Composing Amelia

by Alison Strobel

  But for Pete’s sake, when were they ever going to step into the twenty-first century and get some new music? Their love of the arcane made Amelia writhe in boredom as the uninspired choir sang all four verses of “More Love to Thee, O Christ.” Amelia longed to push the pianist off his bench and introduce them to the Hillsong catalog. Their ministry offerings were equally lacking. There was a monthly tea for the ladies, a monthly coffee morning for the men, and a weekly youth ministry meeting that, as best as she could tell, consisted of playing ridiculous games and then memorizing Scripture. Marcus kept trying to start other ministries, but no one seemed to care. No wonder the little congregation was dying out.

  As the days passed, Amelia’s emotions began to take a turn south. Her frustration with the women made her lament that she would never find any real friends in Wheatridge. Her impulse purchases from the baby store sat unsorted on the floor of the living room; neither she nor Marcus were motivated to do anything with them, and their presence reminded Amelia every day of the impending birth she wasn’t ready for. She had more flashbacks of her childhood relationship with her mother and began to truly fear the idea of raising a child. She was in no way prepared for it, in no way equipped. People like her shouldn’t be allowed to have babies in the first place.

  She could sense where things were going. The reprieve had been short-lived, and despite her best efforts to keep it at bay, the depression was returning.

  Amelia vacillated between resigned and terrified. She couldn’t do it again. It would kill her this time, she was sure. But who cared? And what about her baby? Wasn’t she just dooming another generation to the fate her mother had passed on to her?

  The prescription for her antidepressant still sat in her purse. She knew she should go get it filled, but now that she actually knew people here, she was paranoid someone would see her and ask what was wrong, or that the pharmacist would end up being a member of New Hope. But she couldn’t ask Marcus to do it—he’d be mad she’d never started them as she was supposed to. She was paralyzed, unable to see past her fear.

  Back and forth, back and forth, until Amelia crept once again beneath the bedsheets, praying for sleep that wouldn’t come and for peace that eluded her grasp.

  Marcus had a sermon to deliver in less than seventy-two hours, and he still hadn’t started the research. He hadn’t been this bad the week before, though he’d been up until two o’clock on Sunday morning finishing his talk. This time he couldn’t even decide on a topic.

  Doubt consumed his mind, and he didn’t know how to pull himself out of his quagmire. He’d been analyzing the last fifteen years of his life, trying to figure out which decisions, if any, had been driven by his own desires and interests. Extracurricular activities? No—he chose those based on what he thought his father would appreciate, or on his father’s recommendation. The college he attended? His father’s alma mater. His major—the same as his dad’s. And now he questioned everything he did: Was that decision truly a reflection of his actual desires, or was it based on his attempts to be who he thought his father wanted him to be? Did he really care about the things he spent his time on, or did he pursue them in the hopes that doing so would finally win his father’s love?

  And what if he wasn’t supposed to be a pastor? What if he’d missed his real calling because he hadn’t bothered to listen for God’s voice at all? It would explain why he still felt so out of sorts in his job and still didn’t enjoy it. But what was he supposed to do—say, “Oops, sorry, my mistake,” and leave? He’d prayed passionately for answers, for God to either assure him he was in the right place or tell him no, he wasn’t. But God was silent, which fed into a whole host of other insecurities and worries.

  There was only one decision he could think of that had been made purely out of his own will: marrying Amelia. Had he followed his father’s lead on choosing a wife, he’d have ended up with one of the education majors he’d pursued during his undergrad days. But Amelia had cast all those other women in black and white. They were sweet, earnest, and predictable. Amelia was Technicolor and … exciting. But more than that, she had been so encouraging, so supportive of him and his endeavors. Not that the other women hadn’t been, but theirs had been delivered in a fawning sort of way. He always felt as if they were trying to puff him up so he’d return the favor. Amelia had never sought that kind of recognition; she’d encouraged him enthusiastically and sought to join him in what he was doing. But none of those things ever mattered to her as much as he did. She loved him, pure and simple, not because of what he might someday be, or because of what he did, but because of who he was. He was starting to think marrying her was the only right decision he’d ever made—but then he remembered how things had changed and how at odds they seemed to be lately, and went right back to wondering if their marriage was a mistake too.

  He was still too embarrassed and unclear to talk to her about his father. Plus, he worried that his waffling about his choices would not only fuel her desire to return to LA, but would also make her think he hadn’t been listening to God after all.

  Marcus shut his book and stood. “I’m, um … going for a run,” he told Amelia, who was curled on the couch with a book.

  She nodded. “See you later then.”

  He changed clothes, gave her a kiss, and left, feeling guilty. He knew she was worried about him. He still hadn’t told her—he couldn’t bear to. If moving to Nebraska turned out to be a mistake, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to admit it to her, not after the toll it had taken on her and their marriage. And he could tell there was something going on with her, too—he just didn’t have the emotional reserves to confront it, which made him feel even more guilty.

  Some husband he was turning out to be.

