The Wisdom of Evil (2 page)

C
hapter 2

There were a finite number of pinnacle events in one’s life. Glory found joy to be but a fleeting emotion. It just didn’t last. Intimacy had not come easily for her. Physical intimacy didn’t last either. But real intimacy, the kind she could only even hope for with Michael, was more difficult.

Ah, but
grief
, this was the one emotion that truly opened the door to the soul. The pain of grieving was a character shaping emotion. It separated the weak from the strong, but who the hell wants to be strong? Perhaps, loss and grief were meant to teach life lessons. However, these were not lessons Glory wanted to learn.

The
next day, the Nor’easter still raged on, shutting everything down. The kids were home from school. Olivia was in her room playing with her Barbie dolls; Mickey in his own room with his friend Alex who lived a few blocks down. Glory thought she’d go mad if she had to listen to the sound of screeching breaks from the
Grand Theft Auto
video game they were playing much longer.

Alex’s mom had just called for him. Glory would take him home soon
before her car was buried in the snow again. Glory was petrified of driving in the snow; there was just so much more of it here than in Boston.

“Mickey!”
She had to shout in order to be heard over the obnoxious game. “I need to drive Alex home. His mom just called for him.”

“Mom, c’mon…we’re almost at the highest level!”

Glory heard that “whiny edge” in his voice over the revving engines of cars in the game, which irritated her all the more. And that game! She hadn’t wanted her son to have it in the first place, but Michael had gotten it for him anyway.

One of these days
, that game just might go missin’,
she thought
.

Her car was already blanketed with snow. “Shit, I’ll have to go brush it off, damn it!”
She sighed, throwing on her jacket and gloves. “Okay, you guys, ten minutes! Be ready when I come in.”

When she turned, there was Olivia, all bundled up. “Can I help,
Mommy?”

“Sure, pumpkin
.” Glory smiled.

Olivia was only ten, while Mickey was at that twelve going on eighteen
stage. While she loved them both, she relished this time with Olivia, still so innocent, thinking Mom and Dad were the best people in her life.

Just then, the phone rang. Glory hurried back, leaving the door open, allowing snow to make its way into the kitchen. She assumed it was Alex’s mother calling again, wondering where the hell she was with her son.

“Hello?”

There was nothing but static on the other end; someone
was speaking through it, but she couldn’t make out any words. At last, she heard her Brother Ted’s voice. She felt her heart jump into her throat. He
never
called unless he needed something. They weren’t close. Truthfully, she wasn’t really close to
anyone
in her family. Her brother and mother were both drunks, as her father had been. She worked hard not to be like them.

“
It’s Mom. She just collapsed in the bathroom. I…don’t know what happened. She wouldn’t wake up! I’m at Mass General now. You’ve gotta come down here, Glory!” His words were rushed, scared, and slurred. He was drunk!

“Are you
insane
? It’s snowin’ here in Maine. It’ll take me hours to get there!”

“It’s snowin’ here too. Oh…hang on, just…hang on. The doc’s here now. Le
t me find out what’s goin’ on.”

Minutes passed, seeming like hours.
Driving to Boston in this?
And my brother can be melodramatic at times. Maybe he is making a mountain out of a molehill
, Glory thought.

When Ted came back on the line, she asked what the doctor had said.

“Yah need to come now. She’s had a major stroke. Glory,
please
…I can’t deal with this by myself.”

Glory wanted to kick herself for her own selfishness. Ted sounded dazed and confused and utterly miserable. He needed her there.

“Give me time to drop the kids at their grandmother’s. Michael just walked in.” She turned to acknowledge him, and put a finger up to tell him to hold on.

“Glory?” Michael questioned. She was visibly shaking
. The kids stood, silent and wide-eyed, looking at their mom.

“It’s my mother, Michael. I’ll tell yah as soon as I get off the phone.
Look, Ted, just take it easy. I’m leavin’ right now. But it’ll take a couple of hours ‘till we get there. Call my cell if yah need me.”

“She’s in room two-fifteen. I’ll be waitin
’. Be careful drivin’.”

Michael was already in the driver’s seat of the police cruiser, waiting for her. Two
Styrofoam cups were in the drink holders. The hot, steaming aroma of coffee filled the car.

“When did yah get coffee?”

“Got ‘em on my way home. That eggnog flavored Green Mountain coffee yah like. I was gonna surprise yah, since I got off early, but…”

Glory’s eyes filled with tears at his thoughtfulness. Right then, this small token of comfort could
n’t have been more appreciated.

They dropped Olivia and Mickey off at
Michael’s mother,—Joan’s—house after they took Alex home.

Joan brought the kids into her warm and welcoming kitchen, telling Michael to drive careful and Glory not to worry until she found out exactly what was going on with her mother. But, her eyes were wide and frightened. The eyes always reveal
ed the truth, no matter what words are spoken.

The drive to the hospital was long and treacherous.
Even with the Cliff’s End police Ford Explorer, which was the norm for winter months, they crawled along the highway. The snow, now mingled with sleet, kept coming down. Visibility was near zero. Some cars on the road sped by, only to end up in ditch on the side of the road.

“Jesus Christ, what idiots. You’d think they’d know be
ddah to slow down in this shit,” Michael muttered.

Glory was silent, not wanting to distract Michael
, who needed all his concentration just to keep them on the road. But her mind was racing at a speed matched only by her heartbeat.

She and Michael had both lost their fathers within two years of one another to the most feared and undignified of human illnesses
—cancer. It was the first time that Glory had actually dealt with death,
real
death, not that born in the fear and anxiety that plagued her mind always.

