Back Where He Started

by Jay Quinn

  Cathy shook her head. “You’re terrible.” Then she laughed. “Can I open the one you got for Carlos?”

  Sierra had already slid off my lap and was timidly poking around in my knapsack. Expertly she lifted the two wrapped presents out and marched with them back to me. “Is the big one mine? Carlos is too small for the big one.”

  “Yes, sweetheart,” I said. “The big present is for you. Can you guess what it is?

  Sierra gave me a wide, happy smile. “A book.” Then she looked at her mother.

  “You can open it now,” Cathy said.

  Sierra eagerly tore the wrapping from a large illustrated storybook and held it up for her mother to see.

  Cathy squinted to read the title from across the room. “Five-Minute Bedtime Stories. Chris, I feel like that’s more of a gift for me. Thanks. Sierra?”

  The little girl tugged on my arm, and I leaned down for a kiss. “Take your mommy the present for Carlos, okay?” I said.

  Proud to have a mission, the child carried the smaller box across the room and handed it to her mother. Cathy switched the 4-month- old little boy to her other hip and tore at the gift wrap as expectantly as her daughter had. “Baby Einstein! Look Sierra, a new video! Chris …” she said conspiratorially, “I wish I could still g-e-t … h-i-g-h. These videos are perfect adult viewing if you’re s-t-o-n-e-d.”

  I laughed. “Don’t you just hate being the grown-up?”

  “What does stoned mean Chris?” Sierra asked.

  Cathy and I exchanged guilty glances. “No,” she said. “What I hate is when you can’t spell around them any more. I don’t think I’ll get to have another adult conversation until I’m 60.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, wait until they start speaking in code around you. It begins at about 12 and doesn’t ever really stop after that.” I picked up the shreds of wrapping from Sierra’s gift and tossed them in the wastebasket. “Well, I guess I better scoot. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Is Steve going with you?” Cathy asked.

  “Oh yeah. All of a sudden I’m senile and shouldn’t be driving alone after dark.”

  “Is Andrea all right?”

  I slipped on my jeans jacket and took my knapsack from Sierra, who had already fetched it for me from under my transcription desk. “Yes. She called again about a half hour ago to hurry me up. Evidently, she’s putting off going to the hospital until she knows I’ve left the beach.”

  “Do you think she’ll be able to hold out that long?”

  “Oh yeah. Her water broke only about noon. She imagines they’ll just be out of the chute and already walking within a few hours. The truth is, David says they’re so big, the doctor will probably end up doing a C-section.”

  “Well, travel safely. I’ll say a little prayer for Andrea and the twins.”

  “Don’t forget one for me. That heifer is going to make me suffer right along with her.”

  Cathy gave me a smile and held up one of Carlos’s arms to wave bye-bye. “Don’t worry about rushing back. Take as long as you need,” she said.

  I thanked her and was heading out the door when Sierra called for me to wait. Cathy held the waiting room door open for her as she ran out carrying the book-size box that had arrived for me with the UPS man that day. “Don’t forget your Three Kings Day gift. Will you tell me what it is when you open it?”

  “That I will,” I said. “Take care of your mommy and Carlos for me until I get back, okay?”

  In the car on the way home, I didn’t give the box much thought. I had too much of a list in my head to run down before Steve and I left for Raleigh. Steve told me he would take the dogs to Heath’s to board, so that was one thing out of the way. But I still needed to call Father Fintan to let him know I wouldn’t be at Adoration. I had clothes to pack—I knew better than to let Steve handle that. If he did the packing we’d be wearing the same thing for three days with only a change of underwear. If we took the bridge at the other end of the island, we could gas up the Expedition in Swansboro. That was still an item on the list to be checked off later.

  Back at the house, I almost left the package in the car. My curiosity finally caught up with me, and I stopped halfway up the stairs to the deck and went back down to get it. After I let myself in the house, I left it on the dining room table and got busy with the packing. Finally, with everything packed—down to toothbrushes and vitamins—I hauled the suitcase back into the family room and left it by the French doors out onto the deck. I picked up the package and looked at the label. It wasn’t anything I was expecting—I already had all my traditional Epiphany cards from the kids. Not one of them had forgotten to mail them.

  Schooner’s card had come first. For once, his message to the baby Jesus wasn’t flippant. Neither was Trey’s or Andrea’s. Their faith had ripened as they moved into adulthood. I was impressed with the sincerity of their efforts, but I also missed the humor and childishness I’d read in those cards for so many years. But my babies were making babies and living lives that spun them in orbits farther from me. Life moved on. We all moved on.

  I walked into my kitchen to rummage around in my junk drawer to find a razor to open the surprise package. After Steve and I had spent a couple of hours scraping the spray-painted FAGOT off my French doors, that’s where I’d tossed the blades that were left. I rummaged through pieces of twine, owner’s guides, paper clips, pens and pencils, corks, and abandoned pairs of reading glasses. I found a razor blade.

  Deciding I could risk a drink, I put some ice in a glass and poured some Jim Beam over it. Steve would insist on driving to Raleigh. And to face Andrea’s imminent births, I’d want a drink but I wouldn’t be able to have one. I took a sip of my bourbon and looked out over the great room of my house.

  The place I’d moved into brand-new now smelled like wet dogs and Steve. So soon it bore the scuffs and scrubbings of life and living. Compared to how I thought I’d keep it, the house looked like hell. But it was really beautiful because it looked like home with all its details knocked slightly askew and filmed over with the dust that sometimes settles on a life lived with the doors wide open.

