by Robert Elmer
“Mom!” Michael dropped his music and rushed past Will.
Merit held on to the doorpost for support, wrapped in her terry cloth robe and wavering. Will joined his son to catch her before she collapsed.
“What in the world are you doing out here?” Will grabbed his wife around the shoulders and held her tightly, while Michael held her from the other side.
“Please,” she begged them. “Please just let me be here for a minute.”
“You’re going right back to bed until the boat comes,” replied Will. “This is crazy.”
“Then I’m crazy.” The tears flowed down her cheeks and she raised her voice. “I’m crazy for coming to this lake. Crazy for wanting our family to be together again. Crazy for not letting them kill our daughter. If that’s crazy…”
The congregation stood listening to Merit’s sermon, silent except for the twittering of birds behind them, as the spotlight dappled the yard.
“Honey, you are not crazy.” Will held her but made no move to steer her back to the bedroom. George had returned and stood with his folding stretcher at the edge of the crowd, but he just listened as well.
“You’ve never been crazy. Maybe the rest of us were—or I was. But you…” Will wasn’t sure he could finish saying what weighed on his heart. He took a ragged breath. “You’ve shown me what really matters in life. And I know God must have… He does have a reason for all this, whether I understand it or not. Whether He chooses to heal you…or not.”
He felt a soft nudge at his elbow—Sydney. How long had she been standing there, holding the child? His daughter fidgeted and squirmed, and Sydney handed her to him. Michael helped his mother while Will stepped forward to address the crowd. He had an introduction to make.
“You people have been amazing,” he told them, “the way You’ve supported us through all this. The way you’ve prayed for Merit and this little girl, even through all the attention, the kind none of us ever wanted.” He held up his daughter’s head so they could see her from the lawn. “And now here she is. We, ah, don’t have a name yet. But I want to introduce you to…”
Merit’s hoarse whisper caught his attention, and he turned to hear her better.
“Her name is Colleen Sydney Sullivan.”
That was his wife—making the announcement in a way that headed off argument. He’d never imagined Merit would want to name the baby after his mother. Or after her sister.
“Oh my Lord…” Sydney breathed, shedding her own tears. “I’ve never had anyone named after me before.”
He slipped his arm around her and repeated the name so everyone could hear. “Colleen Sydney Sullivan, born on Resurrection Sunday, and it seems like we ought to keep singing, doesn’t it?”
Pastor Bud nodded at Stephanie, whose cheeks were streaked with tears. She gamely picked up where they had left off, and Michael added his own strong voice.
Hail, the Lord of earth and heaven. Alleluiai
Merit sagged against her son. George took his cue and moved in with the stretcher, which they unfolded on the front porch.
Praise to Thee by both be given. Alleluia!
Aunt Sydney took the baby as Will helped lower Merit to the stretcher, and, though she didn’t know the words to the hymn, she joined in at each Alleluia. And so, it seemed, did her namesake.
Thee we greet triumphant now. Alleluia!
As they picked her up, Merit looked at her sister and blew a soft kiss, then looked up at Stephanie as they passed by, holding out her hand and brushing her fingertips against the younger woman’s elbow. People sang without her accompaniment, as Stephanie leaned down and kissed Merit on the cheek, and they exchanged words that Will couldn’t hear.
Hail the resurrection, thou. Alleluiai
“Oh, Lord Jesus…” Will whispered his own prayer as he followed the stretcher and the woman he loved more than life itself, his hero.
Michael followed too, holding a corner of the stretcher, stumbling, not bothering to fight the tears anymore. The girls came running as well, yelling for the boat to wait. Merit reached up her hands and held them in her embrace.
“You girls behave yourselves,” she whispered, her hoarse voice nearly drowned by the low rumbling of the fireboats engine. They sobbed and tried to hold on to their mother.
Merit looked up at Michael with a weak smile. “I want you to give that book we have about heaven to your aunt Sydney. Will you do that for me?”
Michael swallowed and nodded.
“And if I don’t see you again for a while,” she continued, “you be sure to take care of your dad. Promise?”
Michael gripped her hand as they lifted her stretcher over the side of the boat. “You’re going to be okay, Mom,” he said, barely choking out the words. “Your faith, remember?”
“It’S not about my faith anymore. Mine’s like it always was.” She looked at him with a sad smile and kissed his hand before letting go. “Now it’s about yours.”
She waved at her children as Will and the others settled her into the back of the fireboat and George let go of the lines.
thirty-seven
God made the world round so we would never be able to see
too far down the road.
ISAK DINESEN
If Stephanie didn’t know better, she might think nothing had changed in Kokanee Cove during the past several weeks. From where they stood on Blackwell Point, she and Michael could see the mailboat plowing through gentle waves on it’s way to Lakeview, like always. If she bothered to count, she might have tallied a dozen fishing boats within sight and nearly as many sailboats. A warm wind carried across the waters and rose against the bluff, ruffling her hair in the gentle May sun. In the woods behind them, a warbler sang cheerily, probably trying to impress his mate.
