Matters of Faith

by Kristy Kiernan

  His grandmother patted the Bible that lay on the table in front of her, and Ada glanced over at Marshall. He smiled faintly at her. She didn’t return the smile. In fact, the ends of her mouth turned down, and she murmured something to Grandmother Tobias.

  “I guess it’s time for all of us to turn in,” his grandmother said, turning toward him. “Time to wash up, Marshall.”

  He still felt groggy, and her tone suddenly irritated him. He wasn’t a child, and she certainly hadn’t known him long enough to speak to him as if he were. He’d had Ada all to himself at school. At home, he’d had to share her with Meghan, here he was sharing her with his grandmother. They should never have gone home for spring break. If they had stayed at school, none of this would have happened.

  And now they were probably never going back to school, never going back home.

  He got to his feet and walked over to Ada, placing his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not quite ready for bed,” he said, trying to keep his tone light and confident. “I thought Ada and I would go for a walk.”

  His grandmother’s face darkened, and Ada looked between them quickly. “I don’t think I’m really up for a walk,” she said, looking down at her knees. He immediately felt like an idiot.

  “No, of course not,” he said, trying to salvage his pride. “I just meant out to the backyard, to see the stars. Come on, I’ll help you.”

  “No, really, it’ll be buggy, and I’m tired,” she protested. “We should just get to bed.”

  She rose and gave him a pointed look he chose to ignore. “Well, I’m going to go, but you go ahead,” he said, returning her look as best he could. It didn’t affect her at all, and when his grandmother pushed back from the table and Ada walked down the hall to the guest room, he felt an irrational anger well up in him.

  Grandmother Tobias said, “Maybe we’ll get some more fishing in tomorrow.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, watching Ada’s retreat, desperate to pull her back to him somehow. It already felt too late. She had attached her loyalty to his grandmother, accepting without question her assertion that they were to proceed apart.

  Because God had told her so.

  Told her. Talked to her. Put a voice in her head and formed words and proclaimed.

  She turned away from him and he watched her walk down the same hall Ada had just disappeared down. He stood in the living room in the dark until he saw the light under Ada’s door wink out, and then he opened the back door and wandered out to the middle of the yard, the grass still warm under his feet.

  He stretched out in the same spot Ada had been in that afternoon and watched the night sky, ignoring the pinpricks of the mosquitoes and the rustle of the night creatures in the oppressive woods beside the house, but listening for the telltale barking of the pack of dogs.

  His cell phone rebuked him from his pocket. It felt like a living thing now, a constant reminder of his failures. He didn’t know why he kept it, and since he hadn’t bothered charging it in days, it would be dead soon enough anyway.

  He stared at the stars, at the banks of dark clouds that were rolling over them from the west, illuminated from within when lightning sparked in them, bringing a promise of thunderstorms and rain, and asked God to speak to him as He had spoken to Grandmother Tobias. It stood to reason that if God spoke to both his grandmother and grandfather, then perhaps He would speak to him.

  Though if faith was passed down through the genes like eye color, why didn’t his father believe in anything but the gods of fish and water? His mother he could understand: Being the daughter of academics, her genes had contained loads of curiosity, yet little concrete faith, not just theologically, but in anything, including her own opinions.

  When he’d asked his parents about their beliefs—and he had asked, nearly relentlessly—he’d been met with silence from his father and an open lecture series from his mother. Neither had answered his questions. Neither had told him, in any sort of specific way, what their beliefs were.

  The clouds moved across the sliver of the moon and he felt a raindrop on his left cheek. When Meghan was little, she used to crawl into bed beside him when there was a thunderstorm at night. She would shiver for a few moments, and then fall deeply asleep, as though simply being with him was enough to keep her safe. She drove him crazy on those nights. She thrashed and rolled and kicked, all while asleep. He’d finally told her that she could no longer come in if she couldn’t stay still.

  The next time she came in, she lay gingerly at his side on her back, her arms straight at her sides, legs stretched out, taking up as little room as she could. She finally fell asleep, and to his amazement she managed to maintain this perfect form throughout most of the night.

  Ironically, her very stillness left him sleepless, and he kept checking to make sure she was breathing. When she’d made her presence known, felt in every kick and roll, he’d wanted nothing more than to get rid of her. But the fact that she was strong enough to change her sleeping habits, was strong enough to maintain it while not even awake, simply to stay with him, fascinated him.

  She’d stopped being afraid of thunder by the time she was ten, just in time for him to go to college. Now he wondered if she had weaned herself off of his protection in anticipation of his departure. It seemed reasonable that someone who could change their behavior even in sleep could do that.

  He heard the back door open and close softly, and when Ada lowered herself to the grass beside him, he rolled over toward her, burying his face in her neck, breathing her in. She stroked his hair, but when he ran his hand down her thigh, she stopped him. He tried again and again and she stopped him.

  Within moments, they were grappling with each other on the lawn, and he finally, to his horror, burst into tears when it was clear that she was not simply playing hard to get, wasn’t mock wrestling with him, but was determined to keep him from the solace of her body.

  “What?” he demanded, savagely wiping the damning tears away.

