by CW Ullman
“What arm? They have me so high, I can’t feel anything,” Molly said, making them both chuckle.
“All right, let’s get you back to bed and let Sister Celeste rest; you need your sleep, too,” Charlie suggested.
They walked back to Molly’s room where she crawled back into her bed. When Charlie leaned down to kiss her forehead, Molly grabbed his neck and hugged him hard.
He shared, “You know, I came this morning to apologize for going crazy yesterday. When I went into your room and you were gone, I was sad thinking you were on the run again because of me. I was leaving when I heard you in here talking to her. I’m glad you didn’t leave; that would have broken my heart.”
After the boys were born, Charlie sensed Molly’s disappointment and jealousy at having lost her position as the center of attention. He wanted to alter her impression at the time, so when putting her to bed in those days he said a little phrase to her so she knew he loved her. She would always respond back to him. This morning before he left, he said it to her.
“You know, you’re my favorite daughter,” Charlie said.
Smiling broadly with tears in her eyes she said, “I’m your only daughter.”
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Molly was released from the hospital after two surgeries to reset her arm, but she returned every day and sat with Sister Marie Celeste’s saying the rosary. With her arm in a cast, Molly struggled to wipe Sister Celeste mouth and swab her face. She was there when Sister tried to pull the tubes out of her throat in a fitful sleep. Molly was the first person Sister Celeste saw when she finally regained consciousness.
When Sister Marie Celeste was coherent enough to understand, Molly explained everything that had happened. She informed Sister Celeste that her pelvis was fractured, her nose broken, she had four broken ribs, suffered a concussion, shattered the lower half of her left leg, and had a compound fracture of her right femur that almost killed her. Molly was crying when she told her and asked her many times, “Do you hate me?”
“No, I don’t hate you. You’re not doing drugs anymore?” Sister Celeste asked and Molly shook her head. Sister Celeste sensed a profound change in Molly. Frequently addicts will survive an overdose and go right back to their drugs, but most who almost caused death to another have their eyes opened to their addiction. While the accident was horrific, Sister Celeste wished it had happened to her many years earlier.
Sister Celeste had been out of her coma for ten days. While Molly prayed the rosary or slept, Sister Marie Celeste had a lot of time to reflect on her life. She was made wiser by the accident. Charlie came by to visit her while Molly was in the room, arriving just as a physical therapist was entering.
“Okay, Molly,” the therapist said, “it’s time to rehab your arm.”
Molly said, “I’m going to be back in an hour, Sister. Do you need anything before I go?”
She declined and the therapist took Molly away in a wheelchair, leaving Charlie and Sister Marie Celeste alone.
Charlie asked, “You’re looking better; how are you feeling?”
“I am much better, thanks. I need to talk to you.”
Charlie closed the door and pulled a chair up to the bed. He had been waiting for this: the Sister Marie Celeste lecture. She was going to tell him to go easy on Molly. While Molly was a young, impetuous teen, underneath it all she was still a good kid. Sister would urge him to be vigilant about Molly’s involvement with drugs and remind him of how crazy she was at Molly’s age. His assumptions were completely wrong.
“Remember, I told you I was in Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, in AA there are twelve steps we work to help with our sobriety,” Sister Marie Celeste said. “The ninth step is where we make amends to people we’ve harmed. I have an amends I have been putting off. I justified not doing this because I reasoned no one knew about my transgression but me, and I was working on it with the Lord.
“As a Catholic, after you confess your sin, ask for forgiveness, and perform Penance, you are restored in the Eyes of the Lord. I confessed my transgression, but I hadn’t been absolved of my sin. There was no absolution because I was attempting to con my way out of it. I knew in confession, I’d receive a prayer-ladened penance, but there was the amends that had to be made and I knew the confessor would not ask me to do that. I only did what was required, without doing what was needed. I hadn’t been honest with The Lord and that insincerity almost caused Sister Marie Pierre and your daughter their lives,” Sister Celeste stated.