  He stretched for a few minutes on the sidewalk outside the complex, then started out at a light jog. He still wasn’t sure what he thought about running, but he couldn’t deny how it helped clear his head, and that was more important to him right now than determining whether or not it was something he would have done without his father’s influence. He focused on his route and his body as he waited to fall into his usual rhythm, and once he was there he released his mind to ponder his predicament.

  If being a pastor wasn’t the route he was supposed to take, he’d concentrated on it for so long he didn’t even know how to begin figuring out what he really did want to do with his life. His choices had become a carbon copy of his father’s, and without that template he didn’t know who he was. He didn’t like feeling like a stranger to himself—but as his feet hit the pavement in their steady stride, he realized he was afraid to find out who he really was. What if Amelia didn’t love the real Marcus? What if the real Marcus was as rudderless and aimless as he felt these days? What if he had no ambitions, no desires that amounted to anything significant? What if he was only successful when he was following his father’s footsteps and not laying down his own?

  Marcus rounded the corner a block earlier than he usually did. Any farther and he’d have come across the church, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near the place right now. Just the thought of it made him feel like a failure. In three days he’d be in front of the congregation as a fraud. He knew what the Bible had to say about the responsibility teachers had, and how much more strict their judgment would be, especially if they led people astray. How could he teach them truth when he was living a lie?

  Hopelessness was not an emotion with which Marcus had any experience, but he was drowning in it now. He hated the sucking dark hole it created in his soul, but he didn’t know what to do about it. The optimism and solutions that usually came with a good run down the oak-lined streets of their neighborhood evaded him this time. He increased his speed in desperation, but all it did was give him a stitch in his side.

  He came to a stop, hands on his head to pull out the cramp, on the block where he’d found the little cottage house. He could see the For Sale sign in the yard six houses down. When he’d caught his breath, he turned to retrace his st
eps, not wanting to see yet another symbol of his shattered life. There would be no house buying now, not when he didn’t know if he’d still have a job in a month. Or even still be in Wheatridge.

  Feeling defeated, Marcus walked home, showered, then pulled the sale flyer for the cottage house from the fridge and stuffed it into the trash. He poured himself some lukewarm coffee and sat heavily in the dining room chair once more. He picked up a concordance and flipped to the index to look up despair, then copied down the verses listed. At least now he had a topic for his sermon.

  Amelia woke after fitful sleep to another day when she should have been teaching at Blue Note. Instead she’d called in sick the night before, just like she had the night before that, and now instead of getting up, she pulled the sheets over her head and burrowed deeper down. Marcus was already up and, with any luck, already gone. Otherwise he might realize she was awake and try to make her eat something. Her appetite, however, had fled hand in hand with the buoyancy she’d felt the last couple weeks, and not even the knowledge that her baby needed sustenance drove her to the kitchen. She’d read somewhere that a mother’s body would sacrifice itself for an unborn child, diverting energy and calories to the baby instead of the mother if there weren’t enough for both. She was fine with that.

  She’d said nothing to Marcus, but she knew he’d figured out she was depressed again. It explained why he was so quiet, why he wasn’t talking to her anymore. Her very presence was an irritation to him; he went on more runs than usual and could barely focus enough to write his sermons. The last two weekends she’d heard him up working in the middle of the night, no doubt trying to catch up on the things he couldn’t do when she was around. And his last two sermons, on despair and anger, had obviously been directed at her.

  She didn’t blame him anymore for not telling her directly how he felt. Marcus was a good man; he wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. That he would try to reach her at all, even if it was through sermons that she may or may not attend, was more kindness than she deserved. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize, to talk about it at all—to acknowledge it in front of him felt like failure, and she had enough of that on her plate already. It was a blessing to operate under the guise of normality instead of having to face his disappointment head-on. His silence was painful, but not as painful as his spoken disillusionment with her would be.

  The mid-May sunshine striped the bedroom walls through the blinds, but did nothing to make Amelia feel better. In fact, the glaring light served to illuminate how lacking in light she was. You’re pathetic, the voice in her head told her. A black hole of need. There’s nothing good left in you.

  She’d felt desperation before, but it had never been accompanied by voices this judgmental. She felt twitches of panic in her chest. She was torn between wanting to succumb to the fear in the hopes that it would do her in completely, and wanting to resist it for the sake of her baby. Without thinking about whether or not he could even help, Amelia grabbed her cell off the nightstand and called Marcus at the church.

  He answered just before his voice mail picked up. “Hey.”

  “Hi.” Stupid girl. She hadn’t even thought about what she’d say.

  “Need something?” His voice was terse. Its tension triggered her guilt.

  “I … um … I just wanted to …” To what? Beg you to forgive me? To make this better? To put me out of my misery?

  “I can’t really talk right now, Amelia. Can this wait until I get home?”

  His tone was so abrupt her words caught in her throat. “I—yes, of course. That’s—that’s fine.”

  “All right. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye.” But the line had already gone dead.

  The panic kicked up a notch. She looked at the clock. Marcus wouldn’t be home for another four hours. How was she going to last?

  Something clicked. Marcus wouldn’t be home for another four hours. She had four hours left with which to take care of all this herself.

