by Chris Fabry
Miriam clicked Kara’s name but found her personal information blocked, although there was a link to a blog. It had a creative title and looked artistic, with a series of impressionistic photographs on the header. Miriam scrolled through the posts—a haphazard mix of observations about current events or adventures in potty training. The woman wrote unashamedly from a Christian perspective. Her words weren’t heavy-handed but winsome, and there was something about the way she seemed to genuinely live out what she believed that drew Miriam. There were no political diatribes, no mean-spirited slams against other faiths or groups of people. This woman simply wanted to honor God with everything she did.
Partway down the impressive list of past topics, the title “Shoelaces” piqued her interest. She clicked on the entry.
In my other life, the one I left to start this grand experiment called motherhood, I was a social worker. (Sometimes I wonder if that job prepared me for motherhood better than any seminar or parenting book.) I tried to help moms figure out how to feed their children. I tried to help kids escape abusive parents or houses filled with animals, filth, and meth. I saw some horrific things but I made a difference. At least I like to think so.
It’s hard not to focus on what I’ve given up to be a mom. I have less free time, less disposable income, less conversation with adults, and at the end of the day I’m exhausted and feel I haven’t done anything meaningful. It’s easy to believe I haven’t changed someone’s life, just diapers.
Still, I don’t miss the commute or the office politics—with apologies to former coworkers—or the temptations of those glazed donuts every Friday morning. What I miss about my old job is encapsulated in one face that walks in on me at the strangest moments. I will call her Julie because I’m not allowed to give her real name. She was almost five at the time. She came to me in tattered shoes, with a stare that compares to Superman’s laser vision. She was a poster child for abandonment, for everything wrong with the world.
That is not why I think of her today, nor why I think she comes to me in my dreams. Her shifting eyes haunt me.
I was privileged to take her to the shoe store. We were going to pick out a pair of sneakers. I measured her feet, showed her the styles available in her size on shelves above her line of sight. I pulled thick white socks over her feet and watched her glide along the shelves. She gravitated to a certain pair—pink with white flowers, as I recall—and then she would wander to sandals or tap shoes or the dainty sneakers with Velcro and try them on. Each time she would return the shoes to the box and walk back to the pink sneakers. She looked up at me as we stood there, staring long and deep into my eyes, as if there were an ocean of pain and hurt inside. She drew me in like a magnet, like a tide pulling at the beach, and I couldn’t help kneeling beside her and putting a finger to her temple and tapping lightly.
“What’s going on inside there?” I said. “What are you thinking?”
She spoke in a whisper too light and airy to discern, but I could read the lips and hear her heart.
“Do you have a mother?”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
“What’s it like?” she said.
Children will ask the height of the sky or what God is like and they don’t really expect an answer. They know somewhere deep inside that there are questions that can’t fully be answered. They simply want you to hear them, to care.
Julie wasn’t looking for a single answer to the mother question but for a life full of things she had never experienced. So I told her. I told her everything. It came pouring out—the way my mother used to wake me in the morning before school, the smell of the kitchen with heavy bacon fat that sizzled in the skillet, the peppermint candy she ate just before church, and how she would pull me up on her lap in my grandmother’s rocking chair and read to me. She had been breastfed in that chair, and so had I, and years later my sons would be as well.
Julie listened, not dutifully or waiting to speak again, but drinking in my words until my well ran dry. People walked around us—climbed over us is more like it—for twenty minutes there on the floor of the shoe store, and each time I finished, she asked another question.
I think about her in my unguarded moments. I see her in my children, in some discovery they make. Like learning to tie shoelaces.
It was getting dark and time to leave, so I had Julie try on the pink shoes. The laces were in place but not tied and I could tell by the way she looked at them that she didn’t know how. I told her about the bunny ears and recited the poem my mother had taught me, the sad rabbit whose ears were too long and needed to be tied in a bow. She stared at the laces, then at me, processing the information. I told her to try. Instead, she stood, walked the length of the aisle, and came back.
“Do you want me to tie them?” I said.
She shook her head.
“You could trip and fall if you don’t. You don’t want to let them flop around.”
“It feels better this way,” she said.
“You don’t have to be scared of not knowing how to tie them. Do you want me to teach you?”
She shook her head and sat, taking the shoes off and putting them in the box.
“Then what is it? Why don’t you want them? Why do you keep coming back to them?”
“If I tie them, the job is over. There’s nothing left to do.”
I still don’t know exactly what she meant by that. At first I thought she meant that she’d get more attention from people with untied laces—that grown-ups like me would tie them for her and maybe tell her a story or two about their lives. But now I don’t think that’s what she meant. I think there was more behind her words.
We like to think of life as a series of knots we tie and move along. We do what we’re told, follow the rules, and soon we’re secure in the rhythm of life. We don’t question. We don’t even think of the questions. And when the laces flop, we feel insecure about the lack of pressure against the sides of our souls. Support allows us to relax and inhabit life. But this child philosopher was showing me something I couldn’t see, something I couldn’t begin to understand. That there was more than simply feeling okay about myself or okay about walking ahead. Or walking away.