Charlie had no idea where she was going with this and he was not sure he wanted to hear it. He said, “Sister, it wasn’t your fault-,” Charlie was interrupted when Sister Marie Celeste held her hand up to stop him. She looked at him with melancholy eyes and laid her head back on the pillow to draw a difficult breath.
She continued, “These many years I have put on a good front, but the truth is I’ve wanted to die for the longest time. I wanted to die because of the sins I committed and because the Lord called upon me to do something for which I lacked courage. I understood what Eve felt when she ate the apple and God came looking for her in the Garden of Eden: she wanted to hide. When I could find nowhere to hide from God, I prayed to be taken by the Angel of Death. When our van was struck, I believed the Lord had finally taken mercy upon me and answered my prayers. I died after the accident, and He let me feel peace for the first time in my life. I was free of my flesh, and my sins and I was going to be with The Lord. Then I saw my little child and she held her hand up; not to come with her, but to stay. She revealed what life would be like if I died. In this twilight I saw Molly, and my Lord gave me the chance to accept the responsibility for my life and the courage to come back.
“It wasn’t until I awakened and Molly told me what had happened that I understood the wisdom of the Lord’s plan. In my shame, I had convinced myself I was protecting people from pain, but it was literally the exact opposite. While I was hiding my shame, people were being exposed to catastrophic harm in my attempt to attract death. Had I died, Molly’s life would have become horrible, and she would have harmed herself; maybe even killed herself. If she had killed herself, your family would have been devastated, and it would’ve been all my fault. God returned me to fulfill what I needed to do. I had not been pardoned for my sin because I had not finished making my amends.
“So, now I am going to tell you what I did.” She stopped and got herself resituated in the bed. She tried to take a deep breath, but her healing ribs would not allow it. She rested for a moment before continuing.
“When I first talked with you at the Kettle ten years ago, I mentioned I had a baby that died and then things spiraled out of control. That’s only part of the story. When I got pregnant, I felt a child was only going to interfere with my life. I planned on getting an illegal abortion, but I did not have enough money or the will. I put it off and kept running around with my friends acting like I wasn’t pregnant. So, a day turned into a week and a week into a month, when in the eighth month of pregnancy my state of denial ended with the onset of labor. When my water broke, I was drunk, so my friends had to drive me to a hospital and just drop me off.”
Charlie did not know if he could hear the rest of this. This was reminding him of a day he wanted to forget. He listened to her with a sinking heart and an overwhelmed spirit. Her story transported him back to Cindy’s stillbirth. Mahatma Ji once said you could not close your ears, yet Charlie desperately wanted to; and Darla said it was not the things you saw that made you crazy, but the things you heard. He wanted to stop all sound, but he had relinquished control of this auditory sense and Sister Celeste was compelling him to listen.
“I had the baby and stayed in the hospital for three days. I had been virtually drunk the entire pregnancy, so the baby was born with fetal alcohol poisoning. I contacted my friends when I was ready to be discharged, and the baby and I left the hospital. After I left, my life continued along the same drunken path for a few weeks, except I had this child with me.
“This is hard to say, bu
t I didn’t want to have the baby and I especially didn’t want to take care of a baby. I thought I would give it to a family or one of my friends. I treated the child as though it was a pet. One day I took off in a friend’s car to find a family who would take the baby off my hands, but instead I just drove for days. I had just enough money to stay in motels and get drunk.
“One night I ended up in a small motel in a desolate part of Utah. It was winter and I was the only one there. The baby cried and I did not know how to stop her. What I usually did when she cried was wrap my head in a pillow to block out the noise, but this night the baby wouldn’t stop. Down the road from the motel was a bar, so I thought I’d leave her alone in the room, have a few drinks at the bar and when I got back to the room, she would be sleeping. I met a man at the bar and invited him back to my room. I got there first and because I did not want the man to know I had a child, I opened the back door of my room and put the sleeping baby outside.
