Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  It’s on his mind now because of Hortense. She has no scar tissue or other markings at her wrists, and along with what appear to be underdeveloped fingers on the end of one arm, he figures her deformity is from birth, not manmade. The people at home know about his heart because he’s lived in that small town his entire life. He’s the boy with half a heart, though fame has lessened over the years. Most think he’s cured and no longer haunted by death. If he moves somewhere tomorrow, he can hide it all. Avoid public showers and throw a swim shirt on with his trunks and no one is any the wiser. Hortense doesn’t have that option. She can only keep her hands in her pockets for so long.

  Adultery is a defect too. He doesn’t know yet which kind it will be for his mother, his family. One that is intensely worrisome and pressing while it’s fresh, and then slowly fades into the background as other louder, more worrisome things overshadow it? Or one that will always be seen, a scarlet A sewn onto every article of clothing his family owns?

  He hates he has to consider the options at all.

  What was she thinking?

  He dresses and folds the blanket to the top of the bed, beneath the pillow, and strips the sheets. Those he balls up and carries down to the kitchen where Hortense sits at the table, sipping coffee with a light-haired man. “You didn’t have to do that,” she says, coming to take the linens from him and dropping them in the corner. “This is my husband, Mark. Mark, Evan.”

  “You want breakfast?” Mark asks. He lifts the domed pot lid from atop a plate of French toast and bacon. Evan serves himself several strips of the crispy, fried pork. The heart patient diet, Bryce teased each time Evan ate his favorite food.

  Hortense folds a napkin next to his plate. “How did you sleep?”

  “Okay,” he says. “I think. I don’t remember. I was really tired.”

  “I bet,” Hortense says.

  Mark pours orange juice, so gelatinous with pulp Evan bites through it at the rim of the glass and then swallows down the hairy, citrus drink. Two iPads flicker on the table, one screen trampled with fingerprints, the other smudged with whorlless blots. A news site is up on one, a Google search on the other. Paranoia gnaws at Evan’s ears; they were looking for information about him.

  “Mark and I were talking about . . . everything,” Hortense says, and Evan snaps his eyes back to his plate where he splinters an extra-crispy slice of bacon by folding it in half, and in half, and in half again. “We thought you might like to talk with Julian’s pastor.”

  “Does he know where Mrs. Goetz is?”

  “No. But maybe he could help in, well, other ways.”

  Evan nods. Yes, it’s right, a baby bear kind of idea, and he’s Goldilocks. It fits. It’s what to do in this situation, like porridge that’s perfect in temperature, warming his insides in all the necessary places.

  “Good. I’ll give him a call and bring the car around. You finish up and meet me downstairs in the gallery.”

  Hortense closes the door to a room on the other side of the kitchen, and when Evan lifts his plate and glass, Mark waves them back to the table. “Just leave it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Dishwasher’s full anyway. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Well, okay. Thanks. I’m gonna get my bag.”

  Mark nods, face in his tablet. Then suddenly he says, “Hey. Do you really have Julian’s Still Life seven in your bedroom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When Hortense told me, I nearly split a rib. We haven’t thought of those photos in years.” His words aren’t directed at Evan, but somewhere to the right of him, over his shoulder, a memory hovering in the corner. Mark shakes his head, wistful smile creasing the skin around his lips. “That shoot . . . man, we were dumb kids then. Julian would roll in his grave if he knew people were still looking at those.”

  “I think they’re amazing.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re not much younger than we were. You’ll grow out of it, with any luck.” And his smile dies. “Get your stuff.”

  Evan slings his backpack over one shoulder and hurries out of the apartment, head down, hood up, hoping the combination of posture and clothing has rendered him invisible. In the gallery he waits for Hortense while looking at the art on the walls. On one side, watercolors featuring sleek lines and translucent bubbles. On the other, a photo collection called In the Cemetery. Plenty of rusty fence finials, off-center cracks in hundred-year-old headstones, footprints in mud, and butterflies.

  “We can’t all be Julian Goetz.” Hortense stands behind him, so much taller, her sadness dripping on him, a light, drizzling rain of loss.

  “What is this?”

  “Projects, from the college.”

  “Is that what you do here?”

  “Some. We give space to students who need to show for their classes. Some local artists too. Mark and I have the frame shop, you saw, and then we also have our own photography business. Weddings, location portraiture, special events now and then. Sometimes one or both of us will take a few shots for the local paper, if they’re short a freelancer.”

  “Do you do shows too?”

  Hortense loops her chunky scarf around her neck, burying her chin and lower lip. Then she holds the door open for him. “We can’t all be Julian Goetz.” Her voice changes; the sadness still there, but layered with something else. Regret, perhaps. Discouragement. Envy. Evan can’t decide. Big feelings? Yeah, he has those, testosterone driven and loud as the garbage trucks outside his window at five in the morning. But he hasn’t lived enough in the gray areas of emotion to recognize the subtle whispers.