Even as she watched her mother pray
for a miracle, the rosary beads held tightly in her hands, she thought, surely, her father wouldn’t really die! In contrast, Michael’s mother, who was not Catholic, not religious at all really, held no illusions as to her husband’s fate. She’d made funeral plans before the end came. Glory was appalled! No one could talk her out of her denial. After all, there could be a miracle, couldn’t there? There wasn’t.

Glory’s relationship with he
r father had not been a good one while growing up. In truth, he’d made her life a living hell.

He
’d been an abusive alcoholic, kind and gentle when sober, but turning into no less than a monster when he was drunk.

When she was twelve and just beginning to blossom into young womanhood with all the fears and self-consciousness that
were normal at that age, he had thrown a knife at her while in a drunken rage, stabbing her behind the knee.  She felt no pain, only warmth from the back of the knee to the heel of her shoes, the warmth of flowing blood.

Looking down, she saw a steak knife protruding from her flesh, pointed at a downward angle toward the floor. Blood was l
iterally gushing from the small hole. The knife fell with a clatter to the floor and so did she.

The sight of it, the horror of it
, caused her to faint. When she came to, there was her mother and brother cleaning and dressing the wound. There was no doctor, no hospital, and most importantly, no questions.

That scar was
visible still; a small, white quarter inch section of raised skin, reminding her that evil came from many sources, even those who were presumed to love her.

His emotio
nal attacks were no less fierce. She feared that one day he’d pick her apart until nothing remained. She learned what she needed to do to survive in her world. To become cold and detached, to keep her feelings locked away where no one could find them and use them to hurt her.

Unfortunately, what
started out as a defense mechanism took root in the very core of her personality. Slowly but surely, after the stabbing, the fear of death emerged and grew.

At night, lying in bed, she could’ve sworn she saw shadows on the wall, grinning faces. Like a child makes
silhouettes upon the wall with their fingers. A quacking duck, a bunny rabbit, but that wasn’t what Glory saw at all. She saw black faces, holes where the eyes and mouth should be, the lips always turned up in a slight grin, like a demented clown. She never associated the face with that of death itself, the Grim Reaper. Not yet anyway.

When her father
, riddled with bone cancer, as if his malignant alcoholic rages had somehow turned inward, called her to his room just a day short of his death, she had no idea what he could possibly have to say to her. His body was so frail; his eyes, which were once near black, as were her own, were now milky with the illness and the pain of it.

“
I don’t have much time left. I don’t know why God doesn’t take me now,” he said.

“God doesn’t kill people
,” Glory said coldly.

He
stared silently at her, knowing that she couldn’t understand because she was not yet on the same path as he was.

“I need to…tell you I’m sorry. I took out my
rage at life itself on you and I…shouldn’t have. I want to know we’re okay. I need for us to be okay.” His eyes brimmed with tears, but didn’t waver; they looked directly into hers. She knew the apology was sincere.

“I know that you’re sorry and
…I forgive you.” She struggled to get the words out. Feeling real emotion was difficult for her, but not for him. Despite all of his faults, he was a passionate man. Ironic, she thought, that he’d kept his passion even while he’d taken hers away, leaving her with this cold, detached shell of a self, something she’d struggle with throughout her life. Still, at that moment, she felt her heart stir with pity for this man. It made no difference any more how she’d hated him. Now, at the end of his life, he was paying an enormous price. Even this, the pain of bone cancer, was not something she’d wish on him.

T
he following day, he’d been whisked away by an ambulance. The paramedics tried to revive him, and subsequently, he spent the remaining few minutes of his life in a blind panic, gasping for air and finally choking on his own vomit.

Glory was
confused; she thought life should be extended at all costs. Now, on the ride down to see her mother in the hospital, she was not so sure. She was about to discover a new truth about life, one that she did not want to know, but had no choice in.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Massachusetts General Hospital, it was
near dawn. While the snow fell here, it was much lighter and more manageable than the blizzards of Maine.

Glory’s brother met them in the lobby
and they went straight to their mother’s room.

The sight
made Glory feel ill. There she lay, the woman who Glory had spent years hating for her passivity, for never leaving a man who was verbally and, at times, physically abusive to her and her children. It had taken Glory many years to forgive her mother for her poor choices. Glory was a mother now and was capable of understanding what that sometimes meant.

Her mother had
gone without everything to make sure her children had what they needed. When her father was at his worst, drinking and spending money, sometimes leaving them without the very basic of necessities, she’d somehow seen that her children had what they needed. Eventually, though, she’d turned to drinking herself to numb the pain in her life.

She was propped up in the
bed and hooked up to a ventilator for breathing. Monitors of all kinds bleeped and hummed. The ventilator made a hissing sound as it moved up and down, breathing for her in a most unnatural way.

Glory
knelt down and took her hand and it twitched. The heart monitor indicated an increase in activity, giving her a glimmer of hope.

“Look, she moved
,” she said to Michael and Ted. “Do yah think she knows we’re here?”

“That was an involuntary movement. There is no
real brain function, I assure you,” a voice said from behind them. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Dr. Pierce, your mother’s doctor.” He had an English accent, though not at all clipped and brisk, but smooth and flowing.

Michael leaned in to shake his hand and introduced himself
as Glory turned from her mother’s bed side and asked him what had happened. Her brother hung back, leaning against the wall where there was no medical equipment, and stared as if mesmerized at their mother’s chest as it rose and fell with each hiss of the machines.