spared my life. I’m supposed to be grateful. But you could have saved their lives, too. You didn’t.

“Why, God?” A levee in my heart burst apart. I was shouting now. “Why? Why couldn’t the gun have jammed the first time he squeezed the trigger? Why couldn’t he have picked a different Quick Corner? Why couldn’t you have let me slip away and call for help? None of this had to happen!”

My fury opened the spigot on all my pain. Sobs poured as I spat the words. “And why isn’t my mind strong enough to sail past this? Aren’t you supposed to protect the minds and hearts of your children?

“What about Alex? How can you issue commands about how we’re supposed to live, but then take away someone’s mind so they can’t? Is that fair? Is it?”

My chest heaved. “Which is it? Are you that cruel? Or are you loving but helpless? You wish the bad things didn’t happen, but you can’t do anything about them? I don’t know which I’d rather believe.”

As my anger surged outward in waves, the bedrock fear in my soul finally emerged like a beach at low tide. “If you’re cruel or if you’re weak,” I whispered, “then I have no guarantee. My mind could completely fracture. Like his.”

That was it. The fear that had lurked in my heart for twenty years. I hugged my knees more tightly. How would God respond? A crack of angry thunder? A bolt of inspired wisdom that would explain everything? An angel to touch the jagged stone in my chest and melt it away?

Nothing happened.

I cried until the last of the churning emotions flowed out to sea, and exhaustion brought quiet to my heart.

In the stillness, a warm thickness gathered in the air. Cynics would say the closet simply grew stuffy. But it was more. God drew near. Unimaginable tenderness gathered me, cradled me, murmured that I wasn’t alone. And into my thoughts came the memory of a story I’d heard on the radio years earlier.

A researcher had studied Alzheimer’s in various groups. He was especially interested in a Minnesota convent—a closed population that could be interviewed over time. During the course of his work, he interviewed a nun who had been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s. He asked her about her fears . . . since she knew what was ahead. “My greatest fear is that I will forget my Jesus.” She had smiled through tears. “But even if that happens, I know my Jesus will never forget me.”

Today her words flowed gently over my soul. The incoming tide was soft and clean, not like the churning waves that had poured out of me. I’d never raised my deepest questions with God back when Alex’s mind fragmented all those years ago.

Now they all lay at His feet, along with my hurt, shame, and fear about the shooting. I crawled from the closet and eased upright. My bones felt lighter.