An Imperfect Miracle

by Thomas L. Peters

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s just getting old, and when you get old your body starts to give out a little.”

  “Is he gonna die?”

  She shook her head real fast.

  “No, he’s not going to die. And quit your moping. Your dad was always pulling that stunt whenever something didn’t go his way.”

  In a few minutes we were sitting in Mom’s dinged-up green 2002 Chevy Cavalier that she’d bought used over the Internet for fifteen hundred bucks after Dad took off with our pickup truck. We were about to back out of the driveway when a cop car pulled up and parked right in front of our mailbox. Two cops climbed out and started walking toward us. One had a big belly and a shaved head, and if he’d just been a few inches shorter he would have been perfectly round. The other guy was so slumped over in the shoulders, and so skinny around the middle, and so milky and spotty in the face, that he reminded me of a sliver of crescent moon, which I had just learned about in Mr. O’Connor’s science class.

  Mom got a scared look in her eyes and took a couple quick breaths before the round cop leaned against the window and told her that they wanted to ask me a few questions. Then I got a little scared too and started thinking about what I’d done wrong lately.

  “What’s the matter, Officer?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” the round cop said. “Just a few routine questions for your son.”

  “About what? He’s not in any trouble, is he?”

  “It won’t take long, ma’am,” the skinny cop said, peering in at me from the other window, like they were ganging up on us or something.

  For as much trouble as Mom generally caused me, when other people were after me she mostly took my side. At least she didn’t tear into me right away until she found out what was really going on. We went back inside the house with Mom hugging me the whole way. Because those cops were dogging us so close, I didn’t try to squirm out of it either. Then the cops plopped their rear ends on our couch and started grilling me about Mary and whether I’d seen anybody paint her face on the concrete and stuff like that. They kept saying that some folks believed Mary was just a hoax. But I stuck to my story and told them what I’d told that snarly little newspaper reporter.

  “So you have no idea how the image got there,” the round cop said.

  “Mary put it there herself,” I said. “It’s her face, after all. She can stick it wherever she feels like.”

  Then Mom decided to jump in, like she had a few times when that doctor was asking me questions about Chewy.

  “Nathan has an active imagination, Officer.”

  “So I’ve heard,” the round cop said, and jotted something down on his little notepad.

  “I don’t make things up,” I said. “And if she isn’t really Mary, how come so many people are always showing up from all over the world to pray to her?”

  “Did you put her face on?” the skinny cop asked, leaning over and squinting at me. His squirmy little mouth sort of reminded me of the dried-up apricots Mom sometimes left out on the kitchen counter when she got tired of eating them. “Maybe your friend Carlos put you up to it, and then you made up that crazy story about the little drunk and his cut being healed to get some attention for yourself.”

  My heart exploded up into my throat so hard and fast that I couldn’t say a word. I figured that they’d found the little drunk, and he was calling me a liar for taking the credit for discovering Mary. After Mom watched me for a little while sitting there all frozen up, she decided to jump in again.

  “This is ridiculous. He’s just a little boy.”

  “Answer the question, son,” the round cop said, squinting at me now too, although he had so much flab hanging down from his face that it didn’t change his look much.

  Finally I got my breath, maybe because I knew that, this time at least, I was telling the truth.

  “I didn’t talk to Carlos about her until after she’d already shown up. That little drunk was bleeding real bad too right before Mary healed him. If he’s telling you any different, he’s lying.”

  The cops didn’t say anything more about the little drunk, and it wasn’t long before they figured out that I was sticking to my story and that they might as well leave. Mom and me stood at the window and watched their car pull away. Then she bent over me and gave me a big hug with plenty of kisses, which she hadn’t done since I’d sprained my ankle a couple months before chasing through the woods after Chewy. I tried to fight her off, but she wasn’t budging. When she was finally through, I asked her if Mary had done something wrong to cause the cops to check up on her.

  “They probably just want to know if vandals put her face there. You told the policemen the truth, didn’t you?”