Had anything changed? Maybe she should wonder if anything had not.
“I remember once I was sitting here on the bench praying.” Stephanie had probably already told the story, but Michael didn’t seem to mind hearing it again. “Your mom startled me when she walked up. I think she liked the view up here.”
“How could she not?” Michael bobbed little Colleen in his arms like a pro, turned in a circle, and finally rested his gaze on Stephanie.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. I mean, I was curious about something, but it’s probably none of my business. You never said, so I never asked.”
“You’re not making any sense, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just ask.”
“All right.” He sighed. “But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Would you cut it out? You’re driving me crazy.”
The thought of marrying Michael had flashed across her mind, but they’d never talked about it openly. But the way he was acting now—he wasn’t going to ask an important question, was he?
No, of course not. They’d known each other less than a year and had never discussed the matter, unless one counted his roundabout hints and her vague what ifs.
But why was he acting so strangely?
“All right,” he said. “I’ve been wondering ever since the morning Syd was born, when we carried Mom out on that stretcher, she whispered something to you. What did she say?”
“Oh.” She breathed a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have minded his asking the other question, but she was glad she didn’t have to deal with it yet.
“I understand if it’s a private thing,” he said. “I was just curious.”
“It’s okay. She just said to take care of her hero son for her.”
He chuckled, as if it meant something to him this time.
“She knew, Michael.”
“That she wasn’t going to make it?” He stared at the lake. “She always said she would! Or that we would…”
That they would stay together. He didn’t have to say it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think that’s what she meant.”
“What do you
think, Syd?” Michael wiped his eye and held his little sister close. He crouched by the large bag, close enough to see but not too close. He had a right to hide, to change the subject. Ever since his mom had died a month ago, they’d had enough tears to last a long, long time.
“Careful,” Stephanie warned them. “I wouldn’t get too close with her.”
One never knew with wild birds. She reached into the bag with gloved hands and carefully pulled out the young kestrel.
“How long’s it been?” Michael asked.
Since she’d rescued this beautiful bird? Since they’d met? Or since his mother’s funeral? She looked up at him and tried to answer with her eyes. Long enough? Not nearly long enough? Kevin the kestrel struggled against his wraps, and she turned her attention back to the task at hand.
“Too long,” she finally answered. “We should have let him go a couple of months ago. But with everything else…you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Okay, then, let’s do this.” She held the talons between her fingers, well away from her chest, and squeezed the bird’s wings hard enough to hold it still. After months of slow rehabilitation, this kestrels time had come. He sensed freedom—of course he did—and jerked his head from side to side, even under the sock that kept him in the dark and relatively calm. “Can you yank the blind when I say?”
Michael nodded and reached for the tip of the sock. At her nod, he pulled it off the way a mother pulls a bandage offa child’s elbow, then stepped back, sheltering little Sydney from the flapping wings with his arms. Sydney the angel—the perfectly healthy angel—gave a little startled yelp but did not cry.
“See ya, Kevin,” said Michael.
“Fly!” Stephanie released the bird and it flapped into the sky. That cold day when she discovered him injured in the snow must have faded from his memory. All he’d needed was time. Now it was his time to fly.
And he did, gathering height and circling as if in thanks, but not looking back or down. Kevin the kestrel took his rightful place in the thermals off the bluff, riding the warm air higher and higher, until they could hardly hear his lonely screech echoing against the side of the mountain.
“You think he’ll find his family again?” Michael wondered as they craned their necks to watch the bird circle out of sight. “Hope he knows how to blend back in.”
A lot of questions today. Not many answers.
Stephanie gathered the hood and the burlap bag, then smiled and nodded. She slipped her arm into Michael’s, and they made their way back down the path to the resort.
“I think he will,” she said., “Kestrels have a sense about those things, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “I even prayed for the little guy.”
“You’ve been praying a lot more lately. I didn’t think tough Air Force guys did that sort ofthing.” Bringing up the Air Force was sure to get a reaction, one way or another.
“You know better.” He chuckled, then slipped back to serious. “Just like I prayed for her…and Mom.”
He looked at his infant sister with a gentleness in his eyes, and for a moment, Stephanie thought he looked more like a father than a big brother. She could imagine her own father holding her in much the same way.
A dad? In a way it suited him, but Stephanie wouldn’t tell him so. Not yet. She held on to his arm and let him talk as they continued down the path. Will needed some help with the docks this morning.
“What do you think happened to the miracle everyone was praying for, Steph?”
The question didn’t surprise her. She’d wondered herself over the past month, more than she cared to admit to her parents, perhaps more than she cared to admit to herself. But she had wondered. After all the prayer meetings, all the people on their knees, all the well-meaning Christians who had written to say they believed God would provide a miracle… It had sounded so encouraging at the time.
“Your mom’s healing, you mean?”
She was stalling and she knew he could tell, but he nodded as if he understood.
“I’m not yelling at God anymore, I guess,” he said.
“Did you ever?”
“Are you kidding? All the time. Especially when I was on duty. I would tell Him exactly what I wanted Him to do, and then when it didn’t happen, I gave Him all kinds of grief.”
