This Side of Salvation

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “Four, including Tod. We fed the kittens this special formula from the vet, since Juno didn’t have enough milk.” I sat beside Bailey on the rug, wishing I could trade places with my cat. “Tod almost died, so my sister named him after a grim reaper from one of her favorite books. I think she thought it would protect him.”

  “Did the other three live?” Bailey’s voice caught a little on the question.

  “Yep. Kane took Flo, and a lady at Dad’s work took Belle and Sebastian.”

  “This was three years ago—after your brother died?”

  “Uh-huh.” I watched her fingers stroke the white patch on Juno’s chest, imagining it was my own chest, that she was loosening the sudden tightness inside.

  “That must’ve been hard, with the kittens almost, um, not making it.”

  “It was. Mara and I did a couple feedings each day, but we had school and homework, so it was mostly my parents. They hardly slept for two months.” I smiled at the memory of Dad sitting on the floor of their walk-in closet, where Juno had insisted on having her kittens. He’d still be in his dress shirt and tie, my tattered old crib blanket in his lap, feeding these mouse-size creatures their formula, one drop at a time. Both hands would be occupied, so his tears would go unwiped.

  This was during the Fog Year, when it was okay to feel sad and raw. I hadn’t seen him weep since then. Maybe he couldn’t admit that there are some holes even God can’t fill.

  Bailey moved on to Juno’s belly, caressing with more confidence. The cat squeezed her eyes shut in bliss-out mode. Her tiny paws opened and closed like she was kneading the air.

  Bailey laughed. “She looks like Joe Cocker when he sang ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ at Woodstock.”

  “Who?”

  “He got so into it, he started doing this spastic air guitar.” She lifted her hands near her chest and mimed singing, wrists bent at odd angles, jerking like an epileptic praying mantis. “Whaaaaat would you doooo if I sang out of tune?”

  Juno jumped to her feet, ready to run. Bailey dropped the act. “Ooh, sorry, kitty. Didn’t mean to scare you.” She petted the cat soothingly. “Pull the video up on my tablet. I’m sure it’s online.”

  We watched it together, and I knew I would always remember that moment, when my cat’s paws made Bailey think of an ancient song. It was the moment I realized how amazing her mind was. Not to mention her fingers.

  When the video had thirty seconds left, I kissed Bailey. She must have taken her hand off the cat, because both were on my face, then in my hair. Then one in my hair and the other on my shoulder—not the outside part, but the top, the heel of her hand resting on my collarbone, her thumb curving up my neck, almost to my ear.

  Even though we’d been eating pretzels, she tasted like sugar.

  The music faded and Bailey pulled away a little. “We should probably get back to derivatives,” she whispered.

  My heart turned to lead, like I was a victim of an alchemist’s prank. Is this a blow off? Am I a bad kisser? Why would she kiss me for thirty seconds if it sucked?

  I knew I should say, “Okay,” and meekly follow her back to the table, hoping that maybe one day she’d give me another chance.

  Instead I kissed her again, swift and soft, just a brush, a tease.

  She let out a gasp. “But let’s not.”

  • • •

  Bailey went home a couple of hours later for dinner. I spent the rest of the evening attempting to do homework but mostly reenacting our make-out session in my mind. I was creating an extended 3-D director’s-cut version when the front door opened downstairs. My parents were home.

  I checked the clock on my nightstand. Eleven thirty? What had Mom and Dad been doing to keep themselves out so late? Not that they weren’t allowed to have a life. If anything, I wished they’d go out more, just the two of them, like they used to when my father had a job. Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy happy-making situations, like Mom and Dad’s date nights. (Or a new MLB 2K or Madden game. I was still playing three versions ago and had to go to Kane’s to play the upgrades.)

  Curious, and hungry for a bedtime snack, I went downstairs. Mara was in the kitchen pouring cereal, generic cornflakes mixed with generic corn puffs.

  Mom swept off her purple silk scarf and laid it over the back of a kitchen chair. She looked exhilarated. “Guess what, kids? Family meeting, living room, ten minutes.”

