This Side of Salvation

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  • • •

  We find the Decker house—mansion, really—in one of the oldest, poshest neighborhoods in Delaware County. The oak trees’ ancient boughs stretch across narrow streets to meet one another, looking like they’re gossiping about us.

  We do a slow-but-not-suspiciously-slow drive by the Deckers’ house. The curving driveway is empty, but the cars could be in the garage. A blue flag with a gold cross and white dove flaps gently above their front porch, which is about all we can see from across the street, thanks to a tall hedgerow.

  Mara parks next to a Neighborhood Watch sign.

  “We won’t last an hour in this place before someone calls the cops,” I tell her.

  “Relax, David. We’re in a Lexus.”

  “A Lexus that’s probably two weeks from getting repossessed.”

  “You can’t tell that from the outside.”

  “I could call and ask for Mrs. Decker,” Bailey says.

  “Good idea. Plus I want to hear your grown-up voice again.” I give Bailey what I hope is an adoring not cheesy smile.

  She pulls out her phone. “You have a thing for older women, don’t you?”

  Mara snorts. “Yeah, ask Sophia Visser.”

  I glare at her. “Hey, that was low. And why do you assume just because she’s hot that I’m attracted to her? Are you attracted to George Clooney?”

  “No, he’s old.”

  “So is Sophia.” I roll up my sleeve to show Bailey the Deckers’ phone number.

  As she thumbs it in, she says, “I had a dream about George Clooney once. We were at a protest together and he asked for my e-mail address.”

  “Did you give it to him?”

  “He said it was for social justice, so yeah. Then we rode those mechanical ponies outside of Kmart, the ones you put quarters in?”

  Nothing like my dream of Sophia Visser. Girls are weird.

  Bailey clears her throat and puts the phone to her ear. While she waits for someone to answer, she runs her thumbnail over the tattered logo on her punk-rock Hello Kitty T-shirt, picking off another chip of ink from the cat’s paw.

  Then she hits the speaker button and turns the phone to us.

  “Praise the Lord! You have reached the voice mail of the Decker family. Please leave a detailed message, including the time and date you called. Walk in peace.”

  Bailey ends the connection. “I’m calling back right now. If someone’s home and sees the same number twice in one minute, maybe they’ll think it’s important.” She hits a button and listens. “Oh. Hello, may I please speak to—” She scowls and hangs up. “So much for ‘walk in peace.’ ”

  “Who answered?” Mara asks.

  “Ezra. He said, ‘Go away,’ and hung up. I’m so glad that prick wasn’t in our Math Cave section this year.”

  Mara disengages the locks. “Let’s go knock on the door.”

  I put my hand out. “What if his parents are there? What are we going to say? ‘Hey, our mom and dad have ditched us. Call the police’? No, we wait until we know he’s alone.”

  “That could take hours!” Mara stomps the brake pedal in frustration. “What if we have to pee?”

  I flourish my empty bottle of Gatorade. “That’s what this is for.” I’m denounced by a chorus of girl boos.

  Bailey unzips her book bag. “We could do math homework to pass the time.”

  “I’m too tense.” Mara takes a sip of her Slurpee and watches the Deckers’ front door. I pull out a fresh bag of sunflower seeds. Mara shakes her head when she sees them. “You’re not chewing those in here. This isn’t a dugout.”

  “I’m hungry.” Not to mention nervous.

  “It’s loud and messy.”

  “I’ll spit the shells into my bottle.”

  “The same one you plan to pee in?”

  I drop the bag of seeds into my backpack. “We should’ve planned this better. We should’ve brought Girl Scout cookies and pretended we were selling them door-to-door.”

  “Bailey and I are too old to be Girl Scouts,” Mara says, “and you’re too not-a-girl.”

  “We could sell Bibles. We have lots of extras at home.”

  Bailey whimpers. “I could go for some Thin Mints right now. I wouldn’t even care they’re only ninety-nine percent vegan.”