“The next morning when I woke up the man was gone and so was the child,” Sister Celeste continued. “I was relieved thinking that the man had stolen my baby, because it would allow me to be free to carry on with my life. When I opened the back door to throw out some trash, I saw in the distance what I thought was a red blanket. When I walked out to it, it wasn’t a red blanket but a white blanket drenched in blood. In a swale not far from there, was the baby…this is very bad, Charlie…she had been dragged away from the back door and mauled by a pack of coyotes. She was dead.”
Again, she stopped and tried to draw a deep breath. She looked stricken but determined to get through her story. She paused for a few minutes and Charlie sensed she could not finish what she had to say unless she delivered it in a flat, almost businesslike tone.
“I got gasoline from my car…and set the remains of the baby on fire,” she said. Her eyes narrowed and she paused before she continued. “Charlie…the baby was born eight months after we had been together in Monterey.”
Charlie was numb.
“This was your child and you were the one person I never wanted to tell.”
He lost focus. He was gazing in her direction, but his mind had an image of scruff desert and a small fire. She waited to go on and took a labored breath.
She continued, “When Molly told me about all the things that had been physically broken in me from the accident, it was a reflection of how broken I am as a person. She asked me repeatedly if I hated her and I thought my hearing had been affected by the accident because I kept hearing my voice coming out of her mouth.
“I did not want you to hate me; that’s why I never told you in the letters or ten years ago when we met at the Kettle. I was hiding and my only selfish concern all this time was your condemnation of me if you found out the truth. But I saw the unintended consequences of my omission. I realized that by my selfishness in recruiting death, I had started a cascade of events that jeopardized other people’s lives. When it eventually involved the near death of Molly, another of your children, I knew I had to tell you.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Charlie now knew the profound secret she had been harboring. When they spoke before, she would never engage his eyes. However this time, she never looked away. Her false cheeriness, now absent, had been masking a haunting and brutal memory. That Sister Celeste had been at the center of God revealing a truth through a series of seemingly coincidental events was something Charlie would need time to ponder, yet at this moment Charlie and Sister Celeste were thinking the same thing.
“Had it been another car, another person, a different place I might chalk it up to chance, but when I died, God let me see you and Molly standing in the distance. Until I woke up, I did not know Molly was in the other car,” Sister Celeste said.
Charlie noticed she never said she was sorry. He was not looking for an apology, and found the lack of an apology almost helpful. She did not tell him all this to gain sympathy, but spoke it to Charlie in the manner of the military delivering news of a death; it was serious and he had to know. While she may have completed her amends, and beseeched God to forgive her, she was unwilling to surrender her guilt.
Her real penance was living. Sometimes deeds go wanting for forgiveness because they are unforgivable, and it is living with guilt that gives meaning, purpose, and substance to one’s life. Charlie thought we do not offer excuses for the inexcusable. He had traveled the same territory as Sister Marie Celeste because of the heinous act on the Enterprise; that act in turn made him well acquainted with the self-loathing in which Sister Celeste was immersed.
“This all stays with you and me. Is there anyone else who knows this?” Charlie asked. She shook her head.
“What was the baby’s name? Charlie asked.
She hesitated before she answered. He noticed she had only referred to her as ‘baby’ or ‘child.’ He was not asking Sister Celeste to punish her, but he had to know the name of his child.
“Charlotte Teresa Saunders,” she replied.
“You were right in telling me,” Charlie said. “It is right that I know. What’s important right now is Molly, and if you have no other reason to live, then live for her, and please do not rob her of the responsibility of her act by telling her any of this. Do not try to lessen her accountability. It is only because she ran into you that she has changed her ways. If her car would have hit a tree, I don’t think the accident would have turned her around the way broadsiding your vehicle did. God’s hand in this might have put your vehicle in Molly’s path to save her life.
