Matters of Faith

by Kristy Kiernan

  This, too, was one of those stages of marriage that nobody tells you about. Like the pain of childbirth fades, allowing us to do it again and again, eventually the time spent on petty resentments shortens, and we move from angry to settled in hours rather than days. Cal and I did anyway. My parents were gone too young for me to ask them about the intricacies of marriage, the secrets, if they had them, and the pitfalls.

  And Calvin’s parents were no example to turn to. According to him anyway. I’d never met his father, dead of a massive heart attack on their sofa when Cal was only sixteen, but his stories about him were both frightening and exhilarating, tales of impassioned sermons on the lure of the devil and the pain of the fiery pits of hell. Cal’s brother, Randy, had been the quintessential preacher’s kid, and was, the last time anyone had heard from him, evading warrants in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

  Cal had removed himself entirely from the family the day he graduated from high school. We received occasional letters from his mother, her looping hand childlike, filled with misspellings, guilt-laden entreaties to visit her, and unselfconscious Bible references along with portents of doom and random news of obscure relatives.

  Cal read these letters quickly, silently, occasionally allowed me to read them, and then threw them away. We did not discuss it, but I knew that he feared Marshall would read one and get intrigued, would possibly want to visit his grandmother, and would disappear into the bug-infested wilds of undeveloped Florida and spend his life convincing others that Satan was just a step behind them, waiting for the chance to claim their souls.

  We’d taken him to visit once, when he was a toddler, at my insistence. Our first days there had been good, strained but polite. But once the initial busyness of food preparation and catching up on third cousins thrice removed was over, Cal and his mother seemed to deflate, as though all of their social niceties had simply leaked out, like so much air, and all that was left was the sour, stale remnant of a relationship long over. Their conversations, already terse, decreased in word count but increased exponentially in hidden meaning.

  I watched, as one might watch snakes behind glass, certain of my safety but fascinated by the proximity to danger anyway. I did not miss a word, or a glance. I held Marshall while they jabbed at each other and vowed that I would never speak in riddles to my son.

  She quoted Bible passages that seemed to be written specifically for her perceived lot in life, that of wronged mother, grievously harmed by the insensitivity and ungratefulness of her family. Cal countered with bits of Bible I’d never known he knew, all of it streaming from his mouth in a rounded, thickened accent I’d never heard.

  My son and I were visiting with strangers.

  Two days before we were to leave, we sat on the porch after dinner, eating homemade peach ice cream and listening to crickets, and it all ended. Marshall finished his ice cream and began to cry for more. He was up too late, and his cries rose fast and high in the air. Cal’s mother stared hard at Marshall, his lips soft and red and still smeared with ice cream, and I saw her eyes narrow as she turned to Cal.

  Ignoring me completely, she pointed her spoon at Marshall and said: “ ‘Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.’ ”

  Before I could even begin to make sense of this, Cal stood, his bowl clattering at his feet, and said, “That’s it, we’re done.” He strode past her and grasped me by the arm, pulling me from my chair as he scooped Marshall up in his other arm. Marshall’s crying escalated to screaming, and though I pulled my arm from Cal’s hand, I moved.

  I never protested, I simply followed him quickly to the room he and his brother had shared as children, threw our belongings into our bags, and we were gone. I didn’t dare speak, to her or to him, as we left. It was almost two hours later, after Marshall had cried himself out in the backseat and we were hurtling toward the west coast, that Cal finally spoke.

  “We’re not going back,” he said. “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay,” I said quietly. And we did not. I wrote her Christmas cards, and I occasionally sent her photos of the children. But I never responded to her letters, and could never get the chill out of my heart when I recalled her words.

  It was no wonder that Cal worried about Marshall and his interest in religion. It was hard for him to separate Marshall’s more scholarly approach to religion from his own upbringing. I wondered if Cal had heard anything from the kids on his radio, and made him a sandwich for lunch so I had an excuse to visit the workshop, give my peace offering, and ask him.