  She sat up, breathing heavily, and brushing the sides of her legs free of grass. “Marshall, we have to move beyond that.”

  “But we’ve already—”

  “I know,” she silenced him. “And that was wrong.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he protested. “It was beautiful. Ada, I love you.”

  “No,” she said harshly. “You used me.”

  He gasped. Perhaps he could have expected her to rethink their sexual relationship, but he hadn’t expected her to blame him completely for it, or to think so unkindly of him.

  “I did not,” he said.

  “You did,” she insisted. “But I don’t blame you. I let it happen. I wasn’t strong enough. I got distracted. If we’re going to do this, if we’re ever going to work, then we have to start over. We have to atone, be made clean. Especially if we’re going back to my family. I can’t go back there . . . like that.”

  “I thought we weren’t traveling on the same road,” he said bitterly.

  She gave him a long, considering look that felt heavy on his cheek, as if she’d placed a hand there to try to read his thoughts.

  “We have to leave,” she said softly and watched him. “We shouldn’t have come here. We have to leave soon. The sooner the better. Your grandmother’s asleep. We could leave tonight.”

  He looked away from her. “Ada? How come you never told me that you were born in Canada?”

  “It didn’t seem important. How come you never told me about your grandparents?”

  “How did you get into my room?”

  “What do you mean?” Ada asked, slanting a cagey glance at him.

  “That night at the house, when you came into my room. I had locked the door. How did you get in?”

  “It’s not like it was a deadbolt or anything, Marshall,” she said. “Those little locks are pretty easy to get open.”

  They were silent. Something being pursued, or perhaps the pursuer, in the wildness of the thick brush screamed, and Marshall felt a chill rise along his b
ackbone, spread beneath his thighs.

  “I—can’t go with you. I have to go back,” he said, his voice quivering with the anguished truth of it. The fresh silence in the backyard made him feel more alone than ever before.

  “I know,” she finally said. “But I can’t.”

  This time it was his turn. He looked in her eyes. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  He did the only thing he could for her. He gave her the keys to the car and as much cash as he could. They moved quietly about the house, getting her ready, and he held her tightly before she got in the car. “I love you,” he whispered fiercely in her ear.

  “I know,” she whispered back. “Take care of yourself, Marshall. Have faith.”

  He couldn’t even watch her drive away. As soon as she started the engine, the dogs came out of the brush, yipping and howling as they converged on the car. He backed into the house, gently shutting out the sounds of their hunger and desperation as the car faded away.

  Fifteen

  OUR détente didn’t last long. Cal strode into Meghan’s room later that week and came right to my chair, holding his cell phone up as if it would explain things.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Ada?”

  I was going to tell him. But then he had come in full of hope for Meghan, and all I wanted was to keep things peaceful between us for as long as I could.

  “I was going to tell you,” I said.

  He paced the hospital room, anger radiating from his set shoulders, his tight mouth. I stayed silent. There was nothing I could say right now that would be heard the way I meant it. But then this was the direction things seemed to be moving in, the inexorable slide—started at some point in the past that I’d never been able to pinpoint—into the pool of separateness.

  Cal could stand separation. He’d been alone when I met him. But I had still had my parents, I’d had a boyfriend, I’d had a large circle of friends, a larger circle of acquaintances, and larger still, the very world open to me.

  Everything had gotten smaller. I had broken up with the boyfriend to be with Cal, lost my parents, slowly lost touch with all of my friends, and with the birth of my children, the very thing that I thought would open up worlds to me, I had given up my vast possibilities in this one.

  And it continued to shrink. Marshall left for school and was now so clearly beyond the son I thought I knew; Cal had moved away from me and I didn’t know what his world was like anymore; and my daughter, the one I’d thought I had so much more time with, the one I thought I would always have, had gone somewhere I could not follow. My world had shrunk, constricted around me, to this hospital room.

  When I was pregnant with Meghan, I hadn’t had a baby shower. Gifts had always embarrassed me; I hadn’t even wanted a baby shower when I was pregnant with Marshall. I hadn’t wanted a bridal shower when we got married, and I hadn’t had a birthday party since I was seven and ran from the room, sobbing, when confronted with a great mountain of brightly wrapped presents and the expectant faces of my classmates.

  But I had always been touched by the little gifts Cal occasionally surprised me with. When we brought Meghan home from the hospital, this exact same hospital, he had scattered small bits of love throughout the house, for me to discover in time, without fanfare.

  The first time I reached for a onesie, my hand fell upon a small ceramic plaque, the sort of hokey little tchotchke that I usually couldn’t stand. It had a fat silk rope to hang it on a wall, and in brilliant pink calligraphy it said, A son is a son till he takes a wife, but a daughter’s a daughter for the rest of her life. Little garlands of white flowers surrounded the words, and this new part of me, the mother of a daughter part of me, did not laugh out loud at the sentiment of it.

  Instead I found a hook, and hung it on the wall above her changing table, and then kissed Cal when he came home that day and whispered “thank you” softly in his ear. We had become a family when Marshall was born, but we were complete when Meghan came along, and I’d never even realized that there was an absence to begin with.

