by Diane Adams
"So is our church anything like your church?" Rose asked Neal, as they filed down the aisle.
"It's not my church," Alex was quick to correct her.
"It's the same religion," Rose pointed out.
"They do a lot of stuff different though."
"Like what?" Meemaw asked with interest.
"They didn't make Neal stand up and turn around so everyone could see him." Alex turned to Neal with a look of apology. "Our church is much bigger," she seemed to brag. "We have three services every Sunday morning."
Neal barely listened as Alex went on. He no longer cared about figuring out what the white thing was. It was probably a lunar moth, just as he'd thought from the beginning.
After hanging around with the crazy neighbors for two days, he was acting crazy himself. He didn't really believe that Rose's picture had changed by itself, and he didn't believe that the flowers she painted had a fragrance. It was probably some kind of practical joke. All of it. Including the white thing. It was probably done with a projector. Mr. Cameron was probably operating it from the third floor balcony.
The minute Meemaw put the car in park, he thanked her for taking him and jumped out. "I can't do anything the rest of the day," he told the girls, speaking firmly so they wouldn't argue.
"I'm going home this afternoon," Alex warned him with an unhappy frown. "I thought we were going to ... you know." She whispered the last, nodding her head at her grandmother.
"I can't," Neal insisted. "Nice meeting you, Alex. Maybe I'll see you again sometime."
He had planned to go straight into the house, but he was afraid his grandparents would stop him on the way to his room. He didn't want them to see him crying. He didn't want to answer questions, or say something polite about the church service. He walked slowly, until he was sure he was out of sight, then ran for the clubhouse as fast as he could go.
"I will not cry, I will not cry," he recited, pacing back and forth, his hands clenched into tight fists. He should've known going to church was a terrible idea. It reminded him of those first days, when everyone said they were praying. He had prayed too. He had made a million promises to God, if only his dad would be all right.
Finally he gave in and covered his face with his hands. "Why?" he asked. "Why? Why? Why?" The pain came over him in a great wave, and he sobbed with misery. "If he had to die, why did he have to die like that?" he asked the God he didn't believe in. He thought he had asked that question a thousand times, even if he had never spoken the words out loud before.
"Meemaw made me come," Rose said from the doorway.
She had startled him, and he looked at her before he thought to turn away, to hide his tear-stained face.
"She knew you were crying. I guess she figured out that the minister said a bunch of stuff that would make you feel bad."
"I wasn't crying," Neal said. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with his fists. "I didn't listen to what he said anyway."
"He's really nice," Rose went on, keeping her eyes averted. "He wouldn't have hurt your feelings on purpose."
"He didn't hurt my feelings," Neal said angrily.
"He said some good stuff too." Rose stepped inside the clubhouse and looked around. "About having hope for the future."
"That's nice for you," Neal said in a sour tone. "Your mom will get better and your dad will come back and you'll all live happily ever after."
"It's possible," Rose said, lifting her chin, as though she had been imagining just that. "Don't you believe in miracles?"
"No," Neal said without hesitation. "I don't believe in anything."
"You have to believe in something," Rose argued. "Everyone believes in something."
"Well I don't."
"Don't you believe in God?"
"No. Why should I?" Neal backed up and sat down. He forced himself to breathe slowly through his mouth, determined not to cry anymore.
"That's the way I was when my mom first got sick," Rose said. "I decided not to believe in Him anymore. I mean, it seemed like the more I believed, the worse things got."
Neal was curious, in spite of himself. "How come you started believing in Him again?" he asked. "It's not like anything got better, unless you're glad you have to live with your grandparents."
"I am glad of that," Rose said emphatically. "What if I didn't have any relatives and I had to go in an orphanage? Or if Alex was my only cousin and I had to go and live with her?"
"I thought you liked Alex," Neal said with surprise. He had been jealous of the friendship the two cousins shared, and wished he had a cousin of his own.
"I do like her, but I wouldn't want to live with her. Would you? I mean, she's the most popular girl at her whole school! Everyone would be watching me all the time, to see if I was like her."