“I believe in miracles and the proof of that is that anybody survived the mangled wreck of both cars. If your desire for death initiated a cascade of destruction, that same cascade has also created a beneficial effect in its wake.
“I knew an old mahatma who once told me that God wants to enjoy life through us,. Sister Celeste. You need to let go of the self-flagellation and let God enjoy life through you,” he said.
He got up from the chair, bent over the bed, and kissed her on the forehead. When he got to the door, he turned.
“I don’t hate you, Sister,” Charlie said, then departed.
She was alone and exhaled slowly. She reached over to her nightstand, took up the rosary, and started to pray the Act of Contrition. “O My God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” She stopped and tried desperately to focus on the prayer. She could feel her emotions well up and tried hard not to cry, knowing she would be racked with excruciating pain due to her injuries. Even so, she was unable to hold back her emotions and they exploded forth.
She cried that Charlie had accepted her amends. She cried for her child who perished. She cried in empathy for herself as the drug-addicted teenage girl who caused it all. She cried with the knowledge that through the grace of her Lord she was forgiven of her mortal sin, and she cried with the awareness that her ribs were not hurting in this cathartic epiphany.
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In the darkness of the closet, Charlie could see the muscles on the fifteen-year-old’s arms flexing as one hand tightened on the gun handle and his finger slowly squeezed the trigger. A flood of images washed over Charlie: the Christmas tree lot, the Vietnamese gang, Child Protective Services, the fight with Rusty, Molly’s pregnancy and Cecily’s clairvoyance.
CHAPTER VIII
Charlie brought Chief Biwer to the next meeting of the Knights of the Fire Ring so he could enjoy some bonding with fellow veterans. They got situated in the chairs around the fire ring with their beers and introduced themselves.
Chief Biwer said, “It’s nice to meet you fellows. Charlie’s told me a lot about you all. Around these parts there aren’t many people my age who were in the service.”
Ronnie said, “There is a covert hostility from our generation toward vets. I think our generation is split between the guys who had balls and went to serve, whether they wanted to or not, and the guys who hid. I think the guys who hid are now embarrassed.”
“I know they’re embarrassed, especially after I tell them about Tom
my Bennet,” Chief Biwer said. “We were in Vietnam’s Central Highlands at the same time. He was with the Big Red One Infantry in Vietnam, while I was attached to the 173rd Airborne. Anyway, in 1969, his unit was on a mission to find the North Vietnamese Army operating in the region that was terrorizing locals and making life miserable for the Big Red One and the 173rd.
“One day his platoon walked into the middle of an NVA ambush and his men got lit up pretty bad. He was the corpsman, so while his unit took a withering, incoming, cross fire, he was the medic who triaged their wounds. He was out in the open, completely exposed. When you talk to the troops who were there that day, they did not believe what they saw. He was killed two days later in a similar ambush. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor,” Chief Biwer finished.
They were quiet contemplating Bennett’s bravery, but the Knights were circling a question that none of them knew how to ask Chief Biwer. Finally, Ronnie popped it.
“Chief Biwer, Bennett’s bravery was heroic, no doubt, but is it the tale of his heroism that embarrassed guys who didn’t enter the draft?” Ronnie asked.
“No, I forgot to tell you. Because he was a medic, he didn’t carry a sidearm. All he cared about was taking care of his guys, saving their lives. Here’s the part that that blows everybody’s mind: he was a conscientious objector,” Chief Biwer said.
They were stunned.
“The men who serve in the military don’t get to pick the righteous wars. The guys who serve are doing just that – serving the country, the idea of America. If we did not have people willing to defend, willing to die for an ideal, America wouldn’t exist.
“Should we have been in Vietnam? In my view, the only war that should ever be waged is one where ground is taken and held. Vietnam was a civil war, which is a like domestic disturbance for cops: right after we show up, the old lady’s sorry she called. Every war I ever studied had dumbass moves, World War II would’ve ended much sooner had we followed Eisenhower’s idea to have D-Day almost two years earlier.”