The Heaven Trilogy (103 page)

Joey looked at her, a puzzled look on his face.

She turned to him and smiled. “You will understand soon enough. Now we should pray that our Father will visit Janjic.” Then she walked into the cottage.

HELEN TOLD herself that her decision to go was for Jan’s sake. She told herself that a hundred times.

As a matter of fact, it had been her first thought. That first seed that had taken root in her mind.
Maybe you can talk some sense into him. Maybe Glenn will listen to you.
That had been around noon, before she really had time to mull the possibilities through her mind.

By midafternoon her thoughts had become as stormy as the skies rumbling overhead. No matter how strenuously she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew then that she actually wanted to go back. That she
had
to go back. And not just to tell Glenn that he was being a baby about this whole mess, but because butterflies were flapping wildly in her stomach and her throat was craving a taste.

By late afternoon a perpetual tremor rode her bones. The possibility of pleasure had taken up residence and was growing at an obscene rate. Her reason began to leave her at four. Questions like,
How could you even think of doing this again?
or
Who in God’s name would stoop so low?
became vague oddities, worth noting, but hardly worth considering. At five her reason was totally gone. She stopped trying to convince herself of anything and began planning her escape.

The fact that Joey left the keys in the yellow Pinto made leaving that much easier. She would have the car back before they knew it was missing. Ivena was off talking to Joey in the garden about some new species of rose; they wouldn’t know if a meteor struck the house.

By the time Helen pulled into the underground parking structure at the Towers, she was sweating. She very nearly turned the car around then in a last-minute flash of sense. But she didn’t. She stepped onto the concrete and suddenly she was desperate to be upstairs, high on the thirtieth floor.

To tell Glenn what a baby he was being about this whole mess, of course.

Just that. Just to step in for Jan and call the pig off Ivena and save the day. And to take a tiny snort. Or maybe two snorts.

JAN CLIPPED his foot on a small shrub rounding a corner and sprawled face first to the cool sod. He lay there numb for a few moments. Then it all gushed out of him in uncontrollable sobs. He lay there and shook and wet the grass with his tears.

Time seemed to lose itself, but at some point Jan hauled himself from the ground and settled into a heavily flowered gazebo. Thunder continued to rumble, but farther away now.

Jan slumped on the gazebo bench and stared at the black shapes of bushes lining the lawn before him like tombstones. Slowly his mind pieced together his predicament. He was hiding from the police, but that was the least of it. The price his imprudence would extract from him would be relatively small compared to what he’d lost with Helen’s leaving.

The rug was being pulled from beneath his feet, he thought.
The Dance of the Dead
was finding its death. And not mercifully, but with savage brutality. Karen was right: Everything would change if they canceled the movie. The ministry, his notoriety, the castle he was building for his bride. It would all be snatched away— leaving him with what?

His bride.

Ha!

His bride! Jan trembled with fury in the small shelter. For the first time since entering the garden he spoke aloud.

“Father, I want you to take this from me. I cannot live with this!” His voice came in a soft growl and then grew in volume. “You hear me? I hate this! Take her from me. I beg you. You have given me a curse. She’s a curse.”

“Good evening.”

Jan jerked upright at the voice. A man stood in the moonlight, leaning against the gazebo’s arch.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Jan ran a hand across his eyes to clear his vision. Here was a man, tall and blond, smiling as if meeting another person after dark in this garden was an everyday occurrence.

“Who . . . who are you?” Jan asked. “The garden’s closed.”

“No. I mean yes, the garden is closed. But I’m not anyone to be afraid of. And if you don’t mind my asking, how did you get in?”

“My friend is the gardener. He let me in.”

“Joey?” The man chuckled. “Good old Joey. So what brings you here so late at night? And looking so forlorn.”

Jan stood. Who did this man think he was, questioning him like this? “I guess I could ask the same of you. Do you have permission to be here?”

“But of course. I have come to speak with you.”

“You have?”

“Do you still love her, Jan?”

