This Side of Salvation

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  I blinked at the last word. “What?”

  “Where’d you order your prom flowers?”

  “I don’t remember the name of the place. It’s in downtown Wayne, near where Kane and I got our tuxes.” I made a mental note to cancel the rental.

  “I know the one you mean. Did they have good prices?”

  “No idea. It’s not like I buy corsages every week.” I stood at what would’ve been John’s feet. “Why do you ask?”

  “I need a boutonniere for prom.”

  “Mom and Dad said you could go?”

  “They didn’t give me permission, and I won’t ask for it. I’m almost eighteen.”

  “Must be nice. Who are you going with?”

  “Sam Schwartz. Your left fielder.”

  “Not mine anymore.” I had no outfielders or infielders or catchers or coaches. No bats or gloves or bases. No balls.

  “He had the biggest crush on me freshman year. Did I ever tell you, he texted me a ‘We miss you’ animated GIF my first day of sophomore year, when Mom started homeschooling us?”

  “Well, good for you,” I said, then dropped the resentful tone. It seemed wrong to fight with Mara at John’s graveside. “I mean it. Sam’s a nice guy. Heck of a hitter, too.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” Mara pointed to a small heart-shaped wreath stuck in the ground near John’s headstone. “His friends from high school brought that. They were here when I arrived.”

  “It’s cool that they remembered.”

  “Yeah. I brought the yellow roses.” She looked at my hands, then at my bike.

  “Guys don’t give their brothers flowers,” I told her. “I have something else for him.”

  “Okay, I get it, it’s private. I’m going. It’s Math Cave time, anyway.”

  “Tell Bailey . . . I don’t know. Tell her I hope she’s doing well.”

  “She’s not, based on how she looked in class Wednesday. Did you really break up with her?”

  “I’m not sure who did the breaking up. But we’re definitely broken, at least for now.”

  “I think you’re an idiot for letting her go and you deserve eternal misery for being so stupid. But I hope it works out. I like her.” Mara stood, picked up her backpack, then gave me an awkward hug. “And I love you.”

  I almost stepped out of her embrace, I was so stunned. Those words weren’t easily spoken in our house, nor were hugs readily dispensed.

  I’d barely gotten my hands up to reach around her back when she dropped her arms. Then she patted my shoulder and trudged away.

  I retrieved the baseball I’d stuffed into my bike’s storage compartment—the same place I’d once hidden Dad’s gun—then went back to the grave.

  “This was from the league championship game last year,” I told John. “We lost, one-zip, but I pitched all seven innings. Coach Kopecki gave me a ball that had been fouled into the dugout.” I sat on the chilly grass beside the headstone. “He said I’d left nothing on the field. That means I gave it all. Though you probably already know what it means. Sorry. Anyway, here.”

  I placed the ball next to the marble marker, beneath its simple engraved cross. A breeze stirred the branches over my head, causing a cascade of maple tree seed-pod helicopters. Through the rain of pods I could see the stone facade of the small yet stately St. Mark’s Church.

  “So I have a lot of time on my hands this week, which is bad. You know how I get when I’m not busy.” My eyes fixed on the second date engraved into the granite. “I keep wondering what I could’ve done differently the day you—the day you died.” I pressed my fist against my mouth, wanting to shove the word back down my throat. “So now it’s all falling apart, and everything I do just makes it worse. I can’t stop making it worse.”

  It felt like my lungs were tearing apart from each other, leaving a gaping seam down the center of my body.

  “Sorry. This isn’t one of those happy-sappy visits like last year, when I told you about this girl Bailey I’d just met, and how my changeup was coming along, and how even though Dad lost his job, we were sure he’d find another one real soon.”

  A maple-seed helicopter struck my arm. I popped off the wing and tossed the seed into the grass between John’s grave and the next. Then I imagined a tree growing from that seed, its roots digging into John’s coffin.