  At the thought, the panic died in her chest. The peace she felt almost made her weep. Of course. Why hadn’t she done this earlier?

  She rolled from the bed and headed for the medicine cabinet. She grabbed the first bottle she found, a rarely used container of Motrin, and took it to the kitchen where she poured herself a tall glass of water. Pausing only to write “I’m sorry. I love you,” on a piece of paper and leave it on the kitchen table, she popped the top off the bottle and alternated swallows of pills and water until the bottle was empty.

  She left both on the counter and returned to bed. Tears ran down her cheeks, mostly from relief, though she did feel bad about the baby. Trust me, she thought to the child in her womb, it’s much better this way. I would have been an awful mother. And you probably would have ended up with the same crazy brain that I have.

  Amelia curled herself around her pillow and closed her eyes. I wonder how long this will take, she thought as she felt the tension fleeing her body ahead of the inevitable and welcome end. With any luck she’d fall asleep and die before she woke. The thought was pure bliss.

  Sleep had just about set in when her stomach gave a lurch. Her throat spasmed as her body attempted to vomit. No! She sat up and barely got her head over the edge of the bed in time to throw up onto the carpet instead of the mattress. She’d barely caught her breath when her throat caught again. She fumbled off the bed, threw up once more, and stumbled toward the bathroom. But that seemed to be the end. Her stomach rolled uneasily, but nothing actually happened.

  That’s it? she thought, staring at the mess she’d made on the bedroom floor. That’s the worst it can do?

  What a waste.

  She rinsed out her mouth and walked on shaky legs into the kitchen, leaving the mess behind to clean up later. There was a host of possibilities there—knives, cleaning supplies, gas oven. Her eyes roamed the room, taking inventory of her options, but she couldn’t bring herself to a decision. The last thing she wanted to do was screw it up again. She threw away the note and Motrin bottle, then sat down at the table to think of her next move.

  I need to do some research. The thought brought an odd kind of relief as she went to the dining room where Marcus’s laptop stood open. Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard for a moment before pecking out “how to kill yourself” in the search engine. An eclectic list appeared, and Amelia began clicking the links to see if any of them were achievable with what she had on hand.

  It wasn’t long before she was sidetracked by the bizarre and disturbing sites she discovered as she indiscriminately selected links to click. Some were text-based versions of a train wreck she couldn’t tear her eyes from. Others were surprisingly well-written and thoughtful, but with an underlying darkness that both fascinated and repulsed. She gave up her goal of researching and let herself be pulled along on a virtual tour of messed-up psyches and desperate individuals as the clock ticked the minutes away. When she checked the time she realized she had less than two hours left before Marcus would be home.

  That’s all right, she thought as she clicked another link. I’ll get another chance eventually. She didn’t allow herself to examine the sense of comfort that came with the decision. She simply continued to read, tucking all the information away for another empty day.

  CHAPTER 10

  “I can’t really talk right now, Amelia. Can this wait until I get home?” Marcus rubbed a hand over his eyes as Amelia stammered out some kind of affirmative answer. “All right. ’Bye.” He snapped his phone shut and dropped it next to the pile of papers he’d amassed on his desk. The stack overwhelmed him, though he prayed they’d give him some insights into what he ought to do next.

  He picked up the first set of papers on the pile. After stapling them together, he flipped through the pages, scanning the information for anything that might give him a quick fix. He did the same to the second and third stapled stacks, but uncovered nothing that would save him from the hard work he’d had a hunch he’d have to do. With a sigh, he returned to the first packet,
titled “The Finding Your Dream Job E-Book” and began to read.

  An hour later Marcus dropped the packet on the desk and groaned in frustration. What a waste of time that had been. It wasn’t that the information was bad—it was just the wrong information. Despite the immediacy of needing a job, he couldn’t expect to figure out what kind of job to take until he had untangled who he really was and what he really wanted. And so far he hadn’t found a website or e-book to help with that.

  His eye caught the photo of him and Amelia that sat in a frame on the bookshelf. Pangs of guilt shot through him whenever he thought of her. How was he ever going to tell her all of this? He couldn’t hide things much longer; if he didn’t start talking to someone about everything soon he was going to go crazy.

  Enough. He’d done nothing but run circles in his mind—and through town—ever since he’d read that email from his father. Nothing was going to get better unless he confided in Amelia and Dane, maybe even Ed, and started seeking professional help. Amelia needed a therapist too—maybe they could therapist shop together.

  Marcus stood, stacked all the stapled packets together and stuffed them into his file cabinet. He’d come back to those later, after he’d done a little more work on the real issues. He pocketed his cell, locked his office, and told his secretary he was leaving early.

  The closer he got to home, the more nervous he became. What would Amelia say when she told him? She’d be sympathetic, at least at first—she could relate to having parents who messed with your head. But after her initial empathy played out, what would she think? And what about Ed? He had to tell him eventually. Surely the elder already suspected something was going on—Marcus knew his last few sermons had been sorely lacking in depth and quality. Would he be fired? They’d lose their insurance then. He groaned at the thought of having a baby without insurance. I wonder how much a home birth is …