  In the car, the vents blow air as warm as breath and it’s like falling asleep beside his father, when he was young, and Will would exhale in his ear, against his neck, blowing his hair across his forehead until it tickled. Evan would scrunch his nose and try not to wiggle, pretending his dad was a sleeping giant who would devour him if he stirred, but soon couldn’t help but move to scratch his face. And his father would wake and tell Evan to quit moving or he’d have to go back to his own bed.

  Hortense steers down the steep hill and through one-way streets and traffic lights to a misplaced wood-sided building in the midst of brick and brownstone. A vinyl banner strung above the chrome blue doors reads, Holy Zion. All Are Welcome. She parks at the curb in front, leaves the car to idle, and jerks her head toward the church. “Well, come on.”

  A compact, springy man in his shirtsleeves and tie meets them on the sidewalk. He hugs Hortense quickly and then offers his hand to Evan. “I’m Pastor Ray White.”

  “Evan.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Evan. Why don’t we get ourselves inside. I’m freezing.”

  “Wait,” Hortense says. She manipulates the button of her crochet purse through the fastener and loops her wrist through the handle of a flat plastic bag, no larger than a paperback. “Here. If you need us, just call.”

  Evan folds the bag into his coat pocket, and she returns to her car, driving away without looking back. He follows Pastor Ray into his study, a glossy paneled room off the church’s main office. The secretary, a woman round with extra joy and extra weight, smiles so wide her cheeks bury her eyes. “Welcome to Holy Zion.” She draws out the first vowel in each word. Hooooooly Ziiiiiiion. Like a game show host.

  “Evan, this is my wife, Shanelle.”

  “Don’t look so scared, child. You ain’t heading into the lion’s den.” She laughs, the hundreds of tiny braids in her hair quivering. “You want a pop?”

  “She means soda,” Pastor Ray says. “She can’t help it. She’s from Detroit.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Evan sits in one of the oak chairs at the table in the pastoral study. Ray takes the fetched ginger ale from Shanelle and closes the door. He opens the can. “Want a cup?”

  “No. This is fine.”

  The pastor joins him at the table. “Well, Evan. I’m just going to start. Mrs. Travers—Hortense—said you were looking for Ada Goetz, and you were far from home
. That’s all I know so far. Want to fill in the rest?”

  He sniffles, glances around the room for a tissue. There are none. He sticks his hands in his pockets and digs out a crumpled paper towel from yesterday, stiff with dried mucous. He uses it anyway, finding a clean corner. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just start. Anywhere.”

  He takes a deep breath through his one unclogged nostril. “My mother killed Julian Goetz.”

  “Now, Evan—”

  “She was the one who gave up her seat for him. He wanted to get home for his wife’s birthday. And she—my mom, that is—wanted to stay one more night in Cleveland because . . .”

  “Because?”

  “Because that’s where she was meeting the guy she was having an affair with.” His words rush together, as if the quicker he says them, the less they’ll hurt. It doesn’t work.

  “Okay.” The pastor closes his eyes and nods once, slowly. “Okay. I’m going to drive you home.”

  “What? No, you can’t. I have to—”

  “Evan, I’m sure your folks are worried sick about you. Let’s get you home and then figure this out.”

  So Evan goes because now that his anger is a dull throb rather than the repeated stabbing of last night, he knows the pastor is right. He no longer wants his parents suffering with uncertainty, expending energy on unanswered phone calls and missing person reports. And he can’t camp out on the Goetzes’ front stairs indefinitely.

  Pastor Ray doesn’t try to force conversation on him, and Evan spends most of the trip doing what he does best, playing out scenes in his head, perfecting the dialogue, changing the blocking, the timing of entrances and exits, until he’s constructed the perfect fantasy for his current situations. He talks to Ada Goetz, his parents, Seth, even Julian Goetz; in that one, he stops the photographer from getting on his flight and he lives, forever indebted to the teenager who saved his life. He suddenly wishes all living took place behind his eyes, where he can be God. He wonders if the real God does such things, intervening, rewinding, changing outcomes, making all right, and the people on earth have no idea they’re being manipulated, like playthings, living each interaction over and over until he’s satisfied with the outcome.

  And sometimes those outcomes are death.

  It surmounts him, a crushing desire for God, for him to be real and good and at work in some way Evan doesn’t understand but will eventually make sense. Julian Goetz believed, or so it seemed from the interviews he gave. And yet his belief didn’t keep Flight 207 in the air. While his mother—well, she didn’t let a small thing like the Ten Commandments influence her actions, but the cosmic Rubik’s Cube shuffled her off the plane and into the safe arms of Mr. Bailey. Evan stumbles around this theological house of mirrors, lost, deformed, and pounding the glass, begging to be let out.

  He’s gone to church as long as he can remember, more when he was younger and their lives were less busy. He was confirmed last year; that’s what is done in ninth grade. Sometimes he went to youth group, if Seth planned on being there. But he doesn’t know God, not in the way the kids talk of it, who go to that crazy Baptist place, as his father calls it, whose congregants tape cartoon booklets about Jesus to their Halloween candy and whose pastor preaches the possibility of dinosaurs still alive in the Amazon. He can tell the flannelgraph highlights of the Bible—Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, wee Zacchaeus—and pretty much agrees with everything from the pulpit, which is a weekly Mr. Rogers-esque love your neighbor, love yourself message.