  Wasn’t his casket in some kind of concrete container? I couldn’t remember him being lowered into the ground. All I remembered was the sound of flags flapping in the wind. Maybe I’d closed my eyes as he descended.

  “I hope Mom and Dad come see you today.” I touched the rough edge of the granite headstone. “And I hope when I come for your twenty-ninth birthday, it’ll be with them.”

  • • •

  On the way home from St. Mark’s, my bike got a pinch flat when I rode through a pothole, probably because I’d forgotten to inflate the stupid tires before I left the house that morning. There was no point in calling Mom, since the bike wouldn’t fit in her car; Dad and the minivan were still out of town.

  Then it started to rain. Hard. It stopped as I neared home, but by then I was soaked and exhausted from walking the bike for five miles.

  To top it off, there was no decent food in the fridge or cupboard, just “ingredients.” I was not about to eat unpeeled carrots and a can of tuna fish.

  I sloshed my way upstairs, desperate for a hot shower and a serious misery wallow. Maybe I’d lie on my bed and listen to Johnny Cash’s cover album until Mom got home with groceries.

  On the carpet at the top of the steps lay an unusual shaft of light. John’s door was open a few inches. I’d never seen our cats turn a doorknob with their paws, but sometimes when I got out of the shower, Juno would be sitting on the sink, though I was sure I’d shut the bathroom door tight behind me.

  “Hey, kitten.” I pushed the door wide. “How did you—oh.”

  My father was sitting on the far side of John’s bed, staring at the window. His glasses lay on the bed beside him.

  “Hi,” I said, since it seemed rude not to. “I thought maybe one of the cats had—I didn’t know you were back from your trip. What are you doing in here?”

  Stupid question, considering it was John’s birthday. I’d thought about spending time in here myself, maybe tonight after everyone went to sleep, maybe light a candle and listen to the late Phillies game on the radio.

  My father’s head dipped down. “The king was much moved, and went up to the room over the gate, and wept. As he went, he said, ‘My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!’ ” His voice choked with tears. “ ‘I wish I had died for you, Absalom, my son, my son!’ ”

  He didn’t turn to me, just sat hunched over something in his lap, probably one of John’s old jerseys or his dress-blues cap.

  “I went to John’s grave today,” I said. “It looks good. Some of his high school friends left flowers. Mara, too, of course. Also, there was a brand-new flag. I’m not sure who left that.”

  My father’s breathing was thick with tears. I hadn’t seen him cry since the Fog Year. Maybe it was a good sign. Maybe if I tried, I could get closer.

  “I miss him,” I said. “I get why John’s—” I couldn’t say two forms of the d word twice in the same day. “Why him being gone makes you want to not be in this world anymore. I sometimes feel that way.” I rubbed my arms, shivering in my wet clothes. “I also miss you. I miss my dad. Just give me a sign that you won’t be like this forever.”

  He was silent for a long moment, so I took a step closer, my chest hot with hope.

  “If anyone comes to me,” he said, “and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple.”

  I groaned and crammed my palms against my face, wanting to scream. “My God, Dad, can’t you just—”

  “You shall not take the name of Yahweh, your God, in vain—”

  “Just talk to me, Goddamnit!”

  “— for Yahweh will not h
old him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

  “Stop it! Jesus . . .”

  “Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

  I put my hands over my ears. “Stop! Please, just speak fucking English!”

  In one swift motion, my father stood and turned to me. He was holding my model A-10, the one I’d showed John the last time I saw him alive.

  I pointed at the aircraft. “That’s mine. Why can’t you leave my stuff alone?”

  Dad’s face was red and wet, pinched like a withered apple. “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father—”

  “I’m not a little kid. I’m practically the man of the house now that you’ve given up.”

  “The eye that mocks at his father, and scorns obedience to his mother: The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, the young eagles shall eat it.”

  “Do you even hear yourself?” I stepped toward him at last, fingers curling to form fists. “Sometimes I wish you’d go back to drinking.”

  My father stopped, jaw frozen in speechlessness.