  He gave me a tentative smile as I entered, a tuna salad sandwich and chips on a plate held in front of me, and it was as though the nasty words had never been uttered. He washed his hands and sat on a stool to eat.

  “Anything from the kids?” I asked.

  He nodded, his mouth full, and swallowed, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth before he spoke. “Marshall said he figures they’ll be back around six.”

  “Okay. I’m going to run out and grab some things for dinner. Need anything?”

  “Nope. Maybe get a movie?”

  “Sure. See you in while.” I leaned over to peck him on the cheek. Just a small kiss, nothing memorable about it until much, much later.

  I spent the afternoon doing errands in town. I picked up some summer clothes for Marshall and Meghan, taking care to pass over the childish items Meghan would balk at. After waffling for too long in the underwear department, I also picked her up a bra. I stopped at the produce stand, thinking that the kids would be happy to know I was buying organic and supporting a small, local business. Sandy, the owner, dressed in a long, purple skirt and red tank top, her white hair in long braids, greeted me.

  “Well, am I going to see the whole Tobias clan today?”

  I grinned at her. She had to have been approaching seventy, and I aspired to develop her easy style, her assurance that she was always exactly where she should be. She radiated calm and wit, and I always swore that as soon as my hair was more than fifty percent white I was going to strip the rest of its color and emulate her.

  “Hey, Sandy. Were the kids in?” I asked, smelling the end of a cantaloupe. Sandy pulled it from my grasp, hefted another one, and then handed it to me.

  “Yep. Marshall’s gal is a little spitfire, hmmm?”

  “Seems like it. What did you think?”

  She cocked her head to study me for a moment. This was a small town. She’d been here for years before me, and she knew our family’s history, as did almost everyone else in town. She belonged to the small nondenominational church just down the road from us. The church itself was ancient, but they kept it up beautifully, painting it bright white every year when the rainy season ended. Marshall had attended services for a brief period, but their laid-back style of worship hadn’t seemed to keep him interested, and he’d moved on quickly.

  “Well, she’s not a shy young lady, that’s for certain. Told me I needed to stock yak milk and then called the integrity of my flax-seed into question.”

  I laughed and tucked some tomatoes into my basket. “I can’t imagine anyone calling the integrity of anything you touch into question. If it makes you feel any better, she showed me up last night at dinner.”

  Sandy nodded. “It’s good to question, but I seem to have less patience for it in children these days. Perhaps I’m getting old and crotchety.”

  “Or perhaps they’re just young and brash,” I offered, taking my basket to the counter.

  “Perhaps. Made fresh cookies,” she said, nodding toward the basket of homemade cookies next to the register. I looked longingly at them and inhaled. The aroma managed to seep out of the plastic wrap that covered them. There were more chocolate chunks than dough, and the peanut butter cookies had little hash marks made by a fork, just like my mother had made when I was a child. But I shook my head and paid her for the produce, promising to pass a kiss along to Cal.
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  I stashed the bags behind my seat and headed to the video store, my final stop. Nothing too grown-up, nothing too childish. Choosing for this new dynamic was more trying than I would have thought. Did other parents go through this? I never noticed mothers agonizing over tiny bras, or picking up and putting down an R-rated movie seven times. Had I truly become so protective that my own decision-making skills had been warped beyond repair?

  Finally I chose a comedy, and then, as I approached the counter, my eye was caught by Winona Ryder in a blue skirt, held from behind by a leering Christian Slater. I grabbed the box before I could go into another fugue of mothering and plopped Heathers on the counter along with the other movie.

  I drove home with the windows down, the spring already steamy with a humidity that I loved feeling on my skin, and the radio loud. I had a couple of hours before the kids got home, and even thought that perhaps I could convince Cal to bake some more bread and maybe join me in the shower. The night before had been tense, enjoyable, frightening, and exhilarating all at once. I was ready to plan for a more relaxing time tonight, all the jitters gone, the jagged edges smoothed.