Every time I tie my child’s shoes, every time I tie my own, I think of this. I think of Julie and the way she walked out of the store that night with shoelaces flopping, holding my hand and looking down at them like she had freed the bunny. If I close my eyes and wait, I see her walking today, grown-up, that piercing stare and those questioning eyes.
Somewhere she is walking and I hope she feels freedom. Sometimes when we’re at the park or walking on the track at school, I’ll untie my shoes in her honor. It feels like the least I can do.
Miriam sat back. She hadn’t taken a breath. Could “Julie” be Treha? She had to be. The shifting eyes and flopping shoelaces were a perfect match.
She typed Kara’s last name and town into a phone directory and a James L. Praytor came up. Her heart beat a little faster, then fell when she saw the number was unlisted.
She pulled up the blog again and looked for an e-mail address, a way to contact Kara, but there was only a section for comments.
Kara, I stumbled onto your blog during a search for someone I think might be Julie. Very moving post. I have some urgent questions for you. . . .
Don’t give too much away or appear to be a stalker. Don’t gush about the blog either.
If you could call or e-mail as soon as possible, I would appreciate it.
Miriam typed her e-mail address and phone number, clicked the Send button, and immediately felt she had done something wrong, hadn’t given enough information. Then again, maybe she had sounded too desperate. She could have said she was Julie’s real mother but she didn’t want to lie or manipulate.
Now she would wait. An hour, a day, a year. Who knew how long before the woman responded? It was out of Miriam’s control, just like life. Day after day of waiting and hoping and trying not to feel but feeling all the same. Putting a fis
hing line in the water and sitting and watching for life to give a nibble. She had settled for this. Life’s nibbles.
“You come up with anything?” Charlie said, stopping as he passed the room again. He had a ham sandwich in his hand and a paper towel for a napkin underneath. Crumbs fell like raindrops and Miriam tried not to look down.
“Actually, yes. I think your suggestion about Facebook helped.”
He nodded and chewed, pointing with the sandwich at the screen and beginning a sentence that he stopped when she looked away. She hated watching him eat. The sounds, the slurping of the soup, the smacking lips. She couldn’t stand the noise, the sight of the bread stuck to his teeth. There were so many things she couldn’t stand. And she felt bad about it, but you can’t train revulsion; it simply comes when it will.
Charlie ran his tongue across his teeth. “I meant to tell you, I saw a news report about some kids. Strange stuff happening. I think you’ll be interested.”
Charlie was a news junkie, particularly of the death-and-mayhem variety. It didn’t matter if it was a bus crash in Spain or a tsunami on some remote island in the Pacific, Charlie had to tell her about every missing person or missing limb he came across at some of the most inopportune times. Like during meals.
“They have this rapid eye movement,” Charlie said, moving his hand back and forth in front of his face. “Brain stuff. Kind of like the girl . . . What was her name again?”
“Treha?” she said.
“Yeah. Like her. There’s a bunch of people involved in a lawsuit against a company they say is responsible. Phutura Pharmaceuticals.”
Phutura, Miriam thought. They’re cropping up everywhere.
“I owned some of their stock when it was four dollars. Should have held on to it. You should watch the video.”
She asked him where he’d seen the report and he said he would e-mail the link. She usually wasn’t interested in the things he found online. Cartoons of Maxine. Jokes about old age and bad marriages and mothers-in-law. YouTube videos of military tributes and air shows and memorials of 9/11. Ceremonies during a storm at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Plus the passed-around threads of the aged, the cute and heartwarming stories of life with wrinkles and grandchildren along with the political jabs at the president or Congress or both. Charlie’s favorites were the stories of things in the “good old days.” When gasoline was a few pennies a gallon and you didn’t have to get a home equity loan just to go to the grocery store. He would stare at pictures of childhood artifacts, memories that sparked some kind of feeling for him, and marvel at how much things had changed. How much the world had gone crazy.
Charlie seemed content to go with the flow, move from one day to the next, seeing what life might toss their way and whiling away hours behind the computer or fiddling with the drip-sprinkler system and adjusting the timer for the precise setting that would make everything green that was supposed to be green. It was his inner engineer always trying to surface. But why couldn’t he treat their marriage that way? Why couldn’t he narrow down on their relationship like he did the garage door opener or the PCV valve he was always changing in the car when the Check Engine light went on?
She didn’t know and she had grown not to care. Charlie was Charlie and that was all there was to it. Take him or leave him. A lump of hardened clay. Every attempt to change him and make him the man she wanted left her frustrated and cold. Distanced. And this was as good as it was going to get.
Though she had to admit he was good to have around when you needed the recycle bin stacked perfectly or the satellite TV programmed, and his coffee did taste better than hers because he had a knack of measuring to the very grain, it seemed. But it is hard to see the good in a person when all you can see is what isn’t there.