  Finally. Something got through.

  Then he raised the A-10 over his head. The moment stretched out as I looked up, then down at the bed’s solid wooden footboard.

  “Dad, no. Please don’t—no!”

  He smashed the jet against the footboard. The impact was as loud as a shotgun. A piece whizzed past my ear, another hit me in the stomach.

  “Stop!” I pleaded. “Put it down!”

  He smashed it again, and this time I dodged a chunk of fuselage that shot toward my nose. I wanted to dive across the bed and rescue what was left of the plane. I wanted him to hit me in its place.

  Instead I ran—downstairs, then outside across the yard, finally climbing the wet rope ladder into my tree house. I backed into the corner, wrapped my arms around my bent legs, and pressed my forehead to my knees.

  “Save him,” I whispered. “Please. I did everything he wanted, because I thought it was what you wanted. I tried to be a vessel for your will, but I can’t figure out what that is anymore. So save us all, but start with him.”

  I stayed like that, saying whatever prayer came to mind, some coherent, some not, until my mouth was dry and my butt was sore. Finally I stretched out on the tree house’s ratty old rug, using my arms as a pillow, and dozed off.

  I woke to the sound of my mother calling my name. The sky through the window was dark and drizzly. I crawled over and peered out.

  “Your father told me what happened,” she said from beneath her blue Jesus-fish umbrella. “He says he’s sorry he scared you.”

  “He told you in his own words?”

  “He alluded. Also, I saw the plane wreckage. What did you say to upset him?”

  Besides “Goddamnit” and “speak fucking English”? I didn’t repeat these exact words to my mother, because I wanted to live; I used the accepted abbreviations and substitutions.

  “He was speaking English, David. Your father communicates in a different way than we do, and we have to respect that.”

  “No, we don’t. You know what else I said to him, just before he destroyed my favorite possession next to my baseball glove? I told him I wished he was still a drunk.”

  “David, you didn’t.” Mom sounded wounded.

  “Wasn’t it easier then? You can take a bottle out of his hand, but you can’t take the Bible out of his mouth.”

  “When he was drinking, you were too young to realize what it was doing to him. You don’t understand how much better he is now, how much happier.” Mom tilted her umbrella to look straight up at me. Mascara was smeared beneath her eyes—from tears or the rain or both. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  And if it’s not, he’ll get help. He promised. But I was beginning to realize that making a deal with Dad was like making a deal with God. I’d thought I had leverage, but there wasn’t a lever in the world big enough to move them.

  • • •

  The day after the fight with Dad, I took the bus to the King of Prussia Mall and bought a model kit for an A-10 Thunderbolt II. I’d lied to John about building the other one, and now that Dad had destroyed that lie, it was time for me to create a truth.

  Mara found me in the basement that evening, trying unsuccessfully to assemble it.

  “What is your problem?” she shouted from the stairs. “I’m trying to do homework, but I can hear you whining through the vents.”

  “Nothing fits. I swear I’m following the instructions.”

  She came down and picked up the lid from the card table where I was working. “It says it’s a level-two model. That probably means it’s not for beginners.”

  “This was the only A-10 they had.”

  Mara brought over another folding chair and sat down. Within half an hour she had the whole project organized so that it looked more like a model-plane build and less like the aftermath of an aerial dogfight.

  “How’s work at the garage?” I asked her once the assembly was underway.

  “Excellent. I rotated tires yesterday.”

  “Very funny.”

  “It wasn’t a joke.”

  “Come on, Mara. Tires rotate on their own when you drive.” I spun the wheel of the A-10, which was attached to the axle but not the plane itself. “Duh.”

  “Now that is funny.” She set the wheel back in its proper spot. “The choir director wants me to quit my job. She says all the yelling over the sound of the equipment at the garage is damaging my vocal cords. Not permanently, just enough to hurt the tone in my upper register. It’s only obvious when I sing solos.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not quitting the garage. I love cars.”

  “What about your dream of being a professional singer?”

