Between Before and After

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

“Did you see all those people? I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do. Do miracles need a response?” he asked.

  I couldn’t tell if he was talking to Mom or to himself.

  Mom sat in her desk chair, which was spun to face him. I noticed spider webs in the pale skin around her eyes. Even though it was summer, she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt that came down to the tips of her fingers. In it she looked very small.

  “How dare you give them hope? What about the ones who aren’t saved? What about the kids who die every day even after people pray? Where are those miracles?”

  “I don’t know, Lainey. I don’t know!”

  “This is going too far! If you go on like this, I can’t protect you anymore.”

  Now Uncle Stephen stopped dead. His head snapped up, and he looked at Mom for a beat before he said, “Protect me?”

  “I’ve spent my entire life protecting people. First Pop, then you, now the children.” The tips of her fingers disappeared inside the sweatshirt sleeves. Her voice was low and throaty, like she might cry. “God abandoned me just like the Gossleys did.”

  “You took good care of me when I was younger. But you didn’t protect me, Lainey. That was God.”

  “Was it God who got you to school every day? Who worked so we weren’t living on the streets? Who stood between you and Pop when he was raving drunk and then cleaned his vomit off the floor? Who lied so that you’d stay with the Gossleys, where you had a chance?”

  Then her small white hand shot out of the sleeve and closed around the mug. She hurled it, coffee and all, at the wall. Brown liquid sprayed up across the white paint. Blue shards rained into the carpet, across the surface of her desk.

  “Lainey—” Uncle Stephen looked at me. There was a warning in his voice.

  “How dare you! Everything I did was for you!”

  She was on her feet, running the few steps it took to reach him. He stood, the only thing moving the blue vein throbbing on his temple.

  “And now you’re taking his side.” She pummeled his chest with both fists. “Choosing a God who watched our mother and sister die. You’re choosing him over me all because you think you’ve done a miracle! There are no miracles!” Crying now, Mom let her hands drop.

  Uncle Stephen set both of his long hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged them off, her glance rounding on me. Our eyes locked. And in those seconds, what I saw was similar to the look of a trapped animal—pain, fear, and threat. My gut twisted. When she bolted down the hall, the slam of her bedroom door shook the wall and clattered my school picture to the floor.

  Uncle Stephen stood rigid, staring after her, the blue vein still pulsing.

  The starburst of coffee dripped down the wall. The whole room smelled of it. My brain was frozen, caught in a repeating frame of the mug flying from her hand. Why did God let people die? I made a gurgling sound. Uncle Stephen turned in my direction. In two strides, he was next to me.

  “I’m sorry you had to witness that, Molly. Your mother has had some awfully hard things in her life. She didn’t mean to hurt me. This miracle business has been more than we all bargained for.”

  I couldn’t swallow, much less talk.

  Uncle Stephen gave a light tug on my ponytail. “Miracles aren’t comfortable things. But we’ll get through this, you’ll see.”

  I was crying now too, and buried my head on his shoulder. Mom’s words were clashing cymbals in my brain. What about the ones who never got the miracles?

  Mom stayed in her room the rest of the morning. Uncle Stephen said to let her be, and he busied himself cleaning up the kitchen. I picked the shards out of the carpet and scrubbed at the wall, but the coffee had left a dark, weeping trail on the light wall. A small crack had allowed the stain to soak below the surface of the paint. I rubbed hard, and while the stain lightened, it wouldn’t disappear completely.

  When Uncle Stephen got out the vacuum cleaner, I decided to make myself scarce, in case he had any idea of co-opting me into service. I wandered toward my room, but found I couldn’t keep from staring at Mom’s closed door.

  Angus had been in his room through the entire debacle. I cracked open the door.

  “Angus, what are you doing?” Angus stood on his bed with his arms outstretched. Attached to his arms was an enormous pair of wings. I don’t mean feathery wings. These were as wide as his body, draped with the stiff cream fabric he had attached to wooden ribs with dope. From where I stood, they looked as though they had sprouted from his shoulder blades, and he was smiling, his crooked incisor shyly lapping its neighbor. In his own strange way, my brother was beautiful.