  With my drink in one hand, and the razor in the other, I settled at the dining room table and opened my box. Inside the spill of packing peanuts and bubble wrap was a card addressed to me in Trey’s hand. I sat the card aside and unwrapped the bubble wrap from what felt like a slender, heavy book. With the bubble wrap out of the way and resting on the floor, I held a small, heavy set of boards. The top set was split down the middle from a high pointed crown, hinged on the sides, and closed with a small brass clasp. The edges were trimmed in molding bright with gilding. The two leaves of the boards joined at the seams under the clasp to form a gilt Orthodox cross on a field of mahogany-stained wood.

  I carefully laid the treasure on the table and placed the box it came in out of the way on the floor beside me. I pushed open the small clasp and opened the two leaves from the center. Opened, they lay flat to reveal a beautiful icon of the Blessed Mother, who was holding the Christ child as a toddler before her. In his hands, he grasped a ball painted to look like the earth. Over their heads a naked putto held a banner with Cyrillic writing on it. On the panels flanking the image, two pairs of archangels turned toward the mother and child, but one angel looked away while the others faced the viewer with smiles. Around them was all gilt and enameled blue.

  It was both enchanting and haunting. There was something about the images that seemed familiar, but also somehow not right, not what I’d expect in an icon. The faces seemed too contemporary, too …

  I recognized Schooner first. He was the angel on the lower left side, grinning mischievously. Trey was above him, painfully serious, Across from them was a youthful picture of Zack—taken perhaps 20 years before—looking over his shoulder with a self-satisfied grin. Below him was Andrea offering the shy smile she always gave to the camera. The putto was circumcised and looked to be baby Chris, beaming with an infant’s happy smile.

  Then I rec
ognized the face under the Madonna’s blue mantle and the pose of the infant before her and gasped.

  I took a largish sip of my drink and closed my eyes. I remembered the picture. Trey had asked about it when we packed up the house after Thanksgiving. It had hung, along with so many other family photos, along the upstairs hall in the old house. I was only 27 when it was taken. Schooner couldn’t have been more than a year old. As I recalled, the photo had been taken on the beach not far from where I was sitting at that very moment. I’d encouraged Schooner to take the ball away from his mouth, and just as Zack had taken the picture, he’d held the ball out for his father to see.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the icon again. The audacity of the imagery shook me to my conservative Catholic core. And the love it bespoke broke my heart. There was no denying the thing was beautiful, but I seriously wondered if I could ever look at it as an object of prayer and a source of blessings.

  I reached for the envelope that bore Trey’s handwriting and opened it carefully. The front of the heavy card was embossed with an Orthodox cross. I knew Trey must have given a lot of thought to the words he would write on such a formal and expensive card.

  Dear Chris (Mom),

  If I know you, you are just getting over the shock of this skladen—that’s what the Russians call this kind of icon. The icon painter is a recent immigrant from the Ukraine. He told me many people had their own faces and their loved ones painted as the characters in their icons. It is not sacrilegious; it is an honor. We hope you will take it as a message of love and esteem from all of your family (we all chipped in—even Schooner). The Slavonic on the banner reads: “One law I give you, Love one another.” You are that love for us. It has been blessed by both the local Orthodox patriarch and our own Father Andrew. God bless you on the Feast of Epiphany. Your son, Trey

  I folded the card carefully and slipped it back into its envelope to hold and treasure. I looked at the icon—the skladen—again. The gilt glowed warmly against the bright enameled cerulean of the sky and the Madonna’s paler blue mantle. I looked at my own young face looking back at me and I closed my eyes.

  When I thought of the Blessed Mother, as I said the rosary, or muttered a quick prayer, I didn’t immediately picture her statue or her image on a stained glass window or a painting by Giotto, or Da Vinci. I saw my own mother’s face first, before I strove to replace that image with one less personal, less secular, and more traditionally divine.

  Still, I wondered—what was our first earthly understanding of the pure kind of love that the Madonna embodied? Wasn’t it our mothers? Wasn’t it their faces we turned to when we were too small, too hurt, or too overwhelmed by others’ failures to bear us and heal us and carry us over?

  When hurt and damaged in a thousand ways by the horror of the world, soldiers mortally wounded in combat, the meanest thug, the merciless lawyer, the beat-hardened cop will call for his mama in fear and panic and hurt. That’s who we look to heaven to see for the kind of comfort we can need to feel.

  I searched the faces of my family painted as angels. I looked at the grave face of my sturdy little Schooner as he held the world in his outstretched hands. I saw my own gently smiling face looking at the baby I’d taken into my heart to love and bring to manhood. If they held that picture of me in their minds, I must have done something right. And I must have been blessed.

  I looked at the skladen again and smiled. I stood and propped it up in the middle of the table, where I could see it as I went into the kitchen and opened my junk drawer. After some rooting around, I found a clear glass votive holder and the bag of votive candles I usually burned on holy days. Then I carried the votive back to the table and placed it before the icon, crossed myself, and lit it.

  I said a Hail Mary for the soul of my mother, and a Hail Holy Queen for my daughter-in-law Susan and the Memorare for my daughter Andrea as she prepared to take her place in the world of mothers of all kinds. Then I said a Glory Be for the great mystery of the will of God. I said an Oh My Jesus for my presumption and failings great and small. My devotion done, I crossed myself and whispered thanks.

  With everything in my house squared away, I went outside to stand under the cold blue sky to wait for Steve. For everything I was, I was back where I started. I needed to get to my hurting, scared child and do exactly what I was meant to do with my life.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Jay Quinn

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4804-9786-3

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com