  Weird. What was so urgent it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? The last family meeting had been called to announce that Mom was going back to work, but that had taken place right after dinner.

  “I’ll make chamomile tea,” Mom added.

  Weirder. She only gave us that when we had insomnia.

  I sat on the couch with Mara, trying not to think of what I’d been doing in the same spot with Bailey six hours before. No X-rated acts, just endless kissing, hands in each other’s hair, sometimes me pressing her down, sometimes her pressing me down.

  I rested my hand on the empty cushion beside me, remembering the imprint our bodies had made. Dad cleared his throat. I stopped reminiscing and put my hand back in my lap as he murmured something about “bathe all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the evening.” Mara was trying not to laugh.

  Then my mom entered and proudly announced where they’d been that night and who they’d been with.

  Mara stopped laughing, but I started. It had to be a joke.

  • • •

  It was not a joke.

  “We have you to thank, David.” Mom set her empty mug on the end table and beamed at me. I hadn’t touched my own tea during the ten-minute explanation—I’d seen enough spy movies to know you don’t drink anything that crazy people give you. “You were the one who told us about Sophia Visser.”

  “And you thought she was a con artist,” I reminded her.

  “But that night, after you went to bed, we looked into her ministry. It’s as pure as they come. As you said, she doesn’t ask for money, just faith.”

  “But—” Frustrated, I turned to my dad. “You were the one who said it was sinful to predict the Rapture date. Didn’t Jesus say something like, even he and the angels didn’t know, only God?”

  “That was then, this is now,” my mother explained. “In New Testament days, they thought the Lord would return during their lifetimes. Since then, people have developed ways to calculate these events.”

  “Wait.” I sat forward, putting out both my hands. “You’re always telling us that every word of the Bible is just as true today as it was when it was written. Now you’re saying times have changed because what, we have better math?”

  My father’s voice boomed forth. “That servant, who knew his lord’s will, and didn’t prepare, nor do what he wanted, will be beaten with many stripes.”

  He better be speaking metaphorically. I looked at Mara to see if she was as troubled as I was. She was quiet but chewing her nails like crazy.

  “He who doubts is condemned,” Dad continued. “Whatever is not of faith is sin.”

  No further questions allowed, in other words.

  Then we were dismissed. Sent to bed. Like children. I left my untouched tea and went upstairs, Mara on my heels.

  We stopped at the thresholds of our respective bedrooms. It had been years since we’d been in each other’s rooms. She even had a NO DORKY LITTLE BROTHERS ALLOWED sign on her door, yellowed with age but still enforced and obeyed.

  Mara twisted the ends of her hair around her finger, looking stunned. The left lens of her glasses was smudged. Usually she cleaned them obsessively so they never held so much as an oversize piece of dust.

  All I could say was “Um.”

  “Yeah. Um.” Then she went into her room and shut the door softly.

  Ten minutes later, after I’d brushed my teeth and gotten into bed, my phone buzzed with a text from Mara: Is this real?

  Me: I hope it’s a joke. Is there a September Fools’ Day?

  Mara: It’s your birthday now. M
aybe you’re the Sept Fool.

  Me: Ha freaking ha.

  Mara: Srsly, make them stop. This was your idea.

  Me: I’ll come up with something. Don’t be scared.

  I waited for her to text back a protest. Accusing her of fear normally got me a punch in the arm and a half whine, half bellow, “I’m not scared!”

  But this time, nothing. Maybe she’d fallen asleep, or was planning a witty retort, or was finding it as hard as I was to put this feeling of dread into words. I set my phone back on my nightstand.

  Just as I turned out the light, another text from Mara came through.

  Thanks.

  • • •

  Mara and I left early for our community-college English class the next morning to avoid further Rush lectures. As we pulled out of the driveway, I saw my father standing on the front porch, gazing up at the puffy clouds in the sharp blue sky, then down at a pair of starlings hopping over the front lawn. He waved to us, wearing a serene smile. He reminded me of Sophia Visser’s photo on her home page.