  “Don’t tell anyone.” Angus carefully unstrapped the wings and slid his arms out.

  “You can’t fly with those.” I poked at the stiff fabric and wondered at the design. But the truth was, I wasn’t quite sure.

  “Leonardo thought you could, and mine are like his. Only better.”

  “He was a grown man and you’re a little kid.” I hated it when I found myself copying Mom’s tone of voice.

  “So? It means I have less weight to carry. Besides, I understand how these things work. And I’ll let you watch my first trial, only if you promise not to tell.”

  “Trial?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” He looked at me like I was complete idiot. “I’m going to need to make certain adjustments, so I’ll have to make trial flights, and then write up any changes I make. That’s how inventors do it.”

  “Don’t you need wind?”

  “It would help, but the thing that would help most is flapping wings. My design is a glider. I’m going to jump off the backyard fence as a test.” He paused to make sure I was paying attention. “It may not be high enough. I have to get myself horizontal.” Then he looked down. His voice shook just the tiniest bit. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

  “She thinks Uncle Stephen likes God more than her.”

  Angus met my eyes. He shrugged. “He probably does. He’s God. We’re supposed to like him more.”

  It was snowing in the living room. At least that was how it looked. The couch was buried beneath mounds of white sheets. Socks and underwear were stacked like snowmen while white shirts billowed over the backs of chairs. I tried not to look at the dull stain patch on the wall, but I couldn’t ignore the faint bitter smell of coffee.

  Uncle Stephen smiled sheepishly. “I thought I might do a little wash.” He stood like an awkward crane in drifts of white, sorting, piling, folding.

  I carefully stepped over a pile of undershirts. He must have included his own laundry with ours. I lifted a corner of the drapes and peered out. People had returned to the yard with armloads of flowers and candles. Like before, some waited, staring at the door, as if something magical might happen at any moment. I quickly let the drapes fall closed.

  “They’re the faithful, Molly. But what occurred is not what they think.”

  I began sorting Angus’s socks from mine. “What do you mean?” I glanced again down the hallway toward Mom’s closed door.

  “What most people don’t understand is that miracles aren’t always benign.”

  “What does benign mean?” I felt that certain flutter, right behind my ribs, that a new word always caused.

  “Benign . . . harmless.” He dipped his chin to pin one end of a trailing sheet while he folded the two sides inward with albatross arms. “When people ask for a miracle, they think they are sending in an order to be fulfilled. But miracles are terrible things.”

  “Getting healed isn’t so terrible.” I rooted about for a missing sock.

  “Terrible meaning awesome, full of fearsomeness and wonder. You can never know the consequences once your life has been invaded.”

  Invaded made me think of our duck-and-cover drills at school. The teacher would shout “Duck!” and we’d dive under our desks, heads buried beneath our arms, waiting for the bomb to come. Invasion was a terrible thing.

  Uncle Stephen piled the folded sheet on top of an already towering
mound of white. “In the Bible, people were raised from the dead. A dead man coming back to life must be a fearsome sight.”

  I wouldn’t want to see something that had been dead for a while appear in my room. My uncle had a way of showing everything from a different angle.

  “Are you going to talk to them again?”

  I didn’t like the feeling of all those eyes watching our house. I didn’t like being trapped inside on a sunny day in the middle of July. But it was more than that. Suddenly Uncle Stephen was a stranger to me. There was a part of him, a secret life, that had nothing to do with me. It was the same way I felt about Mom when I heard the words Woodward House, as if the people I had known my entire life had suddenly grown a tail. They had a life that was apart from me, and knowing that, I couldn’t look at them the same way anymore.

  “I think your mother’s right. It’s best to let the whole thing blow over, if it can.”