  I was singing along with the radio, some Justin Timberlake thing that I would never in a million years have admitted to Cal that I liked, when I turned onto our drive. I hadn’t even slowed down when I saw the workshop door fling open and Cal come running out, his mouth open, tearing at the passenger door handle before I could come to a stop to hear what he was screaming.

  Everyone talks about their heart pounding, jumping out of their chest, but when I heard that he was screaming our daughter’s name over and over I never felt my heart at all. There was nothing but a great sucking hole in my chest, with nothing to fill it but the echo of Meghan.

  Six

  WHEN we reached the marina, all the emergency vehicles were already there, their lights going but their sirens off. I didn’t know what that meant and stuttered, “What’s happening?” at Cal, but Cal was already out of the car while it was still rolling, stumbling when his feet hit the pavement before righting himself and tearing for the dock.

  I slammed into park and took a different route, toward the ambulance, grasping at the handle of the cab, startling a young woman in a paramedic’s uniform. I was talking before she could get a foot on the ground, spewing forth Meghan’s medical history, the list of things that could go wrong, and what needed to happen now, right now, and where was she, where was my daughter and what exactly had happened, and why was everyone just standing around and why weren’t the sirens on?

  “They’re almost here,” she said, placing her hands on my upper arms, trying to hold me together. “We can’t do anything yet. Coast Guard is still a mile off. It was faster for them to come in than for us to go out. Everything is going to be fine, they’re almost here.”

  I spun out of her grasp and headed for the dock, where I could see Cal, gesturing toward the marina where the big boat was, and as I got closer I could hear him shouting.

  “God dammit, where are they? I can get her, I can get her!”

  “Sir, listen, listen!”

  As I arrived by Cal’s side, we all fell silent and sure enough, we could hear a boat, going flat-out, balls-to-the-wall as Cal would say with a disapproving shake of his head whenever he saw some idiot speeding through a no-wake zone. The engine whined, and we all watched the mouth of the canal, waiting—helpless and fairly vibrating with adrenaline—for the boat to round the peninsula.

  Within seconds it roared into view, swinging a wide rooster tail as Marshall overcompensated for the speed and then straightening, flying at us, his face, hidden behind the windshield, just a smudge of white with hollows of dark sunglasses for eyes, like a skull with a shock of dark hair.

  We all moved at once: the paramedics poised themselves on the edge of the dock, gloves already on, the driver ran back to the ambulance, Cal readied himself with ropes, and I started my mouth again, talking about anaphylactic shock and the need, above everything else, for speed, for instant action, all the while aware that nothing had been instant because Meghan hadn’t been with me, and nobody else could possibly understand.

  But Marshall did, of course, Marshall understood. Meghan was his little sister; he’d been there for all of it. We’d shielded him, of course, to an extent, until we’d know what was wrong, how it could be prevented. But he knew everything now, he knew what to do, and he’d never have allowed anything to happen to her.

  And then the boat hit the dock, literally, hit it with the side of the bow, sending one paramedic nearly off the edge while the rest of us reeled and got our first glimpse of the horror show in the cockpit. Blood, everywhere, Ada keening gibberish, her eyes rolled back in her head, more blood on the seats, on Marshall and Ada, and on Meghan, dear God, Meghan.

  I started to scream then. Because there was no way that was my child, there was no way that my child, my girl, could have become that poor thing on that boat. I launched myself into the cockpit, pushing myself past Ada, who wouldn’t shut up, and past the paramedics, who had already shot Meghan full of epinephrine, and they fought with me, shouting to keep me back while trying to intubate her.

  Cal, done wrestling with ropes, pulled Ada unceremoniously off the boat, dragging her useless, bloody legs, and tossed her on the dock like a rag doll so he could get to me, and then he hauled me away, my hands reaching for the only recognizable part of my daughter, her hair, her long, dark hair, streaming across the dirty white mesh of the cushions.