Jan’s heart quickened. “How do you know my name? Who sent you?”

“Please. Who I am isn’t important. My question is, Do you still love her?”

“Who?”

“Helen.”

There it was then. Helen. “And what do you know about Helen?”

“I know that she is no more extraordinary and no less ordinary than every man. Every woman,” the man said.

The answer sounded absurd and it made Jan wonder again who he could be, knowing Helen and Joey and speaking so craftily. “Then you don’t know Helen. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

“Tell me why she is so different.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” Jan paused. Then he gave the man his answer. “She’s stolen my heart.”

The man smiled. “Well, then that would make her extraordinary. And what makes her less?”

“She has broken my heart.”

“Does she love you?”

“Well, now that’s the big question, isn’t it? Yes, she loves me. No, she hates me. Which side of her mouth would you like the answer to come from? The side that whispers in my ear late at night or the side that licks from Glenn’s hand?”

The man suddenly grew very still. The smile that had curved his lips flattened. “Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it?” He swallowed—Jan saw it because the moon had broken through the clouds and now lighted one side of a chiseled face. His Adam’s apple bobbed. The man turned to face the shadows, and lifted a finger to his chin. The anger in Jan’s heart faded.

The stranger cleared his throat. “It does hurt. I won’t dispute you.” He faced Jan again and spoke with some force. “That doesn’t make her more or less extraordinary, my friend. She is predictably common in her treachery. So utterly predictable.”

Jan blinked, unable to respond.

“But how you respond to her, now that could be far less common.” The man’s words hung on a delicate string. “You could love her.”

“I do love her.”

“You do love her, do you? Really love her?”

“Yes. You have no idea how I have loved her.”

“No? She is desperate for your love.”

“She cannot even
accept
my love!”

“No, she can’t. Not yet. And that’s why she’s so desperate for it.”

Jan paused, removing his gaze from the man. “This is absurd, I don’t even know you. Now you expect to engage me about this madness without telling me who you are? What gives you that right?”

“Ivena once said that God has grafted his love for Helen into your heart. Do you believe that?”

“And how do you know what Ivena has told me?”

“I know Ivena well. Do you believe what she said?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I no longer know.”

“Still, you must have an opinion on the matter. Was Ivena mistaken?”

“No. No, she was not mistaken. It started that way, but it doesn’t mean I still have any part of God’s heart. A man can only live with so much.”

“A man can only
live
with so much. True enough. At some point he will have to
die
for something. If not now, then for an eternity.”

Jan stilled at the words, surprised. How much truth was in those few words?
At some point he will have to die for something
. They could easily be from his own book, and yet spoken here by this stranger they sounded . . . magical.

“I love her, yes,” Jan said, and a lump rose to his throat. “But she does not love me. And I’m afraid she will never love me. It’s too much. Now I feel nothing but regret.”

The stranger did not move. “Do you know that even the Creator was filled with regret? It’s not such an unusual sentiment. He was sorry he’d ever made man, and in fact he sent a flood to destroy them. A million men and women and children suffocated under water. Your frustration is not so unique. Perhaps you are feeling what he felt.”

“You’re saying that God felt this anger? It certainly doesn’t seem to fit with this love he gave me.”

“You are made in his image, aren’t you? You think he’s beyond anger? The emotions of rejection are a powerful sentiment, Jan. God or man. And yet still he died willingly, despite the rejection. As did the priest and Nadia. As will others. So perhaps it’s time for you to die.”

“Die? How would I die?”

“Forgive. Love her without condition. Climb up on your cross, my friend. Unless a seed fall to the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit. Somehow the church has forgotten the Master’s teachings.”

A buzz droned through Jan’s mind. They were his own words thrown back into his face. “The teaching’s figurative,” he argued.

“Is the death of the will any less painful than the death of the body? Call it figurative if it makes you comfortable, but in reality the death of the will is far more traumatic than the death of the body.”