  “Dad looks different today,” I told Mara. “He looks happy.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  I frowned. Nothing had made Dad truly happy since John died. Our faith gave us comfort in our sorrow, but it couldn’t take that sorrow away. Maybe this Rush obsession would, at least for my parents, and at least for a while.

  There were still mornings when I would get up, walk into the kitchen, and realize that that day would be another day without John. If I didn’t obliterate that thought with music or a hard workout or homework, it would be followed by the hardest reality of all, that every day from now until the end of my life would be a Day Without John. No phone call or e-mail, much less a catch-and-throw partner or a Three Stooges marathon companion.

  So I could see how the end of the world, a world that insisted on being a World Without John, would be hard to resist.

  “They’re insane,” Mara said as we drove away down the street. “Not go to school in the spring? What about graduation? What about college? I’m halfway through my applications! I have SATs next Saturday!” She was nearly hyperventilating. “What am I going to do?”

  “Take the SATs. And just humor Mom and Dad. By January they’ll have changed their minds.”

  “You’d better be right, or I will kill you for telling them about this Sophia Visser chick.”

  “If you kill me, I’ll just rise again on Rush night.” I lifted my arms like a zombie and let a little drool trickle out of the corner of my mouth. “Mara has tasty bwaaaaains!”

  “Stop it,” she said, but she was laughing a little. “Can I ask you a serious question?”

  “I don’t know, can you?”

  This time she didn’t laugh. “Do you believe in the Rapture? I don’t mean on May eleventh or whatever. I mean in general, that Jesus is coming back for us one day before the apocalypse and Armageddon.”

  “That’s what Pastor Ed says. That’s what Mom and Dad—okay, forget what Mom and Dad say.” They were quickly losing status as reliable authorities. “It’s in the Bible, right?”

  “Is it?”

  “Somewhere in Revelation, I think. I’ll look it up. In youth group they told us the Rapture could happen today, so we can’t wait for tomorrow to get right with the Lord.”

  “Yeah, it could happen today because all the prophecies have been fulfilled, or so they say.” Mara waved her hand at our surroundings, the tree-lined road and the big old houses. “Doesn’t it bother you, though? The thought of all this wiped out?”

  “The world’s a crappy place, and it’s getting worse. Wars, global warming, the economy . . .”

  “But there’s lots of good stuff too.”

  Like kissing Bailey. “Christians aren’t supposed to focus on this world. It’s temporary, right? We’re supposed to focus on the next world, which is forever.”

  “What if the Rapture happened tonight, before your birthday dinner?”

  “In theory, that would suck. But that heavenly banquet is probably even better than IHOP.”

  “This isn’t funny, David.”

  “Yes, it is.” It has to be, or I will go crazy. “You will not kill my birthday buzz.”

  “What about everyone left behind?” She stopped at the intersection with the main road and peered at the convex mirror on the tree across the street, checking for cars coming around the sharp curve to our left. “You think they deserve to suffer?”

  “I don’t decide who deserves what. But no, I don’t want everyone to suffer. I don’t want anyone to suffer.” I gestured to a dead raccoon lying on the shoulder of the road. “That’s the whole point of the end of the world. No more suffering.”

  Mara pulled onto the main road with a squeal of tires. “And no more joy.”

  My cell phone rang. Mom.

  “Happy birthday!” Background traffic noise told me she was in the car. “I’m sorry I missed you this morning. I wanted to ask if you’d like to bring a friend along for your birthday dinner tonight.”

  “Can I bring Kane and Bailey?”

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t afford both right now.”

  “What if we leave Mara at home?”

  My sister stuck her tongue out at me.

  “I’m showing a house, so I have to go now,” Mom said. “And no, your sister comes tonight or she gets to keep the gift she bought you.”

  We hung up. “Who are you bringing?” Mara asked me, then spoke in a movie trailer voice. “Faced with a choice between his best friend and the love of his life . . .”

  I couldn’t finish her sentence. I craved more time with Bailey the way a man in the desert craves Gatorade. But did I want to trap her in a two-hour discussion with my parents in their current state? That seemed like the fastest path to losing her forever.