  She shrugged as she picked up a piece of the cockpit. “You can’t eat dreams.”

  At ten thirty, we switched on the radio to KYW for the Phillies game against the Dodgers. It made me feel homesick in my own house.

  Dad’s slow, heavy footsteps came across the ceiling, headed to the kitchen for his bedtime glass of milk. “I won’t miss him when I leave for Penn State,” Mara whispered.

  “I miss the dad we had when we were kids.”

  “You mean John’s dad?” she said with a smirk. “He was nice. More like a grandfather, though, or an uncle. When I was little, I used to pretend John was our dad.”

  “Yeah, I remember that time Dad heard you call John ‘Daddy.’ How quiet he got.”

  “I never did it again after that.”

  Stiff from hunching, I laced my hands behind my head and leaned back in the chair, pushing out my elbows to stretch my pecs. I wasn’t used to sitting still for so long. I noticed the calendar over Dad’s workbench had Xs marked through each space. “Thirty-five more days until the Rush. I’ll go insane.”

  “We have to wait it out.” Mara turned a piece of fuselage in her hand. “We can’t call the police, because Mom and Dad haven’t broken the law. We can’t leave, because we’re not eighteen yet, so running away would mean we were breaking the law.”

  “What about Social Services? Maybe they can make Dad get counseling.” And then I could go back to what was left of my life.

  “They can’t make him do anything if he’s not a danger to himself or others. There’s no law against being weird. And let’s say Social Services decided Mom and Dad are horrible parents, and they take us away from them. We’ll get put in foster care, maybe with two different families. You want us to be separated? Don’t answer that.”

  As much as Mara annoyed or abused me sometimes, I hated the thought of losing her. “Maybe there’s someone we could ask for help. Like Pastor Ed or Mr. Ralph. Or one of our friends’ parents.”

  “I already talked to Pastor Ed and Mrs. Caruso.”

  Mrs. Caruso was our youth-group leader back when we were more involved at Stony Hill. Funny that as my parents were getting more hard-core crazy religious, we spent less
time in church.

  “What’d they say?”

  “Pastor Ed said to be patient. Once the Rush doesn’t happen, Mom and Dad’ll have to face reality, and when they do, we all have to show them compassion and understanding.”

  “What are we supposed to do until then? Don’t the Stony Hill people think it’s bizarre that Dad’s been speaking in tongues for the last year?”

  “Mrs. Caruso says it’s—ugh.” She rubbed her face. “She said it’s a sign that Dad’s been touched by God.”

  “Dad’s touched all right,” I said with a growl. “Touched in the head.”

  Mara pulled her heels up onto the chair and folded her arms atop her knees. “You know, if this were a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago, he would probably be seen as some kind of guru.”

  “Or a prophet.” I imitated Pastor Ed’s voice. “And now, a reading from the book of Dad.”

  “That sounds even scarier than Revelation.”

  “Don’t say the R word.” I searched the table until I found the small brown tube of model cement. “Mom informed me that between now and the Rush, I have to memorize the book of Revelation, plus the last chapter of Daniel.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “I can’t give Dad any excuse to go back on his end of the deal. But between Revelation and all these doomsday books they keep throwing at me, I’m having apocalypse nightmares.”

  “That sucks. Not to add to your heinous workload, but do you want me to keep you up to speed with Math Cave? That way when you come back, you won’t be six weeks behind the rest of us.”

  “That’d be cool. We just have to keep it secret.”

  “Ooh, sneaking in math homework. Rebel geeks!”

  “Studying like there’s a tomorrow,” I said with a movie-trailer voice. “Speaking of geekery, you know what I learned? The word ‘Rapture’ isn’t even in the Bible, and all the beliefs about it are based on three passages.”

  “Wow. We should pick three random verses and form our own religion. Except instead of the Bible we should use a different book. Like Lord of the Rings. Or Harry Potter.” When I didn’t laugh, she added, “Those are novels.”