Miriam checked her e-mail and found the link Charlie had sent without any accompanying message. Just the link. Why send more? Why send an encouraging note saying he was looking forward to their new life together? I love you more now than ever. Or just I like you, sort of. Was that so much to ask?
The link was from a reputable news organization and not from the far right or left. The long story described a community baffled by strange reactions in teenagers and some adults who had developed eye conditions, problems with anger, and even suicidal tendencies. Students at a small high school were being accused by some of manufacturing their symptoms—head jerks, hand movements, intense anger issues, and behavioral abnormalities. Tourette’s syndrome without the profanity. The story was alarming and Miriam couldn’t imagine what the parents had been through with their sick children, but it wasn’t until she watched the accompanying video that something clicked.
A ninth grader’s face filled the screen. As the boy spoke, his head jerked to the right and his eyes twitched. “I don’t have any control over the way my eyes are moving, and it’s scary, you know?”
The report switched to the boy’s mother, in tears, chin quavering. “Ryan was a straight-A student. Tops in his class. He was a finalist in the state forensics competition last year, oral interpretation.”
“The family moved here one year ago,” the reporter said gravely. “And Ryan’s grades and health plunged as a result.”
“He’s not making this up,” the mother said. “Something is wrong here.”
The reporter was shown walking on a pastoral hillside near the sprawling complex of Phutura Pharmaceuticals. “In the class action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant, the plaintiffs contend that Phutura allowed toxic chemicals to seep into the groundwater near the school, affecting anyone who drank the water. Parents say they have the medical proof they need to convince a jury that Phutura caused their children’s problems. But the company says that’s simply not true.”
Ezra Hollingsworth, vice president of Phutura, sat in a leather chair behind a gleaming cherry desk with a look on his face that, to Miriam, exuded smarm.
“I find it more than ironic that people in this community have lived here for decades—they’ve breathed the air, they drank the water, they raised crops—and suddenly there are mysterious problems. I truly sympathize with the parents of these children, and it’s human nature to want to blame. But we followed every FDA and EPA guideline to the letter. As a company, we’re simply not at fault.”
A panel of parents sat in front of a dark background, hands folded, mostly looking down. Solemn-faced. “Our children are the most vulnerable,” one mother said. “If we can’t protect them, who can we protect?”
Miriam read the report again, then looked at the still picture of one of the young girls. Such suffering in the world to so many innocent people. If they won the lawsuit, if the company was forced to pay them for damages, what difference would it make? Their lives were shattered.
And Treha . . . her symptoms were frighteningly similar to those young people’s, but could there be a connection? Would Davidson be able to explain it all?
CHAPTER 32
THE LIGHT WAS FADING in the west and an orange glow hit the walls of the Howards’ house as the car bearing the four travelers pulled to a stop. Treha got out and walked toward the front door, followed by Devin and Jonah carrying equipment, and a stiff-legged Calvin Davidson, who still carried a gun, though at a slightly different angle.
Devin had finally convinced the man that he would never get the gun past the front desk at the hospital and that seeing Crenshaw would simply endanger him more. He’d suggested they go to Miriam’s home, where Treha was staying. Davidson agreed, but when Jonah further suggested they call Miriam from a pay phone at a Dairy Queen near Picacho Peak and ask her to open the garage so the car could disappear inside and not be seen by a drone, Davidson said to keep driving.
Throughout the drive Davidson had continued his sometimes-lucid, sometimes-rambling assessment of the world. He had canceled his Dish Network because “they” were watching him through the television. There were terrorists plotting an assault on the water systems of the United States and a corresponding electromagnetic pulse that
would take them off the grid simultaneously. Infrared cameras looked through walls. Cameras in the sewage system came up through the pipes to look in people’s bathrooms, and no one cared. Why terrorists would look in Davidson’s bathroom Treha couldn’t decipher, but his fears seemed less rooted in these conspiracies than in another more pressing menace.
Treha rang the doorbell and Miriam answered, looking happy to see them but confused when she saw Davidson. And even more confused when she saw his gun.
“Please come in,” Miriam said to the group. “Mr. Davidson, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Charlie was in the kitchen, hands in his pockets, sizing things up as he leaned against the silverware drawer, a puzzled look on his face.
Davidson glanced Miriam’s way. “I wish the circumstances were different. Have you heard anything more about Jim’s condition?”
“Dr. Crenshaw is still in ICU. There’s been no change.”
“And there will be none,” Davidson said. “They won’t allow it. In a few hours or a few days his heart will stop and the problem will be over. But they will still have to deal with me.”
“What are you talking about?” Miriam said. “And why are you holding that gun? You have no enemies here.”
The woman spoke in a way that was reassuring and inviting. Treha could tell her years of experience at Desert Gardens had trained her well for such a confrontation.
Davidson looked at Miriam, then glanced at Charlie. “Do you have Wi-Fi going in here?”
“Yes, sir.”