  The longing in her voice makes me turn to look at her. She’s scanning the opposite side of the street and the visible part of the Deckers’ yard. Her total commitment to this mission, along with the way her eyes get a tinge of blue in natural light, makes me love her so sharp and hard I can barely stand it.

  I really need to chew something. Mara will tolerate bubble gum, at least.

  My job is to watch for trouble on this side of the street, forward through the windshield and backward in the side-view mirror, where objects are closer than they appear.

  To stay alert, I keep a running total in my head of how much all the dogs walked on this street probably weigh. The houses here are big, and so are their four-legged inhabitants, so I’m up to nearly a ton when Bailey breaks the silence again.

  “David, how come you wear a silver cross when everyone else in your family wears a gold one?”

  “I’m allergic to gold.”

  “You’re not allergic to gold,” Mara says, “you’re allergic to the nickel in gold jewelry. You just like how tragic a gold allergy sounds.”

  I slip my finger under the chain and watch a little girl down the street pet a large white poodle. “This is titanium, actually, not silver.”

  Bailey makes a huh noise. “I read somewhere that titanium was supposed to stabilize the electric currents in your body. Sounds like New Age crap to me.”

  “There are some pro athletes who swear by titanium, but I put it in the category of wearing lucky socks or not shaving during the playoffs. If it helps you mentally, great, but you have to own your success and failure. Luck is useless.” I tuck the cross and its chain beneath my shirt again. “I wear titanium because it won’t break or give me a rash.”

  “And it looks cool.”

  “Except he hardly ever wears the cross outside his shirt,” Mara says. “Did you notice that?”

  “That’s because he doesn’t wear it for other people.”

  I don’t reply or react, but on the inside, I kick myself for ever doubting Bailey’s understanding.

  In my side-view mirror, I see a tall, young guy walking a chocolate Lab. Its pace is slow and its face is nearly white, but it wags its tail steadily and glances up at its owner every few steps with a yellow-toothed, lolling-tongued smile. With a sudden pang, I miss Lucy, my speedy little long-toss partner, my only bright spot in the abyss of the Abandoning.

  “You’re chewing too loud,” Mara says.

  I chew harder, smacking the gum against the roof of my mouth, then start blowing a bubble. It swells in a glorious pink balloon, blocking my forward vision, until—

  “Hey.”

  There’s a head at my window. I suck the bubble back into my mouth too fast, almost choking.

  It’s the guy with the chocolate Lab. I’d been so busy watching the dog, I hadn’t more than glanced at his face. But now that it’s inches from mine, I see who it is.

  Our target. Ezra Decker.

  CHAPTER 26

  FORTY-THREE DAYS BEFORE THE RUSH

  Of course, on the last weekend of my quasi-normal life, Bailey was out of town on a Sierra Club outreach trip to inner-city Harrisburg. Early Saturday afternoon I texted Kane:

  Can we leave for practice a half hour early? I need your help.

  • • •

  When I got into the car, Kane was yelling at his phone. “We’ll discuss it later!” Then he thumbed the screen and shoved the phone into the console between the seats. “Or never.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “No one. I was texting my mom.”

  “So you were talking to yourself.”

  “Shut up. Yes.” He pulled out into the street. “She wants me to go to Villanova
so I can live at home. I refuse to apply.”

  “It’d be cheaper. And you’d have daily access to Campus Corner’s cheese fries.”

  “This is true. But plenty of other colleges like Maryland or UVA would be cheaper, even if I lived on campus. Plus no priests.”

  I envied Kane’s college choices. I’d be going to whichever college gave me the biggest baseball scholarship—if any did at all.

  “It’s not the money,” Kane continued. “Mom wants me where she can keep me on the ‘straight and narrow.’ If I get any narrower, they’ll canonize me.”

  “Saint Kane of Wayne.”

  “And if we lived one town over, you could be Saint David of Saint Davids.” He gestured to the small chalk-white train station building on our left. “So what’s going on? What prompted this little shopping trip?”

  “My parents said I can’t see Bailey, starting Tuesday.”