  I nodded real hard a few times.

  “You didn’t hold back anything.”

  “I told them everything,” I said, and crossed my arms hard over my chest, probably a little too hard because Mom squinted at me for a second like she knew I was lying. But I didn’t really see why it was so horrible that I got the credit for having discovered Mary instead of that nasty little drunk. If he didn’t like it, he ought to step up and complain.

  We climbed back in our car and headed north on the Interstate out toward the country. I liked driving past all the old beat-up black barns with the big Mail Pouch signs painted in grimy white letters on the outside. And I liked watching the cows grazing in the tall grass and every once in a while some horses and sheep nibbling away too. Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen lived in a big white wooden house about two hours away up near Lake Erie. The house was surrounded by an apple orchard, and Uncle Carl grew corn and tomatoes in his backyard too. He had a ponytail and used to wear a little gold earring until Aunt Helen made him pull it out.

  They had a dog named Rocky, a black lab with a little hound dog in him. He wasn’t near as nice as Chewy, but they seemed to hit it off pretty well. Even being invisible, Chewy still liked to run through the rows between the apple trees with the tall weeds smacking against her nose, which I guess meant that being invisible wasn’t as big a deal as you might think at first. We turned off the interstate and onto this squiggly country road that cut through the woods and past some run-down barns. Mom had been quiet for about fifty miles, so when she spoke up it jolted me a little.

  “The air’s so fresh and clean in the country, and there’s plenty of space to run around. If we lived up here, you could get another dog and play out in the fields together.”

  I felt like telling her that Chewy could run around all she wanted in the woods back home, but I thought of something better to say instead.

  “I bet Father Tom believes that Mary has special powers, or else he wouldn’t have blessed her. And being a priest and all, he must be pretty smart.”

  “Why don’t you ask Pastor Mike in church tomorrow what he thinks about it?”

  For once Mom was right. Pastor Mike would know for sure, and I could trust him too because he wasn’t Catholic and didn’t have anything to lose one way or the other. After a few minutes, I spotted Uncle Carl’s old wooden barn and gave a secret hand signal to Chewy that we were almost there. Chewy looked out the window, and Rocky must have been able to see her too because he started scampering around in the driveway barking and carrying on.

  Aunt Helen had roasted a turkey even though it wasn’t even a holiday, and it sat tender and juicy in the middle of the dining room table with the sunlight sparkling off it from the big windows all around. Before we started eating we all held hands like usual, and then Uncle Carl said grace the way he always said it, short and sweet, not like those long-winded prayers at our church that I sometimes dozed off in halfway through. “Thank you, Lord, for this meal and bless us all,” or something like that. While we were praying I cracked open one eye to see if I could tell what was wrong with Uncle Carl, but he looked fine to me.

  Aunt Helen started passing around the plate stacked so high with corn that some of the ears broke loose and s
tarted rolling down the sides.

  “Now, what’s all this about you two moving up here?”

  Right away Mom shot her eyes toward me and sort of frowned, like I wasn’t supposed to be hearing any of this. But Aunt Helen was the only person I knew who didn’t let Mom push her around.

  “I just thought that a rural lifestyle might suit us better.”

  I was busy spooning mashed potatoes onto my plate before Uncle Carl got to them. “I don’t want to move, not with Mary showing up.”

  “Quit talking with your mouth full,” Mom growled, even though my mouth was pretty much empty.

  Aunt Helen winked at me and then passed me the plate full of hot buttery rolls. I grabbed three before passing the plate on to Uncle Carl, who snapped up the rest. “It’s funny that the town puts up with this Mary business,” Aunt Helen said, winking at me again, like I was supposed to be agreeing with her or something. “In this day and age too.”

  By then Uncle Carl was busy wolfing down the corn, and some of the kernels were already spilling out the corners of his mouth.

  “People need something to believe in besides crooked politicians and greedy corporations. I don’t see any real harm in it.”