Neal suspected people would be watching Rose all the time anyway. "How come you started believing in Him again?" he repeated his question.
Rose shrugged. "I missed Him."
"You missed Him?" Neal said bitterly. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
"When you're all alone in the world, like I am ... Well, sort of alone. I have the grandparents but even when they're there, they're not there, if you know what I mean."
Neal nodded. He thought it was a perfect description of Rose's grandparents.
"He's my best friend," Rose went on, suddenly shy.
"God?"
"Jesus. Jesus is God, but I like to think of Him as Jesus, because He lived here, on Earth, so He really does know exactly how I feel."
"Some best friend," Neal said with biting sarcasm. "He takes your dad away and then he takes your mom away and then your grandma gives you a permanent that only curls half your hair."
"Actually, she got a phone call right in the middle of doing it and when she came back, she squirted the first side twice and didn't do the other side at all." Rose came the rest of the way into the clubhouse and sat down on a rock. "This is really cool," she said with approval. "Did you build it yourself?"
"It's nothing special," Neal said, unwilling to talk about his dad.
"I'm surprised your grandparents let you," Rose said honestly. "Did they take you to the hardware store to get the stuff?"
"My dad built it," Neal said gruffly. "When he was a kid. Then, last time I was here, a couple years ago, your grandpa gave me the stuff to fix it." Neal remembered how frightened he had felt when Mr. Cameron approached him. Now he thought Mr. Cameron was the least scary person he'd ever met.
Rose nodded. "That's how he is. Always helping people."
Neal remembered the day his parents returned from their marriage counseling weekend. He and his dad had sat across from one another, just as he and Rose were sitting now. His dad had cracked a few jokes about the comfortable furniture. If Neal could remember them, he would tell them to Rose, to try to make her laugh.
"How can you not believe in God?" Rose asked softly. "Isn't it sort of scary?"
Neal frowned at her. "I have a scientific mind and the whole concept of God doesn't make sense to me. If there was a God, things would be different, wouldn't they? Horrible things are happening to people all over the world every single day. Even to children."
"Those things would still happen if there wasn't a God," Rose said logically. "Suppose God decided to move to some other Universe and leave us on our own. Do you think people would stop getting sick and cars wouldn't crash into each other and nobody would get divorced? All the bad stuff would still happen. Dads would run away from home and dads would die and moms would still have nervous breakdowns. Everything would be the same except we wouldn't have God to comfort us and make us strong enough to live through it."
"God doesn't make me strong," Neal argued defiantly. "He makes people weak."
"Nope," Rose said with authority. "You're weak because you don't have Him. And I'm strong, because I do."
"If you're an example of strong, then I'd rather be weak," Neal snapped. He wanted to say that she hadn't suffered as much as he had, but he wasn't sure it was
true.
"Okay, have it your way," Rose said, unaffected by his cruel words. She stood up and backed into the doorway, smiling at him.
Neal wished he hadn't been mean to her. All of a sudden, he didn't feel like being alone.
"Hey, Jesus," Rose said, as though there was someone else in the clubhouse with them. "This is my friend Neal. He's having a terrible day. Please try and help him, even if he does say he doesn't believe in You." She stepped outside, then leaned her head back in. "Just talk to Him," she advised Neal. "It's worth a try, isn't it?" She turned and headed for the corn field, singing the hymn from church, just loud enough for Neal to hear.
"Hey, Jesus," he repeated with scorn. "Rose is a dork!"
Suddenly he felt warm. Too warm. He unfastened his tie and fanned his face with both hands. He wondered if he was running a temperature. "Oh, great," he complained. "Now I guess I'm gonna get sick."
He noticed how quiet it was. Perfect silence. Nothing was moving, like the moment just before a storm.
"Hey, Jesus," he said again. He guessed it couldn't hurt to try it. "I really miss my dad!" He sniffed a few times. "And my mom," he added. "I'm worried she's going to have a breakdown, like Rose's mom, and she won't be able to come back to get me." He sniffed again. Then he bowed his head and folded his hands and listened.
(( 15 ))