  “Is Mom going to be okay?” My question was so quiet, and he waited so long to respond, that I wasn’t sure he heard.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to understand why bad things happen, why it feels like God has left us on our own.” A pair of white boxer shorts dangled from one hand. “Existential angst. Your mother feels like God left her all alone. She wonders if her life has meaning. Maybe it’s my fault. I haven’t done a good enough job of telling her it does.”

  The phone shrilled.

  We both froze. White towels draped from Uncle Stephen’s arms.

  It shrilled again, and I hurried to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Stephen Fitzgerald, please. This is the San Jose Mercury calling.”

  I put a hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s the newspaper. They want to talk to you.”

  “Tell them I’m busy.”

  I thought he’d at least want to speak to them, to explain his story. “He’s busy right now.”

  “Who are you, his niece?”

  “My name’s Mo—”

  Uncle Stephen grabbed the phone from my hand. Towels and washcloths drifted to the floor. “Please don’t question my family. I have nothing to say.” He set the phone down quietly and stood there not moving.

  “Uncle Stephen?” I asked.

  Then I heard it too, faint voices singing. A flight of song was rising from the yard, a strange melody I did not know.

  By mid-afternoon, Mom came out as if nothing in the world was different. She’d changed from her sweatshirt into a new blouse and even added a touch of lipstick. Piles of neatly folded laundry punctuated the room, which now looked as tidy as she did. She sat down at her typewriter and began to work, but not before I caught her glance at the wall.

  Angus and I, clearing a pile of towels off the couch, tried to watch TV, but every few minutes the phone rang, until Uncle Stephen took it off the hook.

  “We are besieged in our own home,” Mom said without looking up.

  “I’m truly sorry that it’s come to this. I’ll get a hotel. I’ll leave right after dinner and make sure they see me go.” Uncle Stephen picked up the book he’d been reading between interruptions.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “It’s unfair to put you and the kids through this,” Uncle Stephen spoke to her back.

  Mom turned to look over her shoulder. “You’re my brother. Fairness has nothing to do with it.”

  The doorbell rang. Like the phone, it had been ringing on and off most of the afternoon. This time the bell was followed by several sharp raps. Angus peeked under the corner of the drapes.

  “It’s the Penguin and the Giraffe.”

  Uncle Stephen sprang to his feet and hurried to the door. When he opened it, Pasquali waddled in. He was a hot, sweating penguin today. The Giraffe loped after him. He was so tall, he had to duck his head to come in our door. It looked like his clothes had been stretched to fit him.

  “Quite a group of pilgrims outside.” The Penguin spoke quickly. “Hope doesn’t wait for official verification. We strongly suggest you do nothing to encourage them.” The Giraffe nodded.

  Mom went to the kitchen and returned with glasses of lemonade on a tray.

  “Tell me, do you really believe my brother has performed a miracle?” Mom leaned forward as if eager for their wisdom. She was using her researcher voice; maybe no one else recognized this, but I did. Penguin looked at Giraffe and Giraffe’s Adam’s apple did a two-step. Then Penguin folded his hands—white hands thick with black hair.

  “There are different degrees of miracles. It appears that your brother has performed a modal miracle. A boy’s body underwent an extraordinary or miraculous cure.”

  “So how would you define a miracle?” Mom looked up from under her thick eyelashes. It was a deceptively sweet look. She was waiting to attack.

  “They’re wondrous, divine deeds with spiritual purposes.” Penguin folded and refolded his hands.

  “And how do you know that what happened was miraculous?”

  I caught Angus’s eye. How could we know? Proof was a complicated word.

  “That is an issue for the Roman Congregation to consider. We’ve sent off all the information we have on this case. Doctors concur the boy is healed from his tumor.”

  I could tell that the two investigators wanted to talk to Uncle Stephen. But Mom was relentless.

  “How do we even know that miracles exist?”

  This time the Giraffe spoke first. His voice was deep, like the rumble of thunder. “If you believe in an omnipotent God, you’ve opened the possibility that we don’t live in a closed system. The world becomes vulnerable to miracles.”