  Besides, Kane and I had spent every birthday with each other since we were six. Our dads built our tree house together, with our help and occasional interference. In the month after John died, Mrs. Walsh cooked or bought dinner for us every night.

  Best of all, Kane had known my parents when they were normal, so he understood they weren’t themselves these days. Or these years.

  So he was the obvious choice. I hoped it wasn’t a choice we’d both regret.

  CHAPTER 13

  NOW

  Suicide?” Kane asks me. “You think your parents might’ve had a pact?”

  “Maybe that was their Plan B if the Rush didn’t happen.”

  Mara’s face turns almost as pale as the whiteboard. “They wouldn’t—” Then she tilts her head like she’s remembering something troubling. “I overheard them talking on March nineteenth.”

  The date is like a sledgehammer. I set my breakfast plate aside, my appetite fleeing.

  “What was March nineteenth?” Kane asks cautiously, fork poised above his omelet.

  “The four-year anniversary of John’s death,” I tell him.

  “Oh. Sorry, man, I forgot the date.”

  “What did they say?” I ask Mara, dreading the answer.

  “Dad said he hated living in this house, with all the memories. Mom said she still expects to come downstairs and see John at the table reading the back of the cereal boxes, lining them up the way he used to do.” Mara twists the cap of the whiteboard marker, making it squeak. “Then Dad got real quiet, and finally he said that he didn’t want to live in this world anymore.”

  The sentiment doesn’t surprise me, only its declaration. “Dad said all that in English?” I ask her. “Not in Bibleish?”

  “I wish. He quoted some verses, but I don’t remember what he said, just what he meant.”

  “Not wanting to live in this world anymore?” Kane shakes his head and spears a piece of green pepper. “I hate to say it, but that does sound suicidal.”

  I can’t exactly blame Mara for not mentioning this before, since I never told her about my own extremely concrete grounds for suspicion. “There’s a difference between thinking the world is a cruel place and a
ctually planning suicide.”

  Mara shoves her dark bangs back from her forehead and starts to pace. “If Dad wanted to leave this world, he probably thought the Rush was the solution. Let Jesus come and make it all better.”

  “That is Jesus’s job,” I remark only half-ironically. “They don’t call Him Savior because He passes out coupons.”

  “But when the Rush didn’t happen,” she continues in a rising voice, “they went to Plan B.”

  “Obviously.” Kane gestures to the ceiling. “I mean, they’re gone. But what if reality is actually a combination of options three and four? They ran away voluntarily with Sophia, who’ll make them all kill themselves.”

  “No way.” My stomach adds a lurch to my protest. “That’s insane.”

  “It happens in cults, especially with these End Times people. If Sophia pretends the Rush really happened, and then her followers turn up alive, it’ll prove she’s a fraud. But if they all conveniently disappear, then it’ll seem like they were Rushed.”

  “That’s sick,” Mara says.

  “It’s happened before, sort of. There was that guy in the seventies—what was his name?” Kane snaps his fingers. “Reverend Jones. He had his cult join him at this place he named after himself in South America. When the authorities started closing in on him, he passed out poisoned Kool-Aid to his followers. They all drank it and died.”

  “Kane, shut up. You’re freaking my sister out.” And me, too.

  “Did they know they were killing themselves?” Mara shrills at him.

  “Yeah, they’d even rehearsed it once. Though I’m sure the babies didn’t know.”

  “Babies?” She sways a little, like she’s going to pass out.

  I’ve got to rein her in and stop Kane’s history lesson. “Mara, you met Sophia. She was a little wifty, but she didn’t seem like a homicidal maniac.”

  “Do any homicidal maniacs seem like homicidal maniacs?”

  “We can’t panic.” I get up to join her at the board. “The whole point of making this list was to be logical. That’s why we didn’t argue about whether the Rush actually happened. I say we stick with number three, they ran away, until we have a good reason to believe that they committed—” I can’t force out the word. “They wouldn’t—” Yes, he would. “Mom wouldn’t do that to us.”