When the Day of Evil Comes (14 page)

I’d taken my Bible on the porch with my tea, determined to summon some faith to see me through this day. I sabotaged my plan, of course, by looking instead for the Isaiah quote about the flies. I found it in chapter 7.

“In that day,” it said, “the L
ORD
will whistle for flies from the distant streams of Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria.”

We’ll. That could not be good. No matter what day we were talking about.

I looked around suspiciously for flies and bees—who needed a new insect to worry about, anyway?

Turning back to the pages, I scanned the surrounding chapters, looking for meaning, trying to come up with my own solution to the bug infestation problem. I finally realized that the
answer was in the passage itself. If God could summon flies and bees, then it stood to reason He could call them off. The flies worked for Him, not for Peter Terry.

My first good news in days.

I bowed my head and had a long talk with the Lord about flies. And about Peter Terry. And about Gavin and the Zoccis and my job. And my professional reputation. All the rocks I was carrying around.

I had to fight with myself about my old niggling suspicion that God really is very busy and has no time for my dinky little requests.

I shot myself over to chapter 40 and pounded myself with more of Isaiah’s words. “Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel,”—I like to insert “O Dylan,” though it doesn’t have quite the same level of cosmic significance, I admit—“‘My way is hidden from the L
ORD
; my cause is disregarded by my God’? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The L
ORD
is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.”

I felt the peace come.

I paged over to Ephesians and refreshed my memory of chapter 6. The spiritual warfare chapter.

Sandals, belt, breastplate, shield, helmet, and sword. Head to toe, spiritual protection built to last. Not my usual attire, but perfect equipment for a fight.

All to be worn “when the day of evil comes.”

My day of evil had certainly arrived. It was burning hot, bright, and ugly, in fact.

I vowed to wear my God-issued uniform faithfully. I resolved to myself that absolutely under no circumstances would I go down without a fight. I was determined to remember that I was on the winning side. After all, my General could summon flies.

I slapped my Bible shut and went into the house.

I’d gotten three phone calls while I was outside. I pushed the play button and listened to the messages.

Helene had called just a few minutes before, wanting me to meet her in her office for a working lunch today—she was bringing enough food for both of us. More good news. Helene’s cooking always comforted me.

David Shykovsky had called just before Helene. He wanted to take me dancing Thursday night. He said he’d call back.

I had to hand it to the guy. Four days’ notice. Didn’t leave a number for me to call him back, because he intended to call me back. So far, I could bottle this guy and sell him. What a sugar pie.

And true to form, my dad had called at the crack of dawn, exhibiting his usual irritation that I hadn’t answered my phone. He had information for me, he said, but I had to call him back to get it. He left his pager number.

I called his secretary instead.

“Hey, Janet. Dylan.”

“Dylan! I was just thinking about you.”

“You always say that.”

“No. I really was. Your dad just asked me if you’d returned his call. Didn’t you get his message?”

“I did,” I said. “I’m calling him back. Is he around?”

“He just stepped out the door, but he said he was coming right back.” I heard her flip the pages of her schedule book. “He’s not due in surgery until nine. He probably just went down the hall for a minute.”

“How are the wedding plans coming?” I asked.
Why do I do this to myself?

“Oh, honey, what he sees in that woman, I will never know. Now she’s got them riding in on matched white horses.” Her
tone shifted to imitate Kellee’s nasal voice. “‘The ceremony must start at precisely 6:07. We’ll arrive on horseback at exactly the very minute the sun sets.’ Do you know how hard it is to find two white horses in a town the size of Cabo San Lucas? Much less two that are exactly the same size. I’m thinking of having some spray painted.”

I made another mental note to make my travel plans now. I intended to be anywhere but Cabo San Lucas come Thanksgiving.

“Oh,” she was saying, “I’d prepare myself if I were you. Your name has come up a lot between him and Kellee lately. Every single time they talk about the wedding.”

“Oh no. He’s not going to ask me to be in the wedding, is he? Tell me he’s not going to ask me to be in the wedding.”

“I can’t tell you any such thing, as a matter of fact. I’m just saying—Oh good, you’re back, Dr. Foster. I have Dylan on line two.” The line went numb as she abruptly put me on hold.

My dad’s voice broke the silence. “Dylan, where were you when I called?”

“Why do you call me at 6:00 a.m., Dad? Who does that?”

“Did you get my message?”

“Of course I did. Hence the return phone call. What did you find out?”

“If you’re going to ask me favors, you could at least pick up the phone when I call you.”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“No Peter Terry at M.D. Anderson.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do I sound sure?”

“Who did you call?”

“Shollenbarger.”

“Who’s that?”

“Oncologist. Big guy. Seven handicap,” he said testily.

“Oh.” I remembered him now. Six five, two fifty. Very nice guy. “Did he check the whole cancer center? Or just his own patient list?”

His voice was getting louder by the word. “I called him this morning and asked him about Peter Terry. He called me back thirty minutes later and said there was no Peter Terry. That ought to be good enough for you.”

“What time did you call him?” I was picturing my dad yanking this guy out of bed at five, and then Shollenbarger doing a cursory return phone call thirty minutes later to shut my dad up. Pretending he’d checked some magical database.

“What does that matter?” he said. “I do you a favor, you’re complaining about how I did it. I called the man. There is no Peter Terry.”

“Don’t get so defensive,” I said.

“I’m not defensive!”

With the temper he had, it was a wonder my dad hadn’t ended up on his own operating table. He was about to blow.