  Aunt Helen told him to quit stuffing so much food in all at once, or else he’d get heartburn again.

  “Of course, you’re welcome to stay with us until you find a place. How are you getting along with that young single friend of yours? The nice minister you were telling us about.”

  My ears sure perked up then.

  “I’m really not his type,” Mom said. Her cheeks turned all bright red as she flicked her eyes over at me again. “The younger women are always mobbing him at church.”

  “He’s not all that much younger than you,” Aunt Helen broke in. “Ten years maybe.”

  “Seven,” Mom said real fast.

  Aunt Helen smiled kind of weak.

  “That’s not very much these days. Some women are marrying men half their age and younger.”

  “They tend to be rich women,” Mom said kind of slow and gloomy.

  Uncle Carl was still chewing on his corn. It must have taken him a little longer to get it all down on account of his new false teeth that he claimed didn’t fit him very snug. Finally he got to where he could talk so that you could mostly understand him.

  “The fact that you’re divorced, you don’t think that’s a problem for him, being as religious as he is, do you?”

  Mom scooped some more mashed potatoes onto my plate like they were about to run out. But I’d had my fill of mashed potatoes and wanted to work on the corn, so I pushed them off a little to the side when nobody was looking.

  “I don’t really know. But he’s such a nice man, and very smart and accomplished too. I’m sure one day he’ll head up a huge church somewhere.”

  “Then he might be a good catch,” Uncle Carl said. “You’ve still got your looks, Jodie. You ought to go after him and quit sulking and feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Aunt Helen yelled at Uncle Carl for being rude, but Aunt Helen wasn’t like Mom and never stayed mad for long. Then they talked about pretty much nothing as far as I could tell. That was fine by me, since I was free to eat all the corn and tomatoes I wanted without having to slow down to say something.

  I was just patting my full belly when Aunt Helen told us that she’d baked an apple pie for dessert and that she had some ice cream and chocolate chip cookies too. I said to save me some while I went outside to play with Rocky. I was pretty sure Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen would have understood about Chewy being invisible now, but I didn’t want to say anything with Mom sitting right there.

  I ran all the way to the back of Uncle Carl’s orchard searching for snakes, but I didn’t find even a single garter snake. Rocky was racing around the whole time showing off how much he knew about where everything was, like groundhog holes and raccoons and such. But Chewy never minded Rocky’s bragging and was taking it all in good fun.

  I was finally starting to get hungry again and decided to leave the dogs out there to play some more while I headed back to the house. The window to the dining room was wide open, it being pretty hot out. As I was passing under it I heard Mom talking real low and serious, which was how she always talked about me with her nurse friends when she thought I wasn’t listening.

  “Nathan’s doing much better now in school. I just wish he had more friends. I still hear him talking to Chewy once in a while. I’ve told the doctor about it, but he thinks he’ll grow out of it.”

  “It’s a tough thing on a boy, losing his dog all of a sudden like that,” Uncle Carl said kind of garbled, like he still hadn’t quite finished off his corn.

  I pictured Aunt Helen throwing him a stern look.

  “Maybe that young preacher could help him adjust,” Aunt Helen said. “You know, bring him out of his shell.”

  I hated it when Mom started going on and on about me being lonely and having no friends and maybe being a little crazy too. How would she know anyway? It wasn’t like she followed me around all day. I shut up my ears and then ran into the house as fast as I could, where as soon as they saw me they started talking about how rainy it had been that year.

  “Good for the corn and tomatoes though,” Uncle Carl said, and then winked at me.

  After gobbling down the apple pie and cotton candy ice cream, which Uncle Carl had bought special for me, I sat back and patted my stomach, hoping I wouldn’t explode. Then I noticed that Uncle Carl had only eaten one little bite of pie and no ice cream or cookies. Uncle Carl was always shoveling down candy and donuts and anything sweet, and I asked him if he had a bellyache. Uncle Carl said that the doctor had told him to watch his sugar, whatever that meant. Then Mom chimed in that his diabetes wasn’t a problem if Uncle Carl would just eat right and exercise a little like the doctor wanted.