“Yes. Yes, you are right. In the death of the body the nerve endings soon stop feeling. In the death of the will the heart doesn’t stop its bleeding so quickly. Those were my own words.”

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten,” the man said. “Now you’re tasting that same death.”

“
She
is causing my death. Helen is forcing me to die,” Jan said.

“No more than you have caused the death of Christ. Yet he loved you no less.” A wide smile spread across the stranger’s face and the moonlight glinted off his eyes. “But the fruits of love are worth death, my friend. A thousand deaths.”

“The fruits?”

“Joy. But for the joy set before him, Christ endured the Cross. Unspeakable joy. A million angels kissing one’s feet could not compare to the rapture found in the tender words of one human.”

Jan swallowed. This stranger would know, he thought, although he wasn’t sure why. He stood and paced the floor of the gazebo, thinking of these words. He turned his back to the man and stared out at the round white moon. The man was no ordinary friend of Ivena, surely. Not with this insight.

The edge is gone from my pain already
, he thought.
I have spoken to this man for no more than a few minutes and my heart is feeling hope again
.

“And what of Helen?” Jan asked without looking back. “How will she learn to love? She must
die?”

It was a backward way of looking at the universe, he thought. He’d always understood the place of death, as it related to life. A seed must fall to the ground and die before giving life to the tree. But he’d never associated death with
love
. Yet it was in love—in the death of self required by love—that it made the clearest sense. The man hadn’t answered his question.

“You’re saying that she too”—he turned to the man—“must find—”

He caught himself mid-sentence. The man was gone. Jan spun around, found no one and stepped from the gazebo. The stranger was not in sight! He had said his piece and then left.

Jan called into the night, “Hello. Is anybody there? Hello.” But the garden remained still except for his own voice.

The stranger’s words echoed through his mind.
She is desperate for your love
.

What was he doing? His whole life—all of eternity—seemed to be in the balance for this one woman. For Helen. And he had all but cursed her.
Oh, dear Helen. Forgive me!

Jan tore for the path and angled for the east wall that hid Joey’s cottage. A panic fluttered through his stomach.

Oh, Father, forgive me!

THE PINTO was still missing when Jan burst through the hedge. He slid to a stop on the gravel, his heart thumping in his chest. She had come back and left already, perhaps.

He bounded up the cottage steps and flung the door open. A dim lamp glowed by the single rattan chair, casting light over Ivena’s face.

“She hasn’t come yet, Janjic.” She’d been crying, he could hear it in her voice. Ivena walked toward him without waiting for him to close the door. She placed her arms around him and laid her head against his chest. “I am sorry, dear. I am very sorry.”

Jan put his hand on her head. “So am I, Ivena. But we aren’t finished. There’s more to this story. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?”

“Yes.” Ivena stepped back and sniffed. “I have been praying for your understanding, Janjic.”

He stepped into the cottage and closed the door. “And God has answered your prayer.”

She smiled. “Then I will retire now.”

“And I will wait for her.”

Ivena and Joey each slept in the bedrooms, leaving the living room to Jan, a gracious gesture considering the circumstances. The night rested eerily quiet. Crickets chirped in the forest, but no traffic sounds reached the cottage. Jan suddenly felt a return of the pain that had flooded his bones earlier. He sank to his knees by the amber lamp, feeling destitute.

What if Helen did not return? Silence rang in his ears, high-pitched and piercing. He gripped his hands into fists. How could the stranger in the garden possibly know of this dread that rushed through his veins? It was death. His heart was being torn to shreds by a death no less real than Father Micheal’s. At least the priest had gone to the grave with a smile.

He gritted his teeth, biting back a shaft of fury.

No, Janjic. If you die, it will be for love.

I am dying for love and it is killing me.
He should brand that on his forehead. He slumped to his haunches, overcome by grief. The night blurred in his vision.

For a long time Jan knelt like a lump of clay, feeling lifeless. He got up once and poured himself a glass of tea, but he left it full on the counter after a single sip. He walked to the fireplace and slid along the wall to his seat.