“I know it hasn’t been easy.”
“No. I wore my game face a lot. My combat face.”
She studied him, wondering. He had the nicest smile, when he did smile. And those eyes… “That face—do you still wear it?”
He bent his head and touched his sister’s nose with his own, Eskimo-style. Then he shook his head slowly. “Not since she was born, not anymore. But I still wonder.”
She let him talk.
“I mean, everybody in the church was praying for a miracle, weren’t they? You were convinced.”
She nodded.
“It just seemed like a logical deal,” he said. “A no-brainer. Like God would get my mom through the pregnancy, and then she would get some kind of reward. He wouldn’t let her die. Wouldn’t that have been perfect for all the talk show attack dogs and the magazines and the newspaper columnists?” He raised a hand, as if framing a tabloid headline. “‘ Lunatic Idaho Woman Healed!’ You were right. That would have been perfect.”
The headline faded in a moment of silence as Michael dropped his hand and his gaze.
“If God had asked me,” he whispered, “I would have voted for that kind of ending.”
“Me too, Michael,” Stephanie said without hesitation. “Your mother was special.”
As soon as she’d said it, she realized how trite her words sounded. And while the sentiment seemed to satisfy him, it still didn’t answer his question.
“Yeah, but I still don’t know what happened to that miracle we were supposed to get.”
Stephanie didn’t mind the question except that she wasn’t close to finding an answer, either. Why did everyone always think she was a theologian?
“I guess…” she answered, not knowing what she would say, “I guess you’re holding the miracle in your arms.”
thirty-eight
Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he
married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her;
and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
GENESIS 24:67, NIV
Ahh!” Will jerked his hand away from the gas pump as fuel spilled over the back end of a fishing boat. He grabbed a rag out of his back pocket and wiped up the spill, thankful the owner had stepped into the store to buy some drinks. He replaced the cap on the blue and white Bayliner.
“Better start paying more attention,” he lectured himself.
But he couldn’t turn it on, just like that. Half the time, he felt like he was a zombie, hardly awake, hardly alive. Was this what life would be like from now on, without Merit?
He hurried back to the counter, rang up a candy bar and a six-pack of Coke for the man, and gave him change for a twenty.
“Free gas?” The out-of-towner grinned at him from under a thick mustache. “I mean, if you don’t want me to pay for it…”
“Right! Sorry, hold on.” Will trotted back out to the gas pumps to check the total, then hurried back in. By that time, two other customers had lined up to buy chips, Popsicles, and a map of the lake. He tried not to appear overly morose, and finally the bell on the door tinkled as they left.
Merit hung that bell. Will let himself tear up, then swiped a handkerchief across his face. The strong smell of gasoline nearly made him gag.
“Whew!” He reeked like a gas pump, so he tossed the handkerchief into a nearby trash bucket.
Watch it ignite, he thought. Or me.
It was nice to be busy, but busy and klutzy at the same time didn’t work well, even after reading all those how-to books. Maybe he should just lock the door, hang up the Gone Fishing sign, and crawl back into bed. But even the sign reminded him of Me
rit, who used to hang it in her kitchen.
Besides that, Merit had planted all the flowers by the front porch. Should he tear them out?
Merit had painted the wall in their bedroom hunter green. Should he paint over it?
And Merit’s perfume still scented his pillow, faintly but distinctly. Should he turn out the lights, pull the covers over his head, and cry all over again?
He couldn’t get away from Merit’s ghost—even if he’d wanted to. Instead, he rolled in his pity like a dog in the grass.
One thing he knew: it wasn’t like it always was anymore, and it would never be again. He’d done plenty of wallowing since they’d buried Merit, but still the casseroles came every couple of days like clockwork, as if the women of the church were going to feed him and Michael and the girls for the rest of their lives. He supposed they should enjoy the lasagna and tuna helper while they could. He was certain it was all very tasty, and if he’d been at all hungry, he might have eaten some instead of dumping his portions down the garbage disposal.
Which he still needed to fix.
His choice of an on-the-job dinner wouldn’t meet with anyone’s approval. But what was wrong with a package of past-date peanut butter cookies and a large helping of dip-style corn chips, washed down with Diet Dr Pepper?
“Are you eating that junk food again?” Stephanie pushed in through the glass door, little Sydney riding snugly on her arm. “That’s where your son learned it.”
Michael followed right on their heels.
Will tried to sweep the peanut butter cookies off the counter, but she’d already seen them and pointed to the evidence.
“How was your walk?” he asked.
Stephanie wouldn’t be distracted. “Fine. But you’d better not let any of the church ladies see you eating that stuff. Don’t they bring you enough food?”
“More than enough,” he mumbled, brushing at crumbs. “Be sure to tell them thanks again for me.”
“Maybe you should tell them yourself.”
“Well, I do, when they bring it.”
“No, I mean at church. I know we’re not Lutherans, but you still need to give us a try. Michael likes our services.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Michael agreed. “It’S not what you think. You’d like it.”