  “Easy for you to say,” Uncle Carl moaned.

  Aunt Helen wiped her mouth off with the big white handkerchief she had sitting on her lap, even though her mouth looked plenty clean to me.

  “If you had just taken better care of yourself all these years, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Uncle Carl reached down and yanked off his slippers and then started rubbing his toes a little. His toes looked fine to me, although the nails seemed a little thick and pale and crusty at the top.

  “My feet are already starting to go bad. Next thing you know I won’t be able to see. That’s how diabetes works. It just wears down all your organs.”

  “Follow the doctor’s orders and you’ll be fine,” Mom broke in before Aunt Helen could yell at him again. “It’s at an early enough stage that it’s easily treatable.”

  But Uncle Carl still looked pretty sour about it, and I was wondering how I could cheer him up when all of a sudden I got an idea.

  “Why don’t you go down and see Mary? I bet she could heal you up, a lot quicker than those doctors anyway. And she’ll probably let you eat all the apple pie and ice cream you want.”

  Uncle Carl looked at me kind of strange and mixed up for a second, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Faith healing,” Mom snorted kind of testy. “That’s the big new thing in town. I’m sure it’s just a passing fad though. I hope so anyway.”

  Then Mom told them how I was the first one to see Mary’s face on the concrete, and they all laughed about that. Even Uncle Carl seemed to perk up, which I was glad about because I wasn’t used to seeing Uncle Carl all sad and gloomy. Mom was the one who was supposed to be depressed all the time, not Uncle Carl.

  “The town council is holding a public meeting tomorrow evening to discuss what to do about it,” Mom said. “I guess some people are complaining about all the traffic and noise.”

  Right away I asked Mom if we could go. She said that I could tag along with her if I promised to keep my mouth shut. I promised and she said okay, probably just so she wouldn’t look so mean and stubborn in front of Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen. Then
Mom said we better get going because we had to get up early for church.

  Just as we stepped outside I gave a secret hand signal to Chewy to make sure she knew to climb back into our car. I hadn’t decided yet whether Chewy had superfast powers when it came to traveling, like she could fly or something, or whether she had to ride in the car with us. I expected she could fly home on her own if she really wanted to, but I didn’t feel like taking any chances.

  It wasn’t long before it was pitch black out, and as we drove along I could hear the crickets singing by the road, which always made me feel a little lonesome. Then my eyes got heavy, but I kept pinching the loose skin on my arm because I wanted to tell Mom something before I forgot.

  “I don’t wanna move out to the country.”

  Mom smiled up into the rearview mirror.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it later.”

  “Why are you always telling people that I don’t have any friends? Carlos likes me, and so do some of those old ladies like Mrs. Marcella.”

  “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

  I must not have been able to hold out any longer, because everything went dark until we got home and Mom made me go to bed.

  Chapter 5

  Mom said our church didn’t look like a lot of churches, because there weren’t any crosses or stained glass windows or pulpits or altars or anything too religious, nothing like the kind of stuff Carlos was always selling at his little table. We didn’t even have any song books or Bibles out where the people sat. Everything you needed to know, even the Bible verses and the words to the songs, they flashed up on a big screen behind the stage, just like at the movies. And the seats were soft and cushy too, not like those hard plastic chairs at school. You could even lean back a little and fall asleep if you wanted to, although sometimes it was hard to fall asleep with all the shouting and praising God going on. Some Catholic kids at school said I was a Protestant, even though I told them that our church was called “Lamb of the Redeemer Holy Ghost Worship and Revival Center.” Some kid with big ears even called me a Fundamentalist once, whatever that meant, and he made it seem like it wasn’t such a great thing to be, either. When I asked Mom about it, she said we weren’t really anything. She said the church was on its own and we just went there because we liked it. Our church didn’t have any statues of Mary outside, that was for sure.