  Cal held me from behind, and I sagged over his forearms while the men struggled with my unrecognizable daughter. Ada had crabbed her way off the dock and was huddled over her knees on the curb by the ambulance, with the driver patting her, as if she were the one who needed comfort. Ada was pushing her away, shaking her head.

  I straightened up quickly, startling Cal and smacking the back of my head into his chin when I realized that I hadn’t seen Marshall since laying eyes on Meghan. There he was, still in the cockpit, his back pressed against the dash as far as he could get, watching the paramedics work with his mouth agape.

  “Marshall!” I cried, pulling away from Cal, who held on for a moment while I struggled, but finally released me. I made my way on board at the bow and crawled over to the windshield to bang on it. He jumped and finally turned toward me.

  “What happened, Marshall, what happened?”

  He didn’t say anything, just shook his head at me, his mouth still slightly open, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses. The paramedics suddenly shifted and the boat rocked, making us both clutch for balance and breaking whatever tenuous contact we’d made. Cal, seeing that they were attempting to lift Meghan, jumped in the cockpit, and the three of them managed to get her out of the boat and on the stretcher. I scrambled my way off the boat and rushed with them to the ambulance, Cal right beside me, both of us talking to the unresponsive lump that used to be Meghan, telling her it was going to be okay.

  The driver left her ministrations of Ada as another EMT from the fire truck took over, and as they slid the stretcher in Cal handed me up into the back, saying, “I’ll meet you there,” before the doors closed and the ambulance raced off, sirens, finally, blessedly, going now.

  There was less room in the ambulance than I would have thought, and I made myself as small as I could while they continued to work on Meghan and talked to the hospital on their radio. I gingerly snaked my hand onto her ankle, the only place I could reach, the only area of her bloated body they didn’t seem to be working on.

  “Is she breathing?” I finally asked, my voice breaking on the words.

  “We have a pulse,” the paramedic nearest me said. “Right now we have to be thankful for that. They’re ready for us, we’re almost there.”

  As we pulled into the emergency room drive there was a sea of people in green and blue scrubs waiting, and they swarmed over her and ran her in through the automatic doors with the paramedics while a nurse guided me behind them and asked me about Meghan’s medical conditions. />
  I lost sight of her and answered rapid-fire questions as Cal finally arrived, Marshall padding silently behind him, Ada limping ten paces behind him, blood running down her leg. A nurse rushed over to her and she was led away while Cal joined me. Marshall hung back, silent, his sunglasses still on.

  “What’s happening?” Cal asked, his voice hoarse. “Where is she?”

  “They’re doing everything they can for her right now,” the nurse answered soothingly. Cal was in no mood to be soothed, and he grasped me by the upper arm and started down the hall, the nurse hurrying to keep up.

  “Where is she?” he asked when the hallway split.

  “Mr. Tobias, please, let me see what’s happening and I’ll be right out to tell you,” the nurse said. “There’s a private room right here. Please, have a seat, I’ll be right back, I promise.”

  Cal looked in the open door of the room, then looked at the nurse. “If you’re not back in five minutes to tell me what’s going on with my daughter, I’m turning this hospital upside down.”

  “Cal,” I cautioned him. “They’re doing everything they can.” And was immediately ashamed. I should have been turning the hospital upside down. But I needed to follow the rules, be courteous. If I did, if I did everything right, everything would be okay. Let the doctors work, let the nurses work, let the drugs work. Stay calm, cooperate, stay calm.

  “Go!” he said, and the nurse went, flying on her soft-soled shoes. Cal finally let go of my arm and stepped into the waiting room, falling heavily into one of the low, burgundy chairs. A muted TV flashed news across the screen in the corner. I beckoned to Marshall, still watching us silently from the corridor, and he slowly joined me, following me into the room and sitting in the chair next to mine.