  A shiver went down my spine. There was something about the word vulnerable that made me want to run away and hide.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  GIRLS WHO ARE DIFFERENT

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—JULY 1955

  Molly

  The house was hot. Every window was closed. Every drape was drawn. The afternoon sun beat against the glass. Sweat dampened my temples. After three days of forced confinement, it felt as if the walls were closing in, as if I might suffocate in my own house. I needed to see Ari, to remind myself that there was a real world apart from the drama surrounding our house. I wanted privacy to talk and to explain that things weren’t what she probably thought they were.

  No one would notice if I left. Uncle Stephen was building a model airplane with Angus in his bedroom. Mom was working at her desk. I slipped out the kitchen door and into the backyard. Here, you would never know our front lawn was under siege. Without the news presence, Uncle Stephen predicted that interest would fade by the end of the week. I wasn’t so sure. Besides, I couldn’t wait for the interest to fade. I thought about my possible escape routes. If I ducked out the side yard gate I might be able to skirt the crowd. Besides, they were focused on the front door. It wasn’t me they were interested in.

  I clicked open the gate latch and peered out. The noonday sun was merciless. The crowd on the lawn was also larger this morning. People loved a spectacle, and word of mouth spread fast. The one news clip of Uncle Stephen on the porch with raised hands hadn’t helped. I eased out the gate and paused for a minute, my back against the warm wood, watching. Cars choked our once quiet suburban street. I recognized one or two neighbors, but most of the crowd were strangers. All were expectant, all were waiting, but for what? For my uncle to perform another miracle? To be healed? What hopes drove them to our door?

  I edged forward along the fence line, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk only yards away. Once there I could blend in and keep walking like any neighbor hurrying home to escape the sun. I’d almost reached my goal when a little boy sitting next to his very pregnant mother shouted and pointed at me. A murmur started, then built like a wave, a terrifying wave that might suck me under. I ran.

  No one followed me as I rounded the corner to Ari’s house. Once I was completely out of view, I felt safe enough to slow to a trot and then a walk. My breath came in gasps, my shirt stuck to my back. I untucked it and let it h
ang loose over my pedal pushers. My legs trembled. I watched the windows I passed for the flick of a curtain. It felt as though there were eyes everywhere.

  By the time I approached Ari’s house I was sticky with sweat, my tongue was gummy and stuck to the roof of my mouth. From her side yard, I heard the swish-click of lawnmower blades and inhaled the unmistakable scent of hot new-mown grass. Jesse rounded the corner of the house, brown muscled arms pushing the mower. A line of sweat plastered his T-shirt to his chest. My heart did a summersault.

  He stopped when he saw me on the walk, and with a forearm wiped the sweat from his face.

  “Ari’s not here. She’s at the movies with some friends.”

  Friends that didn’t include me. My heart contracted.

  He squinted at me as if he could read the confusion in my eyes. “Look. What’s going on at your house has made people nervous.”

  “But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  He walked to the hose bib, turned on the faucet, and took a long drink from the end of the hose. I watched him swallow, feeling my own saliva dry in my mouth. Water splashed his neck.

  “Maybe not, but you’re involved by extension. That’s how people think.” He sprayed his head and shook the water off like a dog. “Do you believe he did it?”

  “A miracle? I don’t know. I don’t know what I think.”

  “Want a drink?” He held out the hose.

  I nodded and crossed the lawn to take it from him. The water tasted like warm rubber, but it bubbled into my mouth and soothed my throat. I wanted to douse my head like he had. Instead I handed it back, and he dropped the hose on the ground.

  “You’ve heard of Darwin, right?” he asked.

  “Sure.” Although I was a bit fuzzy on the details.

  “My science teacher says science may do away with religion entirely. But people aren’t ready to hear that yet. They only hear what they’re ready to hear. Anything beyond that makes them nervous. What your uncle did makes them nervous.”

  Drops of water sparkled in the dark curls of his hair. The sun beat on my head.