  “What?! Why?”

  “Because of the Rush. We have to spend the forty days before it getting ready, and that means retreating from the world. Repenting.”

  “Sort of like Lent?”

  “Yeah. Monday night could be our last chance for a while.” Maybe forever, if she won’t wait for me and decides to find someone less dysfunctional.

  “Makes sense.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Seize the day, right? Like in that Edward Norton movie where he had twenty-four hours of freedom before he went to jail.”

  “It’s exactly like that.” The Abandoning did feel like a prison sentence.

  “You think Bailey’ll do it?”

  “I know she wants to. I mean, she hasn’t pressured me or anything.” Unless getting me so worked up I can’t think counts as pressure. “But she said she’s ready when I am.”

  “And you’re ready now?”

  “I think I have been for a while, but—never mind, it’s stupid.”

  “What’s stupid?”

  “Being intimidated by her, you know, experience.”

  “So she’s not a virgin.” He said it like a statement instead of a question. “I wondered.”

  “She had a boyfriend in Montreal.”

  “No way! A French-Canadian guy? They’re, like, practically European.” He swung out into the busy Lancaster Avenue traffic. “I can see why you’re intimidated.”

  “Why? What have you heard about Europeans?”

  “They’re more adventurous.”

  “Great,” I said under my breath.

  “Hey, you of all people can handle performance anxiety. I’ve seen you pitch your way out of some seriously hairy situations. Bases loaded, no outs, you’re totally wiped—somehow you put all that out of your mind and just do it.”

  “Not always.” I shrugged and admitted, “Usually.”

  “Sex is probably the same way. So when you’re with her, just pretend you’re on the mound. Relax and focus.”

  “Hmm.” I did have years of experience coaching myself through stressful moments. Maybe I should start applying those skills to my life.

  Kane veered onto the ramp for the Blue Route, the interstate highway cutting through the heart of the Main Line. “Bailey loves you, man, and totally wants you. So you don’t have to be perfect. Just get it across the plate.”

  His metaphor was starting to break down, but I got the general idea: Don’t make sex more complicated than it has to be. And definitely don’t think about adventurous French Canadians.

  • • •

  I stared at the bewildering array of condoms on the racks before us, feeling like a tourist gaping at New York skyscrapers for the first time.

  “They don’t come in sizes?” I whispered to Kane.

  “I think it’s one size fits all. Well, two sizes: regular and large.”

  “How do you know if you need large?”

  Kane scratched his forehead. “I think you just know.”

  “They should have fitting rooms like in clothing stores.”

  He cracked up, drawing the attention of a drugstore worker our moms’ age. She started to ask if we needed help, then changed her mind when she saw what we were buying.

  “Good idea coming to Broomall instead of our friendly neighborhood pharmacy.” Kane lowered his voice again. “People might talk if they see us doing this together.”

  “Not if we buy different boxes,” I said, attempting a joke to calm my nerves.

  “They might think we want variety.”

  “Then we should each get a box of the same kind.”

  “Then they’ll think we’re planning a really big weekend.”

  “Kane, I don’t care what people think. If you care, that’s your problem. Now shut up and help me decide.”

  He shut up, and we contemplated the choices before us. I had a vague memory of a middle school sex ed class where we’d learned why condoms should be used, and how to discuss them with your “partner” (a word I always thought sounded businesslike and the opposite of hot), but there’d been no lesson on how to choose among them:

  Her Pleasure, Double Pleasure, Extended Pleasure . . .

  I wish John were here.

  Large, Lubricated, Latex-Free . . .

  John would know which ones to get.

  Extra-Thin, Extra-Thick, Extra-Strength . . .

  Better yet, John would get them for me.

  Candy-Flavored, Rainbow-Colored, Patriotic-Themed . . .

  Maybe Dad—no, no way.

  In the end I picked the box with the fewest adjectives.