  Now I knew more about the absences in our lives than I did about what we had. And we had a new one: the absence of easy apologies. They had never been hard before. Once, sorry had rolled off our tongues as easily as Cal caught fish. I should have said I was sorry that I didn’t tell him what the detectives had told me. But it simply felt like more effort than I could muster.

  He finally dropped into the recliner and dug in his duffel bag. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but I guess you better know in case anyone tries to get in here,” he said, pulling out a newspaper folded in half.

  “I went by their office—those detectives you said you wouldn’t talk to—this morning to see if there was anything we could do about it,” he said, handing it to me. “I looked like a real ass when they mentioned the long conversation they’d had with my wife.”

  I scanned the section he’d given me quickly, unsure of what I was looking for, then gasped when I saw it, the headline I hadn’t even considered could be about us.

  “Girl near death, brother disappears,” I whispered, reading the accompanying article quickly, then going back to read it word for word. Cal talked in the background but I barely heard him.

  “Kevin told me a reporter had been by the marina to talk to me, and I imagine they went by the house too. All I can figure is that someone from the hospital called them, that doctor, I guess. The detectives said a journalist called and asked about Marshall, but they didn’t give out any information except to ask if the journalist had talked to Marshall. I guess that’s how they figured out he’s gone.”

  The article was brief, but damning, and seeing it in black type, with our names attached to this outlandish story, made me ill. I rushed to the bathroom and fell on my knees in front of the toilet, but all I could do was try to catch my breath. The nausea stayed, hovering somewhere just under my lungs, making every breath a risk.

  Dr. Kimball hadn’t been mentioned by name in the article, but who else would have been so callous about a family’s personal crisis, our family’s personal crisis in particular?

  I sat back on the tiles and leaned against the wall, cool against my shoulder blades, and stared dully at the toilet, the white ceramic sculpture, and thought of the oddest things. I wondered if I would have to teach Meghan to use one again someday, or if we would ever even get to that point. I remembered how easy she had been to potty train, especially after the difficulty I’d gone through with Marshall.

  I remembered how Cal had delighted in allowing him to pee off the side of the boat, how the first time he did it, a fish jumped and startled Marshall so that he fell in the water. How Cal roared with laughter as he hauled him out and how Marshall had trembled on the edge of sobbing and laughing, finally coming down on the side of hysterical laughter with his father.

  Such a simple thing, a toilet. So bitterly stupid to sit there and make it a poignant symbol of a possible future. But it did represent a line between infancy and independence, between the drudgery of diapers and freedom. I turned my cheek to the cool wall, my ear pressed tightly to it, and could hear Cal moving things about, muffled thumps and mutterings.

  I took a deep breath and slid up the wall, not bothering to wash my face clean of tears. I used to be careful of the ravages of crying, stress, illness, and daily indifference. Even if my use of makeup had declined over the years, probably just when it ought to have increased, I was still conscious of how I looked to my husband.

  I still brushed my teeth first thing in the morning, I still washed my face, showered, and used deodorant daily, still paid attention to how shabby I would let my clothes get. I still shaved my legs, under my arms, carefully tamed anything that got unruly in a bathing suit. I had not, at any point, let myself go to hell.

  But frankly, I simply did not care anymore. I paused to remember if I had showered that day. I hadn’t. God only knew how long it had been since I shaved my legs. I wouldn’t ev
en consider raising an arm for a look there, much less a whiff, and the thought of applying a razor anywhere else was nearly laughable. I felt a vague satisfaction at the knowledge that I had, indeed, brushed my teeth that morning, as if that proved my descent had its limits. For now.

  Cal looked tired, but other than that it seemed that men, in addition to their unfair aging advantage, weathered stress better. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the amount of upkeep necessary to keep women presentable. Men looked good with stubble, a little scruffy around the edges. A little scruffy around the edges for women meant disaster.

  I jerked at the soft knock on the door.

  “Chloe? You okay?” Cal called.

  “Fine,” I called back, and turned on the faucet as if to prove that, clearly, if I was able to work a sink, I must be all right. Perversely, I did not allow my hands to touch the water, and refused to ruminate about what this might signify.

  When I returned to the room, I saw with surprise that Cal had rearranged the chairs. He had dragged them over to the windows and opened the blinds. That light wasn’t going to do much to improve my countenance. It splashed through the room, as loud and harsh as heavy metal, and I immediately went to Meghan’s bedside, to shield her from this intrusion.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. I couldn’t keep my voice from rising accusingly. I had always tried to keep that shrillness I so often heard in other women’s voices from invading mine. I hated hearing women speak to their husbands as if they were dull children they barely tolerated.

  But right now, Cal was very much like a dull child I could barely tolerate.

  But the mirror-bright bars of light that fell across Meghan didn’t extend up to her face, and there was little I could say to support my irritation. I adjusted her sheets, straightened a couple of wires across her pillow, smoothed her hair back from her forehead. High-pitched beeps made me whirl around to check the digital displays on the machines that were keeping track of her vital signs, her “very promising” brain activity. The beeps weren’t coming from any of the machines, and I finally turned Cal’s way.