  He isn’t going to pray over his lunch in the school cafeteria.

  “I don’t understand God,” he says.

  “You and me both.”

  “What good is being a pastor, then?”

  “Do you believe in God, Evan?” Ray asks. He opens the plastic nub on his coffee cup lid and sips. Winces. “Oh, that’s still hot.”

  Even unscrews the cap to his own drink, a Dr Pepper, and it hisses at him. “I want to,” he says, “but when I try to make sense of it all, it’s like one big mud puddle. I mean, I was born with . . . a bad heart. Lots of babies with the same problem I have, they don’t make it. I don’t know which is better, thinking it’s all random, like luck, like survival of the fittest. Or thinking there’s some big plan. One seems so, well, depressing I guess. Desperate. And the other just feels like a whole lot of pressure. If there is a plan, I better figure out what it is, and I better be able to live up to it.”

  “I can give you platitudes. Tell you God loves us and wants our best. Tell you we’ll understand when we get to heaven and are able to ask him, face-to-face. I can toss out verses about comfort and trust and hope until the cows come home. I can tell you about the deep, philosophical discussions we had in seminary, with words like predestination and omnipotence and Arminianism. But in the end, honestly, I struggle with it all too.” The man puckers his lips, swishing his jaw left and right. And then he sniffs. Blinks. Sniffles again. “There’s a drug dealer three doors down from my church, selling crack to kids, getting them hooked. Prostituting his girlfriend and his nineteen-year-old niece. And he’s walking around, fine and dandy, doing his thing. And then there’s Julian Goetz. One of the best men I’ve known. And he’s dead.”

  “There has to be a reason.”

  “Oh, yes, there’s a reason. There are a million reasons. But none of them matter one single iota unless you can fall on Jesus, wrap your arms around his neck, and weep.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means—” The pastor’s words crack with phlegm and tears. He coughs. “It means hope isn’t an explanation. It’s a person.”

  Evan keeps silent, more confused than minutes ago and too exhausted to ask another question, or two, or ten. But also something else. A Goldilocks answer.

  Just right.

  And then they’re in his town. On his street. Before Pastor Ray shuts off the engine, his mother is out the door, running coatless with mismatched shoes down the icy steps of the front porch, slipping, flailing, catching her balance, and then she’s in front of him. “Evan!” she shouts, drawing him into her body, embracing him. She threads her fingers into his hair, tugs his head back so he’s looking her in the face. “Oh, thank God you’re safe.”

  His father’s arm cocoons both of them. He cries, too, something Evan can’t recall happening before. Will looks toward Pastor Ray and says, “Thank you, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Ray White. Pastor of Holy Zion Community Church down in Trent.”

  “Trent?” his mother says, pushing Evan back by the shoulders. “Why in the world were you there? You could have been mugged—”

  “Mom.”

  “—or worse. That city is dangerous, Evan. It’s—”

  “Mom!”

  Katherine stops, and he continues, “I’m really tired and really not feeling all that great. Can we talk about it later?”

  She nods. “Let’s get you inside.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Walker, a moment?” Pastor Ray shifts from hip to hip, blows on his bare hands. “I was wondering if you would allow me to speak with you for a bit. I’d like to help. Evan told me a little about your situation—”

  His father inhales sharply, filling himself, suddenly taller and more resolute. “There is no situation.”

  “I understand the delicacy—”

  “Mr. White, I thank you for bringing my son home,” Will says. “Now get the hell out of my driveway.”

  Pastor Ray nods, touches the brim of his hat. Evan tries to tell him with his eyes, It’s okay, but is unsure at his success. The man drives away and his parents coax him into the house, up the stairs, tucking him into his bed with more hugs and hair smoothing, but without questions, and they linger at his door while he turns over, closing his eyes, wishing sleep to come to him rather than having to go search for it. Finally they close him in his room, alone, and in his head he conjures an image of Jesus, the one hanging in the church nursery, a long-haired, white-robed, smiling Jesus with a blue-eyed to
ddler on his lap. And Evan pictures himself hiding in the dark folds of his tunic, and finds rest.

  PART FOUR

  CHROMA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  She is in awe of the Internet, where anyone and anything can be found. Julian had shown her how to navigate a search engine the first week they were married, but she didn’t use it much of her own volition. Only when Julian asked for her help did she slip her finger over the rectangular sensor, navigating the teeny arrow to the compass icon and pressing down. Then she would type his request in the blank space and hit the return button. They were simple questions—Could you check what time TD Bank closes today? What’s the name of that deli on 4th Street? I can’t remember. Has the new Hondros book been released yet?—he could find the answers easier than she, but he had wanted her to become familiar with the computer and its capabilities. The past few days, by herself in a motel outside Erie, Pennsylvania, she immersed herself in the online web of information using one of the two computers in the closet-sized, complimentary business center or her cell phone. One click leads to another to another, always more and different beyond the last page she reads. She learns about Julian, the awards he won, the work he did, his life before they met. She types his name beside the magnifying glass and is rewarded with two hundred and seventy thousand results.