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The light was dim, gratefully. Lydia didn’t think she could have taken it bright. She felt cold. Shivering cold. Then wondered if indeed it were her mother, her mother’s spirit, listening, taking it all in. “We’re so sorry,” Stanley said, so softly she barely heard him. “Dale told us he’d be all right. I guess that’s what we really believed. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
Mike was still sitting in the chair when they came back down the stairs, breathing in gasps. Charlette was beside him now talking softly, guiding him in deeper, slower breaths. Margie glared at him, wanting to shout and cry out “You left them there to die!” feeling cheated that he was already in pain.
“Sometimes,” Mike said, his voice high and tense, “it’s like he’s on my back. It’s like carrying a cross, but...” He couldn’t finish. He was not worthy of a cross. There was no legitimate reason to ask forgiveness. He had run. They had all run. It was an action that could not be taken back. Something that would be forever, forever, there. He was Sisyphus forever rolling the rock up the hill.
Lydia felt her legs collapsing and she sat down hard on the steps. She heard Mike but could not respond. Slipping off the step and onto her knees, she bent forward and pressed her forehead onto the cold cement where her father may have taken his last breath. There was too much pain here. There had to be some break in the chain of pain. Some action. Some way to help people move on. Her mother, Mike, Stanley, the sisters, Jake, too. Dale. Some ceremony perhaps.
“Mike, we saw you at the cemetery,” she said. “You placed flowers on your mother’s and brother’s graves. Can you bring one here? Can we all bring something here, to cleanse, to start lifting that cross, together?”
Margie was sitting on the bottom step when Lydia made the proposal. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Lydia came and put her arm around her. Stanley sat down with them. “Why not?” he said.
Charlette and Shirley nodded. Tanya and Jennifer, sitting behind Mike and watching bug-eyed didn’t move. Mike stood, grabbed Jake and said “Sure.” For a few moments the room buzzed with an indescribable energy.
Chapter 18
The Return Page 26