  • • •

  “I think Bailey’ll wait for you,” Kane said when we were in the car again. “But it sucks that your parents are depriving you of a girlfriend for forty days.” He turned the key in the ignition, then gasped. “That includes prom, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I waited until he’d backed out of the parking space and maneuvered around a few incoming cars before dumping all the disappointment. “Also, I can’t see you.”

  His head whipped around at me before he drew his eyes back to the parking lot we were cruising through. “Just me?”

  “All my friends.”

  “But we’ll still see you at practice, right?” He came to the stoplight at the road and put on his blinker. “David?”

  I shook my head, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “It’s just temporary.”

  “Not to them it isn’t! Your parents think your life is over in forty days, and they want you to spend the rest of it without Bailey or your friends or baseball? That’s abuse.” Kane was becoming livid in two senses of the word: super angry, and kind of blue in the face.

  “It’s okay.” I knew it wasn’t okay, but I wanted to calm him down before the light turned green. “With everything going on at home, I don’t need the extra stress.”

  “Yes, you do! You need baseball. I swear to God, if you quit baseball, I will call Social Services and have them take you away.” He jammed on the accelerator to pull into the intersection. “I’ll say I saw your parents beat you with soap bars in pillowcases on a daily basis for years.”

  I grabbed the door handle as he swerved to avoid a crow scavenging a fallen fast-food bag. “Don’t swear to God.”

  “Shut up! I am sick of this shit. I’m sick of being understanding and supportive while you ruin your life.”

  “You act like I’m on drugs. I’m just trying to help my family.”

  “Your family sucks. Sorry, man. I just can’t take it anymore.”

  We stayed silent all the way up the Blue Route. Our exit’s off-ramp was flanked by two steep hills, one topped with a twenty-foot-tall cairn—a big pile of rocks, basically—and the other displaying a huge flat griffin made from hundreds of white stones. Both monuments were installed to honor Middle Merion Township’s Welsh heritage.

  Like Bailey’s family. She’d told me that her last name, Brynn, meant “hill” in Welsh. Now I’d never be able to drive on the freaking Blue Route without missing her.

  �
��Will you really call Social Services on my parents if I quit baseball?” I asked Kane when we got out of the car at the high school.

  Kane leaned on the hood with his knuckles, elbows angled out, not answering. He looked like a bowlegged bulldog.

  “I can still play league ball this summer,” I reminded him. “Scouts are already following me, they’ll come see me whenever and wherever I pitch.”

  “Yeah, they’re following you. Which means they’ll find out you left the Middle Merion team. You think all they care about is your fastball and changeup? They want guys they can rely on. Guys who don’t quit.”

  He was right: I might as well pin a scarlet Q on my chest. Maybe I could explain to the scouts that my parents were forcing me to leave the team. Then again, they might see family turmoil as a risk factor. What if one day my parents made me drop out of college on another whim?

  “Will you at least have my back with Coach Kopecki?” I asked Kane.

  He straightened up and turned toward the ball field. “No, but I’ll have your side.”

  • • •

  Kane did have my side with Coach Kopecki, in that he stood by it while I delivered the bad news. Kane also picked up the batting helmets and rosin bags that Kopecki threw in his uncharacteristic fit of rage.

  And Kane was the only one on the team who tipped his hat when I walked away.

  • • •

  Other than grace, no words were spoken at dinner that night. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I quit baseball.” It felt like the statement would scorch my tongue on its way out.

  Sunday morning I found my mother sitting alone at the end of the kitchen table, clutching her “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” mug as if it were her only source of warmth. A plastic grocery bag lay crumpled on the table next to her.

  She was still wearing her bathrobe, though it was almost time to leave for Stony Hill. “Isn’t service at ten o’clock?” I asked her as I poured a bowl of cereal.

  “Your father’s left on one of his trips, Mara’s refused to go anywhere with me, and I’m not feeling up to it. You can drive yourself if you want. Or go back to bed.”

  From the fridge I pulled out my carton of almond milk, which gave me a twinge. Every vegan food reminded me of Bailey. “We’ve missed church a lot lately. How come?”