“Who is this Peter Terry guy anyway?” he asked.

“I told you. He’s the uncle of a patient of mine.”

“You said brother.”

“Okay, brother. Whatever. Why?”

“Maybe I know him.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe you know him’? Are you saying you know someone named Peter Terry?”

“I might have.”

“Did you or didn’t you?”

“I think so.”

“Well, who was it? Someone you knew in school or something?”

“Not really”

“Know or knew?”

“Knew. But I didn’t know him very well.” His voice was faltering, the bombast wilting.

“I’m waiting,” I said.

“He was a friend of your mother’s.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“How long ago?” I said.

“While she was in the hospital.”

“At M.D. Anderson?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you mention that when I called?” My dad could be so exasperating.

“I’d forgotten about him.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“I never met him.”

“I thought you said you knew him.”

“I didn’t really know him. Your mother knew him. She spent a lot of time with him.”

“But you never met him?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know about him?”

“She talked about him a lot.”

“What did she say about him?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. She felt sorry for him.”

“Was he a cancer patient when she was?”

“She never said how they met, so I don’t know.” There was a long pause. “Mostly she said she thought he needed her. That he made her feel needed.”

My dad, I knew, had never made my mother feel needed. In fact, he had never, at least since their first few optimistic years together, made her feel anything but neglected.

He was still talking. “I thought she’d made him up. No one
else ever saw him. Yet she claimed to be spending all this time with him.” He gathered himself. “Was your mother having an affair with this man? I think I deserve to know.”

“An affair? How did you conjure that up? Mom would never have done that. One of my patients knows him. That’s all I know.”

“But he’s not your patient’s uncle, is he?”

“Brother,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“No.”

I heard Janet’s voice in the background and looked at my watch. It was 8:15. She was probably telling him he needed to scrub.

“I have to go,” he said, “But we are going to finish this conversation. I have something I want to ask you.”

“Can you ask me later, Dad? I’m going to be late to work.” No way was I walking behind those two white horses in Cabo.

“I expect you to answer my calls, Dylan.”

“Sure, Dad. Call me later.”

We hung up. I fixed myself one more cup of tea, then went into the bedroom and dressed for work, imagining my new war gear as I got ready to face my day.

I
STOOD IN FRONT OF MY CLASS
that Monday morning with a renewed love for my job, probably because I knew I was so close to having it yanked away from me. All my whining about the daily tedium of academic life seemed ridiculous now that I faced the possibility of doing without it. Simple, invisible elements of wealth—privacy, routine, security, respect—these I now realized I had taken for granted in the most frivolous, extravagant way.

My students, Gavin included, seemed dull and unresponsive. I didn’t care. I taught gleefully, all the while silently begging Jesus to spare me from a fate flipping burgers for a living by the end of the week.

Gavin and I spoke briefly after class. He was getting settled in at the DeStefanos’. They had offered to let him stay with them as long as he needed to, and had assigned him some household chores. He referred to himself as “vice president in charge of babysitting and garbage removal,” a title he seemed proud to have acquired.

His one night there had passed with neither nightmares nor flies. He was on his way to his dorm to pick up some more
clothes and see if the room had been fumigated. He’d drop by my office later and give me the fly report.

I spent a few minutes returning phone calls in my office and then headed down the hall for my meeting with Helene. Her door was open when I arrived.

“Morning,” I said, offering myself a seat.

She looked over her reading glasses at the wall clock. “Noon,” she said.

“Picky” I popped the top on the soda she handed me.

“You don’t look as bad as I thought you would,” she said.

“You give the worst compliments.”

“Well, I thought you’d look worse.”

“What did you expect? Twitching? Drooling? I’m handling it.”

She was unpacking lunch, stacking Tupperware on a cleared space on her desk. Helene had a thing about restaurants. She was convinced she could out-cook them all, so she rarely ate out. In the years I’d known her, I couldn’t remember the two of us darkening the door of one single restaurant together. But we had shared countless Tupperware-stacked meals at her desk.

“I brought tuna,” she was saying. “With cucumber. Do you want pita or regular bread?”

“Pita,” I said, reaching for a plate.

She unfolded a piece of wheat pita bread, tucked a few fresh lettuce leaves into it, and loaded in a heaping spoonful of tuna salad. She layered some chopped cucumbers on top and poured on a little homemade dressing, moving deftly with practiced, gnarled hands.

She handed me the sandwich and then fixed one for herself. More open Tupperware lids revealed green grapes and freshly cut slices of ripe cantaloupe. Helene had a way of making food look so inviting.

The last lid she opened released a smell that turned my stomach.

“Deviled eggs?” she said, holding the little tub out to me.

I felt myself turn green and put my plate down. “No.”

“I thought you liked deviled eggs.”

“I’ve never liked deviled eggs.”

“Well you don’t have to get so testy. You could just say ‘no, thank you.’”

“Excuse me a minute.”

I bolted down the hall to the bathroom and leaned over the sink, fighting off nausea. It took me a few minutes to regain my composure. I splashed water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. I was white. Shaken.

What sort of person is traumatized by a little plastic dish of deviled eggs? Helene looked up at me as I stepped back into her office.

“Now you look as bad as I thought you would,” she said triumphantly.

“Thanks.” I sat down and pushed my plate away.

Helene had put the lid back on the deviled eggs, forgoing them herself. I walked over and opened the window, then returned to my seat and took a sip of soda.

“You want me to put the rest of the food away?” she asked.